[Luke 21:5-19]
That was The Good News? Nation rising up against nation; empire against empire. Earthquakes, famines, and plagues around the world. The followers of Christ universally hated, persecuted, betrayed by family and friends, hauled before kings and governors, put to death? And emblematic of all this violent upheaval, the Temple in Jerusalem, God’s house on earth, utterly destroyed! Good news?
Judging by the different posture and gestures we adopt when we read and hear gospel lessons at St. Paul’s, standing with the book brought into the middle of the assembly, we seem to expect not just words about Jesus, but Jesus’ very words spoken to us here and now. “The Gospel of the Lord” – to which we respond: “Praise to you, Lord Christ.” So I ask again, where in today’s gospel are we to find good news?
But first, maybe we need to translate Jesus’ words into our own setting in order to get a sense of just what bad news they represented for his original audience. “When some were remarking about how St. Paul’s Church was adorned with beautiful features and objects dedicated to God, Jesus said, ‘As for these things that you now admire, the time will come when not one beam or timber will be left upright; every skylight and pane of colored glass will be knocked down and smashed; not one statue, not the statue of the Virgin Mary, dedicated to God in memory of William H. Drew, nor the statue of St. Paul in memory of Albert Foy, nor any of the others, will remain standing; the altar cushions given to you and to God by the Riddle family will be cut up and their stuffing scattered; the baptismal font, with the name of Julia P. Ferry inscribed on its base, will be tipped over, its water spilled out and its marble broken; the silver chalices and plates and candlesticks will be taken away by looters and melted down and made into other things.’” That would be bad news indeed for us.
The Temple in Jerusalem that Jesus knew was not a single building, but a complex far larger and more magnificent than our beloved St. Paul’s. It encompassed an area 500 yards long and 300 yards wide – the equivalent of 12 football fields. Its outer walls were 100 feet tall; its gates 45 feet high, each with a pair of doors 22 feet wide requiring 200 men to close each evening. The structures inside – altar, sanctuary, porches and pillars – were made of the best materials money could buy, many overlaid with gold. Even non-Jews praised it as one of the grandest places of prayer and sacrifice in the ancient world. Not a single stone of this Temple, Jesus predicts, will be left on top of another. And that’s just what happened. In the year 70 of the Common Era, 40 years after Jesus and just 7 years after its final completion, the Temple was demolished by a Roman army. Such bad news Jesus proclaims! He speaks of crisis and chaos; sudden, violent change to what his hearers thought was so solid, so beautiful, so holy.
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I do hear good news, however. First of all in what Jesus does not say in today’s gospel. He never attributes the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem or warfare or famine or persecution to God. All the disorder and confusion and wastefulness reflect the work of human beings and human beings alone. The God of Jesus is the God of our first lesson from Isaiah (65:17-25); a God of new beginnings, who creates new heavens and a new earth; a God who desires that infants, all infants, grow up safe and healthy, for adults, all adults, to build houses and inhabit them, plant vineyards and enjoy their fruitfulness. The God of Jesus is a God of blessing not destruction.
The world Jesus describes, on the other hand, should be one we recognize all too well. Our gospel lesson paints no imaginary picture of a crackpot apocalyptic future. Jesus simply catalogues the real world in which his hearers, both now and then, dwell – a world of earthquakes and of insurrections and of interrogations. We know first hand how suddenly the buildings that shape and shelter our lives can be thrown down. On the top of Queen Anne Hill, there was a half a block of shops and restaurants that I had seen and walked by for 15 years – ever since I first came to Seattle. One day, all of a sudden, proposed land use notices went up; next, signs in the windows of the businesses announcing that they were moving or closing for good. Then heavy machinery arrived and in just two days buildings that had always looked so solid and permanent became a heap of splintered wood and shattered bricks. Today, there’s nothing but a big hole in the ground. How fast the process of tearing down; how slow the building up. Need I remind you how appalling it was to see the titanic Twin Towers of the World Trade Center reduced to rubble in a matter of hours by human hatred?
And, of course, we know that it’s not just buildings that come crashing down. Sudden, violent change can ambush our human relationships, both professional and intimate. A colleague at work we assumed was indispensable abruptly and at exactly the wrong time announces they are moving to a new city and new opportunities. How does the enterprise go on? Or a spouse or partner one day drops the bombshell that they are leaving and the emotional structure that has sheltered us for years has been thrown down. How does life go on? Or, without warning, the doctor hands us or someone we love the cancer diagnosis or the news of a sudden turn for the worse and familiar, stable landmarks disappear. No, Jesus’ words in today’s gospel do speak directly to us and to our lives.
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Two lines in particular from Jesus’ lips speak good news to me and, I hope, to you in the midst of crisis and chaos.
