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"God’s Presence and Orwell’s 1984"
In 1949 a British novelist by the name of Eric Blair published a book entitled simply, 1984. His pseudonym: George Orwell. So that we know this book as Orwell's 1984. Ever since that time many people have lived with a kind of fear of Orwell's doomsday especially in the totalitarian state in which we have lost the freedoms to be a people who have something to do about decision and determining our own life-style and our own thing.

I was a college student in 1949 and I remember how this book impressed me with all that it foretold. Interestingly enough, at the same time I was reading A. W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God and was enriched by this book. Now I have lived long enough to say that I believe that the book, The Pursuit of God, has more meaning to shape one's life in the right direction even though Orwell's 1984 still is in front of us.

We are living in this period of history and we know something about the projection of a doomsday. Some weeks ago most of us observed that television broadcast "The Day After" and were gripped with the awareness that here is a contemporary expression of doomsday. We also know something of the doublespeak that Orwell spoke about in this book, the kind of doublespeak that talks as though human rights interests are street violence and riots, or doublespeak with language that war is peace, or doublespeak that would suggest that even peace concerns are Marxist, or doublespeak that overtalks until we turn it off, fed up and don't take seriously what the issue is all about.

Our scripture today comes from the book of Revelation, chapter one; that marvelous passage that tells us there is another picture. The picture is that God is at work in the world, that God is active in history, that God is right here in the middle of time, that God is doing something. This brings us all to a place of humility and honesty before the Lord. Who are we in a world in which we shape so many things around ourselves and yet at the same time are aware that there is so much that we do not determine. We are influenced by and effected by that matter of being put in our place. This reminds me of the story of the gentleman who had contributed heavily to a particular college, and then the president invited him to campus to receive an honorary doctorate in a gracious expression of appreciation for his contributions. On that day when this gentleman was presented to the audience to receive this doctorate, the president said, "This is a very, very, very great man."

In the afternoon, he and his wife were walking around the campus and looking over the facilities. After about a half an hour in which he had been quiet, his wife suddenly said, "You're awfully quiet."

He said, "Yes, I was just thinking. I wonder how many 'very, very, very great men' there are in the world."

She said, "I don't know, but I know there is one less than you think there is."

So it is that we all need to be brought down to earth and made aware of what life is really about.

In the passage from Revelation, chapter 1, we also have the vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. It says, "This is the one who was, who is, and who shall be forever."

Again it says that "He was dead, he is alive, and he lives forevermore." It speaks of him in this marvelous statement in verse five, "In that he loved us, he loosed us from our sins, and he lifted us to be a kingdom of priests under God and his Father forever."

It's a fantastic expression of the gospel. Then the passage tells us that John had a vision. The vision was of this risen Christ, standing in the midst of seven candlesticks. The seven-fold expression of the Spirit of God and his work is outlined in the passage. Then at the close of the passage, it tells us the meaning of the vision. It says that the seven stars are the seven messengers or pastors of the seven churches. The seven candlesticks are the seven churches. But the important thing is that the risen Christ is right there in the middle of the seven churches.

You ask me "to tell it as it is." I would simply say that Christ is alive and present in the midst of the church, and that is to say that God is active in history, that God is here working in the world.

If it wasn't for this conviction, there is much that would give us a sense of doomsday. But isn't it great to believe that God is the main actor on the stage of history, that he holds back the end until he has completed what he is about.

So for these moments I want you to think with me about what it means to talk about God being present in the world so that we are confronted with Orwell's 1984 but aware that God didn't write us off, that God is active in the world. In the first place, I would like to emphasize that God's presence gives meaning to life. Modern people do not really think in a linear fashion. They tend to think in a more existential or subjective fashion. There are no absolutes for many people in the modern world. There is no historical plan. There is no flow. If you ask the question, "What is life and where are we going?" there is little answer from the modern mind.

A friend of mine who works on Capitol Hill in Washington where he shares with many a person the meanings of faith—I speak of Burnett Thompson—was speaking one day with a person who claimed to be an agnostic. Burnett Thompson said to him, "You're an agnostic because you are lazy. Get off your duff and begin to think and you can no longer be an agnostic."

Well, in that point-blank statement he is calling us to think. It is fashionable today for us to act as though to think serious and take a position is to be intolerant. As though it is intolerance for one to believe something deeply and be committed to it. No, that is not intolerance. Tolerance is that attitude which respects others' freedom to think differently and to grant that freedom. Being intolerant is to try to rob others of the freedom to think for themselves. But it is not intolerant to say, "This I believe, and this I have found meaningful, and in this faith I have found meaning in relationship to Jesus Christ."

There are certain things that are worth living for and worth working for. The presence of God, I repeat, gives meaning to life. There are certain things that we talk about, rights that we should enjoy. I could list at least seven of those that I could think of in the moment.

