“It
Isn’t the Worst Thing That Could Happen”
Luke
21:5-19
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
November
14, 2010
Text:
“…the days will come when not
one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down…
by
your endurance you will gain your souls.”
(Luke
21:6,19)
While my seminary address was
Princeton, New Jersey and it was to Princeton Seminary that my tuition was paid,
much of the time during those three misspent years I could be found with a small
cadre of like-minded classroom escapees in New York City at Yankee Stadium,
Strand’s Second Hand Book Store, Barnes and Noble, Yankee Stadium, Riverside
Church, Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, Battery Park, the Empire State
Building, Yankee Stadium, Broadway, the Twin Towers.
I recall the first time I made it to
the top of one of the Towers, to the observation deck.
I hardly could believe my eyes as I looked out over
But then September 11…and the day
came when not one piece of steel was left upon another; it all was thrown down.
In the late 1980s, I found myself one
day standing in what had been the chancel area of the great Roman Catholic
Cathedral in the capital city of
One of the questions with which we
approach the gospels is what was Jesus
getting at in the stories he told, in his teachings,
in his memorable sayings. But
another question is just as important. Why
did the gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke – include the
particular material they did in their versions of the gospel?
What were they seeking to say to the people for whom they were writing?
Luke, from whose gospel our text comes
today, was writing to “Followers of the Way” (as the earliest Christians
were called) who had and still were experiencing a variety of trials and
hardships as a result of their new-found faith and needed encouragement.
After the
The Pharisees argued for shunning these
Messiahnians, these “Followers of the Way.”
Soon, they wrote a formal curse – making the banishment of these early
Christians from Judaism a matter of record – and instructed that it be read at
the end of every Shabbat (Sabbath) service.
The curse invoked God to bring God’s wrath down on those who believed
the Messiah already had come. Anyone
who failed to read or recite the curse at the end of a service was considered
suspect. Families, friends, and
communities were torn apart by the controversy as life and relationships
engendered pain and anger, fear and mistrust.
So Luke was writing to the “Followers
of the Way” who were trying to come to grips with their excommunication from
Judaism (that had been their religion from birth).
At the same time, the
Luke directs his gospel to these early
Christians but it has relevance for us today as well.
Luke focuses his gospel on spiritual maturity.
Recall that the second part of Luke’s gospel, the book in the Bible we
call the Acts of the Apostles, is all about the Spirit of God and living a
“spirit-ed” life. Luke
encourages Christians then and now, even in the face of great unsettling, to
practice their faith boldly, to maintain an inner magnanimity, to avoid
self-righteousness, and, as far as it depended on them, to live peaceably and
peacefully.
In doing so, Luke joins a chorus of
others through the ages who have “gotten” what it means to be people of God,
who trust God for their lives rather than the present circumstances.
After the Israelites had been carted off into Babylonian captivity,
Jeremiah told the exiles not to fight or resist their captors.
Do not demonize or dehumanize them. Rather,
speaking for God, Jeremiah counseled them to “build
houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Take husbands and wives and have sons and daughters.
And seek the welfare of the city where you are in exile and pray to the
Lord on its behalf, for it is welfare you will find your welfare…For I have
plans for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future
with hope.”
And remember how the psalmist wrote,
God is our refuge and our strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble
with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams
make glad the city of
God is in the midst of the city;
it shall not be moved;
God will help it when
the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is
our refuge…
Be still and know that I am God!...
Psalm 121 carries the same sense of
God’s steadfast love:
I lift up my eyes to the hills-
from where will come my help?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
God will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time on and forevermore.
Luke is making current and applicable
to the situations of the early Christian community that same ancient wisdom.
And also to us and ours. The
What is the worst thing that can happen
according to Luke (who gets his answer from Jesus)?
The worst thing is to lose touch with our soul, which is to be without
meaning in our lives, without love, without purpose, without hope, without God,
for it is in and from our soul that all of these find their expression and
fullness. Now we are not without
God, ever, for we live and move and have our being with God.
But we can forget that. We
can act as if it is not so. We can
lose our moorings and feel rootless or aimless, tossed to and fro not only on
every wind of doctrine, as scripture says, but by – get this phrase – the
vagaries and vicissitudes of life, the calamities and consternations, the
portents and predicaments.
Luke wants his beleaguered readers to
know that the antidote Jesus prescribes for combating loss of soul is
faithfulness. The simplest acts of
faith put us and keep us in relationship with God.
I happened on a book by a Norwegian pastor and teacher this week that is
turning out to be a very important one for me, a book called Why
I Am a Christian. In it, he
says that the reason more people do not know more deeply the life-giving power
of Christianity is because we think about it, we talk about it, but
we do not do it.
O. Hallesby, writing in the first half
of the last century, begins his book by talking about doubt and the cause of
doubt in our lives regarding Christianity – not the kind of doubt behind which
we hide as an excuse for living an undisciplined life but the kind of doubt that
causes us distress, the “Lord, I
believe; help Thou mine unbelief” kind of doubt.
He says that some people think the cause of their doubt is their great
knowledge and keen intellect and that their modern learning renders dubious the
ancient teachings. Others are more
modest and think their doubt is due to their lack of knowledge and that they do
not have an intellect sharp enough to understand.
But, Hallesby says, neither of these is the cause of our doubt.
The cause of our doubt, he says, is that we lack sufficient experiences.
In offering his help to us to overcome
our doubts, Hallesby says he will not meet our doubts with logical arguments.
Rather, he will point out the experiences through which we must pass in
order to dispel our doubt. To put it
simply, Hallesby says to take what Jesus tells us to do in the scripture and do
it. Do not just think about
it, talk about it, preach it, debate it, long for it, or dream of it.
Do it! And in the doing of
it, consistently, steadily, regularly – whether it is loving your neighbor as
yourself or visiting prisoners or doing unto others what you would have them do
unto you – the sense of God’s presence in your life will be renewed and
strengthened. Meaning, power, and
purpose will rise up in your life and you will be able to withstand and endure
the tumbling of temples and towers and the tumult of turmoil in your life.
It will be as if your hand is in God’s and God’s is in yours.
And you will gain your soul.
Amen.
Copyright © 2010 First Presbyterian Church