“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Do you know how much time you have left? No one does. Even so, all our advisors tell us, “Be ready, prepare, plan.” My financial advisor tells me that age 92 is the standard planning horizon. I recently saw an Allstate Insurance ad suggesting that now we’re even thinking out to age 100. So we take out life insurance. When we cross over into the second half-century, perhaps we buy long-term care insurance. We may have individual retirement annuities or tax-sheltered annuities. We contribute to, or perhaps draw from, the State Teachers Retirement System, the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, the Church Pension Fund, or company retirement plans. We draw up wills, lay out advanced directives, buy a cemetery plot or columbarium space, and convey our end of life wishes to our loved ones. It’s absolutely prudent and right to make all these arrangements. Should we make other plans too? Perhaps to gather the children and grandchildren and take that long-awaited trip? Perhaps to sell the big house and move into a smaller one, move closer to the children, or just get everything done by Christmas day! All these plans are also right and appropriate. And yet. And yet, despite all our preparation, advice, and plans, the truth is that we have no idea what the future holds for us, we have no idea when our life may suddenly change, and we have no idea how much time we have left.
Today’s Scripture lessons remind us that God invites us to make different kinds of preparations than those our financial advisors, attorneys, real estate agents, travel agents, or women’s magazines counsel. We don’t know how much time we personally have left, but as we begin another church year God invites us to prepare for God’s future. In contrast to the rest of our society, now in the midst of the mad rush to December 25th, we are invited to stop, to take a breath, and to look with hope towards another future.
We get a glimpse of God’s future, a promise of the consummation of God’s rule at the end of the age, in the stirring reading from Isaiah. In God’s future, the prophet assures us, all people and nations will be united, and all will live according to God’s law. In words that ring down the centuries, the prophet also reassures us that God’s future is a future of peace: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” When soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan, when civilians are dying in the busses and markets of Pakistan, Israel, and Palestine, when civil war still plagues Sudan, when people are murdered on college campuses, don’t you cry out to God to bring that peaceable reign into being right now? And what is the prophet’s reply: “O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord.” In whatever time we have left, we too are invited to pursue peace, even as we continue to hope that God’s peaceable kingdom will come soon.
And hope we must. For Jesus sternly warns us in today’s Gospel reading that we do not know when God will fully consummate God’s plan. During this church year, our Gospel lessons will come mostly from the Gospel according to Matthew, a gospel written especially to convey a sense of hope to a struggling Christian community. In today’s passage Jesus is near Jerusalem, near the end of his own earthly ministry. Having just warned his disciples about the destruction of the temple, he now cautions them, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Throughout the centuries, and still even today, people have claimed to know when the “end of the world” will occur. Think of the many cartoons you have seen of the bearded figure, perhaps wearing a sandwich board, exhorting people to repent because the world is about to end. Think of the Jim Joneses and David Koreshes of our own era who have led so many astray: Think of those who preach the “Rapture.”
We certainly don’t know when Christ will come again, nor when God will bring in God’s future. Nor do we know when our own lives will change – in an instant – despite all our planning. Aren’t we all a heartbeat away from disaster? September 11th, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the recent fires in California. And then there are the tragedies in our own lives. In February, 1995, my nephew Matthew had just turned 18. As he was making plans for his first year at Penn State, he was struck by a deadly leukemia and died that July. A few years back in Athens a 16-year old got behind the wheel after having had too much to drink at an unsupervised party. She missed a turn on a country road and killed her two 14 year old passengers. All of you could tell similar stories. Our lives, our current comfortable lives, truly hang by a thread.
We know that our lives are uncertain, and that we cannot know what the future holds. But as Christians, we do not despair. We don’t know when God will act, or when our lives may change, but we continue to live in hope, gratitude, and expectation. We live in hope, because God has already entered into our world once. We live in hope, because we know that we have been redeemed in Jesus’ death. We live in hope, because we have been given a foretaste of the life to come in the resurrection, a foretaste of what God has in mind not only for us personally, but eventually for the entire world. Because of this hope, we live differently from those who live without it. Because of this hope, we are grateful for Christ’s first coming, and we wait patiently for Christ’s second coming. In this middle time, as we wait for God’s future to come fully, we remain awake and alert to what God is calling us to do now, “now in the time of this mortal life.”
