Text: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 W 4th Sunday after
Pentecost A Solid Goal in Mind In
the name of him who has sent us his Holy Spirit as a pledge guaranteeing the
things to come, dear friends in Christ: Quite
a few years back, as I was just finishing up the US Army Engineer officer basic
course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and getting ready to head out for that first real
assignment, they had all us brand new second lieutenants sit down with an Army
career counselor. He said, “Okay, the
first thing I want you to do is to write down all the jobs and assignments
you’d like to have in the next twenty years before you’re eligible for
retirement. If you could plan your
career in the service, what would it look like?” So we went to work. And we sat there listing items thinking,
“Well let’s see, first I’ll have to serve as a platoon leader; that’s a
given. Then I’ll want to be a company
executive officer, and after that a company commander – actually, I’d like to
do that twice – then, I’ll want to be on a battalion staff for a while …” and so
it went; we just kept listing all the things we dreamed of doing. When we had finished that, he said, “Now you
have to add a few things. First, if you
stay in for twenty years, you’ll probably spend at least three of them in
various schools and training programs, so add that to your list. Then, you have to recognize that sometimes
you’ll have assignments that probably aren’t on your list. Everybody has to pull their time in what we
call the three R’s, which is Recruiting, ROTC, or serving full time with the Reserves;
so add that to your list as well.” There
may have been a few other things he had us add too, I don’t remember; but
anyway, then he said, “Okay, now that you’ve figured out what you want to do, I
want you to add up exactly how long it’s going to take for you to do it.” When
we added up the numbers, the results varied from a low of about thirty-five
years to over sixty for a few especially ambitious young officers. The average was somewhere in the high forties
– all those assignments we hoped somehow to cram into the next twenty years. Having thus made his point, the counselor
said, “You can’t plan your career by trying to do everything you want. You simply don’t have enough time. Instead, you have to pick a solid, attainable
goal and work toward that. So the
question is not, ‘What do I want to be doing for the next twenty years?’ rather
it’s ‘In twenty years’ time, where do I want to be?’ Then, allowing time for schooling and certain
obligatory assignments, when you have a chance to choose, you pick those
assignments that will advance you toward your goal. Or to say it another way, you make your career
decisions in the present not based on personal preferences or the whimsy of the
moment; but with an eye toward attaining your goal. Let your future be what drives your thinking
in the present.” Now,
I have to say that very good advice for a bunch of green second lieutenants way
back when (not that I took it, because you can see where I ended up, and believe
me, this wasn’t part of the plan back then; but, even though that’s true,) I
think it’s fair to say that the same general principle applies to most other
career fields, and really, to life in general.
A journey needs a destination. Rather
than flitting about aimlessly pursuing the latest fads, scratching your itches,
and doing whatever feels good at the moment, and, as a result ending up nowhere
near where you want to be, it’s far better to have in mind a concrete goal for
the future and live in the present with that goal helping you to define your
priorities, inform your decisions, and guide your steps. And
if that’s a good way to approach the worldly and temporal side life, then let
me suggest that it’s even better on the far more important spiritual and
eternal side. And what I mean is
this: if I were to ask, “Where do you
anticipate seeing yourself in, say, one hundred years’ time?” I’m guessing that
we’d all have the same answer. We will be
where we will spend all of eternity: in
heaven with the Lord. (Am I wrong? Is there anyone hoping to be someplace
else? I didn’t think so.) Obviously, most of us won’t have to wait a
hundred years to realize that future – any one or all of us could be there
tomorrow; but my point is this: if that’s
where we all want to be, and indeed plan on being, then shouldn’t that goal be
what’s driving our thinking, planning, prioritizing, and decision making in the
present? Now,
there is a difference here, to be sure.
When it comes to career planning or setting goals for this life, there’s
a good chance that if you’re not consciously working toward your goal you’ll
never attain it. That isn’t the case
with our heavenly goal. None of us will
inherit the kingdom of heaven because of our own achievements, nor will we lose
it because we didn’t fulfill our obligations.
We’re not working toward the goal. It’s a gift we
receive through faith in the Lord Jesus who suffered and died for our sins, and
who rose from the dead to make his righteous life our own. It’s his work for us on the cross that we
rely on to get us to the goal—which is why the goal is so surely and certainly
ours. If it depended on the things that we
do or don’t do, none of us would make it.
But since it depends on Christ and his perfect atonement on our behalf,
then our making it to the goal is as certain as his resurrection from
dead. Because Christ lives and reigns
for all eternity, so certainly will we who through faith are in him. The only way we can lose it is to get ourselves
outside of him. Through willful
persistence in sin, by extinguishing the voice of the Spirit who calls us to
repentance, or by starving our faith through neglect of God’s Word and
Sacraments, sure, in such ways we can indeed “jump ship”, so to speak, off the
Ark of Salvation and throw ourselves into the sea of damnation. But there are rails in place to help keep
that from happening. And if we do fall
or jump overboard, the Lord sends lifeguards who try to get us back aboard. You’ve literally got to be hell-bent
determined to drown yourself – albeit sometimes people do. But if we are keeping our minds on the goal, then
we won’t be doing the sorts of things that will put us at risk. And
that’s part of what I mean when I say it’s best to keep our mind on the solid goal;
but there’s more to it than that.
