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11/13/22 – Are We There Yet? by Alan Willadsen

ARE WE THERE YET?

November 13, 2022
Isaiah 65:17-25; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-10
Elder Alan Willadsen

There are at least two stereotypical family expectations informing today’s message.  They may or may not have their basis in fact or experience:  1) there is conflict within the family, often between in-laws, and 2) when travelling, the children ask, “Are we there yet?”  I am grateful not to have experienced either of those in our family.

I was fortunate to get a great father-in-law and mother-in-law.  They gave us space to develop our marriage on our terms, never insisting on their way.  My father-in-law had a ready laugh and a good sense of humor.  He called me “Joe” when we first met, then laughed, saying that must have been the last guy Carole brought home.  He once asked me, with a twinkle in his eye, “What’s the difference between in-laws and outlaws?”  Not sure where this question was leading, I said, “I don’t know,” to which he responded, “Outlaws are wanted, of course.”

When it came time to take a long trip in the car (cabins we visited six times near Ely, Minnesota, and were 700 miles away), our children were great travelers.  Carole anticipated their boredom.  She had age-appropriate, travel-friendly, wrapped entertaining gifts that she would dole out along the way.  We interacted with games of “I spy” and “Cows on my side”.  We looked forward to the travel experience, knowing we’d get there when we got there, and rarely heard “Are we there yet?”—until the trip home.

Wanting to know what lies ahead, and when, is a familiar, human experience, one we encounter in today’s Gospel passage.  The disciples are admiring the temple for its magnificent beauty.  They knew it as a house of worship and had been built by the generous gifts from God’s people, gifts given sacrificially to the glory of God, like the “widow’s mite” Luke tells us about in the passage immediately preceding today’s selection.

“Unaided by God’s Spirit, people are inclined to focus on the external, being impressed with size, grandeur, or physical beauty.  Jesus sees with very different eyes.”[*]  The spiritual overrules the material.  It is with the eyes of our heart that we see truth and communicate the message of love and the kindness of Christ.

This congregation has had some experience with the tumbling down of a revered structure when the previous building was destroyed by fire in January 1985.  If we had known—or if someone had foretold—the devastating event before it happened, would we have behaved differently?  Maybe, maybe not.  But we would have wanted to know.  Clerk of Session at the time of the fire, Si Radford, reminded us, and told the larger community, “The church is people, not steeple.”  What are today’s temples that are, will, or need to be destroyed?

We recognize this community—we, the people—are part of God’s intent for the world.  If we remain faithful to God’s vision, if we pursue God’s will, there will be tough times ahead.  And still, we want to know, “when?”  Why is the “when” so important to us?  Jesus says time is irrelevant to God, even though it may be important to mankind.

While some might understand this passage to deal with the Second Coming of our Lord or the “end times,” it seems to me the more immediate issue is the threat the Rome empire poses to the Jewish community.  Rebellion against the empire (Roman or American) is inevitable for those to whom faith in the Creator is paramount.  It will challenge us who want peace with our surrounding culture. It will challenge us around the Thanksgiving table with family and friends.  Remember what’s at stake:  our souls.

Let us not be like the football team, viewing and re-viewing the tapes of next week’s opponents, plotting our strategy to win.  Jesus tells us NOT to prepare our defense in advance.  This rebellion will challenge us to trust in, and rely on, God.

When we “go along to get along,” we betray ourselves and perpetuate what is wrong.  We no longer “do justice, love goodness, or walk modestly with God.”  “Tertullian, the second-century Church Father, wrote that to face prison and death for the faith was a noble fate.  The real prison is to sin and injustice; to love in the face of hate was the deepest call of the Lord himself.  Prison, Tertullian wrote, ‘is full of darkness, but you yourselves are light; it has bonds, but God has made you free.’  To Tertullian, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.”[†]

Two of my favorite authors put into plain language our call to rely on Jesus.  Madeline L’Engle said, “God doesn’t stop the bad things from happening; that’s never been part of the promise.  The promise is ‘I am with you.  I am with you now until the end of time.’” Frederick Buechner said, “Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.”

History provides at least four examples of people or groups for whom Jesus gave words and wisdom, as they needed it, as they fought the injustice of the empire:  Early Christians whose stories are told in Acts, Ancient Rome in which Christians were killed for refusing to worship the emperor and his gods, Nazi Germany in which Dietrich Bonhoeffer led resistance in favor of his faith, and African-American leaders, like John Lewis, during the heart of the fight for equal rights.

