Now-but-not-yet

We got to the Good Friday service (which wasn't really a Good Friday service at all) a little late. I wish I could blame MARTA, but it was actually because I got lost. (Me? Lost and late? Shocking, I know.) But no one seemed to mind as we settled into the back row of the synagogue to welcome the Pesach Shabbat, Passover Sabbath, with the rest of the congregation.

And somewhere between the beautiful kirtan and the silent meditation it hit me.

We're all living in the now-but-not-yet.

We celebrate freedom from captivity in Egypt. We eat quinoa instead of bread to remember the gleeful, terrifying fleeing as Pharaoh finally let us go. We shake tambourines and proclaim, Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad. Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. We remember Sarah and Abraham, Rebekah and Isaac, Miriam and Moses, and we dance in the presence of Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who always, always provides.

Or, we celebrate freedom from death. We take the preschoolers running around the church looking for Jesus only to find out that He is risen. He is risen indeed! We watch the sun come up on Easter and let the signs of life remind us that life itself is being renewed, restored, redeemed. We sing the hymns loud, trusting that this resurrection points to a future one.

But we all live in the same shattered world, a place where the imago dei is on display but goes unnoticed. Image-bearers of the Most High parade, meander, or sometimes slouch through life seen as sex objects, gun targets, too much of one thing, not enough of another. And we cry or yell or sit quietly with the not-yets as they slap us in the face, all the while looking forward to the coming—whether we believe it will be for the first time or the second—of Moshiach, the Messiah, who will bring the complete redemption of the world.

In a world torn by violence and pain, a world far from wholeness and peace, a world waiting still to be redeemed, give us, Lord, the courage to say: There is One God in heaven and earth. The high heavens declare His glory; may earth reveal His justice and His love.

—The New Union Prayer Book