Because this wonderful heavenly goal is so surely ours in Christ, it
should be a big part of how we think about things now. That’s what And
we can take this a step farther. The
truth is that there are few things as important to us as our own bodies. We prove this by devoting countless hours and
vast amounts of resources to feeding, clothing, cleansing, exercising, resting,
and trying to satisfy it. We buy
vitamins and medicines to keep it healthy; haircuts, cosmetics, and jewelry to
keep it looking good; and deodorants, colognes, and perfumes to keep it
smelling nice. And after investing all
this time, effort, and expense, when all is said and done, we’re only going to
throw it away. Now, believe me, I’m not
saying you should neglect yourself or your appearance. Lord knows I don’t want you to stop washing
and using deodorant (that could get nasty).
What I’m saying is that we need to keep it all in perspective. If what’s most important to us is only going
to the dump, so to speak, then how much less should we be attached and devoted
to the lesser things we value so much in this life? Yes, we live in the present, and in the
present we have to contend with the realities of our situations. We have obligations to fulfill. But, but when we have choices to make, we
should make them from a heavenly perspective.
We can ask, “Is this going to matter to me when I make it to the
goal?” Think about all the things you
fret about and get so worked up over. Think
about the goals you have in this life. Ask
yourself, “Will I think that this was important, that it was worth the time and
effort I put into it, when I’m in heaven with the Lord?” If the answer is “no”, then maybe it’s time
to reconsider your priorities. Maybe
it’s time to ask, “What can I be doing now that will matter to me when I’m in heaven?” We’ve
all heard the expression, “He’s so heavenly minded that he’s no earthly
good.” And it’s possible to be that
way. That’s the way certain people at
the church at Thessalonica were. They
learned from This
is what Paul means when he says, “We live by faith, not by sight.” Because we do know what the future
holds, we are able to see the present for what it really is: just a temporary weigh station, a passage to
something permanent beyond. And so, from
this point of view, Paul says, “We make it our goal now to please the Lord”;
that is, to use the limited time and resources we have to do the sorts of
things that will matter forever. We know
that none of the stuff that people strive so hard to accumulate in their lives
will go with them to the other side. We
know that there are only two things from this life that will endure: people who trust in Christ as their Savior
and Lord, and the fruits of faith and righteousness that Jesus worked in them through
his Word and Spirit. That’s it. And that’s where, when we have choices to
make, our priorities should lie. When
we arrive at the goal, none of us will ever regret the time we spent strengthening
our faith by hearing and learning God’s Word.
No one will say, “Nuts, I went to communion too many times.” We won’t regret the time we spent sharing
God’s Word with others. We won’t think that
the time and effort we spent helping people in need were wasted. We won’t regret the occasions on which we
were able to display Christian love and compassion. Instead, these will be the only things from
this side of life that we will continue to value. And understanding as we do that such actions
are the fruit that Christ works in us by his Word and Spirit should encourage
us all the more to enrich ourselves with the means that God has given us to
grow in his grace. That’s the emphasis
of today’s Gospel lesson: the Word of
God is Seed that grows in us and a produces a harvest. It follows that the more we plant in
ourselves, the greater will be that harvest that we produce. One
final thought here: Paul’s talk of our
present bodies being tents in which we are living during our temporary journey
here on earth suggests the biblical image of the Children of Israel wandering
in the desert on their way to the Promised Land. Just think for a moment what it would have
been like to be one of the Israelites who were very young at the time of the
Exodus from But the
old folks, the ones who remember living in In
the same way we too, who are in our pilgrimage here below cannot now imagine
what it will be like when we are received into the kingdom that Christ our Lord
has prepared for us; but we know it will be an infinite step upward. That’s our goal: a heavenly inheritance given to us through
faith in our Savior. We are going
home. We are certain of it. And because we are certain of this solid goal
it needs to be what drives our thinking and our actions in the present. So, for the times that we have allowed
ourselves to lose this heavenly perspective and have become distracted by
things that ultimately do not matter, and for the times we have succumbed to
doubt and despair because of the weakness and signs of decay we see in our
bodies, we ask the Lord’s forgiveness.
And hearing his sure word of absolution, and receiving to ourselves
again his body and blood given as witness of his earnest, let us ask him to
fill us with his Spirit that we may truly live by faith, doing the things that
will please him now in time, and, when in his wisdom he takes us home, forever
in eternity. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |