When Will This Be? [Proper 28C - Luke 21:5-19]
The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Luke 21:5-19
When Will This Be?
St. Paul’s, Schenectady (Rotterdam)
I woke up late on that Saturday morning – just in time to
watch my Saturday morning favorites: NBA Inside Stuff, Saved by the Bell, and
Looney Tunes. But on this particular
Saturday, something wasn’t quite right. I
could sense it almost immediately. Instead
of bustle, the house was eerily silent.
No one was milling about. The
television screen was a powerless dull grey.
Every room I explored revealed the same unsettling discovery:
nothing.
I have two parents and two younger siblings, and so the
silence, and absence, was notable. I was
a child in the days before cell phones and so my investigative options were
limited. You might remember that back in
those days if someone wasn’t at home, by their landline, or right beside you,
there was no way to reach them. It was
as if they simply did not exist.
I grew up in Pentecostalism and so, to my young brain, there
was only one possible answer to the empty home: the Rapture. I knew what had happened: while I was
sleeping, I slept right through the Rapture.
My family was now gone and my pre-pubescent self was going to have to
learn to survive in a lawless society. I
had spent my entire life trying to be a good Christian, but apparently, at some
point, I blew it.
I lived in that post-apocalyptic world for tens of
minutes. And then the door swung open;
the house filled with sounds. It was my family
– the other four of them – returning home from some Saturday morning
shopping. I figured at least one of the
five of us would be acceptable to a rapturing Jesus. And so, the end was not yet here. The Rapture had not yet occurred. And I was safe – at least for the moment.
I don’t worry about the Rapture anymore. I have become much more confident in the
love, mercy, and grace of God – a God the Bible tells us repeatedly is
“merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness.” I’m trusting that. In fact, I am staking my life on the truth of
that claim.
Also, in the years since that anxious morning, I’ve done a
lot of Bible studying and theological reading.
I don’t know exactly what God has in mind for the future, but I do know
that the Rapture was conceived in the 19th century and popularized
only about a century ago. In the grand
scheme of salvation history, it is a pretty new idea – and one lacking a strong
biblical foundation.
But while I don’t worry about being left behind, I do still
worry about the future. I sweat the
small stuff – and the big stuff. I
suspect I am not alone. Actually, I know
I’m not alone, because I know a few of the people in the pews today. We live in an age of anxiety. According to researchers, “Anxiety is
the most common mental health condition globally.”[1]
The uncertainty of our times, the uncertainties of lives, weighs heavily on our
minds and on our souls.
And while anxiety is acute in our culture, driven by a wealth
of data and a lack of connection, it is not new. Anxieties about the future, whether a sudden
disappearance or a slow social decay, have weighed on the human race
historically. We have always been
worrying; it is a survival trait, though not our most comforting one.
We see it even in today’s Gospel – a Gospel story that
predates the maddening buzz of social media by almost 2000 years old. In today's reading from Luke, Jesus' followers
stand marveling at the magnificent Temple – only to hear Jesus foretell its
demise. The destruction of the First
Temple at the hands of the Babylonian Empire is one of the most traumatic
events in the history of the Jewish people.
And now Jesus is predicting a repeat of that ancient trauma. Anxiety bubbling up and over, the followers
desperately ask Jesus to give them a timeline: 'Teacher, when will this be, and
what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?' They wanted a
prediction, one that could help prepare them for the worst. They wanted to know
the day and the hour. They wanted some kind of certainty because it is hard to
live with the unknown. They wanted
answers.
As is his custom in the Gospels, Jesus didn’t give them the
answers they wanted. He didn’t give them
dates or times. They were assurance
seeking in vain.
But understandably so. They should be forgiven for seeking because we
do not get much certainty in life, and mostly we just want some assurance that
everything will be OK. Life can feel, at
times, chaotic and unpredictable. And it
can be painful and scarred with loss.
The future is foggy and sometimes it would be nice to just know where
the pitfalls lie.
But Jesus warns us here to avoid the temptations of
certainty. It is a necessary warning
because there are plenty of folks who are happy to sell assurances. History is stained with charlatans promising
long life and future bliss, success in business and luck in love. For-profit preachers, televangelists, and
dime-store prophets have banked a fortune speaking for God, crunching the
numbers, reading the signs, and guessing the when. Always guessing wrong. Reading signs but apparently not reading this
Gospel passage.
Jesus warns us to avoid the temptations of certainty because
those temptations only dull our trust in God.
And that is what this passage is about: it is about trust. Jesus doesn’t promise smooth sailing in this
passage; in fact, he promises choppy seas, but he assures us that God will ride
the waves with us. We can trust that God
is in the boat with us.
It is hard to stop worrying.
We know there are a bunch of things awaiting us in the future – even
death. But more importantly, God. Why we don’t need to know the whens of the
future, or strain our eyes looking for tenuous signs, is because the future is
in the hands of God. And God can be trusted
with the future, even your future.
Even in this information age, we don’t get to know everything. In this life, Jesus doesn’t give us all the
answers we want. Instead, he gives us to
God. And in God, we dwell in the
assurance that all will be well; we trust in the promise that we have been
saved, are being saved, and will, in the fullness of eternity, be saved by our
trustworthy God – a God the Bible often reminds us is “merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” It is true that some of chapters of this
beautiful, wild mortal life are unpredictable, filled sometimes with twists and
turns, often plagued by anxious thoughts, but you can trust that at the end of
the story God wipes away every last tear and calms, at last, a lifetime of
fears.
Comments
Post a Comment