It is good news when he says: ”Many will come using my name and claim ‘I’m the one!’ and ‘The time is near!’ Don’t go running after them.” In times of chaos, Jesus warns us not to look for another messiah, someone swooping down from above or in from beyond to save us – a new president of the United States or executive director of the organization or a new rector of the parish or a new partner, husband, wife – a savior with a magic wand who will make all the disorder go away. Such a powerful temptation for those in chaos, but a false hope nonetheless. And why is Jesus’ warning good news? Because it presumes we already have in Jesus himself all we need for times of sudden, violent change. His words, his deeds, his values, his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead – one integral whole – provide us with the example of how to live in such times. And more than an example to be imitated: his living presence is the inner wellspring of power to live this life. For Jesus died as he lived – in radical solidarity with the outcast; and Jesus lives now and forever as he died – in trusting self-surrender to God. Please hear the good news that we can rely on the God we already know in Christ Jesus; a God whose love stands beyond our partial ways of seeing and our human temples of knowing.
In this parish, about a year or so ago, when we finally acknowledged a crisis in our communal life, instead of avoiding it or waiting for someone else to fix it for us, an amazingly diverse group of lay people with very different talents stepped forward empowered by Jesus’ spirit and took action in imitation of Jesus’ example. We now have new visibility in the community through glass doors, open doors, unobstructed windows, a garden, a rebuilt website, new human and financial resources, and above all a renewed love for this old place.
It is also good news when Jesus says: “Make up your minds, not to rehearse your defense in advance; I will give you the wit and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to resist or refute.” How is this good news? Situations of crisis and chaos may offer us unexpected freedom by eliminating distractions and by concentrating all our energy on doing just the few things that really matter. Crisis may dispel the powerful myth that we are in control of life and can keep bad things from happening to ourselves and those we love. Chaos may liberate us from the usual games of perfectionism and self-doubt we play, the hall of mirrors in which we worry most of all about what other people think of us. In times of crisis and chaos the seductive and sedating luxury of such behaviors and attitudes is stripped away from us. Old habits that seemed so powerful may be broken. Petty little differences and grudges within an office or a parish or a city may melt away in the face of a larger task. Because the challenge seems so big, we might allow ourselves to trust God again – to trust the power of love beyond our control to sustain us. And when we feel this sudden freedom, we wonder why we lived in bondage to out own smallness for so long. Crisis and chaos may instantly reorient our priorities to matters of life and death, to survival. We simply cannot prepare for sudden, violent change. There’s the freedom, there’s the good news, Jesus proclaims. Don’t rehearse your defense in advance. Don’t try to figure it all out, to have life all scripted. When you need the word, it will be on your lips, it will come from your heart, from the spirit of Christ within.
I think of your sermon last week, Father Charles. You weren’t scheduled to preach; at the last moment you were called upon by circumstances to do so. You did not have the luxury or the burden of worrying about preparing the perfect sermon; you just had to find something to say. And lo and behold, you spoke from your heart, from your depth of pastoral experience. What an inspired word you spoke to us, or Christ Jesus spoke through you.
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So, today’s gospel does contain good news – both in what Jesus says and in what he does not say. Crisis may bring sudden freedom. Jesus’ own presence and example are sufficient in chaotic times. God does not cause crisis and chaos but recreates a new world out of human devastation.
But this good news can be good news for us only if we attend to the inflections in Jesus’ voice.
“By your perseverance you will secure your lives,” Jesus says at the end of our gospel lesson. We must not run away from crisis; we must not withdraw from chaos back into ourselves. If we do, we will just take the fear and pain with us. They will be there waiting for us in our new home or new job or new relationship. Our fear and pain will get pushed down deep inside poisoning us from within. The Greek word translated by perseverance literally means to stay at home, to remain where one is. We secure our lives by remaining at home even in crisis and chaos, for there we encounter the God of new beginnings.
Second, how ironic if you or I managed to avoid the temptation of running after a new messiah out there only to think and act as if you or I were the sole person to redeem a situation of crisis or chaos. Times of violent change might tempt some of us to try to do too much, to try on the role of lone ranger or lone savior. Jesus’ words this morning are good news only if we persevere in community. Catherine of Siena, great 14th century teacher and saint, wrote that God intentionally distributed the virtues unevenly among us as individuals – courage in this person, humility in that one over there; faith or hope in her and love in him; his certainty, her questions – rather than giving any individual all the virtues, so that we might learn to depend upon one another in community.
Finally, we will refuse to follow false messiahs and we will find the right words on our lips only if we already have the spirit of Christ Jesus within us and among us. Does that sound threatening? It shouldn’t – Jesus himself assumes and promises that he is already with us. Not that any one of us is perfect. We struggle, we grow, we fail, for we too are the saints of God. Everything we need for times of crisis and chaos is offered freely to each person here this morning. We gathered together in God’s name, remembering even before entering this holy place God’s acceptance and affirmation of us in our baptism. We hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest Christ Jesus in our encounter with scripture. In a few moments, we will be filled with the presence and power of Christ in our thanksgiving dinner of bread and wine. And we will all be sent out of those doors onto Roy Street as the hands and feet of Jesus.
Today, after the presidential election, drawing near the end of a search for a new rector for St. Paul’s, after Yasser Arafat’s death, during the battle for Fallujah, in whatever personal and professional circumstances of crisis and chaos you find yourself, depend on God’s love in Christ Jesus and believe God’s promise of new creation.
Amen.
