“Besides this, since you know the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, because now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is nearly over, and the day is near; so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
I don’t like to put things off. My preference is generally to work ahead of whatever the schedule happens to be. That way I can sit and relax until it’s time to get started. Some people, on the other hand, work best under pressure. Admittedly, though, when I have a quick approaching due date, I can be remarkably productive. There’s something about an impending deadline that spurs us into action. No one wants to be caught unprepared when the moment of testing arrives. A sense of urgency can result in a whole lot of positive action. Here, near the end of Romans 13, Paul puts a bit of a sense of urgency on our faith. Let’s talk about why the return of Christ matters and what it means.
We are in the midst of another intensely partisan election season where one side regularly derides the other as hating America while the other side accuses the one of being a threat to our democracy. Both sides claim to love the country while insisting the other obviously does not. This raises an interesting question for us to consider as followers of Jesus: What does it look like to properly love our country? What does it look like for a follower of Jesus to properly love whatever country he happens to call home? As we continue in our series, Who Do You Want to Be, this week, examining what it looks like for believers to live like Jesus is coming back someday, let’s take a look at this question through the lens of the Gospel.
A Proper Patriotism
What does it look like to properly love your country? That’s a trickier question to answer than it might appear at first glance. I suspect most of you immediately called to mind all kinds of patriotic images. We’re not quite a month past the Fourth of July. Gathering as families and communities while we eat good food and watch other people blow stuff up seems to be a pretty good way to love our country. But can you love your country too much? Is that a thing? Can you make an idol out of it? What if you love it to the point that you are willing to overlook or otherwise justify obvious and real faults? No country has a history that is totally spotless from any sort of failing of morality. Does a proper love of country allow for honest conversations about those? At the same time, though, can you give those kinds of things too much attention? I mean, no country is perfect, sure, but none of them are all bad either. Every country has noble and redeeming qualities if you are willing to search for them. Yeah, maybe you have to search a little harder in some places than others, but they’re there. It seems that a proper love of country is going to avoid both of these extremes and fall in this messy middle ground of loving without idolizing, and being honest without becoming cynical. What has me thinking about all of this today is that as we continue in our teaching series, Who Do You Want to Be, we are going to be taking a look at our duty to be good citizens wherever we happen to live.
What does it look like to live with the end in mind? Perhaps a number of different things come to mind for us, but the list Jesus and the apostles created for us doesn’t always overlap with the things we might imagine first. As we continue in our series, Who Do You Want to Be, we are starting to get specific about some of the things we are called to do, some of the ways we are called to live as followers of Jesus, if He really is coming back one day. This first one is something God’s people have always been called to do wherever they happen to be: make our communities better places for everyone living in them. Let’s explore this together.
Making Things Better
Let’s start with what is going to sound like a strange question today. Have you ever been kidnapped and dropped off in a country that was totally different from your own? I can’t say that I have experienced anything quite that traumatic, but I can imagine it would be pretty terrifying and disorienting. Actually, check that. I probably can’t imagine how horrifying that would be. It would be even worse, though, if there weren’t any meaningful prospects of getting back home anytime soon. What can you do in that kind of a situation? There are basically two options before you. One is to do whatever you can to get out of the situation, whatever it takes. That’s certainly where our mind might go first. After all, who would want to remain in a horrible situation for even a second longer than is absolutely necessary? The other option is to stay put and make the best of your new situation whatever it happens to be. Now, to a certain extent, factors beyond your control will impact which option is meaningfully available to you. It may be that you want to remove yourself from the situation, but you simply cannot.
The Nexus 