Sermon, Sunday, November 14, 2010

“Digesting the Truth of God”,A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, November 14, 2010 at Church of the Ascension, Rochester, New York

9“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” 10Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. Luke 21:9-11

For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. Isaiah 65:17


There is a saying attributed to German theologian Karl Barth, that a preacher should always prepare a sermon with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Certainly if one does that in our modern world, there are uncanny similarities between what we read in the newspaper and the strange predictions that Jesus speaks of in today’s reading from Luke. Nation will rise up against nation – the war in Afghanistan continues, with casualties on all sides, not the least of which are the women and children victimized by the poverty and the war. Peace negotiations in the Middle East seem hopeful one minute then once again unravel, and a numbing sense that the violence in the land so many of us call “Holy” will never abate. The economy continues to recover so very slowly that for many Americans, the financial squeeze and the worry and anxiety that joblessness or underemployment brings with it eats away at their sense of security and well being. There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues. Cholera breaks out in Haiti where thousands of people continue to live in tent cities without appropriate clean water months after the earthquake devastated that small island nation. Pakistan is ravaged by floods and violence.

I am about to create a new heaven and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind, says the prophet Isaiah. Here at Ascension, the search committee and vestry work hard to move this faith community in ways that will prepare it for significant changes as the transition to new and long term leadership continues. Long term, faithful members of the congregation die, their families mourn and the entire community grieves the loss of good people and the good times that were associated with them and their contributions to the church community. What the “new heavens and new earth” will look like for Ascension is yet to be revealed, and the uncertainty that goes with that is unsettling. Everything feels disjointed, chaotic, sometimes ominous, sometimes just wearyingly different, challenging everyone to remain centered and optimistic when the portents around us are unsettling.

It is in the context of this chaotic and topsy-turvy, nothing-is-the-same-anymore world that we hear today’s texts, an apocalyptic text from Luke’s gospel and the prophetic words of Isaiah to an exiled people. Apocalyptic biblical texts usually puzzle us because they seem so weird and bizarre. And yet, in the context of the daily news, they begin to sound altogether too familiar. “Nation will rise against nation…there will be famines and plagues…not one stone will be left upon another.”

In our collect today, we thanked God for having caused the Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, but texts like this one from Luke are harder to feel grateful for than some others! Where, after all, is the good news in all this doom and gloom talk? Can these apocalyptic texts help us through the scary times in which we live? The gospel of Luke was written around 85 A.D. some 15 years after the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. The destruction of the Temple was a cataclysmic event for the Jewish people, because the Temple was where the Holy of Holies was kept, it was the center of their religious and cultic life. Luke was writing at a time of extreme unrest, when the old was passing away, namely the Temple and the culture that surrounded it, and something new was emerging, i.e. the nascent Christian community as a sect within Judaism and ultimately a separate religion standing on its own. Luke’s readers were intimately involved in the upheaval that was going on and they were trying to make sense of it.

The prophet Isaiah was writing to the Jewish community after its return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon, when the world they had know before the exile was gone and they were faced with rebuilding and starting over after years away. The prophet offers words of hope and promise to weary and fearful people who felt overwhelmed at the task of rebuilding that they saw before them.

The destruction of the Temple, was, for the ancient Jews as upsetting and disorienting as the destruction of the World Trade Center nine years ago has proven to be for us. Just as our culture lost a central symbol of its identity as an economic and financial power on that fateful day, and just as the towers represented the best of our people’s high ambitions and engineering expertise, so did the Temple represent the best of what the ancient Jews believed about their culture. We are lucky to have the Holy Scriptures which were “written for our learning” and now, more than ever, we need to take seriously our duty to “hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them” in order to know how to see the face of God in the midst of our chaotic world.

In periods of disruption, unrest, or transition, apocalypticism tends to flourish and false prophets and false messiahs spring up, claiming to know THE TRUTH and trying to attract vulnerable people into their sphere of influence. This was so in the first century, during the medieval era and is still so today. Never is it more important for us to pray and to study Holy Scripture than in times like these. Finding God’s truth amidst the cacophony of our human conflicts is critical for the survival of all of God’s creation. Like babies graduating from mother’s milk to cereal, times like these ask us to digest the truth of God, which may be harder to handle than anything we’ve known before.

