Luke 21:5-19
“The Words and the Wisdom”
November 17, 2019
Jesus is doing his prophet thing here to great effect, especially when those gathered around him are sounding pretty proud of the beautiful temple. Here he will lay out a picture of all the terrible things that are coming but not right away and that’s the scary part of his warning. He’s talking wars and upheavals and earthquakes and even the destruction of the great temple and these will definitely happen. Jesus foretells arrests and imprisonments and persecution and sure enough that will also happen to the disciples in the not as distant future. What may seem like doom and gloom to our ears, especially after hearing the beautiful description of a new heaven and new earth that Phyllis shared earlier with peace and justice abounding, lives that go on and on with work and homes all around, turns out instead to be a call to endurance in the face of the most awful things that can happen to whole cultures and individuals. As is offered over and over in scripture, fear not, for there is hope.
What is it that strikes fear the most in your heart? Last year, as has happened for a number of years, Chapman University conducted a survey across the United States to determine what Americans are most afraid of. They asked those surveyed to rate their level of fear on 94 different phenomena across a range of areas from personal anxiety to disasters to crime and many others. Any guess what the number one item that 74% reported as being afraid or very afraid of? (Ask the congregation) It was “Corrupt government officials.” Quite a bit lower in second place was 62% fear “Pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes” followed by “Pollution of drinking water,” “Not having enough money for the future” and “People I love becoming seriously ill.” Our fears change how we look at the world and at each other. They have the ability to paralyze us or enrage us. They impact on our decision-making and they often leave us feeling powerless. Jesus presents a list of those disasters that were sure to strike fear in the hearts of his listeners but he doesn’t just dump the list on them and wish them luck. He instead offers an approach to addressing those things that terrify and offers a message that promises that they have within themselves the power to endure.
Luke is telling us here that Jesus prophesied that the gorgeous and ornate temple with its stunning architecture and richly jeweled decorations, a work of amazing design and art that the experts of the day deemed totally indestructible was going to fall and all that beauty, dedicated to God, was going to disappear. Jesus told his followers that there would continue to be massive earthquakes and famines that would wipe out huge swathes of people and there still are. He foresaw that there would again and again be wars so big as to slaughter whole nations of human beings and they are still happening. But wait, it gets worse. It gets personal. Even if we are lucky enough to stay out of the war zones and the earthquakes and floods happening in some distant place away from us and though it may seem like the end of the world, hold on, there’s more. There will be those who are threatened by our beliefs who will try to trick us into giving up on our faith and, after all that destruction and loss of life we might not be so hard to convince that the one God we counted on to be with us, is not real after all.
This, then, when all seems at its most hopeless this is when we will have the chance to testify as to the love and absolute promise of being held by God. Giving that testimony is pretty easy when things are going well – when our loved ones are healthy, or when we have enough food in our refrigerator and cupboards and then some, when the temperature in our house keeps us insulated against the raging wind and snow and the bills get paid on time and our dog’s ears perk up and their tail wags at the sound of our voice. These are the times of great blessing and they provide us with a bounty of opportunity to sing God’s praises and give thanks for our place in the world. But are we really hearing that Jesus wants those who lost homes and businesses to wildfires in California this year or can no longer think about rebuilding their homes in parts of the Bahamas devastated by Hurricane Dorian, to testify to God’s grace and mercy and generous love? That may be too tall an order, we balk. How do we make sense of such destruction when all seems lost? Jumping to the most challenging situation first may not be the way to read this instruction of Jesus. It was C.S. Lewis who famously pointed out that, “If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo.”
How do we make sense of a cancer diagnosis? What is our response to a loved one who is battling addiction or mental illness? What is the meaning to be found in a marriage ending? What are we supposed to find of worth in losing a job or a house or a child or grandchild to drugs or crime or both? We are to do what we can, the best that we are able.
But with what are we to do what we can? Jesus is promising to provide the words. Even in the midst of suffering and pain, struggle and hardship, lousy decisions and armed conflicts, isolation and the sense that we are the only one experiencing such intense pain and loss, we hear the Word and the words that feed us and pull us up out of those deep lost places. And then we are able to hear and live more deeply into Jesus’ promise that not a hair on our head will be harmed and that through our endurance, our perseverance, our continuing to do the best we can do, “we will gain our souls” as the NRSV translation tells us, or “we will be saved,” according to The Message or as the Common English version describes it, “by holding fast, you will gain your lives.”
We’ve all been in situations near someone we cared about who is hurting deeply. There are times when no words will suffice and just being close by, acknowledging and not trying to dismiss or play down their pain is all we can do and sometimes, as unbelievable as it seems, that is enough for now. To have one’s hurt acknowledged with no attempt to fix it but rather to simply be a presence, not abandoning in the face of such deep pain is often the wisest gift we can offer for that kind of presence is what Jesus is offering us. God may not speak in a way we can hear at the hard times and yet God endures with us, never leaving. Love never ends.
Let us then pray: O God of us all, there will be darkness in our lives but so, too, will there be light. May we find the words, from scripture and experiences of our own and others, that will be our strength and our hope. And when words fail us, may your wisdom be found in our silence. We endure in your loving embrace, Most Holy One. Amen.