A VIEW FROM THE FUTURE
Luke 21: 5-19
A Sermon Preached at Market Square Presbyterian Church
November 18, 2007
By Rosie Magee
Life is difficult……….Those are the first three words of Scott Peck’s book, A Road Less Traveled. I am sure many of you have heard of it, if not read it. It remained on the best seller list for years. Apparently Dr Peck has received stacks of mail over those years…most of it concerning those first three words. Many wrote complaining that these words are too pessimistic an outlook on life, especially for someone of faith, that they just send the wrong message. Do they? It’s an interesting question. I warrant to say that if these were the last three words of the book, few here today would have heard of it……rather, they are used as a departure point, a given, a place of common ground for what he has to say – for the good news he sees in the midst of difficult times.
We know all about difficult times and so does the writer of Luke’s gospel. Here, late in Jesus' ministry, the disciples stood with him on Jerusalem’s holiest ground and stared at the stunningly beautiful temple. But Jesus’ breaks into his disciple’s reverie of pious amazement with a real shocker, all the magnificence before their eyes would one day be rubble. The temple tour had turned serious. Destruction of the temple was unthinkable, unbelievable! What began with architectural admiration became a glimpse of what discipleship would cost those who would bear Jesus’ name.
Jesus is preparing his disciples. This is not some sort of checklist for the end of the world. Jesus says elsewhere pretty emphatically, that nobody knows the day and the hour of the end except God alone. This would seem to mean that if you think you know when it’s coming, the very fact you think so is proof that you don’t. Rather Jesus is preparing his disciples for the world in which they will live. It’s s a shock. It’s a reality check, but it is necessary. For this is the world in which they will be called to be witnesses. Jesus needs to paint the picture before he can teach the disciples how to live in the times ahead. And what does he tell them? “Do not be lead astray” and ‘Do not be terrified.’
To be led off track is human….to fear is to be human. Jesus knows that. Why would he say, “Do not be led astray” unless doing exactly that was the human instinct in the scenario he has just painted? Why would he say “do not be terrified” unless he knew that fear has jolted the disciple’s hearts on hearing his words?
The same dangers exist today except that the reports come via the media and are sometimes packaged for good viewing. In a post 9-11, post Katrina, terror filled world, the ethos of fear can be allowed to dominate. Fear obliterates vision, causes us to close in on ourselves. Fear can so easily become our witness to the world.
That’s nothing new, back in 1928 Bertrand Russell delivered a lecture entitled, “Why I am not a Christian.” In it he said, “Fear is the basis of Christianity – terror of the unknown, fear of defeat, fear of death.” Believers hear this and think, “No, no, no you’ve got it the wrong way around. It is the Gospel which overcomes fear. Christianity is based on love not fear. We can protest but what is the witness? It’s sad to say that Russell’s assessment is credible. By that I do not mean it is the reality of the Gospel message. I do not mean it is the reality of God’s transformative love in Christ, but sometimes it is the reality of Christian witness to that love. It reminds me of that bumper sticker, “Your life may be the only Bible some people ever read.”
That we should not fall prey to fear is a constant theme in the scriptures. Perhaps God repeats this theme so often because we so often fear circumstances that confront us in our lives. There are lots of types of fears. It has many faces and it’s tricky to speak about fear in general terms without sounding trite or glib. Awkwardness can cause us to shut people off who are open enough to share their fears. Perhaps because it is a place we ourselves just don’t want to go. I think of the times I’ve rushed in hastily in ‘fix it’ mode or dismissed someone else’s fears as a needless worry - all in the name of being helpful. This is not about keeping fear locked in the darkness where it can mushroom and grow. Rather it is about feeling safe enough to examine our fears…and examine them in the light of the Gospel.
God promised never to abandon us to fearful circumstance but to go with us through the dark night of fear, danger and uncertainty. Tell me I am known by God, that God has numbered the hairs on my head. Tell me that God knows my rising up and my laying down, my going out and my coming in ‘coz left to my own devices I don’t know if I’m coming or going. How extraordinary to be so known, to be so loved.
As followers of Jesus we are called to not make them the motivating force for our actions. Be not afraid is not to say we should not have fears….instead it says that we do not need to be our fears….and there is all the difference.
On NPR’s, This I Believe people share the core values out of which they live their lives. Last month Terry Ahwal, who was born and raised in the West Bank city of Ramallah, shared her perspective. Hear her words.
“When I was 11 years old and living under Israeli occupation, I took a chance and after curfew I ran to visit my grandmother who lives two blocks away from us. On the road I had to hide under a truck to avoid soldiers who were coming my way. For 20 minutes I lay there in utter fear watching their boots walk back and forth in front of the truck. My heart was bounding so fast and loud I was afraid one of the soldiers would hear it and I would be killed instantly.
