Isaiah 65:17-25; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19
Ordinary 33C; Proper 28
God’s cosmic and total transformation hovers, lurks and looms this week.
Depending on which text one looks to first, the feeling evoked around this massive change is more or less hopeful. Isaiah’s description drips with joy and delight. Luke’s comes with more foreboding and suffering. The epistle lesson from 2 Thessalonians comes across more practical than mystical: get to work, keep working, do what is right, now, always, until Christ returns.
So, what’s the end of this age and the beginning of the next one going to look like? What’s it going to take for God to get the wolf and the lamb to feed together? For weeping and tragedy to be obliterated? Luke tells us that before that joy and delight and rejoicing comes false messiahs and incorrect assessments of what time it is and all manner of wars and disaster. Further, Jesus’ followers are far from exempt from the fall out. No, they are, in fact, at the very center of the suffering by virtue of their faithful testimony to the one, true Christ. Would that we could stop with Isaiah this week.
If we stick with Luke, though, we get a word of hope — not cheap hope, but resilient, tenacious hope. Hope that refuses to be defeated by the very real and destructive forces alive and loose in the world. The vision of Isaiah reminds us of God’s sure and beautiful promise, spurring us on in the midst of all that is unlovely and less than delightful. Jesus in Luke emboldens us to witness to God’s peaceable intentions no matter how obscured by events, personal, historic or cosmic the coming new creation may be. 2 Thessalonians instructs plainly: Get to work doing what’s right.
Apocalyptic literature is good news, a word of encouragement and a call to faithfulness to those who are right now being persecuted, exploited and trampled upon. The current and painful state of affairs will come to an end, these texts tell the beleaguered. God will execute justice and the great upending of the status quo will be set into motion. Weeping and the cause for it will cease. Death and crying will be no more. Divine help is on the way. Those who ridicule peacemakers and justice seekers will be silenced. The righteous will be vindicated. Ultimately, the wolf and the lamb will be nurtured side by side at the same, God-set, Christ-hosted banquet. Therefore, do not succumb to despair, no matter the circumstances. Do not grow weary of doing right. Picture the new thing God will do – is doing even now – and witness to it, work toward it. Do not be idle. Do not be fearful. Words and wisdom will be provided. Not a hair on your head will perish. This is the costly hope Luke 21 and other apocalyptic writings provide the faithful.
But is this a word to us? As one more comfortable than afflicted, more privileged than persecuted, more secure than vulnerable, more wolf than lamb, why would I want God to create new heavens and a new earth when the one in place right now works well for me? Why would I bear witness to the One whose ways will get me dragged before the powers and principalities of which I am a part and from which I benefit? This is an important question for people who, like me, do not find themselves under daily threat of real and ever-present violence.
I have been reading Patrick Reyes’ book, “Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood.” Reyes’ life experience is vastly different from my own. His book is an exploration of discerning vocation as a call to live when one’s literal survival is threatened at every turn. When, as Reyes writes, “the world was not built for us, though it was built on the backs of our ancestors, the colonized, the oppressed, the enslaved, and other marginalized people. My narrative wrestles with how the status quo has incredible investment in keeping people like me in their place rather than calling us to new life.”
Apocalyptic texts like this one in Luke calls that status quo to account and therefore anyone incredibly invested in maintaining it is called to account, too. These texts are resounding divine calls to new life, delightful, long, secure, joy-filled life for all of creation. Those of us, like me, not fighting for our lives in the current earth, may not understand the urgency of those like Reyes who “see navigating my Christian call through this lens — as a contested and embattled landscape set out before me in which I must do my best to hear God’s call.”
This week’s readings, at the close of the liturgical calendar, call us to examine the status quo and seek honestly to discern where we are within it, to listen to those who are fighting for their literal lives. Suffering, for many, is ever present. Suffering is never acceptable to God. God’s desire is for life. Isaiah casts the vision of God’s desire and promise. Jesus embodies it. How then do we bear witness to that divine vision? How do we work toward it?
God does not ask us to seek out persecution for God’s sake. Jesus does call us to be willing to endure it should our following of him and his way evoke it from those incredibly invested in the current earthly status quo.
I read an article this week about a doctor who spent most of his career working with people living in poverty. He now works for our country’s largest private health insurer, attempting to put in practice on a much larger scale lessons he learned working daily with those on the margins of this current earth. The reporter notes that hospitals are required by law to treat anyone who comes through their doors. Often those with no other option for shelter visit the emergency room, repeatedly and at great financial cost because, the article states: “As a society, we’ve effectively decided that people shouldn’t die on the street, but it’s acceptable for them to live there. There are more than half a million homeless in the U.S., about a third of them unsheltered — that is, living on streets, under bridges, or in abandoned properties. When they need medical care or simply a bed and a meal, many go to the emergency room. That’s where America has drawn the line: We’ll pay for a hospital bed but not for a home, even when the home would be cheaper.”
Knowing well this reality, Dr. Jeffery Brenner is working to house those currently suffering on our streets. He is working within the status quo to upend it. I find his story compelling, challenging, daunting… tenaciously hopeful. I am a part of this current earth that God intends to re-create. I benefit from how this earth runs and is ruled. However, if I am to first and foremost follow Jesus Christ, bear witness to his will for new life for all creation, I will be called to participate in the destruction of those systems and institutions that threaten the existence of others until that day when the wolf and the lamb, all of us, eat together — secure, housed, beloved, rejoicing.
This week:
- How do you react to apocalyptic texts like the one from Luke’s Gospel? When do you think about the end times?
- Where are you in this story? Does the way the world currently operates work for you or not? How does your answer impact your understanding of this week’s readings?
- When have you been weary of doing right? How do you know what is right to do?
- Jesus promises his disciples that they will be given the words and wisdom needed to testify and bear witness. Have you ever experienced being given the words and wisdom you needed? What happened?
- In your lifetime, what major historic events have prompted cultural conversation about the end times? What was the content of that cultural conversation? How was it different or similar to the texts appointed for this week?
- How does a call to avoid idleness get used as aa means to neglect the needs of others? Who gets to decide if someone is idle or not?
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