Yehuda ben Yitzhak here, reporting now from Jerusalem. I’ve been following behind the itinerant Galilean rabbi, Yeshua ha Notsri, Jesus of Nazareth to you. If you’re just joining us, we’ve been walking here from Galilee. It’s been a long walk. Of course, Jesus’ healing people and stopping along the way to teach his disciples slowed us down some. We reached Jerusalem a few days ago. And what do you know? The crowds came out in droves to greet Jesus. They waved palm branches and looked like they were ready to crown him king, but he wouldn’t let them. Then when he came to the temple and saw the money-changers at their tables, Jesus got all red in the face. He started shouting, and he pushed the money off their tables. You can imagine how that went over! Since then, it’s clear that the religious establishment – to say nothing of the Roman government – has been spying on him and his followers. I think they’re looking for ways to trap him so that they can bring him up on charges – either blasphemy or fomenting rebellion, or both.
So who are these folks in the religious establishment anyway? A little background here, as we walk around Jerusalem with Jesus and his friends. Actually there are five different groups you need to know about.1 There are the temple clergy led by the high priest. They belong to the tribe of Levi and inherit their offices. Then there’s the Sanhedrin, the religious Supreme Court. They’re led by the high priest. The Sanhedrin usually has both Pharisees and Sadducees, parties who interpret Scripture differently and are both very influential among the rabbis. The Sadducees, you remember, hold only the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative. They don’t believe in resurrection, because it’s not mentioned in the Torah. The Pharisees, on the other hand, accept the prophets and other writings. Most people think of them as reformers. They do believe in the resurrection of the righteous, although for them the righteous are those who keep every jot and tittle of the law and who separate themselves from Gentiles as much as possible. Finally, there are the scribes, the religious lawyers. Their job is to apply the Law of Moses to everyday life.
Jesus, of course, isn’t a member of any of these parties. As far as we know, he hasn’t had any formal religious training. He’s just a hill country preacher. It’s just astounding how well he can match wits with all these religious professionals and can make the Law understandable. And of course, he’s such a popular preacher. And it doesn’t hurt that he can drive home his point with a miracle or two! The religious leaders don’t trust him – of course they’re afraid of losing their influence – and the Romans are sure he wants to stir up popular rebellion. Folks, it’s a recipe for trouble.
Oh, Jesus and his friends have stopped walking. We’ve gathered in a square by the temple. The money changers seem to have set up their tables again, and there are lots of folks milling around. First, some Pharisees ask Jesus by what authority he is teaching. Now here come some Sadducees trying to test him. Since the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection, their spokesman paints this ridiculous scenario about a woman having had to marry seven brothers. He probably means to ridicule those who do believe in the resurrection, but, really, what does he take Jesus for? An utter fool? Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He cuts right through the man’s assumptions, doesn’t he? He tells him and the other Sadducees that they don’t understand either God or the Scriptures. God is not God of the dead, God is God of the living. So everyone who is faithful to God will pass through death and, like Abraham and Moses, be united with God forever. And because they are united with God, obviously there’s no need for marriage.
Whoa! The Sadducees’ faces are bright red! That’s a stinging rebuke to those who think they are among the most respected members of the religious hierarchy. They are clearly outraged. Are they also just a little afraid of Jesus? Because the Sadducees only read part of the Scripture, they miss all the prophetic calls for justice and care for the poor. And since they don’t believe in the resurrection, or any kind of afterlife, they don’t think God will ever hold them accountable for how they live. No wonder they’re all so comfortably rich. Jesus talks a lot about caring for the poor, but these folks seem to care only about themselves. Did what Jesus just say change their mind any? I don’t know what will happen next, folks, but, you can be sure, when news breaks Yehuda ben Yitzhak will be here reporting it.
Where are we in this scene? Maybe we’re like Jesus’ friends, just tagging after him, confused and wondering what will happen next. Maybe, though, we’re not so different from the Pharisees and Sadducees. Maybe we’re like the Pharisees. Maybe we believe that all God wants of us is that we be good, decent folks and live a pure and personally upright life. Go to church, read the Bible, tithe, pray seven times a day, don’t cheat on our spouses or drink too much. Never mind those poor people who are too lazy to work and would rather live on government handouts. Never mind those of other faiths – they’re doomed. If we keep ourselves pure we’ll be saved.
