It is rare to find someone who has lived in the same place their entire life.
Even if some of you have lived your entire life near Sloan or San Saba, chances are, you don’t actually live in the same house you grew up in. I admit there may be an exception here or there, but most of us have moved around a lot. For the lucky ones, you’ve come back. You’ve come back home, to be where it all began.
Despite our ramblings and moving about, we eventually settle in and become quite content where ever it is we live. Even when it isn’t ideal, we make due. We find comfort in our stuff, the way we personalize our space, make our place our place, our home. Where, with time, it all feels familiar and comforting, no matter where we are.
In our reading this morning, Jesus flips these feelings on their head. Forget about settling in; forget about being content with the familiar and comforting. No, Jesus quickly moves us away from feeling grounded in the familiar and comforting. This story creates, quite honestly, a new level of discomfort in our familiar and settled place when we admit to what Jesus seems to be promising, that no matter where our life finds us, our familiar comfort truly has a very short future.
During Jesus’ time in Jerusalem, the center of the religious life was around the temple. It was vast, it was beautiful, and if was a very familiar and comforting space for all who came there. Jesus, quoting from Isaiah, reminded everyone that the temple is first and foremost to be their house of worship. The temple was to be that bedrock place where his followers should never worry about its intended use or its place in their familiar and comforting life.
As our reading shows us, those with Jesus understood this teaching. Indeed, the Temple was recognized as their place to worship, they revered it as they admired its physical nature, its stature. They were impressed by how it was adorned, with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.
But, Jesus warned them, as he warns us, about being too closely attached to physical space or adornments, be they in temples holy or secular.
Jesus’ prophecy is that they will all end. He says, “As for these things that you see, the day will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
These first century folks understood about life and death, about how quickly the familiar can be taken away, life for them was harsh. So, they did not argue with Jesus when he claimed that the world as they knew it would also end. They accepted his teaching and asked what any of us will ask when faced with our certain end. When will it happen? How much longer do we have?
Jesus knew how vulnerable we can be to earthly influences and end of time predictions. Even in our own time, we hear it often said when there is a natural disaster or war threatens, “This is it, this is the end.”
The truth is we have all had very personal crisis in our lives that have created for us a sense of dread about the future. And all too often we have good reason to worry like we do.
In a way, it may be easier to follow along with the doomsday prophets and their own particular promise of a way out. If we will just listen to them, do what they say, turn our life over to them, we will be alright.
But Jesus warns us about these short cuts too. We are to beware, to not be lead astray by others who come into our lives and say “I am he”; I am the one with the truth about your life and your future; promising, “The time is near”, so come and follow me for your time is running out.”
How often have we nodded in agreement when we have heard the futurist predict an economic or political or personal end to life as we know it? The elections we just finished, the elections we will have, don’t they all predict doom and gloom if we don’t vote a certain way?
To be truthful, we are almost always disappointed with our attempts to correct the future, aren’t we? Whether through our own efforts or those of others, aren’t we always left with some things that worked out better and some things that did not. I suspect it’s the unpredictable that catches us unaware. Oh, we say, the time is near and our time is running out, we must surely do something or all heck will break loose!
The theologian John Howard Yoder said the church needs to help people take “a minority perspective” about life. A MAJORITY perspective assumes that by power, wealth, organizing or hard work we can get things to turn out the way we want, but a minority perspective never makes those assumptions. A minority church perspective seeks to embody and be witness to the way of Jesus, but without embracing worldly power or wealth or influence. A minority church uses imagination and learns to survive over the long haul.
Yoder said, “In Christendom, both optimism and despair are correlated with the direct reading of how it is going for us in the rising and falling of power structures.” But the minority community learns to hope even when things seem to be going badly – “not only because we have heard promises ‘from beyond the system,’ but also because we have learned that sometime our pessimistic readings for the present are shadowed too much by taking some setback too seriously.”
I recently read a story about a visit a pastor had with a man as they sat on his patio looking out on a small lake surrounded by new and attractive town houses.
The pastor commented about the beauty of the setting and asked the man how he had decided to move to this new place.
He replied, “I didn’t. I was forced to move here. The highway department planned a highway that cut right through our farm, land that I had inherited from my parents. Of course, he said, I never farmed the land, but I sure enjoyed living there. When he heard that the state was going to condemn the property he was sick. He thought it was the end of everything. This land had been the only place he had lived his entire life.
But then he and his wife moved by the lake and as he thought about it he said, frankly, it was the best thing that ever happened to us. He and his wife loved it there.
As he thought a moment more he said, “It is kind of sad that you have to be forced by the State Highway Department to do what you didn’t have the courage to do on your own.” He said, “I though they had just about killed me. As it turns out, they gave me a whole new life.”
Within this mans new understanding we find the meaning of our gospel message this morning.
There is amazing grace and eternal hope for us when we have the courage to live with a new confidence about our endings and beginnings with God.
We find the good news of the gospel this morning in the sure message that our God is a God not of the dead, but of the living. Our God is a God who brings life out of death, who creates new worlds out of old chaos, fear and trembling.
In Luke’s truth to us this morning, Jesus comforts us when he says ‘do not be terrified, even though we will be thrust into this world where our worries may overwhelm us, “Not a hair on our head will perish. By our endurance we will gain our souls.”
A few years back I attended a pastor’s symposium on the German theologian Karl Barth. One of the speakers reminded us that the word of God automatically places us in a state of crisis when we accept it, when we submit to God’s holy command, all heck breaks loose.
In the gospel of John, Jesus asks us repeatedly, “Do you love me?” Isn’t it the case that once we say yes our life is never the same and there is no turning back? Do we love Jesus and are we prepared for the crisis that will come in our lives when we do?
Jesus says, “As for these things that you see, the day will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
“Do you love me, Jesus asks? If so, create a crisis in your life and feed my sheep.
The depth of our experience of God’s grace in our lives will mirror the depth of the experience of our sin, our pain, our suffering, even our cries to God for help. God responds to the depth of our despair with the power of God’s grace.
Do you love me, Jesus asks? If so, create a crisis in your life, come and follow me.
Jesus tells us here in the scripture “You will be betrayed even by relatives and friends…you will be hated by all because of my name.” “But, not a hair on your head will perish.” Our God, as it turns out, will lead us to a whole new life.
Do you love me, Jesus asks? And with our answer, our halting and trembling, yes, God calls us to be a servant to Jesus Christ. A full time servant, living the full cost of receiving God’s grace as we join God’s prophetic work in the world. As each of us, you and me, bring hope and health and calm in the midst of chaos and crisis, bringing grace through Christ’s peace and our life as God’s servant.
Each of us this morning has been assured, temples will fall; there will be endings in our lives, yet their will also be a new beginning, a new age to come.
So, we let go of our familiar comfort and give a great sigh of relief, the State Highway Department doesn’t force the end of anything.
But, loving Jesus does, loving Jesus forces the end of everything, and yet, loving Jesus brings about the beginning of something new, the beginning of everything that really matters to our life and to the world, the beginning of our prophetic hope, hope in an eternal life in the Kingdom of God, filled with God’s grace and God’s love.
The Kingdom of God, where not a hair of our head will perish, where by God’s goodness and our endurance, we will gain our eternal souls, as we seek the power of the living God.
Let us pray: “O God, send into our lives the power of your Holy Spirit. You know, Holy Lord, the battle is hard and the journey is long. You know, Loving Lord, we cannot make it without you.”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
Additional Sources:
“Lectionary Homiletics”, Volume XVIII, Number 6, pgs. 53-60.
“Pulpit Resource”, Volume 35, Number 4, pgs. 29-32.
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