God’s love for the future is what I see reflected in today’s readings. The reading from Isaiah says, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” God asks people to forget the past. God promises a new way of life in the future.

The description in our Psalm today (126): May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

Sowing requires effort, but the harvest brings joy. Between the two there is something called growth. Sowing is known and the sower knows what is being sowed and what to expect. But what will be the harvest depends on the weather, water, and nutrition for the crop. There is a known factor and an unknown. Present is known. Future is unknown.

It is problematic to trade the difficult present for a possibly richer future. That is because the future is unknown and therefore somewhat frightening. The present even if it is troublesome, is at least known. We may not be flourishing, but we are surviving.

However, there is something standing against the future God holds. Our scriptures say it repeatedly that God loves us into future. St Paul’s words to the Philippians assures his belief in God because of the resurrection of Jesus. “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

To emulate Paul requires confidence and unwavering trust in God. However much we try to forget what lies behind, we carry the load of the past. That makes us weary and sometimes hold us from pressing toward the future. Be it our personal life, our church life and so on, the knapsack on our back is what we tend to care for.

Joy Dine in her hymn ‘God who sets us on a journey’ wrote,

End our longing for the old days,

Grant the vision that we lack –

Let us travel light, discarding excess baggage from our past.

Every time we sing this hymn it challenges me to think what excess baggage I carry from my past. We all carry baggage, don’t we? Some wounds from the past weigh us down. How can we trust God’s love to lighten our burdens? As a parish what excess baggage of the past do we carry that holds us from moving into the future?

When such bollards pop up on our way we must turn to Christ Jesus and look for what he did. Jesus embraces the difficult, immediate of the cross. Jesus knew the future God holds for him and God’s love for the people.

Let us now turn our attention to the Gospel of John, which further illuminates this point. We see a vast contrast between a true disciple and a fake one. Mary’s act of love was bold, selfless, and sacred—a disciple in all but name. Judas, by contrast, clothed his greed in false piety. Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, anointed Jesus’ feet with the most expensive perfume of nard. She did it out of her extravagant love for Jesus. It was her pure and holy act of devotion. Even though she was not named as a disciple, her devotions stand out.

On the other hand, we see a disciple of the twelve named Judas who casts aspersions on Mary’s actions. His contention was that the better use of the act would have been to sell the perfume and spend it on caring for the poor. Whether Judas really cared for the poor is a question. But one thing is sure. He wants the money. John’s gospel states Judas has been skimming from the funds, as he had the common purse.

What Mary does is an act of extravagant love for Jesus. Jesus rebukes, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

Mary may not have been aware of the immediate future of Jesus. While Jesus knew what was going to happen over the next couple of weeks. He was aware of his death and burial. He acknowledges the anointing while living. People anoint only the dead with perfume, not the living.

Jesus was prepared to go into the difficult future with trust in God. The challenge for us is, are we willing to forget what lies behind and strain forward into the future.

God’s love is for the future of the people. Armed with the promise that the future is God’s and assured that God loves us and with us, we can keep our faith in the present to confidently march into God’s future.