Detention, Destruction, and Divine Hope
Well, friends, it’s the end of the world. Here we are in this room where it could happen as we heard in our gospel. I won’t pretend that this lesson is easy or simple. The lessons today are complicated and difficult, and they seem to point to the end of the world for both the preacher and those listening. But the end of the world isn’t always quite what it seems. When I was in the sixth grade, our English class met out in a prefab or a prefabricated building. This dull yellow structure was the perfect educational environment. It offered a cool breeze in the winter and sauna like blast furnace breezes in the summer. There were even days when we had our very own trickling fountain of water coming down on our desks.
Our teacher, Mrs. Gibbons, was dynamic. She offered reading and writing assignments that helped us explore and discover our hidden talents. She encouraged us to think critically, to expand our imaginations and explore the universe of language set before us. However, as creative as we could be, we could not be creative with the time it took to walk to her classroom from the main building. One day I was late to her class. By 10 minutes. I was of course exploring friendships in the hallway, discovering new things about what lunch was to offer that day, and what amazing things we could get up to after school. And I suddenly realized I was late. But surely Mrs. Givens would understand the importance of conversation. She did not.
What she did understand was that my world was coming to an end. She could see the future and predicted that the Temple would be destroyed, and suffering and famine would prevail leading to the greatest pain of all: lunchtime detention. Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s not that big of a deal. You go to eat in a classroom at lunchtime and study for the rest of the hour. However, in my sixth-grade mind, this was the end of the world. My anxiety spiral was sent into overdrive. This detention could go on my permanent record. I would be watched for the rest of my middle school time, shunned from friends and family, the end of the world as I knew it.
But not everything is the end of the world, and not everything is quite as it seems. Apocalyptic texts aren’t quite all that they seem either. Our gospel lesson today is the beginning of the ‘little apocalypse’ where Jesus teaches about the destruction of the Temple, of wars and famines and of great suffering. Apocalyptic texts were nothing new. They offer revelation and new ways to see the world that is so filled with turmoil. They name what is happening to give meaning to the events of the time. And, in a way, they offer some hope that God is still with us. Apocalypse comes from the Greek meaning ‘to take out of hiding’ or ‘to reveal’.
And Jesus offers revelation to his followers. These followers of Christ see the Temple and they see the permanence of the stone, the security of the institution that they have known. But Jesus teaches that no structure and no institution can be the Savior of the world. He is speaking of the Temple falling stone by stone as her critique of the very institution he is in. The one he will teach from, the one that formed the whole community around him. The wars and famine, and those who claim to lead and come and go. They cannot be saviors for us all. Wars, famine, destruction, devastation, the dehumanization of creation and the grasping of temporal power are all things we have seen come and go for two millennia and more.
But as with a lunchtime detention, none of these things are the end of the world. When we know that the Savior has come and continues to reveal himself, then nothing is the end of the world. There is always hope. With hope comes the truth of Christ, the truth that Christ came into the world, to disrupt the world, to break down systems, not to comfort those in power, but to break it open and for truth to be revealed. Difficult truths that no government is really our savior, that no one we elect is above the mission that we have in Christ Jesus.
That no influencer or brand or ideology can ever take the place of the work that Christ has given us to do. The work of a loving God, the work that we are to love God with every fiber of our being, to love our neighbors as ourselves. We know this. We strive to live into this, and yet we rip one another apart. We claim to love one another with Christian love when we know that there really is no hate like false Christian love. To love like Jesus is to speak truth to power. To love like Jesus is to break down the walls that divide us. It’s not enough to simply invite people to sit with us wherever we are.
The tables we sit around have lost their sense of purpose. The true host of the banquet feast is no longer at the head. We build tables that are too high for some, with chairs that break underneath us, and feasts of spoiled food and ideologies with vitriol and enmity for one another. And yet we still sit. We still sit at these tables and prop up institutions and ideologies that not only harm, but destroy, the very humanity of ourselves and all of creation around us.
Why are we trying to sit at tables that Jesus would overturn? Why are we trying to prop up institutions that Jesus would throw down? Why are we still sitting idly by as our neighbors, beloved children of God just as we are, exclude others from the table and dehumanize with words and actions that seek to destroy ‘the other’ around us? Stand up from the tables that you know Jesus would flip. Tear down the walls that separate us. The beginning of the birth pangs are here. The discomfort of tearing down what is familiar to bring hope to a broken world is our mission given by Jesus Christ.
Jesus taught us that all of the trials and tribulations of the world give rise to the hope of the divine. In a time of such division, of such hatred and anger and revilement of others based on who they are or who they love, where they come from, how they look, or who they voted for, simply stand up from the table laid with rotting divisions and seek the one who came to the world to love us, to heal us, teach us, and commanded us to do the work. I won’t pretend that this work is easy or simple. It takes sacrifice. It takes courage. But really no more sacrifice or courage than it took Jesus to go and be nailed onto the cross, to suffer and die for the sake of each and every beloved child in creation.
And so how do we begin? Where do we start? We can’t agree on the meaning and teaching of the apocalyptic texts or revelations. We don’t even all agree on the best way to prepare coffee in the morning, let alone how we live into the teachings of Jesus Christ. So if we can’t agree, if we can’t agree on anything at all, if you can’t even seem to be in relationship with your neighbor or why someone rejoices when others mourn, then we have to do something for no reason at all. If we can do nothing else, if we can agree about nothing else, then we must be kind for absolutely no reason at all. Amen.