"What Are You Looking Forward To?" by Jason Edwards
What are you looking forward to?
This is meant to be more than a conversation starter, but instead, a prompt for hope. In fact, counselors sometimes encourage asking questions like this in the face of hopelessness. Is there anything you are looking forward to? The question can prompt us to imagine ourselves in a future with positive possibilities. This can spark hope, and sparked hope for the future can ignite a renewing experience of life in the present.
As these words arrive in front of your eyes, we have some things we’re looking forward to as a church. Our search committee has announced their recommendation that Angie Fuller be called to serve as our next Children’s Pastor. This is her “in view of a call” weekend. Since the search committee’s announcement, I’ve heard and seen many enthusiastic responses from you. There is excitement not only over her calling but also for all the good future possibilities it represents for our church, especially our young families. As a parent, the idea of my children being so shaped by the life and ministry of someone I hold in such high regard as a spiritual leader brings a smile to my heart.
We’ve also heard the recent announcement that the Rev. Andrea Huffman will join our staff as Pastoral Resident starting in late August. This is exciting not only because of Andrea’s great giftedness, but because it represents the expansion of our Pastoral Residency (thanks to a generous grant from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation) and a next step in our church’s commitment to being a teaching congregation. This Pastoral Residency not only enriches the life of our congregation (as we’ve already seen this past year since Emmitt Drumgoole joined our staff) but also enriches the life of the big “C” Church as we send these Residents out to serve future congregations as Senior Pastors. We’re making these investments in the present with an eye toward the future, and that, in and of itself, can serve as a symbol for so many things.
The renowned German theologian Jurgen Moltmann has said Christian Faith is an eschatological faith. “Eschatology” means the study of last things. Often when we hear people talk about eschatology, it involves pondering end-of-time events. Moltmann, however, references this primarily as a way of encouraging us to live in the present formed by future gospel hope. The resurrection of Jesus points to and promises a future resurrection of all things—a new heaven and new earth where sin, death, disease, destruction, and despair are no more. This is our grand, ultimate hope in Christ. Moltmann believes our looking forward to this future ought to have an impact on our experience and approach to life in the present.
In the present, we are living through a pandemic that has affected our lives in so many unexpected and unprecedented ways. Each person reading these words can easily pause and bring to mind those ways now. It has disrupted the lives of individuals, families, cities, states, and nations. It continues to disrupt our world, and though it’s not over, most of us are far from over it. We’re ready for this pandemic to be a thing of the past.
One day, it absolutely will be. There is a future beyond this pandemic. Will that future be affected by this present? It will. It will be affected by the mark of COVID-19. It will also be affected by the mark of you and me, by the way we choose to face these present moments with each other day after day after day. What might it look like for you to face these moments with an eye toward God’s gospel future? Might that somehow prompt more of the “there and then” God has promised us in Christ to break forth into the “here and now?”
We can certainly hope.
Jason Edwards, Senior Pastor