How do we do that? Let me suggest a few ways. First, we can pray about the mission of this parish. We can ask God to show us what God is inviting this parish to do as a parish. In what new ministries might God be inviting this parish to participate? Are there ways in which the resources of this parish can be used to bring God’s future nearer? Are there ministries for which you might take responsibility, or in which you should be participating?
Second, we remain alert to God’s presence in the world through joining the weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection. On Sundays, when we join with the rest of the Christian community to hear God’s word and partake of Christ’s Body and Blood, we are nourished and even transformed by Christ. And especially in this season of Advent, we can find ways to listen for, and attend to, God’s daily invitation to us to deepen our spiritual lives and become more attentive to God’s presence in our own lives. For some of you, the discipline of lectio divina, in which we meditatively read Scripture, might be a useful discipline. For others of you, daily prayer at night, in which you review the day and give it to God, might be a way a remaining more alert to God’s presence in your life.
Some of you know of Episcopal priest and spiritual writer Barbara Crafton. She’s a frequent visitor at parishes and retreat centers. She also writes e-mail reflections on the spiritual life and the weekly lections. In one e-mo, as she calls them, she described how people in her home parish gather to read daily Morning and Evening Prayer. Beginning in Advent, she tells us,
"We will husband our store of quietness, care for it lovingly, knowing that much conspires against it outside the walls of the little church. Advent will be a time of such husbanding for many people, a time when attention is paid to what the spirit needs to greet the little Prince of Peace, soon to come among us once again. This doesn't just happen to us. We have to show up for it. If we want peace, we have to go where it can be found. Where is that for you? In prayer with others? In prayer by yourself?... Now is a good time to consider this, as the old year breathes its last and a fresh new one begins."1
Advent is not a passive season. God invites us to be alert and intentionally prepare for God’s coming. God invites us to prepare for the celebration of God’s birth in Jesus, to prepare for God’s coming at the end of the age, and to prepare for God’s coming to us in the busyness of our days. Are you preparing for God’s coming? We may not know when God will come. We may not know how much time we have left. But we are invited to stay alert, awake, and ready for God’s appearing in our lives. And so we pray,
"Lord, we watch, we wait,
we look, we long for you.
Dispel the clouds and darkness
and awaken us to your glory,
that we may walk in your light,
through Jesus Christ our Lord."2 Amen
1. Barbara Crafton, “The Almost Daily eMo,” November 26,2007.
2. David Adam, Clouds and Glory, Morehouse, Harrisburg, PA, 2001, p. 5.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Kingdom of God's Beloved Son
It’s the last Sunday after Pentecost, the very end of the church year. So why does our church calendar tell us that we are celebrating the feast of Christ the King? Americans, understandably, have negative images of kings. Consider how the writers of the Declaration of Independence characterized George III of England: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” The writers lay out eighteen ways in which the king has oppressed the colonists, allude to the ways they have attempted to redress these ills, and finally conclude that, “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” And indeed Americans have not pledged allegiance to any king since the Declaration was signed.
Nor is the feast of Christ the King in any of our old prayer books. The old lectionary in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer lists no such feast. Indeed, if we were still using the 1928 prayer book today we would be observing the Sunday Next Before Advent and would be hearing the story from John’s Gospel about the feeding of the five thousand. So where does this feast come from? Is it some ancient observance that Episcopalians only discovered when we revised our prayer book in the 1970s and adopted the Revised Common Lectionary? Actually, as an observance Christ the King only dates from the Italy of 1925. In a response to the growing power of Fascism in Italy, and especially to the government of Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XI, instituted the feast of Christ the King. For nations wracked by one war and facing another, the day proclaimed God’s reign over the entire world. The day also reminded Christians that their allegiance was to a divine ruler and not to earthly political leaders. In concluding our liturgical year with the acknowledgement of Christ as our true ruler, we now join with the Roman Catholics, as well as Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, in acknowledging the Lordship of Christ in our lives.
