23rd Sunday After Pentecost
Malachi 4:1-2 Psalm 98 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 Luke 21:5-19 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who offers hope in the midst of chaos. Amen In the calendar of the church year we are nearing the end, next week we will observe the festival of the Reign of Christ and the church calendar will click over into a new year. And as we’ve been approaching the end of the year our readings have also been dealing with the end. whether we call it the end of the world or the end of life as we know it or even judgement day, this is a topic which we humans are fascinated with, look at all the depictions we see in movies and literature, where something catastrophic has happened and what happens next is imagined. Whether it is hunger games or zombies or differently ordered societies we keep coming back to what have been named apocalypses, and however they are told they have an element of fear running through them, they are to be avoided. Now the name apocalypse or apocalyptic comes from a genre of writing that is found in several places in the Bible and while these writings do tend to come up with some odd images their purpose is the exact opposite of fear, they, in all their weirdness are intended to offer comfort and hope for people in the midst of situations that may feel like the end. Apocalypse after all just means revelation, these messages are meant to reveal hope to the oppressed, whether it was Jews in exile or facing the loss of the temple or Christians living in secret in Rome or people facing the loss of the way things have always been and that’s what our apocalyptic texts for today do for us, they point to hope. The hope that God is in control of the end, whatever that happens to look like and with God in control the people of God will be okay. Now as good as that news is, it does leave a question for us humans, what is our role? We like to control our surroundings and we have just been told that it is out of our control, so we wonder, what are we to do? and each of our texts for today offers insight to that question as well. Malachi is short and to the point with an image of evildoers burning up, which, if you have been oppressed by the evildoers is good news, hope is found in the promise of justice for the oppressed and God continues “for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.” God will bring the justice, the role of humans is to revere God’s name and this sounds good until we start to think of all the times when we have not done that, when we have forgotten God’s name, the times when we have been evildoers and we start to get worried again But that’s where our Psalm comes in, a song of celebration at the victory of God, once again the promise is that judgement is God’s work and the hope is found in how God will judge, “O Lord, you have made known your victory, you have revealed your righteousness in the sight of the nations. You remember your steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel...The Lord will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity” Judgement is God’s work and God will judge out of steadfast love and faithfulness, this is not some impartial deity but one who loves us, one who loves us so much that God became human and died for us, and so joined to Christ in our baptisms, when God judges us what God sees is not all the times we’ve messed up, but Christ, the perfect one who has already forgiven us. God’s got it all taken care of, and so what is our role? Our role is to sing praises to God, to shout with joy, to sing to the lord, to make joyful noises on trumpets and tambourines joining with the sounds of creation that also praise God. God’s got it under control and our role is to revere God’s name and praise God. Sounds pretty easy so far but having lived in the reality of the world we know that’s not the full story, which is where Jesus in our gospel for today comes in as he anticipates the difficulties in store for his followers before the end. The conversation starts out innocently enough with some followers marveling at the temple, it is the grandest building they have ever seen, it is the home of God, look at it! And Jesus tells them that one day the temple will be destroyed. Now it’s important to note that the temple in Luke is seen as a good place, it is the place of worship, Jesus teaches there all the time, he tries to clean it up, he stayed there debating when he was 12, the disciples go back after the resurrection and worship there. The temple is the center of religious life, Jesus is pro-temple, so why would he be saying it will be destroyed? Because Jesus knows that in between now and the end which God has taken care of living a life of faith will be difficult and that even good centers of faith will be destroyed and he warns his followers not to focus on the wrong thing. the life of faith while aided by places like the temple is not defined by it rather the promise that there is another way of living apart from the values of the world, a way of living where all are valued and cared for, a way of peace where death does not have the last say, and when bad things happen to good places the role of the followers is to testify to this promise and vision of God. Don’t get caught up in fear trying to predict when these bad things will happen Jesus tells his followers, don’t look at the strife in the world as signs for something more than what they are, a reflection of the brokenness of this world, instead you are to cling to the promise of God and tell others of that promise. I promise to be there with you Jesus says to take care of you, in the end not a hair of your head will perish, remember God’s got it under control. And I think Jesus is speaking directly to all of us with this conversation. We are living in a time where our temple is coming down, the institution of the church as we’ve known it, is being dismantled before our eyes even if we haven’t named it as such we’ve felt the effects, fewer people finding value in participating in a life of faith and the changes in society that support that people being scheduled to work on Sunday mornings, youth activities scheduled then as well things are not going the way they used to. And I think despite Jesus’ warning we’ve gotten caught focusing on the walls coming down when really our role is to testify, to testify to a life different from the kind valued by the world, to live out that life to the best of our ability and most of all to trust God’s promise of salvation and redemption. And yes that will mean change from how things always were, there will be grief and a time where we don’t quite know where that next center of faith will be, we will experiment and fail but as long as we continue to hope in God and testify to that hope faith will continue, and while it might be tempting to just give up on the testifying and rest only in the hope, that’s not what God wants for us either. That’s why Paul had to write to the Thessalonians, some of the community decided that their sole focus was to be waiting on the day of the Lord, and since that was coming soon they didn’t need to do anything in this life, especially if they had some resources stored up. That’s not how this works Paul writes, yes we’re living in hope of the day of the Lord but we still have to attend to this life that we’re living now and that includes meaningful occupation and contribution to the community, “do not be weary in doing what is right” Paul admonishes them And yet sometimes we do grow weary, weary of waiting, of testifying to a world that doesn’t seem to hear, of singing praises with a hurting creation of revering the name of God even, and that’s when Jesus brings us to the table with the saints of all times and places, forgives and feeds us with his body and blood and sends us out no longer weary renewed in hope to praise God and testify, sharing the good news of God with a weary world. God has claimed us, nothing, not even the brokenness of the world can change that and so we set our hope on God, we praise and we persist knowing that in the end God’s got it under control. Amen
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AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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