Year C
Luke 21:5-19
The Rev. Denise Vaughn
End Times?
Every generation it seems, at some point in its history, has thought its time was certainly the end time. For my generation, the Cuban missal crises in the early sixties, was a pretty scary time. I remember my mother and father getting supplies together and setting up a type of bomb shelter in our basement in Valley Forge, PA, just in case. My father an Army officer stayed ready to go at any minute for several days. When I’ve looked back at that time, I think that place in our basement would not have protected us very well but I know it made my parents feel more secure. Then, when I was in high school during the late sixty’s early seventies, there was Vietnam and the threat of nuclear war at any minute. Many of us coming out of the sixties felt the need to live life to its fullest as we weren’t promised a rosy picture of the future.
Then there was September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four commercial airline jets leaving us with vivid memories of that horrible day. Many of us have vivid memories of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina and while it is not clear to us whether these or other happenings in our times can be considered apocalyptic or relating to revelation, the scriptures clearly tell us only God knows when the end time will occur. The end time, or the great and terrible day of the Lord, was a common image among the Jews. Long before Jesus’ day, prophets like Malachi spoke of that day burning like an oven, when the righteous would be tested and all evildoers would be burned to stubble. This kind of imagery was part of Jesus’ mindset as a Jew and played a large part in his prophecies.
Jesus and his disciples in the text today have come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. These are the final days before his death and resurrection and he spends them in the temple teaching. He begins to speak in apocalyptic terms which would be predictable but rather challenging for the disciples and those listening as he tells them what they ought to do in times of chaos and destruction. They are to be unprepared. As things all around them seem to be falling apart they are to take it as an opportunity for mission. They are to keep their hearts fixed on their main purpose, which is to testify faithfully and to trust in Jesus. Less than forty years after Jesus spoke these words in our text today, his people would rebel against the Roman rule and its possible Jesus foresaw this uprising and its consequences as inevitable.
In A.D. 70, three Roman legions were sent to besiege the defiant city of Jerusalem. Starvation, disease, and relentless slaughter followed. It is said that Jerusalem finally fell on the same day it had been conquered more than seven hundred years earlier by the Babylonians. The city’s walls were torn down and its buildings burned. The magnificent marble and gold temple was obliterated and the core of Jerusalem lay in ruins. The temple has never rebuilt. Today a mosque sits in its place. The first Christians lived through this destruction with their whole lives besieged by persecution for what they believed. In the midst of unimaginable suffering, Luke remembers Jesus saying, “In the midst of the most unimaginable suffering I will give you courage, words and wisdom. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Luke wrote his gospel sometime after the destruction of the temple. He wanted to show Jesus as a reliable prophet whose words were proven true by the historical events. Therefore, we can trust his words and we can trust as the early Christians did that the temple may have come to an end, but that was not THE end, peace will come to an end with war but war is not the way the world ends, security will end, shaken by earthquakes, but fear and uncertainty are not the end either. People will come in my name misusing it with false prophecy, but the world does not end with these imposters. They are trying to second-guess God, or even persuade God to do what they want.
We may be tempted to become prophets ourselves reading our times full of war, terrorism, earthquakes not only in the earth but in the events taking place all over our world, there is famine with many dying because of lack of bread and clean water, and there are plagues that kill millions, and we may think how can things get worse and just when it seems it cannot possibly get any worse, Jesus gets personal. You will be arrested, you will be persecuted, and you will be thrown into prison. But then, Jesus says you will have them right where you want them. They will have to listen to you, when you are forced to account for yourself, you will have “an opportunity to testify” and “I will give you words.”
The words given to say we receive as a gift. Christ will speak the word of the kingdom through his Church. Christ will speak through all who have been baptized in his name including our Lillian who will be baptized in a few minutes. He possesses a wisdom our troubled world needs to hear and he promises to speak the word through us with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is no need for us to create these words. The word we are given is the word that created all things in the beginning and continues to create in our testimonies, in our reaching out to bring in the lost, in our asking those who need to hear the word spoken to come and hear the word. Paul writes in the book of Romans, “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”
Just as the destruction of the temple testified to the truthfulness of Jesus’ words, so do the words spoken in our worship, in our lives, in our testimonies, bearing witness to Christ’s unshakable promise that these words have the power to “gain your souls”. These times of uncertainty give us the opportunity to tell of our hope, to open the doors of hearts in those we encounter each day. Paul tells us in his 2 letter to the Thessalonians, “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.” Jesus’ life, death and resurrection provided us with a new set of lenses to engage the world. We are to engage the world with the hope of the new creation that God has promised to his people because at the very heart of our Christian faith is a creator who emerges even in the bleakest hour of human history to create anew.
We may not know the time or date, or how God means to transform the world, but we can confess, testify that we know it is in God’s power to do this. We have been called to do the work involved in this transformation by following the word in the scriptures that God has laid out for us. Jesus is asking for a willingness to set our hands to the task in front of us and forgo speculation. Using the gifts and abilities we have been given to participate in the work God is already doing in creation. Stepping out with hope in the God who creates, reconciles and sustains us. I will give you the words and the opportunity to testify to my love with acts of mercy and justice for all people. Our help comes from the one who watches over us so that “not a hair of our heads will perish.” I will give you what you need, bear witness, go and tell, because “by your endurance you will gain your souls.”