During my years in pastoral ministry, I noticed that people do not come to church without bringing the atmosphere of the age with them.

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They bring their fears, their grievances, their political loyalties, their private wounds, their hopes for the nation, their anger at the culture, their anxiety for their children, their disappointment with institutions, and their suspicion that history has somehow turned against them. That and a whole lot more.

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The church is always tempted to mistake these atmospheric variations for the movement of the Holy Spirit. Which to say, people are tempted. You and I.  This temptation never wears the same costume twice. It comes as urgency. It comes as courage. It comes as relevance. It comes as compassion. It comes as moral clarity. It comes as the command to stand on the right side of history.

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But the church must be very careful. In trying to speak to the age, she may begin to speak from the age.

 

She ends up blessing the leftward mood or the rightward mood or whatever emotional momentum happens to be passing through the room, pronouncing it holy.

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There is all the difference in the world, however, between preaching the Word of God into the present moment and allowing the present moment to become the hidden author of the sermon. The pastor must speak to the world, but he must speak from the pulpit of the coming kingdom, not from the editorial desk of the present age. 

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Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). 

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This does not mean the church flees the world. Christ entered the world. He was born under Caesar Augustus and suffered under Pontius Pilate. The creed implanted this down-to-earth language for a reason. He came into a world of taxes, armies, sickness, family sorrow, religious conflict, political fear, and death. 

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And He translated none of these into a cause or movement. 

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Yet, this where the temptations enter. And here is where I encountered them in congregational life. They look something like this:

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Be a chaplaincy of affirmation. The people gather to hear that their desires, wounds, and chosen identities are already the voice of God. Give them back with religious warmth and affirmation, in an emotionally comfortable package.

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Be a chaplaincy of national anxiety. Speak as though the kingdom of God depends on elections, courts, borders, flags, and the recovery of a fading cultural memory.

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Be a chaplaincy of progress. Speaking as though history itself were a sacrament and the newest moral consensus has descended from heaven.

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Be a chaplaincy of the market. Frame the congregation as a brand. Become a personality. Make the sermon content-driven. Measure ‘success’ by metrics.

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You get the point. And you may hear your voice somewhere on the list!

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In each case, Christ may still be named. Scripture may still be quoted. Sacraments may still be administered. But the center has shifted. Christ is no longer the living Lord who judges and saves. He has become the guarantor of an agenda we brought with us before we entered the sanctuary.

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That is captivity, not the freedom of faith.  To enter the atmosphere of the world with the gospel is to proclaim a different kind of weather. That proclamation:

 

Speaks to the nation without making the nation its savior. 

Speaks to justice without turning justice into a new ladder of self-justification. 

Speaks to suffering without making suffering innocent. 

Speaks to guilt without making the guilty disposable. 

Speaks to the anxious without becoming anxious and to the angry without becoming angry.

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Such preaching does not arise from the anxieties of the present moment, nor from the preferred programs of the age. It comes toward us from the eschatological future, from the kingdom already opened in Christ and not yet fully seen. It speaks from the end that God has promised, and therefore it is free to address the present without being captive to it.

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This is why the church must recover her eschatological nerve.

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We live between the times. The old age has not yet passed away. But the new age has already begun in Christ, yet to be fully revealed. 

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Ideologies tempt because they offer relief from this tension. They simplify everything. 

But the gospel does something far more terrible and far more merciful.

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It kills my need to confuse my nation, my party, my generation, my wounds, or my moral passion with the kingdom of God.

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Then it raises me in Christ, where I am free enough to suffer with the world and my neighbor without imagining that God has lost control.

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“Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). 

And that city is for you.

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It is the promised kingdom of Christ, opened by his death, secured by his resurrection, and given to sinners who have no lasting city here, and who are forgiven for believing they must produce one.

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Christ crucified for you.
Christ risen for you.
Christ reigning above every power for you.
Christ coming to judge the living and the dead for you.
Christ given in Word, water, bread, and wine for you.

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This is what the church has to give. Not panic. Not triumphalism. Not religious commentary on collapse or success. Christ himself, delivered to you.

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That is the atmosphere from which the church speaks.

And when she speaks from there, she may speak to any age, without belonging to it.