There is, of course, the right to life, both for the born and for the unborn. There is the right to land or space. There is the right to food. There is the right to self-determination. There is the right to worship in freedom of conscience. There is the right to educate our children according to the values that we have found meaningful even in the midst of a pluralistic society. And there is the right to be treated with justice. In many parts of the world those rights are not known, neither are they understood.

And that is true basically because persons have not realized that it is God who gives meaning to life. And when God says that each person is created in his image, that every person is of infinite worth, this sense of the rights of life begins coming through. May I remind you that it is not enough just to talk about our rights unless we also talk about our responsibilities.

I suggest then in the second place that his presence exposes our perversions, and in sharing with him we are called to do something about those perversions in life. Secularism denies any meaningful future. A television celebrity sometime ago made a statement which I heard him say, "We pass through this world once. When we die, it is all over, there is nothing beyond. Therefore, we should do all we can just to enjoy life here and now."

That leaves you with a great sense of futility. In the words of one of my astronomy professors back in the days that I was in college, he said, "When I look out there at the stars and some of them have been out there seventy billion years and at the rate they are disintegrating, they will be there seventy billion more years before they are gone, and yet those stars can't think, can't laugh, can't love, can't worship, can't sing, can't fellowship, can't do a thing. And to think that here I am. I can think, and laugh, and love, and will, and worship, and sing, and praise, and fellowship. That I should have a mere seventy years and die, and that's the end of it? Inconceivable!" I agree with him.

Isn't it inconceivable to think that one of these days we will be gone and it will be all over, and there won't be an intelligent mind anywhere in the universe who remembers that we ever happened?

You know, sometime ago, coming home from a great musical presentation at The Kennedy Center, I turned to Esther and said, "You know, it is so wonderful that if it wasn't true, it ought to be, because we can think and sing of something so marvelous that's it inconceivable that it isn't true."

I come today sharing this word from the standpoint of the word of God, a truth in which God has disclosed himself, in which God has come to us, in which God has made known purpose and meaning.

How does one work to overcome the problems and perversions of life? Basically, by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. One great Methodist writer has said, "The most important thing the church can do in society and in the face of any state, totalitarian or not, is simply to worship, to be a people who gather and affirm together that we believe in God, that we are committed to Jesus Christ, that we are open to the moving of God's spirit, that we believe that God is doing something in the world."

This is the most marvelous thing that we can affirm. In fact, I would say the most radical thing you and I ever say in society is that we believe that Jesus Christ is actually alive, that he actually has a kingdom, that he is coming back, and that we can share now in that kingdom by living now under the rule of God.

Years ago there was a man whose theology was quite different from mine, but he did critique the secularism of our day in words that are almost inimitable. I refer to Bishop Pike's comment that secularism means: this is all there is ism - or there ain't any more ism.

That's about the best way that one can express the meaning of secularism, as though what we have now is all there is. And yet from the gospel, it is my privilege to affirm today that life has forever. Fifty billion years from now I expect to be a young man living on with God.

Nor does that mean that we are just dreaming about something in the future, some pie in the sky. In no way when you take Jesus seriously, for Jesus says that we live now in relation to God. "Blessed are the meek for they are the ones who will really enjoy the earth. Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the ones who are called the children of God."

So it is in this moment that you and I can experience the presence and the rule of God in our lives. I'm talking about what that means in daily experience. We have a call to do something about the perversions of life. In our society, crime is an increased problem. With that increase of problem we have something to do about it. In our day we have 52 divorces to every 100 marriages. This means that we have something to do about building understandings of marriage and love rather than thinking that it will happen automatically, and the young people can be prepared simply by whatever is happening in society for the most important challenge to their personal lives is to build a happy and successful marriage.

Suicide has become a problem, not simply for older people, but it is a problem for young people today. Prejudice from the Ku Klux Klan right down to our attitude toward our neighbors who may have a different culture, is a problem in our society. Racism doesn't go away just because of some laws. Somewhere the human heart has to be changed to recognize every person as being my brother or sister, made like me in the image of God.

The prison population of our country is an appalling situation in which we have one of the highest in the world, and for some strange reason, we have put into those prisons a disproportionate amount of persons from the black community. Almost 70% of those prisoners are from the black community. Somewhere we have something that is needing to be done to correct the problems in our system as well as in our personal lives, in our society.

In the international scene we are a part of what Marshall McLuhan has called the global village. It is a world in which there were at the end of 1983 three particular crucial problems.

There was the problem of famine. Famine in about five countries of Africa as serious as we have ever seen. The problem of famine and one billion people suffering and dying as a result of malnutrition.

Another problem is the problem of violence. Violence expressed in many places around the globe and in many of those violence because some super powers haven't been able to resolve their conflicts because they haven't found a way to save face even when they know that the whole thing needs to be turned back.

