Don’t be terrified. This is your opportunity to witness. And don’t be weary in doing what is right. These are God’s words of hope for you and for the creation.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 33 C
Texts: Luke 21:5-19; Isaiah 65:17-25; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Three things. That’s what the Triune God has to tell you today in a world that’s falling apart:

Don’t be terrified.

This is your opportunity to witness.

And don’t be weary in doing what is right.

Jesus’ apocalyptic warnings seem unnecessary today, with the massive problems that hang over us, whether it’s climate change, struggles with our democracy, still-pervasive racism and sexism that harm millions in our culture, fear of those who are different that leads to death and terror for people coming to our land for life and safety. Jesus talks about wars, earthquakes, famines, persecution, plagues. We’re seeing this.

And it doesn’t matter if every generation has believed they, too, saw the signs. I don’t care. What we face is real and frightening. We don’t need to discount it by saying, “well, everyone always thinks their time is the worst.” Whether this is the worst or not, whether this is the end of all things or not, is irrelevant. In nearly three decades of ministry I’ve never seen this level of concern and anxiety among faithful Christians before. Jesus’ words speak to today.

But hear this from your God: Don’t be terrified. This is your opportunity to witness. And don’t be weary in doing what is right.

Don’t be terrified, the Triune God says, because I am making all things new.

God will create joy and delight in the people of God, Isaiah proclaims. People will live in homes and have gardens, and enjoy the safety of their walls and the fruit of their growing. Weeping will be no more. Distress will be no more.

Now, we could say that this is clearly a promise of a life to come in Christ after we die. But the preaching of Jesus changes that timeline. Jesus proclaimed a way of God that could start this transformation early in this world. Hearts changed, lives changed, to follow God’s ancient command to love God and love neighbor, and all the suffering and distress that we see could start to shift. We know this because we’ve seen it shift in history. You know this because even in your life you’ve seen healing and restoration in the midst of suffering.

Don’t lessen God’s promise by only throwing it into a future after death. God says this: before you call, I will answer. While you’re still speaking, I will hear. That’s a promise for this life, this world. This new heaven and new earth don’t replace a creation that from the beginning God has declared good. They are God’s restoration of a creation we’ve broken into the world God envisioned from the beginning.

So, don’t be terrified, God says. I raised Jesus from the dead: my life and love can bring hope to anything, everything, even that which looks dead.

God’s Son tells you today, that means this is your opportunity to witness.

This is your time, Jesus says. He literally says, “This will lead to your martyrdom.” So it’s your time for martyrdom, but not by being persecuted or killed for being a Christian. Not here in the U.S. Here it is Christians who persecute and kill Muslims and Sikhs and Jews and others because of their faith. Which makes your martyrdom, your witness, even more critical to understand.

What Jesus has always said is, your faith is seen in your love, or no one will know it exists. It’s the witness, the martyrdom, of your sacrificial, vulnerable love as Christ in the world, the giving of all you have to make a difference in this world. That’s your opportunity. God’s promised new heavens and new earth begin with you, with me, with all God’s children, healing the world with vulnerable, sacrificial love.

That means in your family, with your friends, losing for the sake of love of the other. That means in your community, in your society, witnessing by your votes, your protest, your speaking to leaders, and your sacrificial life of justice and mercy to your neighbors. That means in your sacrificial giving, your pledging of that giving to your siblings in Christ in this place. Your giving, and today’s pledging of it, is not “to” anything – not to a Vestry, or to Mount Olive. It is your sacrificial love shared in this body of Christ so we can concretely bring vulnerable, sacrificial love together to our neighbors and our city and our partners across the world, and receive it in turn. This is your opportunity to witness with your very life that God has come to love this world back in Christ and to make all things new.

So Paul says, “don’t be weary in doing what is right.”

None of us are delusional enough to think that any of us has the leverage to change the course of the United States, or even our city. The problems that need resolving are so large that even knowing where to start on one of them is daunting. Let alone all 25 of them, or however many there are.

Don’t let that weary you, Paul says. God’s wisdom in Christ is that any difference you make, any difference, is world changing. You might only love another person as Christ, and bring healing to their day. In God’s eyes, that’s a new heaven and a new earth being born. If you are Christ’s vulnerable, sacrificial love among your friends, your family, your work, in your civic engagement, it doesn’t matter if you’re just one person. In each act of your love, God’s new heaven and new earth begin to happen. And God’s people all over are doing this, just like you.

And of course, as our pledging to each other today reminds us, you also have the gift of doing this love with all of us, together. Don’t underestimate what God can do in the world with the people of Mount Olive. God’s got a history of changing things through the people of God here. When Mount Olive feeds a neighbor, welcomes a stranger, works against injustice, partners with mission around the world, a new heaven and a new earth begins to be created.

So don’t be weary. It is often overwhelming. But as Rabbi Shapiro has said, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”^[1] You are enough, God thinks, with your love and sacrifice and Christ-work. So are we, together. Trust that when it all seems too much.