O.K. I get it. But if Christ is my king, my lord, my true ruler, the one to whom I owe primary allegiance, why do we hear this Gospel reading? Aren’t there others that better showcase Jesus’ majesty? Wasn’t Jesus truly regal when he calmed the sea and commanded the winds? Wasn’t his power obvious when he fed the multitudes with bread and fish? Surely he showed his authority when he drove demons out of people and healed them from every imaginable illness. And whenever he debated with the religious leadership, the greater depth of his wisdom was clearly evident. Why this Gospel, that shows Jesus at the lowest point of his life, his humiliation on a cross? Isn’t this Gospel reading more suitable for Good Friday?
Well, certainly we read the whole Passion story in Holy Week, beginning with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, and going right through to his death on the Cross on Good Friday. As I wrestled with today’s readings, it became clear to me that the Church lets us hear this story again to drive home to us just what kind of Lord we actually have, of what kind of king we are actually subjects. The Gospel of Luke is a Gospel of reversals and irony, and in a wonderfully ironic touch, it is those who here mock and reject Jesus who point to Jesus’ true identity. To begin with, Jesus is mocked by those in political authority. Shortly before the scene of today’s reading, Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, a man dependent on political power and the threat of violence. Jesus had been accused of saying that he was the Messiah, God’s anointed one. Thinking in political terms, Pilate mockingly asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus’ answer? “You say so.” Even so, Pilate had the inscription “This is the King of the Jews” put on the cross. But Jesus was not a political ruler.
Secondly, the religious leaders mock Jesus: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah….” But Jesus was not a religious leader: he did not found a new rabbinical school or Jewish sect. Those welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday might have been expecting him to take up arms and free Jerusalem from the hated Romans. Indeed some think that Judas betrayed Jesus in the hope of stirring up a military rebellion. However, Jesus was clearly not called to be a military leader. And so, the sneering soldiers similarly denigrate him. As they cast lots for his clothes, they taunt him, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Even the first thief, who thinks only of himself, mocks Jesus: : “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
Those who mock and taunt Jesus show us clearly that Jesus is no George III. Jesus is a different kind of king from any we could have imagined. No, Jesus is not a king in political, military, or even religious terms. What Jesus models for us is self-giving, sacrificial love. Unlike the tyrants of his own or even our world, Jesus models the servant-shepherd leader foretold by God in the prophecy of Jeremiah, which we heard in our Old Testament reading. Letting go of any possibility of political, military, or religious power, Jesus offers himself up for the life of the world. At the point of death, Jesus reigns from the cross, giving himself up for us, forgiving us, and assuring us of God’s deep love for us.
What would the kingdom that Jesus announced look like in our world? What would our lives be like if Jesus ruled the nations, instead of Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, or even David Cameron or Barak Obama? Unquestionably, every aspect of our lives would be different. We would have peace instead of endless war. Gone would be exploitation of others and human trafficking, the modern-day equivalent of slavery. Instead of a vengeful, punitive system of justice, we would have mercy and forgiveness. Adequate healthcare would be available to all, instead of only to the fortunately wealthy few. Walls between ethnic groups and races would cease to exist, and all would be included within our communities. When God’s Kingdom comes, the kingdom we pray for every time we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we would truly know shalom, the well being of all humankind, and indeed of all creation. This is our hope, this is what we proclaim, and this is what we pray for with all our hearts. The shalom and reconciliation of all creation is the place to which everything that we have heard, preached, and said this year has led us. This is the point of the whole story: that God’s Kingdom, inaugurated by the birth, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, would come to full realization.