To calm myself, I started begging God to take mercy on me and save me from those men and their guns. I remembered the words of my mother after soldiers beat my father...She told us to put our fear and anger aside and pray for the poor soldiers, who were also afraid because they were away from their homes in Israel. I began to feel bad for the soldiers. I wondered: where do they sleep and are they afraid of little children like me? What kind of food do they eat? Do they have big families or small families? Their voices began to remind me of my neighbors. My fear dissipated a bit as I pictured the soldiers as people I knew. Although my 20 minutes under the truck seemed like an eternity, I believe that shedding my fear literally saved my life.”
She concludes, “I believe it is fear we should be fighting not, ‘the other.’ We are all soldiers patrolling the road. We are all little children hiding under the truck.”
In Luke’s gospel Jesus issues an invitation to live out of our faith rather than our fears. He offers an invitation to let the Spirit work through us at the very moment when we, in all our humanness feel that is impossible. It is a way of saying: let your responses to the hype and horror of accumulating disasters not be determined by the one-liners of media editors but by the same Spirit who is the centre of your life.
Jesus says, “Do not be lead astray by those who say, “the time is near.”…another way of saying this might be ‘hold your ground’ or ‘keep yourself centered’ on God, for you are called to witness to the world.
It’s paradoxical. It in those times of crisis in our lives when we need to root ourselves in God’s will the most that we can lose our center. We can go into crisis management mode, living on a series of knee jerk reactions, we live with choices we do not even realize we’ve made, reacting to outside pressures rather than responding to them in the Spirit. That’s when we lose sight of our center.
Tropical storms were a feature of my time living in Antigua. When one was on its way we’d spent the time getting in supplies, boarding up windows, obsessed by weather reports on the radio. In September 1995 we knew a big storm was on the way, Hurricane Louis. I lived in one of the brick houses in the village so two families came to ride out the storm with me there…along with their cats and dogs. We sat together in the candle light through a night of screaming winds, banshee winds, hearing the roof timbers groan while outside corrugated roofs flew across the sky and trees bent practically horizontal. Then the ‘eye’ came. I’d never experienced being directly in the eye of a hurricane before, If anything I imagined it would be like going back to normal weather for a while. It’s not like that at all. The eye had a stillness I’ve never experienced before or since, a quietness that makes other types of quiet seem like noisy chatter. It felt other worldly. After a few hours the winds started up again and they rose to a crescendo again for hours and hours but it was not the same for us. The ‘eye’ was not an intermission. Experiencing the eye changed things. We were not so fearful. We had been at the place of calmness in the center of the storm. We held on to that center and didn’t let go.
We are not to be off-centered by hate or fear, but informed by the stillness and wisdom of the Spirit. Jesus invites us to wrap ourselves in the quilt of God’s faithfulness when we are going through the difficult times. We are called to ask questions, to make choices. Are we responding to situations in our lives out of faith or fear? Where does our true security lie? True strength is found in a commitment to examine our impulses, assess if they are rooted in God or desire to shore up our own feeble defenses…
Many of you were here to hear Stephen Nolt speak a few weeks back about the book Amish Grace. Sometimes we can think that the Amish community has some inherent disposition that makes their behavior somehow more attainable for them than it would be for us. Rather, it would appear that the ground to a forgiving heart is tilled over and over, it is cultivated. We heard about the regular practicing of forgiveness that is built into community life. We heard how they walk the road to forgiveness step by step over and over. Sometimes that journey is longer than at others, but it is not new ground. They are in the habit of seeking God’s grace to forgive and what a witness to the world that has been.
Are we cultivating the habits of living out of faith or of fear? The habits we foster in our dealings with our friends and our families and our colleagues are really the same habits that get lived out at a community and national level – just writ large. They become our witness. What habits are we developing so that when we are called to step beyond ourselves we can be open to God directing our path when it seems too dark for us to see?
We are called to keep our center and not to despair, and to remember that witness faces outwards, into the world. Witness, how? Considering the enormity of the world’s problems, all the injustice, callousness and greed and the suffering and pain that follow them, how can I make a difference? How can we make a difference?
It is tempting to think that nothing really is done for anybody by seemingly small, everyday things when the problems are so systemic. But the truth is just the opposite: without the little things, there are no big changes. We are to cultivate the ground, one kindness, one intervention at a time. One time when I don’t stay silent, one time when we don’t wait for the stones to speak.
The Bible doesn’t teach us about optimism, or looking on the bright side. The Bible focuses on hope. A hope that doesn’t spring up out of nowhere but is grounded in what God has done and what God promises to do. Such grounding says that hope is an authentic stance to take. It’s not about being in denial or to engage in wishful thinking. It’s about living from a God centered place deep within us and it changes us and it changes the world.