The future is something that we cannot avoid. Whether we are looking forward to it, or dreading it, it is laid out tantalisingly before us with both threat and promise. The Judao-Christian tradition has various insights into our future-anxieties.
Consulting mediums, in order to try to determine what the future may hold, is something that was strictly forbidden in Jewish law. The kings who suppressed mediums and fortune tellers are commended for their actions. And yet, through the prophets, God often outlines future outcomes of the path down which Israel is travelling. The key difference between mediums and prophets is that mediums focus on unavoidable destiny, whereas the prophets always hold out a choice. Jonah prophesied that God would destroy Nineveh. But the prophesied destruction never happened because the people of Nineveh repented. Prophecies are given as warnings and promises. They are not predictions of the inevitable.
On another track, the Jewish ‘New Year’ (which happens in the autumn) is based around Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Jewish people, in ancient times as today, see in the new year by unburdening themselves before God of the sins of the old year. And so the begin the new year with a clean slate. It is a powerful statement of Godly living. With ‘forgiveness’ so much at the heart of Christianity, it is a good theme for us to consider on the first Sunday or our New Year.
And we will end the month by addressing the ultimate ‘future’ issue - the end of the world! This is a particularly Christian theme and one that has been part of Christian thinking since the final days of Jesus’ life. It is not a simple theme or a singular one. Through the period of the New Testament, expectations gradually changed. Initially, the followers of Jesus were expecting him to come back very soon, but over time they came to understand that it may not happen in their own lifetimes. It was also not quite clear what they were expecting Jesus to do when he returned, and we are presented with a rich mix of colourful imagery from which it is hard to separate the meat from the metaphor. Perhaps it is a good moment to remind ourselves that prophecy does not foretell an inflexible future, instead it draws out the pattern of God’s interaction with humanity.
Underlying all the Bible’s thinking on the future is a priority for the present. Most of Jesus’ teaching is focussed on the ‘now’: it is how we live and love today which will determine our eternal future. The ban on mediums in Israel is also an expression of a priority on the present. And the prophets told the people around them that the shape of their futures depended on the decisions in their present. This theme will underpin the whole month.