And what of ourselves? By God’s grace, we have been brought into, transferred to this kingdom governed by Christ. We are now citizens of a different world, not our own. In the world of which we are now citizens, we know that our hope lies not in the agendas of Democrats or Republicans, of capitalists or socialists or communists, of management or labor, of democracy or theocracy. Just as we learned last week that no human monument is forever, so this week our texts proclaim that no human system is forever. None can claim ultimate allegiance from us. Every system ultimately fails. Only Christ is truly sovereign. Only Christ has the authority to claim us as his subjects.
As Christ’s subjects, we are invited to live as he lived. We are invited to see that at the heart of everything is a God who deeply, truly, passionately loves us. We discover with joy that Jesus is the Ultimate Reality who should be our Ultimate Concern. We celebrate Jesus not as a distant tyrant, a George III across a three thousand mile-wide ocean from his subjects, but as a near, dear, close presence in our lives – as close as a prayer. We celebrate Jesus as lover of the world and all that is in it. We celebrate Jesus as pure Mother/Father love, as supreme healer and transformer of life. We celebrate Jesus, God’s anointed one, who through his death and resurrection takes away the sin of the world for all and forever.
And so as we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and as we give thanks to God for blessing us with the gift of inclusion in his kingdom of grace, let us pray in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, “We are all vassals of the King. May it please his Majesty that, like brave soldiers, we may look only where the banner of our King is flying, and thus follow his will.” Amen.
Nor is the feast of Christ the King in any of our old prayer books. The old lectionary in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer lists no such feast. Indeed, if we were still using the 1928 prayer book today we would be observing the Sunday Next Before Advent and would be hearing the story from John’s Gospel about the feeding of the five thousand. So where does this feast come from? Is it some ancient observance that Episcopalians only discovered when we revised our prayer book in the 1970s and adopted the Revised Common Lectionary? Actually, as an observance Christ the King only dates from the Italy of 1925. In a response to the growing power of Fascism in Italy, and especially to the government of Benito Mussolini, Pope Pius XI, instituted the feast of Christ the King. For nations wracked by one war and facing another, the day proclaimed God’s reign over the entire world. The day also reminded Christians that their allegiance was to a divine ruler and not to earthly political leaders. In concluding our liturgical year with the acknowledgement of Christ as our true ruler, we now join with the Roman Catholics, as well as Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists, in acknowledging the Lordship of Christ in our lives.
O.K. I get it. But if Christ is my king, my lord, my true ruler, the one to whom I owe primary allegiance, why do we hear this Gospel reading? Aren’t there others that better showcase Jesus’ majesty? Wasn’t Jesus truly regal when he calmed the sea and commanded the winds? Wasn’t his power obvious when he fed the multitudes with bread and fish? Surely he showed his authority when he drove demons out of people and healed them from every imaginable illness. And whenever he debated with the religious leadership, the greater depth of his wisdom was clearly evident. Why this Gospel, that shows Jesus at the lowest point of his life, his humiliation on a cross? Isn’t this Gospel reading more suitable for Good Friday?
Well, certainly we read the whole Passion story in Holy Week, beginning with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, and going right through to his death on the Cross on Good Friday. As I wrestled with today’s readings, it became clear to me that the Church lets us hear this story again to drive home to us just what kind of Lord we actually have, of what kind of king we are actually subjects. The Gospel of Luke is a Gospel of reversals and irony, and in a wonderfully ironic touch, it is those who here mock and reject Jesus who point to Jesus’ true identity. To begin with, Jesus is mocked by those in political authority. Shortly before the scene of today’s reading, Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, a man dependent on political power and the threat of violence. Jesus had been accused of saying that he was the Messiah, God’s anointed one. Thinking in political terms, Pilate mockingly asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus’ answer? “You say so.” Even so, Pilate had the inscription “This is the King of the Jews” put on the cross. But Jesus was not a political ruler.
