The Moment
The Rev. Dr. John Judson
March 6, 2011
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Matthew 4:23-25
It was the moment. It was the moment we knew was coming. It was the moment we were waiting for. As soon as the movie had begun we knew there would be a time when Melanie Griffith and Tom Hanks would meet. And not only did we know they would meet but we knew that they would fall in love….instantly. It was fate. It was kismet. It was a romantic comedy, and that is the way romantic comedies work. What it made it even better was that they met on the top of the Empire State building on Valentine’s Day, thus fulfilling an unmet promise from the movie An Affair to Remember. And in that moment everyone in the theatre either sighed or cried. It made Sleepless in Seattle a hit people could watch over and over.
We can watch it over and over because we love the moment. Everyone who has ever fallen in love knows the moment. The moment is that instant in time when we know, without a shadow of doubt that the other, is the one. We may not have known it before and we may wonder about it afterward, but in the moment we know that we have met the one. The reason that the moment sticks with us is that it is that instant in which everything in the world is OK. It is that moment in time when anything and everything is possible. It is that moment in time when the future has limitless possibilities and there are no constraints on how wonderful life can be. Now we know what is ahead. We know there will be disagreements over which way the towels are hung, or the toilet paper roll goes, or over how long the relatives get to stay. We know life will not be perfect. But in the moment none of that matters. All of life is good and right.
Why are we talking about the moment in this moment? We are talking about the moment because that is exactly what we have before us this morning. We have the moment in Jesus’ ministry. We have that instant in time when everything was perfect. We have that moment in time when there were endless possibilities. We have that moment in time when everything Jesus did was applauded by everyone. Let’s look again at the image Matthew presents to us. Jesus is preaching and teaching. No one is opposing him. No one is trying to trap him. People flock to hear what he has to say. Jesus is healing. Jesus is healing every disease and ailment. Jesus is healing every infirmity. There is no one and nothing that is not putty in the hands of Jesus. Gentiles come to him. Leaders from Jerusalem come to him. And one of the gifts of Matthew is that we get to stay in the moment for five chapters watching Jesus teach, preach and heal. Just as in romantic comedies, just as in real life, this is where we want to stay. We want to stay in the moment and live there forever.
As I said a moment ago most of us are aware that we never get to live forever in the moment…though movies like Sleepless in Seattle often leave us with the, and they lived happily ever after vision. We know that life can be, and often is, tough. For those of us who know the Jesus’ story we know that his life and ministry are no exception. In fact as soon as we leave chapter nine, which by the way ends with virtually this same passage, we discover that all is not right in paradise. People begin to question and criticize Jesus. People begin to doubt he is who he says that he is. People begin to conspire against him. People plot his death and destruction. And for those of us who are here this morning all we have to do is to look at this table and we know what is ahead. We know that Jesus will be arrested, tried and crucified. So why then should we spend any time in the moment? Why should we spend any time in this place where everything seems to be so good when we know things will get so bad? Why bother?
We bother because that moment is not simply a remembrance of what might have been but it is a vision of what can and will be. That moment is the vision of the Kingdom that makes everything afterward matter. If all the future held was pain and grief. If all the future held was death and misery, why ought Jesus to bother? Why should anyone follow Jesus? It would make no sense. The only thing that would matter would be to eat, drink and have fun. The moment then becomes the vision of the future toward which Jesus is living and dying. The moment is the vision of the kingdom of heaven in which all human beings encounter Christ, discover who they are to be and are empowered to live into their full potential as human beings. The moment is the sign that there is hope, there is something worth working for, there is something that can and will empower us to be Christ followers even in the most difficult of times.
This morning we hold two very distinctive images in contrast at this table. The first is an image of a brutal world in which the very Son of God, the one who came to bring peace and reconciliation is nailed to a cross by those who feared his power. The second is of a loving God who was willing to go to the cross, to die for us, so that the future of the moment might become a reality. Our challenge is to live with both. Our challenge is to walk out into a world filled with pain, divorce, death, unemployment and war as those filled with the hope of the moment; filled with the hope that God is in charge and that God is working with us to bring about this new and amazing kingdom in which the moment lasts forever.
So here is my challenge to you, to ask yourselves this question, “Am I willing to live into my life as if the moment is the future of my life and of the world?”
