Begin with the End in Mind

Begin with the End in Mind
John 14:23-29;
Revelation 21:10; 21:22-22:5; Acts 16:9-15; John 5:1-9

Whenever we use the onboard GPS system in our automobile or search for directions on Google Maps, we have to put in the destination. The nice thing is the current programs allow us to alter the route. On the computer screen we can drag the suggested route to include a stop along the way at the bakery or Aunt Millie’s house. That doesn’t change where we are going, just the path we use to get there.

In Stephen Covey’s well-known book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he tells us the second Habit is very simple: “Begin with the End in Mind.” Or, in other words, determine where you want to end up in the future, and plan the present in light of those goals. Covey makes the shift from the Google Map kind of geography to the map of human geography, human fulfillment. What is the end that each of us have in mind for our lives? I often joke that I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Others echo that same sentiment.

There is some truth to the notion that we haven’t reached our final purpose. Joan Chittister, a Benedictine sister, says in her current book, Following the Path, that there are actually three calls in life. The first is the call to adulthood. As we move into the season of graduations – Ohio State’s is today, with President Obama bringing the commencement address – we think of all the graduates wondering if they will get a job to pay off the college debt, let alone get a job in the field for which they have trained. Chittister says that the “culture is full of criteria for success that have almost nothing to do with happiness, with Aristotle’s notion of ‘virtuous activity,’ with the recognition that we have all been born to make the world a better because we have been here.”(1)

She goes on to say that the culture demands that we get money, or power, or prestige, at least; “get the trappings of the good the life, the rumor of the great life, the reputation of success, the culture says, and that will be enough.” Except that it isn’t. And the result is that we are a culture of misfits, because we are accustomed to becoming things we aren’t.

Chittister’s second call is the mid-life crisis when we have outgrown the young life that we thought would go on forever and we find within us a whole new person. We get stuck in a rut that is comfortable and complacent and is a creeping kind of death. We realize that we haven’t gone where we thought we would. It may pay the bills, but does nothing for the spirit. Chittister says of this point in life: “Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is poor preparation for living. It equips us only for disappointment or, more likely, for shock. To live well, to be mentally healthy, we must learn to realize that life is a work in process.”(2) What she says is that somewhere in the course of the years between the first and second calls, we chose static and confused it with stable. We failed to change with the changes around us that prodded change within us at well.

I’ll return to Chittister’s third call in a moment. I want to pause here to look at the man at the pool of Beth-zatha. This pool has been found and excavated by archaeologists. It is 315 feet long, trapezoidal in shape and between 165 and 220 feet wide. That’s about the size of a football field. It was identified in part by the porticoes, in which, as John tells us, many invalids lay waiting for healing. Beth-zatha pool (which means ‘house of mercy’) was evidently roiled up periodically by an intermittent spring. The theory was that if you were first into the water you would be healed. There is no proof for that theory. But the man in our text believed it for 38 years!

That is a long time. Perhaps he had grown used to the waiting. He may have given into despair, who knows? We could look down on his paralysis at helping himself, but we, too, invest so much hope in external attempts at security – money: our IRA’s; power: our guns; prestige: our delusions of control – that we might as well be invalids ourselves. It is worth noting that this man’s years of waiting roughly correspond to the years of Israel’s journey in the wilderness. More importantly his healing is a sign of resurrection, a path from death to life.(3)

The man didn’t know Jesus at all, did not ask Jesus for healing, and faith was no pre-requisite for what Jesus did. It was not about whether he was worthy. Jesus asked him one simple question: “Do you want to be healed?” The man did not answer the question, but started listing of excuses: “I have no one to out me in the pool; someone always gets there ahead of me, etc. etc.” Jesus was not interested in the litany of excuses, and simply said, “Stand up, take your mat, and walk. You don’t need the pool.” The man was healed, took up his mat and walked out of Beth-zatha.

Do you want to be healed? Do you know where you are going? What is the end for which you are living?

Resurrection. New life. That’s where we are supposed to be heading. Once in a while when I read a novel, I will read the last couple of pages first. They might or might tell me something about the ending. Even if they don’t, the fun is not in the outcome butin experiencing what happened first and how it proceeds to the conclusion. We do that with scripture. We know the stories. We know the high points if not all the details. We need to remember where we are going. Revelation tells us where we are going:

The angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ...  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in [the city], and his servants will worship him; ... they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

We know the end of the story. We know where we are headed. And we know who we are headed there with. Jesus has promised that the Paraclete – Comforter, Advocate, Companion – will go there with us. And we are going to where God reigns.

Princeton Seminary professor Darrell Gruder writes,

A definitive answer to the question, ‘What is the reign of God?’ cannot be given. But we can at least sketch some of its contours by listening to the Old Testament’s prophetic forecasts of the coming day of God and the prophets’ expectations of God’s intended future for the world. Philosopher Arthur Holmes summarized that prophetic vision as shalom. It envisions a world characterized by peace, justice, and celebration. Shalom, the overarching vision of the future, means “peace,” but not merely peace as the cessation of hostilities. Instead, shalom envisions the full prosperity of a people of God living under the covenant of God’s demanding care and compassion as the rule.(4) 

We all know Revelation 21, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth....” What would it be if we localized that? “I saw the holy city, God’s New Waverly, coming down out of heaven ...” What would our ‘new’ city look like, envisioned in light of God’s vision of hope? This is an exercise in ‘borrowing the eyes of God,’ as the German theologian Dorothee Soelle describes our mystical sight. We see our world as God sees it. This is what happens in Revelation’s New Jerusalem vision.

Gruder picks up the theme:

Eschatology is not only about the end of the world. It is about the future breaking in today with an alternative order known as the reign of God. The announcement of Jesus that in his coming the kingdom of God had drawn near (Mark 1:14-15) was a declaration that God’s future—the eschaton—was present in the world.(6)

Like Paul seeing the vision of invitation to evangelize Macedonia, we are called, beckoned into God’s future which is already here, right now.

That brings us back to Chittister’s third call. She says that the secret of life is the willingness to grow into something that is beyond our present. The third call, leaving behind all the cosmetics of life – titles and money, positions and schedules, civic committees and public service activities – is the call to completion.(7) We are constantly trying to explain, define “shalom.” “Peace” doesn’t cover all the possibilities. We are called to be complete, to be whole, to be at peace with the image of God entrusted to us. We are called to stop making excuses, be resurrected to the life that Christ freely offers us, take up our mats, and live in the knowledge that God’s saving work is happening right now in the new creation which is bathed in God’s light- and life-giving love.

We know the end of the story. We know where we are going. We have the end in mind. Don’t just think it. Do it now.

(1) Joan Chittister, Following the Path : The Search for a Life of Passion, Purpose and Joy (New York: Image, 2012), p. 115.
(2) Ibid., p. 120.
(3) J. Shannon Webster, “Do We Want to Be Healed,” www.midrash@joinhands.com, Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 10:01 PM.
(4) Darrel Gruder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 90-91.
(5) Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, (New York: Basic Books, 2005), p. 166.
(6) Gruder, op.cit.
(7) Chittister, op. cit.

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Used by permission.