Secondly, the religious leaders mock Jesus: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah….” But Jesus was not a religious leader: he did not found a new rabbinical school or Jewish sect. Those welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday might have been expecting him to take up arms and free Jerusalem from the hated Romans. Indeed some think that Judas betrayed Jesus in the hope of stirring up a military rebellion. However, Jesus was clearly not called to be a military leader. And so, the sneering soldiers similarly denigrate him. As they cast lots for his clothes, they taunt him, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Even the first thief, who thinks only of himself, mocks Jesus: : “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
Those who mock and taunt Jesus show us clearly that Jesus is no George III. Jesus is a different kind of king from any we could have imagined. No, Jesus is not a king in political, military, or even religious terms. What Jesus models for us is self-giving, sacrificial love. Unlike the tyrants of his own or even our world, Jesus models the servant-shepherd leader foretold by God in the prophecy of Jeremiah, which we heard in our Old Testament reading. Letting go of any possibility of political, military, or religious power, Jesus offers himself up for the life of the world. At the point of death, Jesus reigns from the cross, giving himself up for us, forgiving us, and assuring us of God’s deep love for us.
What would the kingdom that Jesus announced look like in our world? What would our lives be like if Jesus ruled the nations, instead of Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, or even David Cameron or Barak Obama? Unquestionably, every aspect of our lives would be different. We would have peace instead of endless war. Gone would be exploitation of others and human trafficking, the modern-day equivalent of slavery. Instead of a vengeful, punitive system of justice, we would have mercy and forgiveness. Adequate healthcare would be available to all, instead of only to the fortunately wealthy few. Walls between ethnic groups and races would cease to exist, and all would be included within our communities. When God’s Kingdom comes, the kingdom we pray for every time we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we would truly know shalom, the well being of all humankind, and indeed of all creation. This is our hope, this is what we proclaim, and this is what we pray for with all our hearts. The shalom and reconciliation of all creation is the place to which everything that we have heard, preached, and said this year has led us. This is the point of the whole story: that God’s Kingdom, inaugurated by the birth, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, would come to full realization.
And what of ourselves? By God’s grace, we have been brought into, transferred to this kingdom governed by Christ. We are now citizens of a different world, not our own. In the world of which we are now citizens, we know that our hope lies not in the agendas of Democrats or Republicans, of capitalists or socialists or communists, of management or labor, of democracy or theocracy. Just as we learned last week that no human monument is forever, so this week our texts proclaim that no human system is forever. None can claim ultimate allegiance from us. Every system ultimately fails. Only Christ is truly sovereign. Only Christ has the authority to claim us as his subjects.
As Christ’s subjects, we are invited to live as he lived. We are invited to see that at the heart of everything is a God who deeply, truly, passionately loves us. We discover with joy that Jesus is the Ultimate Reality who should be our Ultimate Concern. We celebrate Jesus not as a distant tyrant, a George III across a three thousand mile-wide ocean from his subjects, but as a near, dear, close presence in our lives – as close as a prayer. We celebrate Jesus as lover of the world and all that is in it. We celebrate Jesus as pure Mother/Father love, as supreme healer and transformer of life. We celebrate Jesus, God’s anointed one, who through his death and resurrection takes away the sin of the world for all and forever.
And so as we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and as we give thanks to God for blessing us with the gift of inclusion in his kingdom of grace, let us pray in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, “We are all vassals of the King. May it please his Majesty that, like brave soldiers, we may look only where the banner of our King is flying, and thus follow his will.” Amen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
New Heavens and a New Earth
Since I am older than dirt, I actually studied the classics of English poetry in high school. I think it must have been sometime during my sophomore year that I read Shelley’s haunting poem, “Ozymandias.” The poem was written in 1818, in response, some think, to the recent arrival in London of a colossal statue of Ramses II, the great pharaoh of ancient Egypt. How many of you remember it?
