What Do We Really Owe Past & Future Generations? (New Beginnings UMC)

What we're talking about today is, is responding to this

question, what do we really owe past and future generations?

Because we do owe past and future generations something.

The reality is we are part of a very, very, very long story.

A story, in fact, that's infinitely wrong long I heard

years ago someone say that history, another way of saying

history is his story, his story being God's story and and God's

story. The story that that we are in is

going to go on forever and ever and ever.

And we're part of that story. But we didn't start the story,

not even the human part of the story.

The human part of the story still alone began thousands and

thousands of years ago and will continue for years after us many

years infinitely into the future because God's Kingdom will have

no end and we didn't start it. So we if we think of of the

story not as a book, but it's a journey that God is taking

humans on this long journey that's going somewhere that will

that will eventually arrive at God's Kingdom.

And then beyond that, we don't even know have any real idea,

but we've started, we've been traveling this road, humanity,

people of faith for thousands of years.

We started well into the journey.

Our lives began well into the journey.

And and that's because of the people that came before us.

And, and our hope is, is that future generations will carry

the story on, will continue the journey after us and be further

down the road than we ever have the opportunity to get.

But what do we owe them? What do we owe the past?

And what do we owe the future? Oddly enough, I think a good way

of looking at this question and thinking about it is to remember

this, that Sarah and Abraham died.

They died. They were main characters in the

story. They they were, they were given

a promise specifically to them. You're going to have a child,

the two of you together in your old age.

It'll be your biological baby. And you will become the parents

of a great nation and all nations of the world will be

blessed through you. And then they died.

And at the point where they died, they had one son, one

child of that promise, Isaac. They called him laughter, 'cause

it was so ridiculous that they had this baby when they were so

old and they just couldn't help but laugh.

And then they died. They had no real estate.

The only real estate they owned that they were able to leave to

Isaac was their burial plot, their tomb.

They were in this land that God had promised him, but that land

still belonged to other people. They had no politicians on their

side. They had no nation making laws

that would benefit them or protect their rights or

privileges or or anything like that.

They didn't have any. It was Isaac out there now with

his wife and Sarah, and Abraham died.

What's the point? Why?

Why does that matter? I think one of the reasons it

matters is this, that Sarah and Abraham dying help us remember

that our part in this story, we're in a story that's been

going on for a very long. It's a long time.

It's a long story. It's been going on for a long

time. And each of us plays a very

small part. Abraham and Sarah, as big as

their part was, they still died and the story went on.

The journey continued. It had been going on for

thousands of years before they lived, and would go on for

thousands and thousands of years after they died.

And the same is true for us. The story was going on a long

time before any of us do our first breath and it will go on a

long time after we've passed. And that should comfort us that

this story is so big and so grand.

And ultimately it doesn't depend on us, not in the sense that we

we can't wreck it. We can't wreck it.

There's a lot of of of fear for the future right now.

And I think a lot of that I was saying neurological this morning

at at least one of the other churches when I meant to say

neurotic. But you know, that's, you know,

either way, not, not a you know, I think the fear is at some

levels neurotic and at times pathological.

We get afraid for the future. Oh my goodness, we got global

warming and everyone's going to die.

We got artificial intelligence and the machines are going to

rise up and everyone's going to die.

And we've got genetic engineering and designer babies

coming and and they're going to wreck everyone.

And it's all off on the politics is terrible and the wars are

terrible and our government leaders and all of these large

corporations run and everything, and it's all going to be awful.

And it's I yeah, I got news for you.

Human beings are not the ones writing this story.

And human beings can't wreck the story.

We can do awful things along the way.

There's no doubt about that. Human beings have been doing

awful things since human beings have been around.

But we can't wreck the story. You and I certainly can't.

We don't have that kind of power.

We don't have that kind of influence.

We play a small part in a very large story.

Now, one of the problems with that, though, any good truth,

and I think that's a good truth, the devil can twist.

And one of the ways Devil the devil can twist that is to say

that it doesn't really matter. What we do makes no difference.

Life itself is meaningless. We're all here by accident.

This universe isn't going anywhere.

Except one day it'll all collapse in on itself and and

we'll just be a collection of atoms scattered throughout the

universe. Nothing that we do will endure.

Nothing that we do will remain. It all comes to nothing.

It's all pointless. There's a philosophy that comes

out of that mindset, A philosophy called nihilism or

nihilism, depending on how you pronounce it, either

pronunciation is correct. And no matter how you pronounce

it, it it, it, it can leave people really messed up, people

that really buy into this, that it's we're all just an accident.