In this country, perhaps we’re more like the Sadducees. Maybe we hear only the parts of Scripture that we want to hear. Maybe we miss the parts about caring for the widow and orphan, about making just provision for the alien in our midst, about pursuing peace, about caring for creation, about loving one another. Franciscan spiritual teacher Richard Rohr reminds us that page after page of the Gospels call us to “the work of justice and generosity toward the poor and the outsider.” Yet “most Christians have indeed been ‘cafeteria Christians’ when it comes to this. Usually they will markedly emphasize something else (often a sexual issue) to divert attention from what Jesus did not divert attention from.”2 Perhaps, like the Sadducees, we also think that we won’t be held accountable by God for how we’ve lived our lives, for “what we’ve done and left undone,” for “the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf.”
Jesus has called us to lives that are better and richer. For us, to postpone accountability is to postpone discipleship. Heaven and hell are not something we experience only after death. We experience heaven and hell right here in this world, in our daily lives, through our choices to listen for God’s voice or ignore it, to love others or to isolate ourselves, to pursue justice, to care for those in need. Perhaps like the Sadducees, we let our wealth numb our consciences and blind us to the needs of others. While reassuring us that we are God’s forever, Jesus calls us to open our eyes and look around. Jesus calls us to read all of Scripture and to understand God’s preference for the poor and marginalized. Jesus calls us to give up our trust in following myriad rules of personal purity. Jesus calls us to give up our belief that it doesn’t matter how we live our lives. Jesus calls us to begin seeing our neighbors, all our neighbors, and all of creation through God’s eyes and to begin partnering with God in realizing God’s future.
Most of all, Jesus calls us to believe in resurrection, to believe that God has and will overcome every negation, including the ultimate negation of death. Because Jesus has risen we will rise because of him. Because Jesus has risen we can hope and trust in the future. Because Jesus has risen, we can experience resurrection here and now. And how do we experience that resurrection? When we see the poor lifted up out of poverty, when we see those who are lonely restored to community, when we see those who are sick brought back to life, when we raise our own voices against violence and injustice. Resurrection means feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, it means visiting those in prison and witnessing to the good news not only with our lips but with our lives. While we wait for the one who has died and risen, so that we too may experience full life with God, we are to press forward, devoting ourselves, our time, our talent, and whatever treasure we have, to sharing with others the experience of resurrection.
My sisters and brothers, this is the good news. Jesus has revealed to us a God who profoundly loves all of us, who calls us into a resurrection life of both deeper relationship and more faithful service, and who assures us that once we are joined to God our connection with God will never be broken. Thanks be to God.
1. With thanks to Pat Marrin, Celebration, Nov. 10, 2013 for much of the following.
2. Daily Meditation, Nov. 7, 2013 (electronic message).
Showing posts with label Pentecost 25. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pentecost 25. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Do Not Be Alarmed
It was 1912. The prosperous congregation of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Gallipolis, made up mostly of the families of businessmen, physicians, and other professionals, worshipped in the red brick building that had been consecrated in 1859 by then Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine. Electric lights now illuminated the well-appointed interior of the church. A vested choir led the congregation in singing the familiar hymns. The Rev. Charles Elliott Mackenzie preached and presided at Sunday worship. Although the town of Gallipolis had weathered the social and economic challenges of the years following the Civil War, and the Rev. Mr. Elliott had already had more than twenty predecessors, in 1912 most of the adult members of St. Peter’s likely thought that the world was at a comfortable and stable plateau.
Many in the larger world shared that sense of stability. In the U.S. and Europe, children left school at thirteen to take up work in stores, factories, and mines. Wealthy and aristocratic families lived comfortably on richly furnished estates. Kings and queens, the Kaiser and the tsar, reigned serenely from their centuries-old palaces. The U.S. and European countries, especially the United Kingdom, grew rich from colonies in South America, Africa and Asia. American and European Protestants sent out evangelists who took up Jesus’ Great Commission and strove to bring the Gospel to the benighted heathen. Many believed that the world had at last reach a comfortable and stable place of peace.
