John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech in February of 1961 may have ended with a bold dare (“Ask not…”), but it started with a far more simple observation. He started by saying, “The world is very different now.” I think the voices of the great individuals who have led the church through these last many years would echo his remarks. The world is a very different place.
And, for the most part, isn’t that wonderful?
We live in a more connected world than ever where devotions, sermons, and other forms of the good news of Jesus Christ can be shared with the click of a mouse. Where our church body in Arcade, for example, can include, in a meaningful way, a woman bound by geography to another state and while another is bound by health to her home.
We live in a more just world where civil and women’s rights movements have meant full participation for entire demographics of our society that have long been shut out. Where little girls, like my own, can grow up to be anything they want… even pastors (God forbid it).
We live in a more harmonious world where our church in the last 20 years has entered into full partnerships with churches we once called opponents.
We live in a more advanced world where “cancer can’t win” (thanks, Roswell) and modern medicine saves lives that would have once been lost. Where we get more time than ever in human history with our loved ones, and where we can trust in the care they receive until the end.
Yes, the world is a different place, and, for the most part, isn’t that wonderful?
But we must remember that “very different” and arrived are not one in the same. The world may be different, perhaps even better, now, but that doesn’t mean we can stop working. And the problem is, I see a tendancy all around me, and I feel the same strings within, calling our world and especially our generation to complacency. We may strive for a better life, but we’re quite content with a world that’s better or good enough.
But we have to remember that despite all of the connections and wireless networks in this world, many people still suffer deep depressions of loneliness while every one of us still feels the most basic human need, that is, to actually relate. While we’ve come great distances for the right of our fellow man, we are still content to pay women less then men, and, if we could, just about everyone less than us. We still live in a world where I can’t take communion down the street, and where our brothers a little further down think both of us are crazy for wanting to take it at all. After all, we may live in a world where cancer can’t win, but the last time I checked, death still does.
The world may be better, but that’s not an invitation to stop working.
It’s an invitation to start.
And who better to start working than you? Who better to connect than those woven together into Christ’s body through baptism? Who better to defend than those who know how precious every human is in God’s sight? Who better to reconcile others than those called to be one in Christ? Who better to face death than those who will never die through Christ?
Like it or not, we are that people. And God believes that we can work to make this world a better place. I mean, how do you think things got this far? The world is different through the work of the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. Let’s carry on their Tradition. Let us come together. Let us dig in. Let us be the church.
And let us hear the generation after us say, “the world is very different now… and isn’t that wonderful.”