It's all going nowhere and it's all meaningless.

They, they wake up in the morning and there's kind of one

of three things that that drives them.

One is it's all meaningless. Eat, drink, and be merry, for

tomorrow we die. Let's seek pleasure or it's all

meaningless. Ravage, pillage, plunder, maim.

Because it's all meaningless and tomorrow we die.

Doesn't matter what I do. And the third option is why get

up at all? I'll just lie in bed and play

video games because tomorrow we die and it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. Nihilism is on the rise,

particularly among younger generations.

The sense of pointlessness, one of the beautiful things we have

in the faith that we have received is a legacy from those

who have gone before us, is a blunt and simple refutation of

nihilism. There is a point.

Life has meaning. No matter how small a part we

have to play, we have a part to play, and every part is

important and every part has meaning.

It was a lot of notes in the song that Anne just played and

that we attempted to sing. I didn't do too well either,

John. A lot of notes.

Any one of those notes, if you take it out, you can still have

the song. Doesn't change the fact that

every single one of those notes has meaning and purpose in the

composition. You can take out any one of the

words and still have the song, but each one of those words has

meaning and purpose in the composition.

We had a dramatic example of that at Rock Springs this

morning. We use recorded music there

every once in a while. I don't know why, but every once

in a while it's, it's got something to do with how the

tracks are set up in the lyric videos that I create and I

there's kind of a left and a right track and for whatever

reason, every once in a while it doesn't play one side of that.

And so we only got half the lyrics, and it would be blank,

blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.

It's like the song was still there, but losing bits of it

matters. Every single one of us has a

part to play, a role to play that is meaningful and part of

God's grand and magnificent purpose.

Life isn't meaningless. Life isn't meaningless even with

a small part. And we owe a debt to the past

and those who went before us. We stand on their shoulders.

We started from a place that is miles and miles and miles down

the road from where Adam and Eve started, from where Noah

started, from where Abraham and Sarah started, from where Isaac

started. We're miles down the road from

there as we're going toward this final destination of God's

Kingdom. And we owe a debt to the people

that have gone before us because we didn't just pop into

existence on our own. We are where we are with the

faith that we have because of the people that went before us,

that lived faithfully following God like Sarah and Abraham, not

perfectly, but faithfully who who had hope in the promise that

God put before them. Not perfect hope, their hope

lapsed at times, but they held on to it and who loved as best

they could the people around them.

Again, not perfectly, not perfectly, but they loved.

And they passed that on to Isaac, who passed it on to his

kids, who passed it on to their kids, and eventually it was

passed on to us. We owe a debt to those who came

before. Without them, we would not be

here today. And we have a responsibility to

the future, to those who will come after us.

There was a thought theology that that became popular in the

Western world, particularly it started, I think in Europe and

England, and then became really popular in the United States

around 200 years ago or so. And, and it was a theology

focused on the end times. If you've read the Left Behind

series, it was kind of the apex of that theology.

Jesus is coming back, taking people away from earth, his

faithful people. And you better be ready because

it's happening soon and all of the signs are out there, all of

the prophecies, all this one's fulfilled.

That one's fulfilled. Jesus is coming back soon, going

to take all his faithful people away.

Jesus is coming back not to take us away, but to join us here.

And one of the problems that develop out of the theology that

Jesus is coming back probably really, really soon in our

lifetime and and going to take us all away is that it kind of

leads us thinking we don't have any great responsibility for the

future. Jesus might come back before

this sermon's over. You're like, oh, we got to go

home early. It'll be our real home in the

Kingdom. That'll be awesome.

There's also a possibility that Jesus won't come back for

another thousand years or more, in which case we're leaving a

world to our children and our grandchildren and our great

grandchildren. And we have a responsibility for

the condition of that world, for the condition of the

environment, for the condition of the political systems, for

the state of the culture, for the amount of violence, for, for

the the relative proportions of justice and injustice for the

weakest and most vulnerable people in the world.

We have a responsibility for that now, just like the devil

can twist, we have a smart, small, only a small part to play

into. Your lives are meaningless.

The devil can take this risk, these responsibilities.

We have the debt to the past and what we owe to the future and

twist those into something destructive.

That debt to the past can be twisted into, oh, there's a

truck. Wait, wait, wait.

I'm not sure if it made it all the way back, but there we go.

We have it. We have We owe something to the

past. But it gets twisted when we

think we honor the past by trying to preserve it whole,

intact and unchanged in the present and into the future.

We owe something to the past, but we have to honor the past

without trying to rigidly preserve it or repeat it.

