Göttinger Predigten
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26. Sunday after Pentecost, 11/17/2013
Sermon on Luke 21:5-19, by Phillip Edmond Gagnon
A promise is a precious thing. It declares to the one hearing it that the person speaking it cars enough about you to fulfill it. There is a relationship implicit in the promise that the one giving it desires to not let the one hearing down, to disappoint or give the impression that they have been rejected or abandoned. Hence the emotion when a child blurts out, "But you promised!" After all, promises are inextricably intertwined with expectations and the future.
Our lives are marked by promises, the promise of a good job after going to university, a promise of a good life after doing all the right things, the promise of a promotion after working hard. But life does not go according to our plans or the promises of those around us whether it be our parents, bosses, children or spouses. Life is contingent on too many things. That I can promise you.
The disciples were warned about the time when the forces of this world would be against them. Lies and deception would be rampant about the Christ, who he was, where he was and what was to come. And certainly after the resurrection there were many messianic claimants as we read in the book of Acts and secular history up to Bar Kochbah in 135 A.D and it seems especially so in the last two hundred years with many claiming either to be the Messiah or pointing to a very different one, from Mormonism to David Koresh, from Benjamin Creme pointing to the New Age Christ to Jehovah's Witnesses and everything between.
Throughout the centuries the followers of the true Messiah would be opposed, vilified and persecuted. Throughout time the gospel would be perverted by a plethora of groups each claiming to have the "true" Christ and the "true" way..
Those who have lifted up the name of Jesus according to the gospel have known death and blood since the beginning, from the barbaric times of the early centuries to those martyrs around the world in modern times. In fact, some have claimed that more have died for the faith in these past hundred years than the first few centuries after Christ. The gospel will always have its enemies and followers will always know suffering and persecution in blatant acts of evil or insidious, subtle and seductive corrosive attacks.
Jesus warned us about this eventuality. "They hated me, they will hate you too..." Times will come of deception and destruction when everything around us seems to be falling apart; economies, societies, families, moral decay, the hearts of many becoming cold toward each other.
But there is one whose promises we can trust for he took on flesh and entered the poverty of human existence to present himself as the fulfillment of those prophecies, the enfleshment of God's promises and love (Jn 1:14). His promises are given in the milieu of a world arrayed against the truth of the fall and the forces of darkness are opposed to the light that pierces its essence and will at the right time destroy it on that day when he comes "to judge the living and the dead."
In the mean meantime we are, as followers of the Servant King, to stand fast and be patient as we are persecuted and attacked in various ways by those in concert with the "rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" their evil and rebellion in a spiritual agreement against the Holy One (Eph 6:12).
These principalities reveal themselves in social and cultural forces opposed to the truth of God in increased moral decay, the disintegration of family values and the revision of truth itself from within the body of Christ, to the exploitation of peoples and creation by heartless, psychopathic corporations whose only interest is the bottom line. Alongside the attack on whatever is good and true and noble in society and culture is the blatant persecution of believers in various parts of the world, imperfect followers of Christ dying for their faith from Asia to Africa to the Middle East to Europe. Evil would obfuscate, deny and lie about this most profound truth, that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believe would not perish but have eternal life."
We hear and read the news, is there any hope? Is there anything good to be seen? Anything good to know of that gives us a sense of the future devoid of ugliness, hatred, bloodshed and war? Indeed there is, but it will not be found in economical or political systems, a one world spirituality based upon agreeing upon the most common idea of the good, as good as that is, or the strength of man and the highest of aspirations grounded in the human spirit, for the "heart is wicked and deceitful, who can understand it?"
No, our hope is in Jesus Christ, the Son of God who took upon himself the sin of the world and by his blood washed us clean if we would, but receive what he has given in grace. This truth, this love will undercut the foundations of evil and when the two unequal forces come to that day of judgment, evil will crumble at last, forever, and every eye will see Him and weep on account of him (Rev. 1:7). Some will weep for they will know their end is not in him and others, the faithful in Christ, will weep that the day of justice and promise has come at last.
And so we hold onto the promise of God who keeps his promises. We see it every day in the beauty of creation, God's masterful hand in every sunrise and sunset, the laughter of a child, the heartbeat of love, the spontaneous acts of kindness that defy the darkness of this world. Things will be bad, Jesus says, but he promises to never leave us nor forsake us. My grandmother in a small poor village on the Baie de Chaleur (Bay of Heat) on the northern coast of New Brunswick used to say, "We don't have a lot and it gets pretty tough at times. But we have each other, and that's enough."
It is getting tougher and Friday may seem to be lasting awhile, but we have the Cross, the love of Christ, the means of grace, we have each other in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit - that Day is on its way!
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!