That peace was shattered on July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia, Germany invaded Belgium, Luxembourg and France, and Russia attacked Germany. Britain soon joined the war on the side of France. The U.S. joined the conflict in 1917 on the side of Britain and France. The War to End all Wars finally ground to a halt on November 11, 1918, leaving over nine million combatants dead. Unfortunately, the 1918 Armistice was a fragile and short-lived peace. With the rise of fascism, war broke out again among European nations in 1939. The U.S. again went to war following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. European fascists were defeated, and the war came to a fiery end in Japan with the fall of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. However, the Allied victory did not usher in a new period of peace and stability. While the U.S. fought a Cold War, colonial nations fought for independence. Wars were waged again in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Armed conflicts broke out in Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, and Syria. The Soviet Union broke apart in 1989.
Meanwhile, the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world experienced major social changes. Women were granted the right to vote, African Americans achieved major civil rights victories, shifting tides of immigration created previously unimaginably diverse communities, and people learned how to communicate electronically. Americans and Europeans became more open to different expressions of sexuality. Mainline churches ordained women but ceased to be centers of social life. The Episcopal Church finally untied itself from sixteenth century English and learned that God could still hear our prayers in contemporary language. And now many observers believe that the church is undergoing yet another Reformation, from which it will emerge with yet new ways of organization, expression, and worship.
What a century it has been! Could the worshippers in these pews in 1912 imagine what awaited their world? How do we survive in a time of such great change? If we were Buddhists, the answer to that question would be easy. A central tenet of Buddhist teaching is that everything is in flux, and that there are no times or places of stability and peace. The answer is not quite so simple for us Christians. Do our Scriptures give us some clues? Not surprisingly, all the communities who heard the readings that you just heard were experiencing huge changes in the world around them. The book of Daniel, the source of our first lesson, was written in the second century BC, when Greek rulers were attempting to destroy Jewish communities. Our lesson comes at the end of a three-chapter sequence in which God, speaking through Daniel, assures the Jews that, even though they may be in anguish, the great angel Michael, will surely deliver them. Our psalmist reiterates that theme by reminding his hearers to trust in God’s protection.
And what of the hearers of Mark’s Gospel? That Gospel was written during or slightly after the destruction of Jerusalem that took place between 66 and 70 CE. For them, it was as if 9/11 were stretched over four years. The center of the system of sacrifices and their religious universe, that great temple that had been rebuilt after the Exile, the temple that Herod the Great had enlarged, the temple where Jesus had walked and prayed, was no more! The whole city was devastated and most of its inhabitants scattered to the four winds! Worst of all, Mark’s community was facing discrimination and trials. Who more than they needed to hear of God’s eventual liberation of the world? And even the hearers of the Letter to the Hebrews needed to hear again that they had already been rescued by Christ. They were a discouraged and disheartened congregation desperately needing a new vision and a new hope.
As we look back on the last century, and as we look around us at our lives now, many of us feel as if we are living in a time of cataclysmic change, especially in the church. So what do these lessons say to us about living in such a time? To begin with, they tell us that we are to be neither complacent nor afraid. Daniel reminds his hearers that only some of those who sleep will be raised, and that some will be condemned. On the other hand, those who are wise will “shine like the brightness of the sky.” Our psalm distinguishes between those who are godly and those who are not. Even so, the psalmist takes refuge in God and rejoices in God’s protection. The gospel reading warns us both to beware of false prophets, those who would lead God’s people astray, and to trust in God’s deliverance and “not be alarmed.” The letter to the Hebrews reminds us to trust Christ’s saving work above all and know that we can approach God with faith because Christ’s victory has removed the separation between humanity and God.