I used to have to say a lot. Back when I started pastoring in

the early 90s, I had to say this a lot.

I don't say it much anymore because I think folks get it.

I think you get it. The 1950s and 60s are never

coming back. The culture, the politics, and

the way church was done in the 1950s and it's never coming

back, never going to happen again.

God does not do reruns. We're going forward into the

future, not backward into the past.

We honor the past, but not trying to make the present or

the future just like the past. Great.

A great snapshot of this kind of problem was the worship wars

that happened back during the 80s and 90s.

Were you all? Were you ever part of the

worship wars? Was that ever a thing?

No, it's OK. Yeah.

Yeah. I was in a few churches that it

was like, well, are we going to have contemporary praise and

worship, OK, or traditional music and we just sing out of

the hymns. Was in a church.

We put a drum kit in the sanctuary and Oh my goodness,

how could it be church with drums in the sanctuary and and

people got all crazy. We've got these hymnals.

We must sing the hymns. These hymns were good enough for

our parents and our grandparents.

They should be good enough for us and our grandkids and our

children. The wonderful old hymns of the

faith. They are wonderful old hymns of

the faith, but every hymn in every hymnal was once a new

song. And one way we can claim to be

honoring the past is to say we're only going to sing the old

hymns of the past. I've heard that in the Methodist

Church, Charles Wesley wrote lots and lots and lots of hymns.

And like, this is our heritage. We must preserve our heritage.

We need to sing the hymns of Charles Wesley.

You know, another way to preserve the heritage of Charles

Wesley is to write new songs like Charles Wesley did.

I think that the old hymns and the new songs have their

strengths and their weaknesses both.

But trying to preserve, to keep everything like it was in the

50s and 60s is not honoring the past.

It's calcifying it to honor those who brought us here and

continue their faithfulness and their hope and their love into

the future. Those are the things that honor

the past, not trying to preserve the past at some random point in

history. Honor the past without

religionally preserving it. And we owe future generations.

We do owe future generations not, not a neurotic fear about

the future that we pass on to them of how awful everything is

going to be and trying to figure we can't wreck the future, we

can't fix the future. We are not that big, we are not

that strong, we are not that powerful.

But what we can do for the futures is carry on a legacy of

faith, a legacy of faith. Isaac got that from Abraham and

Sarah. Isaac was grew up hearing the

stories. Do you realize I can't, you

know, my family. If, if you have a family that

loves to tell the same stories over and over again, there's a,

there's a, a tree in the backyard that you cannot be in

the back. If you come to visit my house,

my parents house and stand in the backyard, you will not be

back there for more than 10 minutes without my dad telling

you a story about the tree in the backyard.

I know we tell it by heart and the family over and over and

over again. You don't think Isaac heard 1000

times? Do you know how old are you are?

We were when you were born. Do you know Isaac?

It was impossible over and over and over again.

He would have heard that story, passing on the faithfulness of

God. Do you know what God did?

You're a miracle, Isaac. You're a miracle from God.

You're an answer to a promise. God promised something.

Everyone thought it was impossible going to confess,

Isaac, your mom and I, your dad and I thought it was impossible

to, but here you are. He grew up with that faith

passed on to him, the faithfulness of God that kept

the ancestor, his ancestors alive in the ark, the

faithfulness of God and the mercy of God when he didn't

destroy Adam and Eve after they sinned in the garden.

All of these stories over his whole life he heard growing up a

legacy of faith. This is what we owe to future

generations living in faith and sharing those stories with them.

Not sure. The stories of the Bible, to be

sure. The faith stories of the church

that has gone before us, to be sure.

And our faith stories we share to our children who God called

us to do this. God said to do that.

We thought this couldn't, but God did this in our lives.

God did this in our community. God did this in our church.

We can you. You can depend on God.

We know you can because God has been faithful to us over and

over and over again. We owe it to our children to

pass on a legacy of faith following where God leads.

Isaac grew up hearing another story.

You know what, Isaac? We were living up in her on a

year miles from here. God said go.

We said where? God said, I'll tell you when you

get there. And we went and look where God

has brought us. Look where God the dad, Mom, we

don't own any land, yes, but one day it'll all be ours.

All be our children's, your children's.

How do you know? Because God is faithful.

God is faithful. This is the legacy that we owe

our children, living by faith and helping live them live by

faith as well. And we owe them a legacy of

hope. Nihilism says there is no hope

for the future. Other philosophies, whether it's

capitalism or socialism or communism, say there's hope for

the future. If we get the right people in

charge and they can enforce their will, then we have hope

for the future. But we got to keep the wrong

people out of power. The hope is in us.

