The earliest followers of Jesus believed that the end of the world was nigh. They believed that the death and resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of a process which would see the whole world disintegrated, and a new world inaugurated.
This meant at least two things. Firstly, the current time was a temporary arrangement. The world as they knew it was a liminal space. Secondly, there was a real urgency about their work of spreading good news. They wanted everyone to be part of this new world that was coming, and to start living as though the new world had already arrived. I mean, why wait? There’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth, in which there is justice, peace and equity for all – so let’s do that in our small base communities now, as a kind of entrée for what’s about to come.
The early believers, and the Jews both in the Roman province of Palestina and spread throughout the known world, were experiencing a lot of bad stuff. Jews were expelled from Rome in the late 40s, and there was a major Jewish uprising in Judea at around the same time. In the early decades, followers of The Way were still joined at the hip with Jews – even if the synagogues were not always thrilled about it. So the Jewish persecutions affected them as well. We know of dozens of Christ-followers who were martyred in the first century, and there are probably others we don’t know about. At the time of the letter to the Romans, the temple in Jerusalem was still intact, but the Emperor Caligula had instructed that statues of himself be placed in the temple and in synagogues.
All of these difficulties strengthened the belief of these early Christians that the end was close. You can imagine that it was also a source of some comfort. They were a struggling minority, living under a corrupt and cruel regime, but Jesus was coming back to set it all to rights soon enough. This was good news!
So this is context into which Paul writes ‘I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.’ And Paul also places the sufferings of this Roman ‘church’ into a cosmological context. It’s not just that some humans are craving the return of Jesus, but the whole creation, all matter, is groaning like a mother in labour, getting ready to give birth to this new world. These little churches, the small gatherings of Christians, have access to a profound truth – the world as they know it is about to be radically altered to a world without violence or poverty or cruelty. It’s an intoxicating vision, and you can imagine people being drawn to it.
So, let me ask you, do you feel like you’re living in a temporary world? Like all that we know is about to upended and a new world formed? Do you feel a sense of urgency to let people know about this new world and invite them in to the open secret?
I think the honest answer, based on my knowledge of this community, is a firm no to both questions. Most of us lead stable, settled lives, and we like to put down roots and feel at home and at peace. We might gripe about particular details, but by and large we quite like living in a prosperous society. And while we’re always happy to welcome newcomers to our church, there isn’t a sense that we have an obligation or compulsion to let people know that the world is going to be turned upside down, and invite them to change their lives because of it. For most of us, our faith impacts our life, but it hasn’t caused us to radically change the way we live.
I’m not offering condemnation here, let me emphasise. Just naming the dramatic disparity between those early churches and what we call a church in 2020 in a comfortable modern democracy.
When that early church read out Paul’s letter and heard the words ‘present sufferings’, they didn’t think about having to use hand sanitiser at Bunnings or get a flu shot. They were in imminent danger of social exclusion, poverty, imprisonment and death. They were desperate for the new creation to arrive, because the world they lived in was so dreadful. They weren’t anticipating a happy holiday after death, they were intent on the wholesale destruction and restructuring of the world as we know it. This great upheaval, the great clean-up of the world would not be brought about by their own revolutionary efforts, this was no violent uprising, it would instead be brought about by the crowning of Jesus as the nonviolent King, and the inauguration of a new kingdom where violence has no more place.
Which brings us to the ‘present sufferings’ of our own times. We’re about 1,970 years after St Paul wrote to these Romans. COVID19 is tragic, and is having a major impact on the world, including many tragic illnesses and deaths. But as the virus spreads, it is exposing the inequalities, the violence, the greed, the selfishness and the corruption that were already present, and have always been present. While our comfortable lives might shield us to some degree, the reality is that for most people in most of the world, life is a miserable drudgery. And in most cases, the root cause of this wretched existence is the greed and power-lust of the few.
So what is to be done?
Here’s what I think, today at least. Our church – our churches – need to be more like the church that Paul addresses in Rome and less like clubs for nice people. Like many of you, I crave stability and safety, but The Way of Jesus asks us to tread lightly on this earth, as though we are temporary visitors, not permanent fixtures. And we would do well to embrace some urgency about the good news. If we truly believe that the kingdom of God is coming, then we should want others to know about it, both by the way we speak, and by the way we live.
The Lord Be With You