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I was reminded of Shelley’s poem, and of so many other great deserted statues and monuments, as I tried to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” today’s Scripture readings. In our Gospel lesson in particular, Jesus, now just days away from his own death, reminds his disciples and us that one of the greatest buildings of the ancient world, the great second temple in Jerusalem, is about to suffer the same fate as the statue of Ramses: “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” And we know that in 70 AD, that vast temple complex, and indeed all of Jerusalem, was reduced to rubble by the Roman armies. Four centuries later the great monuments of ancient Rome suffered the same fate. Despite our pride, despite our trust in earthly power, nothing lasts. All eventually is lost – that is certain.
Actually as we think about the world and our place in it, there are, as Daniel Clendenin reminds us, four different kinds of sure and certain losses.1 The first loss is the one we know best, that of our own bodies. Whether you’re a Haitian male, whose life expectancy at birth is now about 30, or a Japanese female, whose life expectancy is over 85, “mortality rates are 100% certain.” Secondly, we know that civilizations die. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Aztecs – all are gone with scarcely a trace. And more: with the climate changes, overpopulation, famine, and wars that coming centuries will surely see, many, if not most, of the cultures in today’s world will also vanish without a trace. The end of the earth as we know it is also sure and certain. Indeed, many scientists believe that the earth is now about middle-aged, and will be incinerated by the sun in about 5 billion years. As particle physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne warns, “humanity and all forms of carbon-based life will prove a transient episode in the history of the cosmos.” Finally, the universe itself may disappear. Astronomers tell us that our expanding universe will at some point collapse in on itself.
And what comes after that? Here is the good news! Christians believe that the end of humanity and of the cosmos as we know it is not the final end. We believe in God’s promises to us. There is more to God’s plan. In today’s lections, we hear God’s promise clearly in the prophecy of Isaiah. Using a restored Jerusalem as the symbol for an entirely new creation, God promises us that “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” God promises us a restored creation in which there will be no more lives cut short, no more weeping, no more loss or plunder. God promises us a peaceable kingdom, in which all the animals and human beings will live together in harmony. God promises an earth in which “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” In the same way, Jesus acknowledges the disruption and pain that the disciples will face in the coming days. Nevertheless, in a passage following today’s Gospel reading, he commands them to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” And again, Paul reminds the Christians in Thessaloniki to continue valiantly doing the Lord’s work, even as they wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Do we believe any of this? Do we believe God’s promises of a restored creation? Whenever you read Morning or Evening Prayer or witness a baptism or confirmation, you repeat in the words of the Apostles Creed, that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Sunday by Sunday, we affirm in the words of the Nicene Creed that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” And in all times and places we pray in the words of the Lord’s Prayer that God’s kingdom will come, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Every time we say any of these words, we affirm our belief in God’s promises that justice will be done, that wrongs will be righted, that all will live in peace and health, and that creation will be restored and renewed. Blessed hope, blessed assurance!
How and when will all this happen? We have no idea. The psalmist reminds us that “a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.” Truly we are in the realm of mystery here. What should we do as we wait for the unfolding of God’s plan, as we continue to hope for the fulfillment of God’s promises? Here, my brothers and sisters, we are on firmer ground. As Paul told the Thessalonian Christians, we are to pursue conscientiously the work God has given us to do, and we are never to “weary in doing what is right,” as we ourselves partner with God in the bringing in of God’s kingdom.
What does that mean for us here in Gallipolis? Today we give especial thanks for what we have inherited in this region. We are grateful to God for the beautiful land with which God has gifted us, for the mountains, the rivers, the fertile land. We are grateful for the history of the people here, for the music, crafts, language, literature, and arts of this place. We are grateful for the strong communities of faith in this region. At the same time, we know that we also have a responsibility to care for this land and its people. While we wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises to us, we are called to be good stewards of the resources of this region. We pray that God will guide us and our leaders in decisions to be made about energy, mining, and agriculture. We are also called to be mindful of the needs of God’s people. Perhaps we in this parish, as relatively well educated, middle class people, are called to be “bridges,” as one speaker put it, for those who are still mired in the poverty of this region. In our Loaves and Fishes dinners and in our diaper distributions, we provide material help to some of those in need. To what else is God calling us? What else does our community ask of us?
