Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 18, 2007
Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19
On this Sunday before we celebrate our national holiday of Thanksgiving, our scripture lessons do not appear to inspire much reason for giving thanks. In his Epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul is not very happy about the faithful people of his congregation who have become idlers. People who have decided they can sit back and relax, because they believe Jesus will soon be coming back to the earth and they are sure he will whisk them into heaven. So why bother. The problem, as Paul sees it, is that these idlers have decided they can stop being contributing members of their faith community. They no longer need to work to eat; they can simply go to their local soup kitchen where they will be fed by their do-gooder friends. Even worse, they have become busybodies engaging in everything from idle chatter to the vicious spreading of rumors because they have too much time and too little to do. Paul reminds them that regardless of when Jesus makes his second coming, they are part of a community of faith who must share in the responsibility of caring for each other and doing ministry in the world.
Luke doesn’t appear to give us much to be thankful about, either. As thankful people admire the beauty of their temple, Jesus’ critical response seems downright abrupt, even cruel. “The day will come,” says Jesus, “when not one stone will be left…all will be thrown down.” Well, hearing that would be enough to dampen anyone’s spirit. But Jesus doesn’t stop at just dampening their spirit; he goes on to drown it. His disciples want to know what signs will indicate that the destruction of the temple will take place, which to them is a sign of God’s end time. Jesus tells them there will be wars and insurrections. Nation will rise against nation. There will be earthquakes and famines and plagues. Scary, isn’t it, especially if you watch the news or read newspapers. The events Jesus’ describes are almost too close for comfort. Not something we can take much comfort in, no less be thankful about.
So, if you were expecting to hear a sermon to honor our upcoming national day of Thanksgiving, you will have to join us at the UCC Church on Wednesday night to hear it. Our scripture lessons do not seem to lend themselves to thanks-giving. Nor does the world we live in. Because we also live in a time of wars and famine, social injustice, disease and natural disasters, and we can add threats to our environment, as well. And we in the church are very aware that we are trying to maintain our ministries in a time when, as Paul tells us, so many who claim to be Christians “are living in idleness and not according to the tradition thy received from us.” Christians who feel they do not need to support the church by their presence, their material gifts or their talents. Nor do they feel responsible to a community they belong to by their baptism, a community which they assume will always be there for them despite their absence from it.
No, there does not seem to be much we can be thankful for when we translate Paul’s letter, and Jesus’ words into our own times. But if we consider these texts closely, and if we are able to get beyond the doomsday interpretations of today’s gospel account, which incite us to fear and tremble at events which seem to portend the end time, we can actually find much to be optimistic about as God’s faithful people. To get to these optimistic messages, however, we need to put aside these all-too-popular and all-too-dangerous interpretations of these scriptures. Like the notion that we can predict the end time; like the idea that dire signs of devastation and destruction will indicate when the end time will come; like the belief that all a faithful Christian needs to do about it is to hunker down and wait for the rapture. These popular and dangerous ways of thinking about God’s end time abound, even in our modern world. You might have spotted a popular bumper sticker on cars which goes something like this: Caution: This car will not have a driver when he is taken up in the rapture. You might also be familiar with a popular series of violent and bloody books called Left Behind which engage the reader in end time suffering and death of the sinful, while the faithful are taken into heaven unscathed by the evils of this world. It is unfortunate that our own Hebrew and Christian scriptures, especially the book of Revelations, have prompted such erroneous understandings, because these writings are meant to be a symbolic way to convey the struggle between the forces of good and evil, and the triumph of life over death in a kingdom ruled by God.
