Recently, I discovered AXS TV. On this cable station are interviews, old taped rock concerts etc of the “rock heroes” of my past. As I watch Dan Rather interview people like Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Eric Clapton, I think, “What happened! You guys are all old and decrepit!” It is clear that not every rock star can age as gracefully as Paul McCartney. It is equally clear that the popular saying from the 60’s, “Die young and leave a good looking corpse”, is nothing more than a hopeful sentiment. Regardless of our age, it is always tempting to live in the past. The past is not a good place to live one’s life. W. C. Fields aptly observed, “The good old days, may they never return.”
Augustine of Hippo once wrote that there is no such thing as past, present, and future. There is only the present. Within the present is what once was. Within the present is the hope of what will be. We hear this being expressed in the scriptures for this weekend. Through Isaiah, God exhorts the Israelites not to dwell on the past, but to live in the present looking to the future. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, describes all the things of his past as nothing more than rubbish. He writes,” I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” In the story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus abrogates the old Law’s call to stone the woman to death by introducing God’s “new law.” Only those without sin can cast the first stone. When alone with the woman, Jesus demonstrates the tremendous depth of God’s new law of love and mercy by forgiving her sin.
Throughout all four gospels, Jesus warns us not to live in the past, e.g. to not look back as we plow the field, to not put new wine into old wineskins. The Church teaches us that we are always evolving and growing into something new. Yet, from the time of the apostles to the present, there is always a segment of the Church who refuse to evolve and wish to dwell only in the past. Neither present nor future is found in the past. Are we a Christian community who live to what we will become, or stuck in what we once were?