There is a third problem: a refugee problem. In USA Today I read that as we went into 1984, there were three million Afghan refugees, two million Palestinian refugees, one million Ethiopian refugees, one-quarter million from Indo-China, one-quarter million from El Salvador, one-quarter million from Angola. In Uganda we have a situation that has caused a quarter of a million refugees. From Burundi two hundred thousand, and from Rwanda one hundred and fifty thousand, from Namibia seventy-five thousand. This is a problem in our world which you and I need to be doing something about.

Yet we go on playing our silly little games of power and prestige. We go on acting as though the most important thing in the world is to have what I need. And we even preach a pseudo-gospel which talks about the most important thing in the world being a patriotism that will protect what we have. We overlook the fact that unless we begin sharing, unless we understand the meaning of the gospel when it says, "If a man has this world's goods and sees his brother has need and shuts up his bowels of compassion toward him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"

So we are called to recognize that we are part of a global community. Billy Graham says that we have become a part of a world neighborhood without knowing how to be neighbors.

There are a few things I would add in a third place, and that is that his presence does give us hope for the future. I am not one who would throw in the sponge. I do not believe that there is no hope for tomorrow. I do not know how long history will last. Anyone who purports to be a date-setter doesn't understand the claims of the New Testament where Jesus said, "No one knows the day or the hour in which the Son of Man cometh."

The world may be around a thousand years yet. I am not of those who somehow would like to cop-out on responsibility by saying that the Lord is coming anyway so we don't have to deal with it. We don't know when he is coming. He may come today and if he does, we won't be disappointed. But he well may wait a thousand years. The Bible says that a thousand years is with the Lord as one day. And the God I know is a God "who so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life."

And in a world like ours of nearly five billion people, where there are two and one-half billion who do not even know about Jesus, I don't believe God is in a hurry to rap it up. But he simply says to us again, "Occupy until I come."

So it is that our belief that God is present in history, that God is doing something, that God is acting in history gives us a sense of meaning but also a sense of mission. This hope is an invigorating stance. The hope is an integrating power as we relate to all of life. This hope gives us that sense of meaning that some things are worth working toward and working for. It gives us a realistic confidence in the. work of God. It gives us a new sense of the value of persons.

A few years ago, a friend of mine, Dr. Duke McCall, for long president of Southern Baptist Seminary of Louisville, Kentucky, was on a plane hijacked to Cuba. They landed on a strip in Key West to get some fuel. So he and several other men immediately when that plane landed had made up their minds that they would open the back door and get out. As they moved back down that aisle, suddenly they were stopped by a little stewardess who weighed probably no more than one hundred pounds, standing there in front of those great big stalwart men, gripping a bar on each side of the aisle, and with tears running down her cheeks, she said, "You will not open this door. If you do, an alarm will go of f in the cockpit and the hijacker will shoot the pilot."

He said, "There we stood looking into the face of that kind of caring, compassion and dedication. We turned around, and walked slowly back to our seats and went on to Cuba."

It's that kind of commitment that Jesus calls us to as well, until we would dare to shove our hand in the face of the devil and say, "Stand back. My king won't stand silent and watch you ruin this people or this world." We dare to raise the consciousness level in our society about the things that ought to be done. There are bigger problems than those we are working with. The greater problems, the larger problems are not the devaluation of currency, but the devaluation of people, of persons. The greater problems are not simply the luxuries and the affluence that we would like to maintain, but rather the sharing with people who don't have. The greater gaps in our society are the gaps between the haves and the have-nots, and the need for us to care about those about US.

But above all, the greatest need is to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that every person who doesn't know God may hear that good news. The good news being simply this: that in God's grace, you can become his child and that's my news for you today. In God's grace, you can become his child, you can be born from above, you can be changed by the work of the Holy Spirit, you can become a new person in Christ Jesus. The Bible says, "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation."

Years ago in the early part of the 16th Century, in Milan, Italy, the great artist, Leonardo da Vinci, was painting The Last Supper on a wall in a dining hall. One day there was a man who came to call and stood there admiring that beautiful painting. As he looked out at those silver goblets that were painted so effectively that they appeared to be so realistic that you could almost reach out and pick it off the wall, and the visitor commented to Leonardo da Vinci of the beauty of his painting and especially the way he was impressed by those goblets.

To his amazement, the artist reached over and grabbed a brush, whipped up some paint and reached out there and smeared out the goblets and said to the man, "It's his face, his face."

May I say to you today, if there are some things in your life that ought to be smeared out because you have given them too much importance, they don't belong there, they aren't that important, they need to fade into the background. It's the face of Jesus, the face of God, the purpose of God, the love of God that is important.

May I remind you once again of that good news of the Gospel: you can become a child of God because of his grace. He invites us each to come, to open ourselves to his presence, to let him change our lives.

I invite you to do this by simply opening your mind and heart to him in faith for no matter what 1984 is like, the meaning of life is found in the presence of God. This I have come to know and to enjoy. He will grant you all that he says he will. He is as good as his word. "If any man come to me, I will not cast him out."     

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