Luke 21:5-24.
I.
Jesus
is still fuming over the poor widow, whom the system and its custodians have
required to donate her whole living to the Temple, while the wealthy get off
with casually tossing in their spare change. He looks around at the Temple itself, where he has been
teaching for the several days since he came into Jerusalem. On his first day he forcibly drove out
the merchants who had been allowed to set up shop in the Temple. For the next few days he continues to
walk over from Bethany, about two miles, coming down one side and up the other
of the steep Kidron Valley, walking mostly in darkness, so he could start
teaching in the early morning.
Some
in his group are still mesmerized by the Temple’s grandeur. Most of them are from Galilee and may
never have been to the big city before.
The Temple, as renovated at great expense in a construction project that
took over 40 years, is spectacular.
It is a tourist attraction in itself, with its foundation of huge
stones, which are still there, by the way. And its gleaming white porticoes and the edifice of the
Temple itself. It is
breathtakingly beautiful.
Jesus
is not impressed, however. Perhaps
he rolls his eyes over the wide-eyed awe of his disciples. “This? This impressive building you’re all gaga over? The time is coming when not even one
stone will be left upon another.
The whole thing will be demolished.”
Buildings
are not important. Jesus’
followers would not construct any buildings at all for about 400 years. Buildings impress us; we attach
importance and value to them; we transfer our own self-image onto them; we
develop sentimental connections to them, or places in them.
But
Jesus has nothing like that. He
knows that the Temple rebuilding project was started by King Herod, the same
Herod that attempted to murder him as a baby (in Matthew). And he knows how much it cost in terms
of workers’ blood and sweat, and the huge amounts of money forcibly shaken out
of poor people. And that very
little of the wealth now generated by this massive tourist trap trickles down
to the people who worked so hard to build it. Plus he knows that the people now running the Temple have
sold out to the Romans and have very little commitment to the Spirit of the Torah. They live fat and happy off the donations of people like
that poor widow.
The
Lord knows that everything built on a foundation of injustice will eventually
fall into ruin. This will
inevitably happen to this Temple, and, as we know, it does happen only about 40 years after Jesus predicts it. The Romans lay siege to the city and
eventually completely demolish it and the Temple.
So
the disciples, distracted from their reverie by this stark prediction, press
Jesus to tell them when this will happen and how they will know when it is
about to happen. I guess so they
will know when to run for the hills?
Or are they looking for proof?
II.
Jesus
then launches into a long diatribe about readiness: "Watch out that you
aren't deceived,” he says. “Many
will come in my name, saying, ‘I'm the one!’ and ‘It’s time!’ Don't follow them. When you hear of wars and rebellions,
don't be alarmed. These things
must happen first, but the end won't happen immediately.”
In
other words, human existence will continue as normal. Individuals will emerge and proclaim themselves to be the
new messiahs, the saviors of the world.
They will attract great followings. They will win elections. They will wield great power. They will generate ideologies rationalizing their own
authority. But Jesus says we
should not follow any of them.
Don’t join in their wars; don’t sign up for their rebellions. Such leaders are corrupt and false.
And
he says we should not go figuring every war or insurrection as a sign of the
end. Wars are just what humans do; they don’t mean anything. They’re
just part of the regular, ongoing collapsing and disintegration of civilization. They happen all the time, and they will
continue to happen.
Jesus
goes on: “Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other. There will be great earthquakes and
wide-scale food shortages and epidemics.
There will also be terrifying sights and great signs in the sky.”
So
political catastrophes are joined by natural disasters to perpetuate a
situation of general human misery.
The thing is, in the way powerful humans have managed to structure the
world, all of this is relatively normal. Since the Fall, there has never been a
time without these kinds of events.
They constitute the context of our human existence, under the domination
of ego-centric, personality-driven leaders.
Human
economics and politics have spawned a regime in which people are always at war
with each other and the earth. We
live by fear, anger, and hatred, and this is reflected in the massive imbalance
and disorder in the world. It is
nothing that the Bible hasn’t recited countless times, going at least back to
Pharaoh’s injustice attracting the ten plagues, or environmental
disasters. Or the way every empire
and unjust system eventually crumbles by the weight of its own falsehood and
sinfulness.
Jesus
says, in effect, “Don’t waste your time and energy sifting through current
events looking for signs. There are
no signs to be seen there except the ‘sign’ that the sins of injustice and
inequality invariably attract God’s wrath. Before you worry about any of that, there is one thing that
you have to do, which is to testify.
You are to point out that it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a better way to live available
to us. Life does not have to be
wall-to-wall war between people and between people and nature. You want a sign? You
have to be the sign.
That is your role as my disciples.”
III.
In
the meantime, we are to share with others the good news of God’s love for the
world. We are to tell the story of
Jesus’ death and resurrection. We
are to “be the change,” which is to say, we are to be living witnesses to God’s
triumph, in Jesus Christ, over the power of sin and death, and over every
enemy.