On All Saints Sunday we renewed our baptismal covenant. Those baptismal promises are probably more crucial to our survival now than they have been in many a year, if we stop to think about them in the context of this crazy world in which we are living out our faith. One of those promises is to be faithful in the study of Scripture and the “apostle’s teaching.” As we continue to live in unsettled and anxious times, we need to keep the Bible at the ready, as we hear the news reports, face the crises of human life and look towards a promising but unknown and unfamiliar future as a faith community in transition.

In our baptismal covenant, we promise to persevere in resisting evil, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace and to respect the dignity of every human being. These words may too often fall easily from our tongues but in unsettled and transitional times, particularly times such as these where fear drives so much of what we hear and see in the public media, some of those promises become harder to say and may seem impossible to keep. We promise to persevere in resisting evil, even as we live in a world where the evil we encounter comes at us from different sources – foreign enemies, disease, financial uncertainty and the real poverty that many suffer because of the economic downturn that doesn’t seem to be abating as quickly as pundits claim it is.

In the context of a similarly unsettled and tumultuous culture in first century Palestine, Jesus offered his followers some instructions on discipleship. He exhorted his disciples to be cautious, not to follow every hip cult of the day and not to be led astray by false prophets. Disciples need to persevere in living out the truth that they know, which is different from that proclaimed by their culture. Jesus tells them that in the midst of famines and plagues, of war and destruction, of nation rising up against nation, they must take such times as an opportunity to witness to him. He says that these dangerous times become an opportunity to testify and cautions against making up our arguments in advance. “I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” Jesus tells his followers to stand fast, to endure so that they may gain their souls.

Jesus’ words to his disciples and the crowd in the Temple are as important for us to hear as they were for those first century listeners. We desperately need God’s wisdom as we move through these days of struggle and conflict. We are called to be peacemakers even as we engage in war. We are called to love our neighbors, even as we find ourselves feeling more suspicious than loving towards some of them. We are called to embrace optimism as we seek to redevelop our church community and to live hopefully in tough economic times. In many ways, our baptismal covenant calls us to make hard choices. For example:

• In a materialistic culture, we are called to live simply.
• In a culture that praises, honors and rewards the beautiful, the powerful, the intelligent, the successful, we are called to honor and respect the outcast, the poor, the oppressed, the lonely, the misfit.
• In a culture that reveres hard work and rugged individualism, we are called to be merciful, to feed the poor, house the homeless, shelter the persecuted, embrace those whom the culture rejects, visit the prisoner, to give away rather than acquire.
• In a culture that demands scientific proof for every reality that it accepts, we are called to be mystics - to honor and embrace the mystery of God, which we can never prove with a scientific instrument.
• In a culture that seduces us with various means by which we can control our lives, we are called to relinquish control and flow with the movement of God’s Holy Spirit, letting God direct our lives, our loves, our passions, our work, and yes, even our politics.
• In a world where we fight real and dreadful evil, we are called to acknowledge our own sinfulness and to repent and return to God.
• In a culture that teaches us to fear those who differ from us we are called to love our neighbor, to see in the face of Christ in all sorts and conditions of people.

What does Jesus say to people consumed with anxiety and fearful about the future? He says that the cost of discipleship will be high, but the reward is that we gain our souls. He assures us, “not a hair of your head will perish” despite the fact that some will be put to death. He encourages us to use these times of adversity as “an opportunity to testify” to him and the truth he represents. The prophet Isaiah calls us to embrace a vision of optimism and hope, even as we look at situations that feel heavy, tired and bleak. Both Isaiah and Jesus call us to walk forward in hope, confident that God is in the midst of the chaos of our personal and corporate lives and trusting that something new and wonderful will emerge for those who are faithful to the covenant with God. “They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.” “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest these holy words. And then leave this church and go forward into your world as witnesses to that hope. Amen.