November 17, 2019 Luke 21:5-19 Malachi 4:1-2a 2 Thessalonians 3:5-13
When I worked at Hospice, before
I came here, we had a saying you may have heard, “People die the way the
live.” If people were bossy in their
life, they were often found ordering everyone around on their death bed. If they were warm and kind, they were the
same as they were dying. If they were
anxious, they were often anxious about death.
And if they were chill, they often died peacefully.
When we face difficulties in
life, we all react in different ways depending on how we were raised and our
life experiences and sometimes our genetics and body chemistry. Some people panic at the slightest thing, and
some people can’t be phased by anything.
Some people tighten their control, and other people give it to God. I think all of us would say, that our
Christian faith has helped us to accept some hardships and difficulties and not
to panic at any little warning or difficulty.
We have a community at Spirit of Life, for one thing that helps us
through hard times, forgives us, loves us, helps us, and hopefully occasionally
corrects us. And we have a bigger story
of God’s plans for building the Kingdom of God here on earth, a more just,
peaceful, loving world where everyone belongs and everyone’s gifts are needed.
Today’s readings might sound
like a lot of bad news. Since we’re
coming up the end of the church year, the readings are getting more
intense. As we talk about the end of the
year, we also consider other endings: The end of the temple, the end of our own
church buildings, wars which end many lives, the ends of kingdoms and nations
and empires, earthquakes, famines, and plagues, natural disasters,
persecutions, arrests, betrayals, and even the end of friendships and family relationships.
The readings don’t stop with all
this bad news, though. They seem to say
there is a bigger picture and something more.
The Gospel starts with a cheerful comment, “Look at the beautiful
temple!” But Jesus points out this is
temporary. It is nice, but it doesn’t
last. Then he goes on with a lot of what
sounds like bad news. Then at the very
last he finishes with the real good news, “By your endurance you will gain your
souls.” There is something to be gained
that is permanent and matters and worthwhile.
There is good news!
In the reading from Malachi,
too, it’s a lot of bad news. “The day is
coming, burning, people will be stubble, burned up, without roots or
branches.” Bad, bad news. And then good news, “But, the sun of
righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” Whoa!
There is a bigger picture, a longer journey through pain and suffering
and death, and the story goes on and because of our relationship with God we
know new life, and hope, and something lasting and truly beautiful.
All this bad news might also be
seen as good news. That nations fall and
temples are destroyed and people are arrested, isn’t all bad news. It is good news to any who have been
oppressed by the nation, who were kept in poverty because of that nation, who
were overtaxed, who were required to jump through impossible hoops. That a religious institution should fall
would be good news for those who were told by a twisted religion that they were
to blame for their illness and poverty, for those who were kept in ignorance of
the power structure so they could never challenge it or understand and share in
religion’s true liberating power. It
isn’t that people want wars and famines and earthquakes and crumbling nations
and people to die, but since these things do happen, can God make something new
out of that, and give a fresh start, give life to all the people instead of a
few?
That was the situation for
Luke’s audience. They watched their
temple looted and burned. They watched
wars and insurrections take the lives of good and bad people. They had been betrayed and handed over by
family members. But they knew this was
not the end of the story.
The good news for this morning
is that God has a way of taking what we would call an ending and making new life
out of it. This is death and
resurrection. This is the story of the
liberation of the slaves in Egypt and bringing them through the wilderness to
new life. This is the story of Noah and
the flood and the new life that flourished after with a fresh start, not only
for all people, plants, and animals, but with God promising never to do that
again. This is the story of the woman at
the well who was snubbed by everyone in town, and how when it seemed her life
was meaningless and hopeless, she met Jesus who told her everything she had
ever done.
Earthquakes—not the end!
War-- not the end!
Betrayal--- not the end!
Wildfires-- not the end!
Nations falling-- not the end!
Impeachment trials-- not the
end!
Church roof leaks-- not the end!
Death-- not the end!
We
have God, the Spirit of Life, which cannot be killed. This Gospel says that people will cry out
that it’s the end and they will say they have the answers. Don’t listen to that. That makes more anxiety and makes people do
things in anxiety that are not the will of God.
Instead, stay calm, and remember the God of new life. Remember all the stories of God bringing the
people through crisis after crisis in the Bible. God is still doing that today.
To
me the little things add up and cause me a lot of stress, until I read the good
news in this Gospel:
Late
to a meeting-- not the end!
Forgot
someone’s name-- not the end!
Had
a disagreement with a friend-- not the end!
Burned
dinner-- not the end!
Lost
my temper with my kid-- not the end!
The
candles wouldn’t light in remembrance of the saints-- not the end!
Even divorce and terrible
illness, pain, kids who have wandered from the church or made one bad decision
after the other, family members not speaking to each other—it’s still not the end! God is on this painful journey with us and
there is still more of this journey to go.
It’s not the end of the story that God is still writing.
God has written the end of that
story and in that story all creation in heaven and on earth are gathered together
and united, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, all
tears will be dried, all prodigal sons will coming running home to dad, all the
prison doors will spring open.
It is wonderful to build
beautiful places of worship and welcome and to use God’s gifts to repair old
roofs, as long as we remember that isn’t the point to benefit mostly
ourselves. God requires that we use the
gifts that God has let us borrow for a little while, to relieve the suffering
of the little people, the hurting people, the invisible people, the
despised. I do think you’ve got a good
handle on that, Spirit of Life, and I’m excited to enter this time with you,
that is in some ways an ending, the old year passing by, all the endings,
griefs and losses, all the hurts you’ve experienced here and at other
congregations, and looking at all of them and saying, that is not the end. There is new life, there is hope, let’s see
what good God is doing, freeing, forgiving, loving, and forming into community.
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