But nowhere in scripture, not even in the book of Revelation, do apocalyptic visions of the end time support the notion of the rapture which will save only a few people while all the rest suffer horribly and perish eternally. In fact, Jesus is saying just the opposite in today’s scripture passage. Jesus says that while destruction and death are evident on this earth, we are not to read them as signs of end time. We should not read them as signs to follow some religious guru into hiding or up on a mountaintop until the rapture. In fact, Jesus indicates that, if anything, these are signs that God’s people should be doing everything we can to bear witness to the good of God’s kingdom in the midst of natural and human evil. Jesus warns his disciples, however, that if they are truly being faithful, if they are truly speaking and acting on behalf of God in the midst of the bad things which are happening in the world, they will also suffer the consequences of the good that they do. Faithful people who take action to right the wrongs of this world will be arrested and persecuted; they will be handed over to prison officials and governors because of what they do in his name. They will not be able to depend on being supported by family and friends; in fact they might even be betrayed by them. If this is a difficult piece of scripture for us to hear today, it is because Jesus is telling us, not about the signs we need to look for in the end time, rather he is telling us about the signs we need to look for in ourselves and in our communities of faith which indicate that we are being faithful to God’s purposes for good, particularly during times of great calamity in our world. Jesus is challenging us to do the hard things required of us by a God who wants us to do the good and the right thing in a world where it is easier to do the bad and the wrong thing—or nothing at all as we stand still and mute in our idleness.
In his letter to the Thessalonians Paul is also dealing with people who have an incorrect and even dangerous understanding of end time which they believe will happen at Jesus’ second coming. Baptized Christians who believe their faith only requires them to sit idly by and wait for their heavenly reward. People who will take advantage of the generous and loving nature of the Christian community, rather than work or support that community by their own generosity and love. People who find it easier to create ill will among the members of their community rather than create the good will which comes from the hard work of being in healthy relationship with its members.
The challenges our scripture lessons raise for faithful Christians today are no different from those of the early church. But they also show us how we can respond to these challenges. When Luke wrote his gospel account, Jesus had already been gone from the world for more than fifty years. The things Jesus prophesied had already come true. The temple had been destroyed, wars and plagues and natural disasters were decimating great communities of people, and each of the disciples had suffered much for the sake of bringing God’s kingdom closer to earth in establishing communities of faith we continue to call the church. In the end they even sacrificed their lives by dying for it.
If anything, Jesus’ disciples showed us by their own action the purpose for apocalyptic literature which springs up in every age when death and destruction seem to take hold of the world and paralyze the people of God. Apocalyptic literature uses its vivid language to portray cosmic and natural portents in order to give us a warning. Not a warning that the end of the world is imminent. Not a warning that it is time to hunker down in self-protection until we will are raptured into heaven. Not a warning which causes us to throw up our hands in despair and do nothing. Apocalyptic literature sends a much different kind of warning, a warning to people of God who sit back and just let the bad things if this world happen to us. People who have become too idle. Too complacent. Too willing to succumb to the forces of governments and systems and institutions that do not have our best interests at heart, no less God’s good purposes for his creation. People who would rather exploit others rather than work for their meal And that includes everyone from lapsed church members to the presidents and CEO’s of big businesses and corporations.
Paul tells the idlers of his church in Thessalonia: Get busy. Go to work. Hold up your end of your end of the commitment you made to be faithful to Christ and to your community of faith. Paul tells these idle Christians that their faith did not exempt them from their responsibilities to serve God and their church right to the end. They are not meant to sit idly by while their world suffers because of their neglect. Their faith is meant to be put into action. And it is capable of suffering the consequences which can come from doing right and good by the world. Jesus tells his disciples that nothing we can suffer by doing the right thing and the good thing can cause us or this world to perish. He assures us that by our endurance we gain our souls.
When you think about those times in your life when you did the right and the good thing, I am certain you remember what it feels like to gain your soul. To feel what it is like to rise above the evil and destruction of this world. To feel alive in a way which transcends the grief or suffering you might have endured for it. Apocalyptic literature is meant to encourage us in these ways in times like these. It is intended to give people of God and faithful followers of Christ hope and confirm our belief that God is still in charge. Jesus assures us that we can do more than just get through these difficult times; we can actually do something to bring the Kingdom of God closer to us on this earth and make this world a better place to live. In fact we must do something. We are the only people God has to bring his good to the world. But God also gives us the choice. We can stand idly by and do nothing. We can even become part of the problem.
But both Paul and Jesus call us to put our faith on the line. In times like these, when the church continues to decline in membership and mission, and the world continues to suffer from natural disaster and human injustice, Paul and Jesus are calling us to do something about it. Because they know what people of faith can do when the power of God is able to work in and through us; they know that that we can BE the difference which MAKES a difference for good in a world (and in a church) whose future depends on it.