I start preparing for worship on
Sunday night. That means that I started reading this text last Sunday night. As
I read the text, I was thinking about the world at that moment, as the
elections were drawing near, of the high feelings, the polarized status, the
inflammatory language that had become common place and somehow praise worthy. I
wondered how Hilary Clinton was going to heal the rift that had grown between
Democrat and Republican. Of course, those thoughts were all based on Sunday.
They had nothing to do with Wednesday.
Among my friends, many were positive that Clinton was going
to win. They too, were living in a Sunday/Monday world. How upset they were on
Wednesday morning. Meeting with pastors on Wednesday morning I heard, “What are
we going to preach on Sunday?” In the midst of their psychic pain and
confusion, they had no idea. The stones of their sacred structures had tumbled.
Their perspective of the world had shifted, and their sense of reality had been
challenged.
So I asked if any of them had read the text for this week
yet? Most of them had been so involved in the election that they had not taken
time to do that. So I said something that I thought was a given. “I’m guessing
that we are going to proclaim the Gospel.”
One of my friends said, “But it feels like the world has
ended.”
I said, “Have you read the text?”
What an amazing thing that we have been given this text on
this day in our lives. Here we are reminded that ends are not always ends. End
does not mean that it is over. Ends are the places of new beginnings. There
will be wars and insurrections. “Do not be terrified.” The temple will be
destroyed. “Do not be terrified.” There will be famines and plagues in parts of
the world. “Do not be terrified.” Our political system is changing. “Do not be
terrified.”
When we are brought before kings and governors, or the
judicial bodies of our world, when your life looks like it is in the dumpster,
Luke, reporting Jesus’ words for us, says, “This will be an opportunity for
bearing witness, giving testimony, proclaiming God’s justice for the world, of
who it is that sustains and supports you in your life. Is it going to be Donald
Trump and the American flag? Or, will it be God, revealed to us in the person
of Jesus Christ and his promise of salvation? Is it going to be a political
system that has always been broken? Or, is it going to be a life of striving
for God’s justice in the world? This is the time for deciding.”
Yes, you may be betrayed by parents, brothers and sisters,
relatives, and friends. You may be hated by the people around you. In extreme
circumstances, you may die, but, in the midst of the turmoil of the day, we
find that this is our time—our time as faithful people to stand up and declare
who and whose we are. This is our time
to remember God’s commands and Jesus’ ministry of protecting and caring for the
widow, the orphans, the strangers, and the poor. This is our time as faithful people to go out
into the world, as Jesus did, to lift up the social dead into new ways of
living. This is our time to tell the world in which we live and the government
that we have that this is where WE want to go.
So many people have said, “We want change. We don’t even
care what kind of change it is. We just want change.” And we find that we are
living in a world that is waiting and looking for direction. We, as a faithful,
Christian, living community have been given the awesome opportunity to speak,
to make our voices heard in the public square, to make our voices heard in all
the places of governance that we have—in our municipalities, in our states, and
in the halls of Congress with the mouth and wisdom of God that our opponents
cannot withstand or contradict. We have been given the opportunity to point out
the direction. What an amazing gift!
We know that the stones of the temple will be cast down.
Even the people of Luke’s time knew that because, at the time Luke was written,
the temple had already been destroyed. This amazing temple building was totally
destroyed in 70 C.E., fifteen to twenty years before the time of Luke’s
writing.
Yet, if you were into architecture, this was one of the most
amazing buildings of its time. It was a major architectural accomplishment of
its day. The courtyards were cantilevered over the marketplace below it, and it
was raised up above the city walls. From a distance, it looked like the temple
was floating in the air over the city. Ancient historians say that it was built
of the finest white limestone and crowned with gold. Indeed, when the sun came
out and shined on it, it was so brilliant that it hurt the eyes to look at it.
In other Gospel accounts we hear that it had taken
forty-three years to build it, so the thought of destroying it is terrifying.
Think about it, forty-three years. Yes, it was an architectural marvel, but
what is man-made is susceptible to erosion, corrosion, rust and general
deterioration. Eventually it falls apart. Even wonders like the Great China
wall need continuous maintenance. Without that maintenance it will disappear,
it will vanish into the earth. So it is with the other wonders of the ancient
world. The colossus of Rhodes? The hanging gardens of Babylon? The library of
Alexandria? They are all gone. Only the Great Pyramid continues to be present
in our world. All of the other wonders of the world only exist in ruins—and the
British museum.
It is time to remember that our salvation does not come in
temple buildings, that Jesus is not our personal property redeemer. Jesus has
come to save US. It is time to remember, in us, with us, and through us, Christ
is made known to the world around us. It is time to remember, by our endurance we
will gain our lives. We will gain, not just our own life, but we will gain the
lives of those around us, for in remembering the widow, the orphan, the
stranger, and the poor, in going out into the world to the social dead and in
raising them up into our community of life, we do not only gain our lives, but
we gain their relationship with us and their lives and support as well. Let us
therefore walk together in the body of Christ, which we have entered through
Baptism where we were first lifted up from sin and death in Christ’s living
body for the world.
“What are we going to preach?” my colleagues asked, and I
had nothing to say because I thought it was all too apparent. In the midst of
great change, we preach what we have always preached—the one who comes to walk
among us, the one who leads us and teaches us, the one who died to save us,
continues to walk with us and among us. That one, the Christ, continues to be
with us this day and every day as we endure the trials of this world, that
Christ is active and vocal in our midst. Christ continues to give us a mouth
with words of wisdom that do not come from the world, but for the world
My brothers and sisters in Christ, as we go out into our
lives, into our places of work, may our voices be heard. May we find the ear of
those who are in power, that they might listen to us and that they might hear,
really hear, the cries of God’s people and do something about it.
Not long ago, we heard the story of the unjust judge and the
widow, of our need to pray persistently. So, let us, with the persistently
praying widow make, our voices known to those judges, until all those around us
are embarrassed to the point of letting us have our way whether or not they
respect us, and that our way might be the way of God’s justice for the world. Let
our voices be heard by those who are in power and let them act in our favor
simply because they will not have us continue to speak against them when it
comes to God’s justice in the world.
Whether you voted for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton, much work
needs to be done. Let us roll up our sleeves and begin the work that God is
giving us.
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