If we are honest with ourselves, even with these witnesses, these examples, these promises from our Lord, we remain complicit when governments continue to exert power over Christians in places like India, Niger, North Korea, and Sudan.  Think of the conflict and backlash over the “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” movements in this country.  Did we ever truly listen to the pain the other person experienced, to empathize with them?  Did we do anything to support or publicly defend the women who had been harmed?  Did we advocate for African Americans?  Or did we remain silent, hoping the discomfort we felt would go away?  I’ve remained silent.  Forgive me, God.  Help me change my ways.

We continue to ignore the cries of others and harm those who are poor, weak, orphaned, or widowed when we do not help defend them and testify to God’s power because we fear the cost.  What are you willing to die for?

In the twentieth century, Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the more vocal and visible individuals to testify to God’s claim on his life.  He was arrested, persecuted, betrayed, and finally put to death because he spoke out against Hitler’s inhumane use of power, pitting the Aryan system against Judaism, Germany against biblical Israel.  “It was Bonhoeffer and his friends who proved by their resistance unto death that even in the age of the nation-state there are loyalties which transcend those to state and nation. . .. They proved that even in this age nationalism stands under God and that it is a sin against him and his call for fellowship with other nations if it degenerates into national egotism and greed.”[‡]

In the introduction to The Cost of Discipleship, Leibholz wrote, “To Bonhoeffer, Christianity was not the concern of the believing, pious soul who shuts himself up and keeps himself within the bounds of the sacramental sphere.  No, according to him Christianity has its place in this world and the Church as the Body of Christ, and the fellowship in him can only be the visible Church.  Man must follow him who has served and passed through this world as the living, the dying and the risen Lord.  Therefore wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death.  It is only in the way that man learns faith.”[§]  Are we there yet with our faith?

Bonhoeffer himself said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.  It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world.”[**]  How have we died serving Christ?  What a challenge!

Shortly after the end of World War II, the battle for racial equality in the United States accelerated with the Civil Rights movement.  One of the leaders who experienced the arrest, persecution, appearance before governments, betrayal, and hatred for his Christian perspective on racial issues was John Lewis who practiced nonviolent resistance to the status quo.  He believed, “The words of Jesus had to be put into action. [Also, one should] ‘Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.’”[††]

“Lewis kept his faith.  It wasn’t easy—it was, in fact, the hardest thing in the world. . .. How could you not act on the instinct for self-defense?  How could you not despair of a path that led lambs to slaughter?  How could you hold to a creed that appeared to produce more pain than progress?  The only way to explain Lewis’s persistent nonviolence, his unending commitment to answering hate with love and death with live, is to take him at his word.

“’We truly believed that we were on God’s side, and in spite of everything—the beatings, the bombings, the burnings—God’s truth would prevail,’ Lewis recalled.  The anguish and the duration of the struggle was, in a way, a vindication of the premise of the premise of the struggle itself—that this was the ultimate battle to bring light to darkness no matter how often darkness prevailed.”[‡‡]

With conflict and turmoil come despair, exhaustion, frustration, rage, and weariness.  We have no idea what will be required of us in the coming days and Jesus will give us the words we need.  Jesus will also help us through the negative emotions we know we will experience.  Come to me, all you who have heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  (Matthew 11:28)

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” goes the adage often attributed to Edmund Burke.  Being passionless about those in need “serves no other purpose but to put [us] on the side of the oppressor.”[§§]  Jesus says here we can help overcome evil by standing up to it—though it will not be easy.  The world is no match for the love, grace, and mercy of God.

Remember Jesus said we should not prepare our defense in advance, that He would provide powerful words and a “wisdom that none of [our]opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”  Isaiah gives us very good news.  “The former things”—that is the persecution and suffering we experience before the end— “will not be remembered or come to mind.” We will no longer weep.  We will be blessed.  We’re not there yet, but God promises we will get there one day.

Change is coming.  It will not be easy.  As M. Scott Peck opened The Road Less Traveled, “Life is difficult.” Such challenges are consistent with what Jesus said we should expect.  We must trust God’s promise to be with us through that change, providing what we need, when we need it.  Ultimately the change will lead to new heavens and a new earth, where we all will live at peace.  Are we there yet?  No, but with God’s help we ultimately will experience a new Jerusalem, God’s holy mountain.

To God be the glory.  Amen and Amen.

 

 

[*] JSB, p. 1423.

[†] Meacham, Jon.  His Truth is Marching On:  John Lewis and the Power of Hope.”  New York:  Random House, 2020.  p. 4.

[‡] Cost, loc 429.

[§] Cost of Discipleship, loc 305.

[**] Cost, loc 1279.

[††] Meacham, p. 49

[‡‡] Meacham, p. 160.

[§§] Meacham, p. 215

 

 

© Elder Alan Willadsen, 2022, All Rights Reserved
Westminster Presbyterian Church | 1420 W. Moss Ave. | Peoria, Illinois 61606
WestminsterPeoria.org  | 309.673.8501

 

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