The texts for the week are:
Malachi 4:1-2a
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19
Come Holy Spirit. Carry these words where they need to go. Let your love be the centerpoint. Amen
You know how they started putting out Christmas decorations weeks before it was even Halloween? And Thanksgiving kind of gets lost in the mix these days?
And how we say “it’s too soon! It’s not time yet! We haven’t even gotten into fall yet – how can it be time for Christmas which comes at the END OF THE YEAR?”
Well… I am bringing some news that might be a little bit surprising to some folks: The year is, in fact, coming to an end!
Maybe not the calendar year so much… quite yet…
But in just two weeks we will be starting a new church year. It will be Advent, the time of waiting until the great festival of Christmas.
So that leaves this week and next week in this church year.
We are just at the end and sometimes the end can seem kind of rough and raggedy. In fact, sometimes that’s how we know it’s at the end.
The socks with a hole in the toe? The end.
The slacks with the worn knees?
Or the shirt with fraying collar?
Or the chair with that one wobbly leg?
We know it’s at the end because it isn’t right. It isn’t how it was originally created to be.
Our lessons today talk about the end, too. About how things are not how they were originally created to be, and how that tells us something:
Here’s what Malachi says about the raggedy things that will come at the end:
* Burning like an oven
* Arrogant and evildoers will be stubble
* Without root or branch
And then in Luke:
* Not one stone left on another
* Wars and insurrections
* Nation against nation
* Famines and plagues
* Persecution
Well who would EVER want to live in times like that?? It’s tempting to think that maybe we should just give up. Throw it out like that wobbly chair. Or, perhaps if you are a more energetic sort, at least try to fix it?
Apparently the people in today’s lesson from Thessalonians felt a little bit like that. They were so convinced that the bad things were happening that Jesus would be back (quite literally) ANY MINUTE and so they didn’t need to do a thing. They could just hang out and wait.
They quit living into their calls as people – their one unique personhood that only they could fulfill.
But Paul was not having it. Paul said WHOA WHOA WHOA HERE! You can’t just QUIT! You have to keep going. Sure Jesus will come back, but you have to keep living until that very minute.
You can’t just give up. You were not made to give up.
And that is what I want you to hear today: you were not made to give up. You can still live the life you were born to live, in whatever way there is to live it today.
You do not have to be afraid.
For as long as I can remember I have heard these texts read with their laundry list of disaster and thinking (along with other people around me) IT’S NOW! THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW!
But now I am not quite so young as I once was and I have a sneaking suspicion that those words, those harbingers of disaster, are ALWAYS happening – that they always have been happening, ever since The Fall in the Garden of Eden. Because the world simply is not how it was originally created to be.
And OH don’t we love to focus on that? How bad things are?
What we are not quite so eager to focus on is the other part of our readings that are the same today and always:
* Those who persevere
* An opportunity to testify
* Do the work that you were born to do
* DO NOT PREPARE YOUR DEFENSE IN ADVANCE
Somehow, Malachi, and then about 400 years later, Jesus, seemed to be saying the same thing:
WELL YEAH things are going to be hard and scary. But that is not what is important!
Don’t get caught up trying to fix what you cannot fix!
Don’t go down the rabbit hole of academic theology (or whatever other arguments you like – politics, climate change, reproductive rights, whatever). Don’t try to systematize everything and constantly clarify and argue and pretend like it can ever all be ok.
Because it can’t.
The latest political skirmish
Scary weather changes
How women and men and their unborn babies are treated
Even the latest spat you have had with someone you love
Those are not the things that are going to win (or lose) the day. We cannot stop all those things. We cannot put the world back like it was originally created to be.
There is only one thing that matters, and that one thing is
Living in God.
Following Jesus
Living the life you are called to live.
Jesus came and lived a life steeped in all the realities of humanity. All the wars and arguments, and anger, and poor treatment, and anguish.
But do you know what Jesus never did?
* Jesus never worried
* Jesus did not argue with the Pharisees and Sadducees, even when they asked him foolish trick questions.
* Jesus did not even (as far as we know) argue with his parents!
How did he DO that?? Did you ever wonder how Jesus knew what to say to the people who tried to trip him up?
Well, of course Jesus was God.
But even though Jesus was God, he spent time reading Scripture and studying in the Temple. He took time to pray. He spent time being with alone with God.
He did not study and pray to out argue scholars though, or to get his own way. Jesus spent his time studying and praying in order to be in the company of God – of the Trinity.
Which is pretty remarkable, given that Jesus IS ONE OF THE TRINITY.
But that’s what he did. He spent time with the other two members of God. So when the questions came he knew what to say. He knew how God thought. He knew how to fit the foibles and weaknesses of humanity with the ultimate love and yearning of God.
Remember those stories where Jesus would be in trouble with the Temple officials for something or other, and he just walked through the crowd and left? Why was it different at the crucifixion?
How did he know when it was time to stay and die?
I believe it is because he stayed close to God.
He had prayed and learned as a human, listened and believed. So when times got really hard, Jesus knew what to do.
I am pretty sure that is what our texts want us to know today.
There are always going to be terrible, scary, destructive things happening, right up to the time Jesus returns.
We are at the end of the church year and we are somehow at the end of time, waiting for Jesus. And someday this life as we know it will end. But it will not end up tattered like an old sock or frayed shirt.
Someday it will be like it was originally created to be again. And God will be the one who makes it so. Not you, or me, or a bishop, or a president. Not a king or a doctor. But God. That is the promise. God will take care of the world and everything in it, and it will be restored.
If you have spent your life praying and listening and learning and loving God, then you do not have to worry.
If you are new to praying and listening and learning and loving God, then you do not have to worry.
If you know God even a little bit, you do not have to worry.
None of us is called to worry.
None of us is called to fix things on our own.
None of us is designated as the person to focus on how wrong everything is
We are called to live the life we have now.
We are called to spend time with God. To learn to know God: Father, Holy Spirit, and our beloved Jesus.
That’s it.
And when the time comes we will know what to say – much like Jesus did – because we will be who we were born to be, and we will know exactly and perfectly what God wills.
We will know that we are loved – just like Jesus was.
AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment