Göttinger Predigten
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23rd Sunday after Pentecost, 11/17/2019
Sermon on Luke 21:5-19, by Luke Bouman
Luke 21:5-19
5When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” 7They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” 8And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. 9“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” 10Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. 12“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; 15for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17You will be hated by all because of my name. 18But not a hair of your head will perish. 19By your endurance you will gain your souls.
Dreadful Portents and Great Signs
I listened with rapt attention as Greta Thunberg addressed the UN Climate Action Summit in September this year in New York. She spoke only briefly, but powerfully, about the urgency of climate change. She reminded me of an Old Testament prophet, striding into town to proclaim God’s judgement on the selfish acts of Israel, yet hold out mercy if there was repentance. Both the prophets and this 16-year-old from Sweden did not threaten God’s retribution, but rather simply announced the consequences if we do not change our course of action. To many, her warnings sounded apocalyptic in nature. They are not wrong. The science is pretty solid. The world as we know it will change in a cataclysm unknown in human history if we don’t act now.
I am not resigned to the fact that this cataclysm MUST happen. I am working to change my own habits and encouraging other to do the same. I have always taken God’s command to care for God’s creation seriously, something I think we all should do. I want to leave behind a world that is better than I found it for future generations. But I cannot help but think of Jesus’ words in the lesson today as I ponder the future of our planet. He, too, talks of world changing events, some of which were taking place even as he spoke.
The Temple in Jerusalem, which opens our text, would be destroyed within the lifespan of some of the disciples listening. The unrest that sets that destruction in motion was already seeded in the hearts and minds of zealots in Judea. Every generation has known catastrophic natural disasters. There will always be earthquakes, eruptions, wildfires, floods. Human caused disasters also occur in every epoch of our history. There are wars, refugees, oppressions, uprisings, and migrations that challenge the world
constantly. Perhaps the challenges we face in our current generation, with climate change that could accelerate into mass extinction events, or with military technology that could completely wipe out human life on our planet, are a real and present threat in our time. But challenges have faced every generation. The question is not first and foremost what we face, nor even how we will deal with it. Rather the question is, where will we place our trust? In whom can we trust, who is worthy of that trust? In other words, where are the promises that are trustworthy and true, and will those promises deliver us from the evils we face?
Of course, there have been varying answers over the years. It is clear, for example, that Greta Thunberg thinks that our selfish generation has elected leaders who have promised economic salvation, which she rightly dismisses as unable to fix the climate crisis we face. Some encourage trust in God alone, which on the face of it seems a good idea. But their idea of trusting God is to believe in a promise that God will bring us to new life outside of this current world or apart from the physical world. Their theology is articulated in old hymns verses like, “I am but a stranger here, heaven is my home.” They articulate a decidedly “out of this world” solution to a very “in this world” problem. I think Greta Thunberg would suggest this is, at best, no solution at all, and at worst a core part of the problem. Certain religious groups do not hide that they feel no need to care for a world that God is going to rapture them out of.
Against this backdrop, this text presents a challenge. Where is God in the midst of our suffering world? What is God promising us? How can we live into those promises and what can we expect will happen to us if we do?
Part of the trouble in reading just snippets of text every Sunday is that there are times when the fullness of the answer will not lie within the boundaries of the reading for the day. When that is the case, we must always look for context and connection with a wider sense of what God is doing. In Luke’s Gospel, that context is even a bit wider than some of the other accounts. Luke is, explicitly, writing an ordered narrative in order to help us understand what God was up to in Jesus. The answer is, surprisingly, a little different than some people have assumed.
The first part of that answer is that God is decidedly NOT saving us from this world by taking us out of it. Whatever else you infer from a book like Luke, you cannot help but notice that God has a very “down to earth” approach to the concept of Salvation. Rather than working to take people out of suffering, God joins us in it. God is born, not into privilege or wealth, but rather humbly. Christmas is just around the corner, or so proclaims the radio station that has already, as of the date of this sermon, started playing non-stop holiday music. But the music of Christmas morning, angel chorus aside, was like not anything like our holiday celebrations. It was the quiet folk song of Mary’s singular voice, soothing the child in her arms as shepherds and other gathered to gaze upon her child with wonder and delight. God enters our world, commits to being in it, even to the point of death, and we needn’t remind ourselves that when Jesus is talking to the disciples, he is in Jerusalem where he has already told them he will die. In the resurrection, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus appears to disciples on many occasions where he eats and drinks in a very physical new existence. God weds himself to creation in Christ. God’s salvation is for the world, not to take us out of the world.
The next part of the answer is that God is calling us back into harmony, harmony with one another and the creation. This means that God is on a mission to turn us, turn all of humanity, turn all of the cosmos from inward facing to outward facing. God means us to serve one another and creation rather than consuming one another and everything in the way of our ravenous appetites. The way that God brings about this transformation in us is death and resurrection. God promises that our lives are more abundant not when they are filled with things, but rather when they are filled with love, in service to one another. That new abundant life is promised for us now and is brought to completion in a future out of our purview. But we are initiated into such a new life in Baptism. God’s care for creation becomes our care for creation. God’s care for all, especially for the least among us, becomes our care for all. God’s mission becomes our mission in Baptism.
This promise changes us. It frees us to live differently in the world and for the world. We care for the planet and its climate not out of fear, but out of love. But there will be resistance. There are those who do not embrace the promises of God as life changing. God way, become our way, is threatening to their ability to wield power and accumulate wealth. We cannot expect that challenge to go unanswered. We should expect, as Jesus taught his disciples even in today’s very text, that we will be persecuted for living out our faith in God’s promise. We should expect that this persecution might even come from our very own families and loved ones. Of course, there is a question of what exactly we say or do in those moments. How we best demonstrate our love for both creation and our fellow human beings in those moments is not always just a pat answer. But, as Jesus suggests, it may be a persistent and well-rehearsed plea to others to receive God’s love in such a way as their lives too may be set free from the false promises of wealth, or power, or even misguided religious trust. We only know full well that such a proclamation may be costly for us.
But the God who promises new life, who proclaims that life is stronger than death and will win in the end, THAT God has us covered. I do not know what will happen if because of our selfishness our planet dies or that life will be significantly altered by human short-sightedness. I do know that God’s love for me calls to work with my whole being to shape and account for my life in such a way that I contribute to the world’s life, not its death. And in the end, the God who is in the resurrection business, promises new life to me and all of the cosmos. So, I support Greta, even perhaps share some of her fears, anger and pessimism. But I also trust that the God who brought this world into being with a word, who redeemed this world from within, will continue to be the God of new life into that great unknown toward which we are hurtling ourselves. What that future will be, I do not know. Except that it is in God’s hands. And so long as I have life and breath, I am baptized into God’s mission, which means that in so far as I am able, God has placed it in my hands as well. Greta Thunberg has “words and a wisdom that none of her opponents are able to withstand or contradict.” I pray that God give all of us the same in this hour.