Summary: Two hundred and fifty years have passed for Americans from the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain until now. But what does the future hold -- not just for the United States but for the cosmos? The late theologian Juergen Moltmann, influential among both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that it's in the hands of the risen Christ, who wants all of us to help bring peace to this wounded world.
With yesterday's celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, have you spent enough time pondering the past to make you want to move into the future?
If so, the passage of scripture that we read today from the Gospel of Matthew gives us a chance to gain a better understanding of the future God has in mind for you, for me, for the whole Christian church and for the entire cosmos.
Indeed, Jesus says there that "all things have been handed over to me by my Father." And the words "all things" include the future.
So how are we to understand what Jesus has in mind?
We can get some help with that question from a theologian of hope and transformation named Juergen Moltmann. As the Jesuit publication America magazine noted at the time of Moltmann's death two years ago, he was a scholar of "enormous influence over several generations of theologians and other scholars in related fields. Moltmann was once one of the most prominent theologians in the world -- in both Protestant and Catholic thought."1
He had been born into a non-religious family in 1926 in pre-Nazi Hamburg, Germany, and he was drawn into the study of theology after almost dying in World War II. Eventually, Moltmann lived until age 98.
So what did Moltmann have to say about the future that might interest American Christians 250 years after Americans declared that their future would mean independence from Great Britain?
To help us with that, let's turn to an article about Moltmann published last year in The Presbyterian Outlook magazine. It was written by Steffen Loesel, a professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Loesel writes that for Moltmann, Christian thinking about the end times -- an area of study and speculation theologians call eschatology -- "is not about escaping present suffering but rather about injecting hope for the here and now. This hope arises from God's future breaking into the present to renew, reshape and transform this world and to propel the faithful to participate in this transformation."2
And isn't that just like God? The Holy One wants us to be partners with the divine to do what followers of Judaism often say is their task by using this term -- tikkun olam, which means to repair the world.3
Loesel writes this about that very point, and notice that he uses a term related to eschatology: "If the eschaton [meaning, essentially, the end of the world] is not above and beyond -- not a hereafter -- but instead meets humanity from God's future, then Christian theology must not reduce redemption to privatized salvation or postpone it into an otherworldly eternity. For Moltmann, God's ever newly creating love sends believers back into the world to participate in its transformation. Because God is at work in the world, the faithful live out of hope for the future and become restless in the face of the suffering and injustices of the present."4
The suffering and injustices of the present?
Why, what can Loesel possibly mean? That's a silly question. We all know about many obvious sufferings and injustices, including hungry children, homeless families, underpaid workers, economic systems that don't work well for everyone, educational systems that fail to educate students thoroughly and fairly and international political leaders who spend their country's money on war instead of creating peace and prosperity. And we know about prejudices based on race, sexual orientation and other immutable human traits.
All of that is one reason that Moltmann's thinking, as noted in the Catholic magazine piece previously quoted, helped to create -- in largely Catholic South America -- what's called "liberation theology," with its emphasis on hope for the downtrodden, the ignored, the overlooked.
Moltmann insisted that God wants to stop all of the present sufferings and injustices and show us a future that's beautiful, equitable, fair, generative and, most of all, possible, because God is working to help us bring such a future into existence.
To say that Christians hope to see that future is to say we trust that God, through Christ, is in control of that future. Moltmann makes it clear in his various books that Christian hope -- Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and other -- is different from mere optimism, a word that should be reserved for when we hope our favorite sports team will pull out a victory or that the red traffic stop light we see ahead will change before we get to it.
Optimism is a lifeless hope compared with Christian hope because Christian hope is deeper, longer and much more rooted in our faith in God.
As we ponder that kind of world-changing hope, let's listen to Moltmann's book, Theology of Hope: "From first to last and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving and therefore always revolutionizing and transforming the present." That kind of hope, he writes, "is not one element of Christianity but it is ... the key in which everything in it is set, the glow that suffuses everything here in the dawn of an expected new day."5
Scholars say that the Gospel of Matthew, from which our scripture passage today comes, was not the first one written nor the most eloquent. But the late and renowned Catholic scholar, Fr. Raymond E. Brown, said that it "has been the church's Gospel par excellence." Indeed, Brown writes that "Matthew has served as the New Testament foundational document of the church, rooting it in the teaching of Jesus ...."6
And as Matthew's gospel ends, we find that it's an important source of the very hope that Moltmann focuses on -- a hope that, to be fulfilled, requires those of us who are followers of Jesus to be active on God's behalf.
In the gospel's last few verses, Jesus tells his followers that "all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
That work -- turning hope into reality -- is now our work. Through our words and, more importantly, through our lives, we are to draw people to Christ so they may live flourishing lives.
Once Juergen Moltmann was introduced to Christ by the Christians who met him when he was captured in World War II, he began to see that his only hope for a worthy life was to devote himself to helping people understand that God sent Christ to challenge the systems that were harming people. Christ came to show that there's something better for all of us.
As Loesel puts it in the essay we've been quoting, Moltmann decided that "human beings need to live and act" in ways that honor our trinitarian God. "We are called to community with one another," Loesel writes, "expressed in nonhierarchical, loving, just and self-giving relations with one another. As the body of Christ, the church is called to model such a community for the world by working for justice and peace, for reconciliation and social transformation and by siding with the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized."7
Many of you who know the Matthew passage we've read today also are familiar with the 25th chapter of Matthew. That's where we get the story of Jesus saying to his disciples that "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me."
And upon hearing all that, his puzzled disciples ask when they did all that. Jesus' response is classic: "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me."
The words "the least of these" can sound demeaning, which is why I think that the late pastor and translator Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of the Bible called The Message, offers clearer wording on Jesus' answer. Peterson put Jesus' words this way: "Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me -- you did it to me."8
Have you seen any overlooked or ignored people today? Were they wandering the streets or riding public transit? Were they on your own street? Were they living in your home or apartment? Do you feel that you are among the overlooked or ignored? If so, do you think the members and staff of this church are listening to the way Jesus says we should be reacting to such people, who at times can include many of us?
Friends in Christ, Juergen Moltmann was right when he described what constitutes Christian hope. He knew that if Christians are to make a difference in the world, they must be the hands and feet -- indeed the very heart -- of the risen Christ here on Earth. And that, as Pope Leo XIV regularly reminds everyone, means loving one another, praying and otherwise caring for those in need and being open to God's very presence in our midst.
May we all be awake and alert enough to be Christ's body today -- wherever we need to be -- even here in 250-year-old America. Amen.