Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9; II Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
I promise that not every sermon I preach will begin with the words, “When I was in the Holy Land…” but I can’t resist a second week of sharing some of that experience and hope that you might indulge me one more time. In part, last week’s All Saints’ gospel coupled with this week’s gospel continue with that same synergy of God and our Holy Land tour. Whereas last week’s message was set in the pastoral and yet slightly menacing threat of the geo-political landscape of Galilee; this week Jesus preaches in a more chaotic setting in which the threat of Rome is much more overt in the midst of Jerusalem.
Seventy-five percent of Jesus’ ministry is set amongst the rolling hills and peaceful shores of a nine-mile stretch of the Sea of Galilee. His words and his work, though challenging to people’s daily life and understanding of what it means to be community, are not threatening to the political power. They are more invitation to reframe life in terms of relationships over rules or necessary social customs or mores. He offers a different way of thinking about the world and life through his stories and parables, beatitudes and wisdom sayings, even his actions and behaviors. He eats with tax collectors and prostitutes and invites a bunch of unqualified and untrained people to follow him and help spread his message. It’s not perfect—the disciples, esp Peter, say some dumb stuff and fail at the tasks he assigns them—but he doesn’t give up on them or his work.
Things change when Jesus gets to Jerusalem. No longer is his message one of invitation to transformation through a new way of seeing and understanding the world. Instead, when Jesus gets to Jerusalem, he begins to preach a more apocalyptic message, a challenging message meant to threaten the authority and call them out. When speaking of the Temple, “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” In terms of false prophets, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’” About the earth, “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified….Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” Finally, he makes it personal, “But before all this occurs they will arrest you and persecute you…hand you over to synagogues and prisons…brought before kings and governors in my name…You will be betrayed…they will put some of you to death….you will be hated by all because of my name.” He is not threatened by Jerusalem—”the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers…” He weeps for her and pities her—he desires to gather her under his wings of protection and he warns her of her own impermanence.
We started the biblical experience of our Holy Land tour in Galilee and after three days there, headed south—up to Jerusalem. The morning we left our kibbutz was a clear and soft day after rains the night before. The further we traveled south, the brighter and bluer the day became. After a morning excursion to Beth She’an—a Roman ruin of a first century city—and a dip in the Jordan River, we arrived at the top of the Mount of Olives. Though I had looked at pictures on the internet and had heard stories describing the location, I was not prepared for the visceral experience when stepping off the bus.
The Mount of Olives stands directly opposed to the Temple Mount—divided by a sharp decline in the landscape that is filled with tens of thousands of Jewish tombs. When we stepped off the bus, we had a glorious view of the golden Dome of the Rock but the sights and sounds and smells of the city assaulted our senses immediately. My first thought was, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” My second thought was, “Woe to you Jerusalem.” It immediately became clear to me why Jesus’s pastoral preaching and teaching changed so drastically to an apocalyptic take on the world when he came to Jerusalem after leaving behind the Sea of Galilee. There was a camel blocking our path in getting off the bus, street vendors hawking there wares and trying to get us to pay attention to them by separating us from our group, a guy on a motorcycle kept riding through the midst of those crowded on the sidewalk yelling at a dog who was running through the crowd, not to mention the sheer number of tourists gawking at the sites, chatting and laughing and tour guides shouting to keep their groups together. There is no peace in Jerusalem.
Even as we made our way down the Mount to the Garden of Gethsemane, there was nothing pastoral about that scene—the streets were narrow and walled closing in on us and limiting our space to walk as we competed with traffic coming form both directions in the narrow one lane road and shouting at one another to get out of the way—though no one had any place to go. The Garden of Gethsemane was a bit quieter, but our senses were exhausted after the seemingly non-stop attack of the city in such deep contrast with the quiet and peace of Galilee and the Jordan River. It felt a bit apocalyptic.
It is not simply the chaotic surface level of existence that assaulted our senses that day and the following days in and around Jerusalem that I think Jesus was tying into. Jesus understood what was under that chaos—the drive for power and wealth, the expectations of productivity and entitlement, even the more overt threat of Herod and Rome. He saw the Temple as the place that should have offered comfort but was more interested in compliance and conformity. And he knew as it allowed itself to be drawn more into the standards of man—productivity, power, and affirmation of the systems that surrounded it—that the joys of God would be lessened. He also knew that those base desires would also threaten the temporality of the Temple—and he was right.
Within forty years of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Temple would fall. Roman legionaries would demolish the Temple—stone by stone—until only the foundation would remain in existence. It would take them three years to pull it down—“when not one stone would be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Imagine that—three years to tear down a building. Firstly, the construction of the building would have been mammoth. But secondly, and more importantly, the tenacity and expense of such destruction would reveal a deep resentment, anger, and desire to prove who was the greater power—Rome.
Jesus saw what would happen when ideology and power became pre-eminent in a religious context. Today we might call that “zeal” and are quick to point to the shadow side of religious zeal. But there is something even more subversive and destructive when beliefs become tainted by the desires of man—we turn against each other. We tear down that which is most holy, most sacred to us in our attempt to destroy—or, if you are even more subtle, not build up—one another. In that destruction, we don’t simply tear down one another; we destroy the very thing we believe we are fighting for. Why else would parents and siblings, relatives and friends betray one another?
When we speak ill of our country, our work place, our schools, our homes, even our church; we are tearing them down stone by stone. We don’t realize how much our thoughts, words, and actions contribute to the problem we are already so frustrated by—not fix it. We are quick to complain and point out the darkness and slow to heal and find the joys. It’s not that complaints are not warranted at times but when they are not accompanied by constructive thought and creative aspirations, they become destructive and demeaning—to us as individuals, to our institutions, and to our communal life.
In the midst of all this darkness, we are called to be light bearers. We are called to speak the good news not the complaints and negativity. We are called to find the good and relay it to all the world. Jesus says that all this brokenness, all these things that are wrong with the world gives us “an opportunity to testify. And that by [our] endurance [we] will gain [our] souls.”
We get a choice—we can contribute to the darkness or we can live the Gospel call to share and witness to the Good News by finding that which is good and beautiful and true in all of life—
politics, work, school, home, church, wherever we may be. That will probably mean we need to reexamine our tendency to feel entitled to specific outcomes or at least curb our expectations and open up to our possibilities. It will mean we must engage in a sacrificial existence—giving of ourselves to the things that we truly believe in without defining what we think we ought to receive in return. Being Good News, sharing Good News in word and action is hard when you leave the pastoral existence of the sea and countryside and enter into the challenges and grind of daily living. But that is the call Jesus places before us today. It is the call he knows will truly heal the world. We’ve tried the complaint route maybe it is time to try a different path. Speak good news to be good news.