We Too May Trust

My brothers and sisters, here is the good news, right up front. You may be thinking that there is no good news in today’s lessons, but there is. This is the good news: despite destruction and chaos, despite natural disasters and unending wars, despite personal tragedies and sorrows, we Christians can still look to the future with hope. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection fundamentally changed history. God’s future has already been inaugurated, although we do not yet see it. We are living in the “middle time,” the time between Jesus’ resurrection and his Second Coming. Consequently, we are called to live faithfully in the present, as we press forward with the hope that our bond with God is eternal, that creation will be renewed, and that God’s future will be realized in God’s good time.

In their different ways, all our lessons lead us into a deeper understanding of that good news. Our first lesson comes from the book of the prophet Malachi. Malachi was written sometime in the late sixth century BC, after the Israelites had returned from exile in Babylon. The first temple in Jerusalem, which had been built by King Solomon, had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Although the temple now had been rebuilt, the post-exile generation was experiencing economic hardship and cultural dislocation. Earlier in Malachi’s prophecy, God takes the people to task for their inappropriate sacrifices. The people for their part complain that God neither rewards the faithful nor punishes the wicked.

Today’s lesson is Malachi’s answer to these charges. Speaking for God, the prophet looks to the future and assures his hearers that God has not forsaken God’s promises. He warns those who are unfaithful that they will be destroyed like the stubble left and burned after a harvest. We don’t know when that day will be. However, in that same future day, Malachi assures the faithful, those who have kept the covenant with God will be rewarded for their righteousness. They will be refreshed by the healing rays of the rising morning sun. Christians see these promises fulfilled in the redemption wrought by Jesus. On Christmas Eve we too will praise God as we sing, “Risen with healing in his wings, light and life to all he brings, hail, the Sun of Righteousness….”

Echoing Malachi, our psalm anticipates the fulfillment of God’s promises and celebrates God’s intervention in the world as an accomplished fact. “He remembers his mercy and faithfulness to the house of Israel, and all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” God has acted, and we are filled with joy.

Paul’s second letter to the Christians in Thessaloniki extends the message of the coming of God. Written in the early 50’s most probably from Corinth, the letter is addressed to a community in disarray and conflict. The main problem was that some members of the community were so convinced that Jesus’ return was imminent that they had stopped working and were instead mooching off others and spending their days gossiping with each other. Despite being an evangelist, Paul had continued to support himself by his trade as a tentmaker. Consequently, his response to those who would harm the community through idleness and gossip is firm. In the earlier part of the letter, he assures them that Christ will indeed return. However, he is clear that we do not know either the time or the place when Jesus will return. Consequently, Paul he goes on to remind the Thessalonians that all who are able most continue to ply their trades and live quiet and orderly lives. Most important, they must not “weary in doing right.”

As we hear this portion of Paul’s letter, we need to keep in mind an important caveat. Paul is most emphatically not saying that we are to let those who are unable to work go hungry. Indeed, throughout his letters Paul emphatically urges his hearers to care for the vulnerable members of the community, to remember the widows and the orphans, the sick and disabled. Here his point is to remind his hearers not to worry about the when or where of Christ’s second coming but rather to faithfully live their lives carrying out their duties conscientiously and working to build up the Christian community.

The message of the Gospel reading is similar. There are also some things to remember about Luke’s Gospel. The first is that it was written in the early ‘80’s AD. Peter and Paul were both dead, having been executed in Rome by Nero in 64. The temple had been destroyed, along with all the rest of Jerusalem, by the Romans in 70. Persecution of the followers of Jesus was in full swing.

As you know from our reading last week, after walking from Galilee, in Luke’s narrative Jesus and his followers are now in Jerusalem. It is just days from Jesus’ death. Jesus and his friends are standing looking up at the temple. Although it is the same temple to which Malachi had referred, it had been much enlarged by Herod Antipas and was actually quite beautiful. (It is the remaining wall of this temple that survives in Jerusalem today and is known as the Wailing Wall.) In a long speech, of which we have heard only the first part and an aside, Jesus is giving his followers a glimpse of the future. After predicting the fall of the temple and of Jerusalem, he throws out a few signs that the time is near. Then he backs up and warns his followers of persecutions that will take place before the destruction of the temple. Finally, in the part we don’t hear Jesus talks again about signs of the end. He reassures his followers that they “will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” On that day, he tells them, they are to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

When Luke‘s hearers heard this part of the Gospel, all that they had just heard had already taken place. Consequently, their conviction that Jesus was truly a prophet was strengthened. If he was right, they might have said, about the fall of the temple and of Jerusalem, then they could also trust his predictions about his final coming to redeem his followers. More important, hearing Jesus’ words about persecution, they could be reassured that all their own suffering – and the Book of Acts, the companion to the Gospel, details many incidents of persecution of Jesus’ earliest followers – was part of the continuation of Jesus’ mission through the lives of his disciples.

Like Paul, Jesus provides no details as to when, how, or where God’s reign will be consummated or when Jesus himself will return. However, he is clear about this: we are not to obsess over his return. Rather, we are to live faithfully in the present. We are to do the work that God has given us to do. We are to speak up about our faith, and we are to grow and mature as his followers. Even in times of war and destruction, chaos and natural disaster, personal tragedy and persecution, we are to turn to Jesus, and we are to trust in God’s goodness and love towards us.

Thomas Dorsey was born in rural Georgia in 1889.1 He was an excellent gospel and blues musician and a prolific song writer. As a young man he moved to Chicago. There he played the piano in churches, clubs, and theaters. In August, 1932, he left his pregnant wife in Chicago and traveled to St. Louis where he was to be the featured soloist at a large revival meeting. As he finished his first night there, he received a telegram. The telegram said simply, “Your wife has just died.” He rushed home. There he learned that his wife had given birth to a son but had died in childbirth. His son died the next day. Dorsey buried them both together in the same casket. Deeply grieving, he secluded himself and refused to see family and friends or to write any music.

Still in mourning, one day he sat down at the piano. He felt a sense of peace wash through him. He heard a new melody in his head, one he had never heard before. He began to play it on the piano. That night he testified, in the midst of deep sorrow, to his trust in Jesus’ love:

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand;
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light;
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

My brothers and sisters, the good news is that we too may speak these words. We too may trust God’s promises. We too may live in hope. We too may know God’s love. We too may work for the coming of God’s reign.

1. With thanks to Nancy Lynne Westfield, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2010), 312.