More important, our readings encourage us to live in two time frames at once. We are to live in the now, confident and faithful regardless of how messy and dangerous the world around us appears. But we are also to look ahead into the future, God’s future, we are to catch a glimpse every now and then of creation liberated and renewed, of the joy to come. “Your people shall be delivered,” Daniel tells his hearers. “You will show me the path of life,” the psalmist confidently prays. “The end is yet to come,” we hear Jesus telling the disciples, “this is but the beginning of birth pangs.” We are to hold fast to that vision, we are to have confidence in the coming of God’s future, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us. Christ’s work is finished, but we are still awaiting the full realization of Christ’s victory.
Finally, and perhaps most important, we are to encourage one another. Like Daniel’s people, we are to cultivate wisdom so that we may help others to trust in God’s future. Like the hearers of the Letter to the Hebrews, we are strengthen our ties as a praying community, we are to love one another, and, most important, we are to actively partner with God to bring God’s future nearer. In Christ, we are reminded that, together, as a community of disciples, we have all that we need to do what God has called us to do.
Here at St. Peter’s one thing is crystal clear: we cannot live as if it is still 1912. So much has happened to our world and to the church since then. The church has changed, and will continue to change. We cannot sit back and refuse to acknowledge those changes. Nor can we indulge in the luxury of fear or despair at what we see. God is at work! As we seek to do God’s will in Gallipolis, we can trust that God is leading us, just as God led this community a century ago. Most important, we can do everything in our power to strengthen this community and to build each other up. We are a unique community, called into being by God and surviving by God’s will. Believe it! “In an age when communities of all kinds are crumbling and individualism is the prevailing ideology, only the church ‘can offer a community that was here before any of us were born, that will be here after all of us die and that binds us to one another because it binds us to Christ.’”1 Trust that God is bringing in God’s future. Today join hands with your brothers and sisters in Christ and rise up to do God’s holy will.
1. Robert Bellah, quoted by Jerry L. Van Marter, “Church is Best Equipped to Rebuild Communities,” PCUSA NEWS #4041, 2/112/97, quoted by David E. Leininger, Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2008), 277.
Many in the larger world shared that sense of stability. In the U.S. and Europe, children left school at thirteen to take up work in stores, factories, and mines. Wealthy and aristocratic families lived comfortably on richly furnished estates. Kings and queens, the Kaiser and the tsar, reigned serenely from their centuries-old palaces. The U.S. and European countries, especially the United Kingdom, grew rich from colonies in South America, Africa and Asia. American and European Protestants sent out evangelists who took up Jesus’ Great Commission and strove to bring the Gospel to the benighted heathen. Many believed that the world had at last reach a comfortable and stable place of peace.
That peace was shattered on July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia, Germany invaded Belgium, Luxembourg and France, and Russia attacked Germany. Britain soon joined the war on the side of France. The U.S. joined the conflict in 1917 on the side of Britain and France. The War to End all Wars finally ground to a halt on November 11, 1918, leaving over nine million combatants dead. Unfortunately, the 1918 Armistice was a fragile and short-lived peace. With the rise of fascism, war broke out again among European nations in 1939. The U.S. again went to war following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. European fascists were defeated, and the war came to a fiery end in Japan with the fall of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. However, the Allied victory did not usher in a new period of peace and stability. While the U.S. fought a Cold War, colonial nations fought for independence. Wars were waged again in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Armed conflicts broke out in Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, and Syria. The Soviet Union broke apart in 1989.
Meanwhile, the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world experienced major social changes. Women were granted the right to vote, African Americans achieved major civil rights victories, shifting tides of immigration created previously unimaginably diverse communities, and people learned how to communicate electronically. Americans and Europeans became more open to different expressions of sexuality. Mainline churches ordained women but ceased to be centers of social life. The Episcopal Church finally untied itself from sixteenth century English and learned that God could still hear our prayers in contemporary language. And now many observers believe that the church is undergoing yet another Reformation, from which it will emerge with yet new ways of organization, expression, and worship.