When
the disciples live according to Jesus’ good news, and his commandments and
values, the principalities and powers that rule in human civilization invariably
see them as a threat. Their
economy depends on greed, selfishness, and widening inequality; but Jesus
teaches sharing and generosity in a community of equals. Their religion is about idolatry, the
State, and punishing scapegoats; Jesus teaches simple trust in the God of
Israel. Their legal system is all
about violence, threats, and retribution; Jesus teaches forgiveness, repentance,
rehabilitation, and healing. Their
politics is based on a hierarchy of classes, and centralized leadership; Jesus
teaches a community of equals. Just
as Jesus himself was executed by the empire for the crimes of blasphemy and
sedition, his disciples will be persecuted as atheists and traitors. Get used to it.
His
disciples will be harassed and hauled into court because of the lifestyle,
practices, words, and actions that they demonstrate. They will be imprisoned; they will be brought before kings
and governors, as we see later in the book of Acts.
Jesus
urges them to see this as an “opportunity to testify.” He even says they should not prepare
what they are going to say in advance, but that he will give them “words and
wisdom that none of [their] opponents will be able to counter or
contradict.” Because the disciples
will be telling the truth; they will be testifying to what is real; they will
be witnessing to the way the world actually is, as God made and intended it. They will be proclaiming the triumph of
light over darkness and life over death.
They will be announcing the victory of goodness over evil and equality
over hierarchy. They will be
telling the truth that love wins, life wins, and the empire of death,
falsehood, and hatred will inevitably come crashing to the ground.
Their
judges and prosecutors, on the other hand, will still be mouthing their
well-scripted lies and propaganda, spewing the toxic fog of rhetoric that plays
on people’s fears, bigotry, and ignorance. Which is how judges and prosecutors, not to mention
lawmakers, maintain their power.
It’s all theater anyway; we know in advance how it will come out.
Jesus
even says to the disciples, “Everyone will hate you because of my name. Even your own family and friends. They will even execute some of you.”
This very thought of being hated by family and friends, to the point
where they assent to your murder, is haunting and barely imaginable to me. And yet Jesus says this is what it will come to.
IV.
In
the movie, The Matrix, the main
character is given a choice to take a blue pill or a red pill. If he takes the blue pill, he will
remain unconscious of the true nature of human existence. But if he takes the red pill, his mind
will open and he will see and know what is real. He will discover that his whole life up until then was a
cyber-illusion.
In
a sense, Jesus Christ offers people a red pill. Through trusting in him we come to perceive the truth. But unlike in the movie, the truth Jesus gives us is that the real world is
actually better than the distorted,
broken, conflict-ridden world we manufacture by our limited, ego-centric,
fear-based thinking. The real
world is a paradise of peace and blessing that Jesus calls the Kingdom of God. And it is always available to us. Jesus even says it is “within” us.
The
thing is, once we take the red pill… that is, once we experience God’s love at
the heart of all things in Jesus Christ, there is no going back. It becomes impossible to accept or
tolerate the sordid, pinched, soiled, rancid, painful, cheap, dark, violent
“civilization” that our leaders offer us.
Not just because it is inadequate and illusory; but because it is doomed, and even now collapsing on
itself in fire and fury.
Jesus
gives a more detailed description of the horror awaiting Jerusalem and its
inhabitants. And we know that this
kind of horror has happened repeatedly in history, and it’s happening now in Gaza,
in northern Iraq, in the Ukraine, in Syria, and a few other places. And it will continue “until the times
of the Gentiles are concluded,” he says.
Who,
knowing that the truth is so much better than this, would choose to stay in
such a pit of anguish and despair?
Who would not choose rather to die,
especially since Jesus has revealed that death is not the end, but a victory
through which we are translated into God’s good and blessed reality?
Every
moment we are faced with this choice between life and death, blessing and
curse; truth and falsehood, light and darkness, to be awake or to be asleep? To be people of God, or people shaped
and conditioned by the latest ideological fad the ruling class has decided to
adopt and impose on the rest of us for their own enrichment? To be champions of love, or pushers of
fear and hate?
We
still dwell in “the times of the Gentiles,” that is, the world as ruled by
people who don’t know God but know only violence and terror. But because of Jesus Christ we may also
hope in, and anticipate, and even begin to see realized among us, a different
way of life. This is a life
characterized by joy, hope, peace, love, and justice. It is the life we are given to share in the gathering of
disciples. It is the life we are
sent out into the world to spread.
V.
Jesus
assures us. “Still, not a hair on
your heads will be lost. By
holding fast, you will gain your lives.”
A wise pastor once told me, during dark days when my infant son was at
risk of being taken away by a judge, that “in the economy of God, nothing is
ever lost.” If God accounts for
every hair on our head, surely God does not lose track of any person,
especially one who knows and hopes in the truth.
The
Lord is promising us that if we hold fast, that is, if we maintain our
obedience of him in living lives expressive of the truth of God’s love; if we
are forgiving, accepting, welcoming, healing, blessing, and sharing people,
following Jesus and seeing our lives shaped by his; if we hold fast to God’s
love for the world by lifting up the downtrodden and not caving in to the power
of the powerful, then we will gain our lives. Then we will live.
Then
we will live in such a way that nothing can hurt or kill us, for we will be one
in God, in this world and the life to come.
+++++++
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