The hope that we have, that we pass on to our children, our

grandchildren, is that our hope is in God, that if we live

faithfully, God will do what God has promised he will do.

And one day God will wipe away where there's a lot of pain,

there's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of heartache.

One day God will wipe away every tear.

One day God will right every wrong.

One day, all of the folks that our world is keeping down on the

bottom, God's going to lift those people up and give the

poorest of the poor person greater honor than we give to

presidents and business leaders and emperors and Queens and

kings. They will be honored.

They will be lifted up, and our God will do that.

How do you know God will do it? Because God keeps his promises.

And that's what God has promised.

And that is our hope. And what do we do in the

meantime? We leave a legacy of love while

we wait, while we live in faith, while we hope in the future that

God has promised. We love those folks around us

and share with them the love that God has shared with us.

The love that God showed Abraham and Sarah, the love that God

showed Noah and his family, the Gov that God showed Adam and Eve

and even Cain. Preserving their lives,

following the great sins that they committed, caring for them

and giving them a promise, a future, and a hope.

And the love itself is the ultimate act of faith and the

ultimate act of hope that I'm going to love, I'm going to

sacrifice. I'm going to lay down, I'm going

to be patient, going to be kind, going to be compassionate.

I'm not going to keep a record of wrongs.

I'm not going to. I'm going to bear whatever the

world throws at us, believe and hope and endure and love.

And that's how people will know that God loves them if we love

them first, Well, not first, but if we love them too, if we love

them too. Now I've preached, I don't know

how many minutes so far. Enough.

That's what you're saying. I know, I know.

How long have you preached? Got enough?

I got a song I want to play and I've got a lyric video.

So we can and we, I might, I'm going to go to the back and make

sure the volume is up back there.

This is not, this is, I'm about to utter a sentence that 20

years ago would have been totally meaningless and

ridiculous to me. And that is some of the best

Christian music in the world right now is being written by

Jelly Roll. I don't know if you know who

Jelly Roll is. I don't know.

I, I, I've been you. I'm pretty sure his mom didn't

name him. I've been saying this morning

his mom didn't name him Jelly Roll.

And then I found out his mom gave him the nickname Jelly

Roll. I still don't know what his real

name is. I don't know whether he goes

with his friends by Jelly or Mr. Roll, But he he's lived a rough

life and he's come to faith and he's an extraordinarily talented

singer-songwriter. And he's written a song called

My Cross that I'm going to play for us.

And I think that he artistically, and in about two

minutes and 15 seconds, can say everything I've been trying to

say in the past 25 minutes here. So let's listen to this

together. Your blood is my blood, him

poison runs deep. Knowing your minds is the hell

out of because hurt is a sickness and trauma is too.

And I'd rather die than to pass it to you.

Because that's my cross to carry.

My's cross to heal my pain to bury, not yours to feel.

I pray every day I can love you enough so my cross to carry

won't be yours to pick up. I hope to God you don't get my

addictions, don't deal with my demons, make my decisions.

Yeah, I hope the apple falls far from the tree And the sins of

the Father stop right here with me, 'cause that's my cross to

carry. My cross to heal my pain to

bury, not yours to feel. I pray everyday I can love you

enough. So my cross to carry won't be

yours to pick up, Won't be yours to pass down.

And when you make mistakes on your own, I hope that you know

you'll never go through it alone.

So that's my cross to carry, my scars to heal, my pain to bury,

and not yours to feel happy everyday.

I can love you enough. So my cross to carry won't be

yours to pick up, won't be yours to pick up, won't be yours to

pick up. We can't fix the world.

We can't wreck it either. We can't leave our children a

perfect culture, a perfect politics, a perfect society.

But what we need to do is to deal with our own stuff.

Deal with our own stuff so that our children can start from our

shoulders rather than under our feet, so that we can launch them

ahead rather than leading them to be stuck in the past.

This is what we can do. This is the cross that we have

to bear and to carry so that we can leave them a legacy of

faith, trusting in God, obediently hearing God, and

following where God leads with the hope that God will keep His

promises and loving people along the way as best they can.

And they're going to make their mistakes and they're going to

have their pain, but if we can deal with our stuff, then

they'll have less stuff to deal with.

And that's the hope that we have.

We play a small role and the grand, great big story of God.

We play a pretty big role in the people that are in our lives

around us. And to pass them, pass on to

them the faith, hope and love of Jesus Christ is the

responsibility we have in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.