What a century it has been! Could the worshippers in these pews in 1912 imagine what awaited their world? How do we survive in a time of such great change? If we were Buddhists, the answer to that question would be easy. A central tenet of Buddhist teaching is that everything is in flux, and that there are no times or places of stability and peace. The answer is not quite so simple for us Christians. Do our Scriptures give us some clues? Not surprisingly, all the communities who heard the readings that you just heard were experiencing huge changes in the world around them. The book of Daniel, the source of our first lesson, was written in the second century BC, when Greek rulers were attempting to destroy Jewish communities. Our lesson comes at the end of a three-chapter sequence in which God, speaking through Daniel, assures the Jews that, even though they may be in anguish, the great angel Michael, will surely deliver them. Our psalmist reiterates that theme by reminding his hearers to trust in God’s protection.
And what of the hearers of Mark’s Gospel? That Gospel was written during or slightly after the destruction of Jerusalem that took place between 66 and 70 CE. For them, it was as if 9/11 were stretched over four years. The center of the system of sacrifices and their religious universe, that great temple that had been rebuilt after the Exile, the temple that Herod the Great had enlarged, the temple where Jesus had walked and prayed, was no more! The whole city was devastated and most of its inhabitants scattered to the four winds! Worst of all, Mark’s community was facing discrimination and trials. Who more than they needed to hear of God’s eventual liberation of the world? And even the hearers of the Letter to the Hebrews needed to hear again that they had already been rescued by Christ. They were a discouraged and disheartened congregation desperately needing a new vision and a new hope.
As we look back on the last century, and as we look around us at our lives now, many of us feel as if we are living in a time of cataclysmic change, especially in the church. So what do these lessons say to us about living in such a time? To begin with, they tell us that we are to be neither complacent nor afraid. Daniel reminds his hearers that only some of those who sleep will be raised, and that some will be condemned. On the other hand, those who are wise will “shine like the brightness of the sky.” Our psalm distinguishes between those who are godly and those who are not. Even so, the psalmist takes refuge in God and rejoices in God’s protection. The gospel reading warns us both to beware of false prophets, those who would lead God’s people astray, and to trust in God’s deliverance and “not be alarmed.” The letter to the Hebrews reminds us to trust Christ’s saving work above all and know that we can approach God with faith because Christ’s victory has removed the separation between humanity and God.
More important, our readings encourage us to live in two time frames at once. We are to live in the now, confident and faithful regardless of how messy and dangerous the world around us appears. But we are also to look ahead into the future, God’s future, we are to catch a glimpse every now and then of creation liberated and renewed, of the joy to come. “Your people shall be delivered,” Daniel tells his hearers. “You will show me the path of life,” the psalmist confidently prays. “The end is yet to come,” we hear Jesus telling the disciples, “this is but the beginning of birth pangs.” We are to hold fast to that vision, we are to have confidence in the coming of God’s future, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us. Christ’s work is finished, but we are still awaiting the full realization of Christ’s victory.
Finally, and perhaps most important, we are to encourage one another. Like Daniel’s people, we are to cultivate wisdom so that we may help others to trust in God’s future. Like the hearers of the Letter to the Hebrews, we are strengthen our ties as a praying community, we are to love one another, and, most important, we are to actively partner with God to bring God’s future nearer. In Christ, we are reminded that, together, as a community of disciples, we have all that we need to do what God has called us to do.
Here at St. Peter’s one thing is crystal clear: we cannot live as if it is still 1912. So much has happened to our world and to the church since then. The church has changed, and will continue to change. We cannot sit back and refuse to acknowledge those changes. Nor can we indulge in the luxury of fear or despair at what we see. God is at work! As we seek to do God’s will in Gallipolis, we can trust that God is leading us, just as God led this community a century ago. Most important, we can do everything in our power to strengthen this community and to build each other up. We are a unique community, called into being by God and surviving by God’s will. Believe it! “In an age when communities of all kinds are crumbling and individualism is the prevailing ideology, only the church ‘can offer a community that was here before any of us were born, that will be here after all of us die and that binds us to one another because it binds us to Christ.’”1 Trust that God is bringing in God’s future. Today join hands with your brothers and sisters in Christ and rise up to do God’s holy will.
1. Robert Bellah, quoted by Jerry L. Van Marter, “Church is Best Equipped to Rebuild Communities,” PCUSA NEWS #4041, 2/112/97, quoted by David E. Leininger, Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2008), 277.
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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