And above all that, we are called to remember that even as we are “placed among things that are passing away,” we are to trust in God’s promises. We may not know how and when they will be fulfilled, nor do we know what we may have to give up in order for God’s will to be done. In a lovely essay in a collection entitled Heaven, Barbara Brown Taylor tells of the death of her father. He was having a hard time dying. As she lay next to him one Sunday, she whispered, “You’re having to let it all go, aren’t you? All the places you haven’t traveled yet, all the places you’ve been. Your first girlfriend, your favorite chair, your prize students, your grandsons…. Everything that makes you you, you’re having to let go now. Oh, Poppa…. It has to be so hard.” After her father’s death, Taylor began to cultivate what she called a “radical trust in God.” Though less attached to specific beliefs about heaven, she nevertheless has an “enduring sense” that “everything will be revealed in the hereafter.” She now hopes that God’s judgment will reveal not only all her shortcomings but also what she may have done right in her lifetime. Most important, she tells us, “in the end my highest hope … is simply to be rescued when my time comes – plucked from the roadside where I have fallen, struck dumb by all there is to love and grieve in this world – and gathered into God’s own safety, whatever that turns out to mean. I am willing to forego the details, as long as I know whose lap I am in.”2
As we confront the mystery of the end of all things, including ourselves, and as we embrace the hope of God’s restoration of creation, of new heavens and a new earth, we continue to trust that God is working out God’s purposes, and that, in God’s good time, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
1. In “Heaven: Our ‘Enduring Fascination,’” The Journey with Jesus – Notes to Myself," http://www.journeywithjesus.net, accessed November 11, 2010.
2. Barbara Brown Taylor, “Leaving Myself Behind,” in Heaven, Roger Ferlo, ed. (New York: Seabury, 2007), 11-12
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I was reminded of Shelley’s poem, and of so many other great deserted statues and monuments, as I tried to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” today’s Scripture readings. In our Gospel lesson in particular, Jesus, now just days away from his own death, reminds his disciples and us that one of the greatest buildings of the ancient world, the great second temple in Jerusalem, is about to suffer the same fate as the statue of Ramses: “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” And we know that in 70 AD, that vast temple complex, and indeed all of Jerusalem, was reduced to rubble by the Roman armies. Four centuries later the great monuments of ancient Rome suffered the same fate. Despite our pride, despite our trust in earthly power, nothing lasts. All eventually is lost – that is certain.
Actually as we think about the world and our place in it, there are, as Daniel Clendenin reminds us, four different kinds of sure and certain losses.1 The first loss is the one we know best, that of our own bodies. Whether you’re a Haitian male, whose life expectancy at birth is now about 30, or a Japanese female, whose life expectancy is over 85, “mortality rates are 100% certain.” Secondly, we know that civilizations die. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Aztecs – all are gone with scarcely a trace. And more: with the climate changes, overpopulation, famine, and wars that coming centuries will surely see, many, if not most, of the cultures in today’s world will also vanish without a trace. The end of the earth as we know it is also sure and certain. Indeed, many scientists believe that the earth is now about middle-aged, and will be incinerated by the sun in about 5 billion years. As particle physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne warns, “humanity and all forms of carbon-based life will prove a transient episode in the history of the cosmos.” Finally, the universe itself may disappear. Astronomers tell us that our expanding universe will at some point collapse in on itself.
