Luke 21:25-28
What’s going to happen in the future?
Ten years ago, as you looked into the future, is today what you saw? Is the person you are now the person you envisioned back then? What about 25 years ago? 50 years ago?
What’s going to happen this afternoon? Tomorrow? I try to keep a thorough calendar of future days. I look at my calendar and it tells me what appointments and events will be coming up. I look forward with anticipation to some of those events on my calendar. Not so much anticipation with others. But at least I know. Each item on each day of my calendar is going to happen, right?
My calendar gives me a sense that the future is predictable. Probably about 95% of the time, what I have on my calendar happens. But there are times when things I didn’t expect to happen, happens. Or things I expected to happen get canceled. I get surprises. Some times they aren’t good surprises.
We like to have a sense of control over our future. We want that predictability. Whenever we speak a sentence that begins with the words, “I will…” it has to do with what we want to happen in our future. Earlier this week, as a number of you invited me to spend Thanksgiving with you and your families, I replied, “I will be going to Wichita for a couple of days to spend Thanksgiving with my son, his wife and her family.” But looking at the weather I didn’t know if I would be able to say, “I will be coming home on Friday.” If the weather said, “I will be dumping an inch of ice all over the land,” then the weather’s “I will,” just might have precedence over my, “I will.”
Whenever we start a sentence with, “I will…” it means we haven’t done it yet, or experienced it yet. It’s something that will happen in the future. But because we say it, we assume it will happen. It means I have made a choice and it’s my intention to make that choice happen.
I’ve always thought that life is about choices. And the choices are about all those, “I will…” statements we make. But the more I thought about it this week, I wondered more and more if my “I will…” statements really have my personal power in them.
Here’s what I mean by that. I am not the only person who is saying, “I will… do such and such.” Everyone else is making their own, “I will…” statements. Some of those are bound to encroach into my own “I will…” statements. Everyone is trying to build their own future with their own “I will…” statements at the same time. What happens when some of those future plans collide?
Certainly you and your spouse have had those kinds of conversations. How do you handle it when your two separate “I will…” statements collide or are incompatible? What happens when what you will be doing, even for just the next hour or the rest of the day doesn’t quite fit with what your spouse or your kids envision what they will be doing?
Or what if the two clashing “I will…” statements go something like this: You say, “I will be going to the France-Germany soccer match tonight and I will sing and chant my voice hoarse for the French team.” That sounds like a fun and memorable, “I will…” statement about your future.
But unbeknownst to you, there is another group of young men who are arming themselves with automatic rifles and stating, “I will go to the France-Germany soccer game and I will shoot to kill as many spectators as I can in the name of my religion.” You who were going to the soccer game as a spectator had no idea there was another whose “I will…” statement was going to clash with yours in such a deadly way.
Thankfully, not all “I will…” statements clash in such a hideous and ugly way.
But I think we don’t stop and realize how most our choices, most of our “I will…” statements end up being negotiations, because we don’t consider how our choice will impact others, and other’s choices will impact ours.
Which brings me to one of the points in this message, Our futures are always negotiable. Our choices are all negotiable with the others who are also making choices, and “I will…” statements, that may not mesh well with our own.
So maybe, life isn’t about choices, or the sum total of all the choices we make. Maybe life is more about the sum of all of our negotiations that flow out of our choices and our “I will…” statements. Think about it. There is a huge invisible web out there that connects all of us through those negotiations that are woven by every one of our “I will…” statements.
The futurist Robert Prehoda once wrote:
Unless you believe in a totally fixed and immutable time-stream (in which case it doesn’t matter what you do, everything’s frozen in cement already) then the future must be a series of events that have not yet happened, and therefore can be altered, changed, diverted, moved, shaped by myriad of individual decisions. There is no one certain future; there are countless possible futures, with every moment bringing new opportunities to hand.
That’s the way life works: we make choices based on our, “I will…” statements, and we negotiate those choices within the web of relationships that we hold dear. Then we move into our future, molded by those negotiations.
Except in one instance. There is one future that is not negotiated. When God says, “I will…” our only response is to like or not. But even if we don’t like it, we don’t get to negotiate with God. Only a couple of times did God allow negotiation according to the Bible: when Abraham negotiated with God about any righteous people who might be in Sodom and Gomorrah; and when the people of Ninevah negotiated with God through their repentance, and God changed from the “I will destroy Ninevah in 40 days” statement.
Here, in Luke, we have one of those “I will” statements. It is by this statement that we find out there are times in the history of the world that all our “I will” statements will be suspended; another’s “I will…” statement will take absolute precedence and there is no negotiation.
Look back through this statement by Jesus and see how many times the word “will” comes up:
“Strange things will happen…”
“The nations on earth will be afraid…”
“People will be so frightened…”
“Every power in the sky will be shaken.”
“…the Son of Man will be seen, coming in a cloud…”
“You will soon be set free.”
Six times.
Let’s look at that word, “will” and what it infers. If something “will” happen it means whatever is to happen is expected. Not only expected—it’s supposed to happen. There is no shade of doubt. There is certainty.
Also, behind an “I will…” statement is a sense of determination. Determined in two meanings of the word. First, determined as in predestined. If something will happen, and there is certainty about it happening, it means it is fated, or determined that it will happen. And nothing will be able to derail that fate. If it will happen, it has been set.
Determination also has the sense of volition behind it. If I make an “I will” statement it means I am being deliberate in my choices and actions. I am exercising my own purposes. I am determined. “I will make this happen.”
Coupled with that is fact that in order to say you will make such-and-such happen, you must have the power to make it happen. I can’t say something like, “I will make Donald Trump drop out of the presidential election.” I could show all the determination I want about that statement, but I just don’t have the power to pull it off. So if you say you will do something, you better have the power to make it happen.
One other part of this statement Jesus makes about all the things that will happen has to do with design. Some things will happen simply because that is the way they are designed. That’s the feeling we get when we read Jesus’ six “will” statements—that this is the way the future is designed, and that future can’t do other than how it has been designed to play out. Thus we get back to fate or determinism. We may not like the way certain things about life are designed, but that’s tough. There are some things about the design we don’t get to have a say in.
The ultimate destination of our future, or the future of the world, is one of those. At least according to this statement of Jesus.
The other dissettling part of these six will statements is that they are open-ended. We can be sure that they will happen. We just don’t know when. Most of our “I will” statements that we make we try to be close-ended. “I will buy a different car next week.” “I will write a book in the month of November.” “I will drink some oolong tea with my lunch today.”
Not so with Jesus’ statements. The Second Coming, and these events, could start happening this afternoon. Or 50 years from now. It’s already been over 2000 years since Jesus made this statement. So when? We don’t know.
There were “will” statements made about the first coming of the Savior for thousands of years. And then, as Luke states in the Nativity story, “Suddenly there were angels in the sky singing…” The Savior was here. “Suddenly.”
In the coming weeks of Advent I will look at what has happened with the first coming of the Savior, and compare that with what will happen when the Savior comes again. “I will” do that. Unless the Lord breaks in and the sea starts roaring and the stars start shaking out of the sky. My “I will” must bow to Christ’s.
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