Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

The 25th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28C)
November 18, 2007
Mark Lloyd Taylor

 

[Luke 21:5-19]

Remember our collect of the day, which read in part: “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scripture to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life…” (BCP, p. 236). It strikes me as a little perverse that this challenge should be paired up with the gospel lesson we just heard proclaimed. 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, God’s house on earth, utterly destroyed! Digest Jesus’ words, we might rather spit them out! Where is the hope, where is the good news, in this Scripture?

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Luke 21, the source of today’s gospel lesson, has sometimes been called Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse. The word “apocalyptic” refers to a revelation or unveiling of the future. Apocalyptic writers invariably foresee a future full of crisis and chaos. Certainly Jesus’ words echo popular apocalyptic language of his day: But in our gospel lesson, Jesus rejects apocalyptic fantasies of revenge and turns inside out and upside down our understanding of power and powerlessness.

Pay attention to what Jesus does not say in today’s gospel.

Unlike apocalyptic preachers past and present, Jesus refuses to divide people up into two groups: his people, his followers, lined up in the camp of the righteous, and the others, the foreigners, the unbelievers, arrayed as a wicked army. With no venomous words for the occupying Romans, Jesus speaks out against the religious elite of his own kind who hold the poor and the unclean in spiritual and economic powerlessness. He foresees the destruction of his own people’s greatest symbol of strength – the Jerusalem Temple.

Jesus never attributes warfare or earthquake, plague or persecution, to God’s displeasure the way apocalyptic literature does. The God of Jesus, like the God of Isaiah in our first lesson (65:17-25), is a God of new beginnings; a God who desires that infants, all infants, grow up safe and healthy, that adults, all adults, build houses and inhabit them, plant vineyards and enjoy their fruitfulness; a God in whose shalom wolf and lamb, strong and weak, feed peacefully together.

Most apocalyptic writers in Jesus’ time expected a Messiah, a Son of Man, to break suddenly into troubled times, incinerate the wicked, then bring the righteous out of hiding, vindicated. No vision of wolves and lambs feeding together; apocalyptic seers longed for the wolves to be destroyed for the sake of the lambs. Jesus urges his hearers to beware of such false Messiahs and to abandon such fantasies. For Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, “the Son of Man [who] came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Nor do we need to become apocalyptic visionaries in order to understand Jesus. Today’s 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 all know how suddenly the buildings that shape and shelter our lives can be thrown down. Several times in recent years on the top of Queen Anne Hill I have seen proposed land use notices suddenly go up; signs then appear in the windows of the shops and restaurants announcing that they are moving or closing for good. Heavy machinery arrives and in just a couple of days buildings that looked so solid and permanent become a heap of splintered wood and shattered bricks. How fast the process of tearing down, how slow the building up.

And we already know that it’s not just buildings that come crashing down. Sudden, violent change can ambush our human relationships. 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 for years is 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, today’s gospel describes a world we recognize all too well.

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But still, where is the good news, the hope, in this Scripture?

It is good news, first of all, when Jesus says: “Many will come in my name and say ‘I am he!’ and ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them” (8). In times of crisis and 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 chaos go away. Such a powerful temptation for those in crisis, 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. 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.

And these words of Jesus harbor hope: “Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict” (14-15). 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 a family or an office 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. 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.

Finally, it is good news when Jesus promises, “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” or, in another translation, “By your perseverance you will secure your lives” (19). 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 endurance or 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.

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As we finish digesting today’s Scripture, theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who was in Seattle last month, offers helpful words on power and powerlessness. He writes: “Experiences of powerless are now the order of the day. They are experiences we face in every sector of life. Everywhere we come up against limits we never envisaged. There are limits to economic growth; limits to the readiness for political action; limits to personal self-realization. It is not these limits themselves that are the problem. The problem is the way in which we meet the experience of limitation. Our reactions can be fatal. If we react with anger, we run our heads against a wall. If we react with resignation, we destroy ourselves. But living means experiencing impotence without giving up. It means accepting limits without becoming resigned” (The Power of the Powerless, pp. ix-x).

Then in his usual courageous way, Moltmann asks and answers the key question. “Where can we find the strength that is made perfect in weakness?” Answer: “All the biblical testimonies speak to us of the power of the powerless. This was the way in which the people of Israel in their poverty experienced God. This was the way the crucified Christ experienced God. And this too is the experience of the divine Spirit today: God’s Spirit is the power of the powerless, in us as well. Let us discover God’s Spirit in us and us in God’s Spirit. The power of the powerless – that is the name of God, the true God” (p. x).

If you need icons of God’s Spirit, go to the website of the humanitarian organization Care (www.care.org). Look at the pictures, watch the videos, of women from around the world – Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia. See their endurance, their remaining where they are – to teach the young, to feed the old, to bring villagers, both men and women, to combat a centuries old practice of female mutilation. The Care campaign is called “I am Powerful.” The power of the powerless.