Farewell quick weigh-in on the Sunday of Eternity and Christ the King, which closes the church year.
For us Christians around the world, this Sunday marks the end of the church year and the beginning of the new church year, which is heralded by the next Sunday of Advent. Saying goodbye, taking stock, and forward-looking, illusion-free hope. He is hopeful despite hopelessness, because he trusts in the promises of Christ. This does not mean a blind hope that desires success or the fulfillment of our desires, but a personal faith that always waits for and sees Christ. Not the accusation, not the temper of finally telling me about myself, not the prioritization of everything we got or didn't get personally, as a family, nationally, as children of this age in 2022. We are not making a mathematical balance, but a balance of faith and hope. With gratitude for everything that we have endured with faith and we receive with hope, whether they have brought good or bad, the days will bring. Because we know, according to the Heidelberg Catechism, that "fertile and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, wealth and poverty, so everything comes not by chance, but from His paternal hand."
Phobia behind us and in front of us - so put your hands in the hands of your good Father!
I remember reading in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung many years ago: “We live in a phobia. We are afraid of cancer, of loneliness, sometimes even of staying in an elevator. And from death and from the Russians". In short: we live in fear of life and death, because life is life-threatening and death is unavoidable. Necrophobia - Zoephobia? Really?! And today, at home? What about everything! It's hard to list. National phobia, family phobia, personal bread phobia, and fate phobia. And uncertainty phobia. Because everything is uncertain. However, our people, our families, our colleagues, and ourselves will become more and more neurotic. What to do? "We don't have any miracle pills, and our doctors and teachers will be few and far between." Yes, we need to organize ourselves for self-help, self-care. Or we have to return to the place from where we became dizzy under the spell of modern technology and free capitalism, and staggered away from the sustaining roots. From the breathing root-like life-giving faith. From the providential faith, which is not idleness, but the ancient, Christian practice of leading a certain and healthy life. To the faith in providence, with the help of which our ancestors were able to live and survive contentedly in both good and bad days for centuries. They got to know him, accepted him and wholeheartedly relied on God's providential hand. Just as the Catechism of Heidelberg, the compass of our faith, puts it clearly and unambiguously: "Persistent in all adversities, grateful in happiness, and regarding the future faithful to our heavenly Father and God, let us have good hope that no creature can separate us from His love, since all creatures are so much in His hand that they can do nothing or even move without His will”. Only faith in the watchful and helpful presence of the providential God can dispel all kinds of phobias and fears. We entrust ourselves to His hands in the new church year as well. According to an ancient Chinese Christian saying: “You are standing at the gate of the New Year. You don't see a single minute of what is in front of you as an unknown. 365 days with many thousands of hours. Many thousands of pitfalls, traps, deadly dangers, but also some cherry blossoms. Be sure to walk among all these, even with your eyes closed. But entrust your fate to your Father, place your hands with faith in His creative, redeeming, guiding hand!".
Sunday of eternity against space and (faith) narrowness of consciousness
The prime sin that narrows space and consciousness, Éva's attention to the inspiration coming from the dust, from the level of the snake, is what still poses a similar threat today. In space-time, this short-sightedness of the eye, which only sees things today and right now, means millions of people who neither look at the past nor at others, but only see their own, selfish interests. Most of the more than 8 billion people. And this blindness that narrows space and sees only itself also means a narrowing of consciousness: neither God nor the other really exists for him. Let's not even talk about eternal life. This is the wall view. Many people only see what is right in front of them, which they willy-nilly bump into. From the tunnel only darkness, from the wall only the hopelessness that narrows existence into a digital prison cell. And Kálvin was very right in this, too, when he taught the people of Geneva for 25 years, and taught them the big lesson: you don't have to look at space and time, life, your life from your own perspective, but from God's. And everyone was repeating the sentence catechically: sub specie aeternitatis - everything from eternity.
And how right he was, centuries later, Bonhoeffer and everyone who is trying to be crippled by the horrors and inhumanities of the present experienced it. He learned this and taught it even in his last days in prison: if the final things are put in place and resolved, then everything in life that comes before, events and things before death, whatever they may be, becomes tolerable. It will fall into place. Because our ultimate hope is that we are heading home, to the place we read in the Book of Revelation: "God himself will be with them. He wipes all the tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, nor mourning, nor wailing, nor toil, for the former have passed away" (Revelation 21:3-4).
Towards the entire community of God, which forgets everything: tears, grief, death, wailing, toil, everything. Human humiliations, unjust abuses, poverty and treasurelessness, but also the haunting consciousness and memory of personal sins. Yes, on the Sunday of eternity, we can be strengthened in this faith: our caring Father will be with us in Christ until the end of the world. Our provident good Father takes us out of the narrowing states of space and consciousness, and gives us the perspective of life from the perspective of eternity and the freedom of keeping a distance of three steps in the belief of the orderliness of the final things, against the relativity of all things that are happening right now, good or bad.
German evangelical minister Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) started the Jesus ist Victor movement in his parish, which brought a great wave of awakening and renewal in the lives of many German families and communities.
He looked at even the most fallen man from the perspective of hope and eternity, the Ever-Living Christ. With whom, if not people, but the Victorious Christ or, as our Roman Catholic brothers will say tomorrow: Christ the King knows and wants to do something. That is why Blumhardt wrote these lines: "One day the day will come, and it will come quickly, when our Lord Jesus Christ will also come again. Then in His presence you will understand your whole life, and you will be happy even for what caused the most bitter hours or years. You will thank Him for everything and everyone, your past and present, everything".
Blessed eternity and the Sunday of Christ the King, blessed Church New Year 2023 with the approaching first Sunday of Advent, in a week.
Author: Dr. Lajos Békefy