And what comes after that? Here is the good news! Christians believe that the end of humanity and of the cosmos as we know it is not the final end. We believe in God’s promises to us. There is more to God’s plan. In today’s lections, we hear God’s promise clearly in the prophecy of Isaiah. Using a restored Jerusalem as the symbol for an entirely new creation, God promises us that “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.” God promises us a restored creation in which there will be no more lives cut short, no more weeping, no more loss or plunder. God promises us a peaceable kingdom, in which all the animals and human beings will live together in harmony. God promises an earth in which “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” In the same way, Jesus acknowledges the disruption and pain that the disciples will face in the coming days. Nevertheless, in a passage following today’s Gospel reading, he commands them to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” And again, Paul reminds the Christians in Thessaloniki to continue valiantly doing the Lord’s work, even as they wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Do we believe any of this? Do we believe God’s promises of a restored creation? Whenever you read Morning or Evening Prayer or witness a baptism or confirmation, you repeat in the words of the Apostles Creed, that Jesus “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Sunday by Sunday, we affirm in the words of the Nicene Creed that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” And in all times and places we pray in the words of the Lord’s Prayer that God’s kingdom will come, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Every time we say any of these words, we affirm our belief in God’s promises that justice will be done, that wrongs will be righted, that all will live in peace and health, and that creation will be restored and renewed. Blessed hope, blessed assurance!
How and when will all this happen? We have no idea. The psalmist reminds us that “a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night.” Truly we are in the realm of mystery here. What should we do as we wait for the unfolding of God’s plan, as we continue to hope for the fulfillment of God’s promises? Here, my brothers and sisters, we are on firmer ground. As Paul told the Thessalonian Christians, we are to pursue conscientiously the work God has given us to do, and we are never to “weary in doing what is right,” as we ourselves partner with God in the bringing in of God’s kingdom.
What does that mean for us here in Gallipolis? Today we give especial thanks for what we have inherited in this region. We are grateful to God for the beautiful land with which God has gifted us, for the mountains, the rivers, the fertile land. We are grateful for the history of the people here, for the music, crafts, language, literature, and arts of this place. We are grateful for the strong communities of faith in this region. At the same time, we know that we also have a responsibility to care for this land and its people. While we wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises to us, we are called to be good stewards of the resources of this region. We pray that God will guide us and our leaders in decisions to be made about energy, mining, and agriculture. We are also called to be mindful of the needs of God’s people. Perhaps we in this parish, as relatively well educated, middle class people, are called to be “bridges,” as one speaker put it, for those who are still mired in the poverty of this region. In our Loaves and Fishes dinners and in our diaper distributions, we provide material help to some of those in need. To what else is God calling us? What else does our community ask of us?
And above all that, we are called to remember that even as we are “placed among things that are passing away,” we are to trust in God’s promises. We may not know how and when they will be fulfilled, nor do we know what we may have to give up in order for God’s will to be done. In a lovely essay in a collection entitled Heaven, Barbara Brown Taylor tells of the death of her father. He was having a hard time dying. As she lay next to him one Sunday, she whispered, “You’re having to let it all go, aren’t you? All the places you haven’t traveled yet, all the places you’ve been. Your first girlfriend, your favorite chair, your prize students, your grandsons…. Everything that makes you you, you’re having to let go now. Oh, Poppa…. It has to be so hard.” After her father’s death, Taylor began to cultivate what she called a “radical trust in God.” Though less attached to specific beliefs about heaven, she nevertheless has an “enduring sense” that “everything will be revealed in the hereafter.” She now hopes that God’s judgment will reveal not only all her shortcomings but also what she may have done right in her lifetime. Most important, she tells us, “in the end my highest hope … is simply to be rescued when my time comes – plucked from the roadside where I have fallen, struck dumb by all there is to love and grieve in this world – and gathered into God’s own safety, whatever that turns out to mean. I am willing to forego the details, as long as I know whose lap I am in.”2
As we confront the mystery of the end of all things, including ourselves, and as we embrace the hope of God’s restoration of creation, of new heavens and a new earth, we continue to trust that God is working out God’s purposes, and that, in God’s good time, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
1. In “Heaven: Our ‘Enduring Fascination,’” The Journey with Jesus – Notes to Myself," http://www.journeywithjesus.net, accessed November 11, 2010.
2. Barbara Brown Taylor, “Leaving Myself Behind,” in Heaven, Roger Ferlo, ed. (New York: Seabury, 2007), 11-12
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