Sermon – Is the Future Good?
Isaian 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44
Farmville Presbyterian Church
11/30/25
Have you ever planted a tree? Trees are very much on-the-mind at the moment. Of course, these are the days when the debate is between real or artificial. It is a strange dichotomy since the real difference – the opposite – should be real or imaginary, and we are not talking imaginary trees. Still, trees are coming out in these days. You may have found one yourself of one kind or another, but I am not getting into Christmas trees with my initial question. That was the easy connection, and I want to go even more basic, even more simple, with the idea of planting trees into the ground. Have you ever planted a tree?
It’s a wonderful thing to do. It is also not a simple thing to do, especially for larger trees. You heard Anne and me talk about our tree planting project from when we were on the mission trip. It was an earth care focused trip, and we spent that one day planting 100 trees with the youth from the church we visited. Soil erosion was a significant issue. Roads and land were being washed out. The trees would help. The particular trees we planted were also resistant to a parasitic plant that was killing trees in that area.
We plant trees here, of course. One of my favorite trees that I have planted is a weeping cherry. It was the largest tree I have ever attempted to plant. It was a lot of work but a beautiful tree. Some of you might have tree farms. I know the Farmer family has their own tree farm and a Christmas tree farm behind their house. Those trees are still a good way from being harvested though. Trees are an investment into the future. They take years and years and years to grow. Even fast growing trees cannot grow like fast growing varieties of other plants. Kudzu can grow a foot a day. A tree is a different kind of investment. Those Christmas trees tend to take seven to ten years. A regular tree farm may take 20 years or even twice that. Planting a tree means you believe there is hope in tomorrow. You have hope in the future – you are counting on the future. No one plants a tree assuming that it will be gone in a year.
Why am I going on and on about this? Because we are again embarking in a season that is all about hope. If we are not able to buy into that hope, to cling to that hope, or to build on that hope, then there is no point to planting our trees, metaphorically or literally. There is no point in investing in tomorrow if we have no hope that it is in fact coming or that it will be worth living. I find this absolutely fascinating.
I find this absolutely fascinating because there is a part of me that has become more pessimistic about the world we have and the lives we are living. I did the absurdly foolish thing years ago and wished that I could live in a time that would stand out in a future history book. There are periods of time in our history that stand out as notable about which grandchildren may ask one day – granddad, tell me what it was like to live through the 2020s with COVID and Trump and the beginning of AI (and all that we do not even know yet because we are only halfway through the decade). Honestly, I would have been fine to have these years a little less interesting. Ever since 9/11, honestly, things have been difficultly interesting. Sometimes it is hard to look forward to the future and have a great swelling of hope.
But that also completely misses the witness of God in our history. If anyone should have doubted that they might have a history, it should have been the Hebrew people. They stared at their destruction in the face, again and again. Even though God promised them a future, they didn’t believe it very well. This was a people who were nearly obliterated in a famine, ended up slaves in Egypt, wandered 40 years in a wilderness, fought wars against everyone (losing and winning), and suffered time and again from God’s wrath. They lost two temples in the Biblical witness, had their nation divided, were all carried off into captivity, and were eventually dispersed as a people until just under 100 years ago. They defied God, despised God, ran from God, abused God, and failed to be a faithful people in every way, YET, God never let them go, not as we might expect.
The way the Bible reads, God really sits on the fence about this from time to time. It is telling just how much we are able to push God’s buttons, but it turns out that this is also how we understand what love really looks like. To be clear, the God who promised to be our God was completely rejected in the Old Testament, and that same God entrusted to us a Son, whom we also executed. It turned out that that WAS the path to a future. This is mindboggling. People who should have had NO future were given a BEAUTIFUL future, though not an EASY future. There is nothing that we can do or that can happen to make God love us any less. We will always have a future. No matter how this world turns out in the next five minutes, five days, five years, five decades, or five centuries, God will be the same God working the same saving grace in the same miracles of love. It is when we are most pressed and even most pressing that we see the best in God’s hand and heart. When things seem bleak is when God shines. That is our future.
This is what Isaiah is trying to spell out for us. He is offering prophecy in these years of complete failure for God’s chosen people. They were in the process of losing everything to foreign invaders who were being prompted by God to devastate the people to ultimately bring them back to God. The first chapter of Isaiah’s book is tough and challenging in a prophetic way. It is not bright or cheery or comforting. The second chapter, though, today’s chapter, is a message of hope. People will come up to Zion and go forth. The world will be shaped and changed for something better. They will walk in God’s ways. It is beautiful and comforting and hopeful, even though they had done nothing to deserve that message – in fact, the opposite.
Matthew is also forward-looking in his message. He is less hopeful in that sense, though. Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel speaks of a future that is perhaps scary, people being taken unexpectedly. He even connects it to the time of Noah which is utter devastation for all except for the family of Noah. Sometimes it is tricky to try to reconcile different notions of the future, especially the ones we do not like, but we cannot rewrite Scripture as we prefer, making it more palatable, pleasant, or comfortable. At the time of Matthew’s actual writing, they were just a few years away from the complete and utter destruction of Jerusalem. The Temple was levelled except for one wall which is still there today. The people were hunted, and those who stood against the Roman brutality were ended. The story of Masada was a part of this larger series of events. The nation of Israel ceased to exist, so yes, people were taken suddenly and violently. Jesus warned them how terrible and awful that time would be, but he did not want them to dissolve into despair. He wanted them to get ready – to watch and wait.
This means living in the spirit of Advent. You may wonder about this time of the year when things really just seem to be about getting ready for Christmas, but Advent may be even more important than our appreciation of Christmas. If we hear the challenge of the Bible to wake up, then it is on us to anticipate God’s future work. If we have a future in which we can hope, then it is worth preparing to be a part of. Even if the future seems intimidating or downright scary, we are not alone walking into it. The ones who are in the worst spot, those that are in true trouble, are those who go on living as if the future is nothing to think about or is ours to control. Sadly, those who never bother to get ready for what God is doing are the ones who suffer the most.
Over the next several weeks, we will be able to reawaken our sense of anticipation of God’s future for us. If we have let our hearts cool with busyness and distraction, it is time to remember who is writing our future. If we have forgotten that these days are about what is coming far more than what has already happened, then we can begin to prepare. No one prepares to meet the past. We are a people looking for a future in God, and by the grace of God, even through the struggles it brings, it is a good future. To God be the glory. Amen.