It’s a hard world, Jesus says. But I am with you always.

God’s Spirit is in you, you are not alone. So don’t be terrified: God is making all things new. This is your opportunity to witness: your life of Christ love will make a difference. And don’t be weary in doing what is right: you’re not the only one God is calling to this, and your love is multiplied in all God’s children. And through you, and all of us, and all God’s children, a new earth and a new heaven are surely beginning right now.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

[1] Rabbi Rami Shapiro, paraphrase and trope on Rabbi Tarfon in Wisdom of the Jewish Sages: A Modern Reading of Pirke Avot (New York: Harmony/Bell Tower [div. of Crown/Random House], c. 1993), p. 41. A calligraphy of this was the cover of the service folder for this day.

It is easy to see the world and despair, or fear, or do nothing. But take courage, God is with you, and you will be strengthened to be a part of God’s healing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 32 C
Texts: Haggai 1:15b – 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

They couldn’t see how to restore what was once so beautiful.

The Jewish exiles returned home from Babylon to disaster. Jerusalem’s walls broken, homes burned, and, worst of all, God’s Temple destroyed. Being home was wonderful, but what now? How can they imagine starting over?

The Thessalonians couldn’t see a possible future. First, they’d become terrified when their loved ones still died as they had before, even after believing in Christ. So Paul had to reassure them. Now apparently they got another letter, claiming it’s from Paul, warning them that the end of the world was at hand. How do you live with that fear hanging over?

The Sadducees couldn’t see the hope Jesus offered. They didn’t believe in resurrection, and Jesus, like the Pharisees, did. In spite of his wisdom, his teaching, his acts of divine power and mercy, they couldn’t see anything in Jesus except someone to be mocked, someone to be trapped into saying something ridiculous, if possible.

So the Judeans turned inward; they took care of themselves.

They rebuilt their homes, started picking up rubble, made a life in the midst of devastation. But as we hear Haggai speak, 18 years have passed since their return, and the Temple still lies in ruins. They haven’t rebuilt their house of worship, the house of God.

The Thessalonians fell into frightened inactivity. If our loved ones are dying, what’s the point of faith? If the world’s going to end, what’s the point of doing anything? Some apparently stopped doing work entirely.

And the Sadducees respond to their inability to see what God is doing in Christ with cynical baiting. They make up a horrible story based on Jewish law that mocks anyone who believes in the resurrection from the dead, trying to trick Jesus. They don’t seem to want enlightenment, just entertainment. Or worse, evidence for a trial.

Sometimes our readings seem to speak directly to our situation. Today is such a day.

The Church has long ended the Church Year with readings about the end times, apocalyptic Scriptures. Today, that seems fitting. The anxiety of all these people feels like our own.

We haven’t returned from exile, but as we look at the state of our beautiful earth, how we’ve destroyed it, how so much is in ruin, we despair. Even if everyone in this country agreed to start working on ending our contribution to climate change, even started trying to reverse it, finally joining the rest of the world in this task, we have no idea if we’re too late. We don’t know if we’ve ruined our home permanently and irreversibly. And we still can’t even get everyone to agree it’s a disaster.

Our cherished institutions of democracy and government seem to be on the verge of failing, too. Things we took for granted – rule of law, decency, the idea that there are facts, truths, that exist beyond personal opinion – we seem to be in danger of losing forever. We don’t know if we can restore any of this, even if we could get others to agree it needed to be restored.

So, like the exiles, we are tempted to despair at the sheer amount of work to be done, and turn inward, taking care of our own needs. Like the Thessalonians, we are tempted to do nothing, to sit out all these problems. If it’s all crashing down, what’s the point? And we are tempted to take the Sadducees’ path, mocking what we don’t understand, hiding our anxiety behind cynical criticism, pretending we’re not worried or despairing.

But did you hear what else was in our readings? Did you hear God’s voice?

God speaks in all these readings with hope and promise in the midst of the despair, the fear, and the feigned indifference.

Jesus – the Triune God’s Word in the flesh – ignores the cynical question and goes straight to reassurance: the point of resurrection, Jesus says, is that it is God’s life that makes you alive. You are children of the resurrection, children of God. What life after death will be like, don’t worry about that, Jesus says. Just know that right now, already, you are resurrection children, God’s life in you.

And that, Paul says, is where your hope comes from. God “loves you and through grace gives you,” Paul says, “eternal comfort and good hope.”

And Haggai brings it all together: “take courage,” he says three times, “take courage, says the Lord, for I am with you. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” I am with you. My spirit lives in you. Don’t be afraid. That’s God’s answer to your despair, your fear, your confusion, even your inability to act.

And that’s not an empty promise. God’s Spirit is in you. You are not alone. That means things can change.

Paul says that the God who “loves you and by grace gives you eternal comfort and good hope” will also now “comfort your heart and strengthen it for every good work and word.” All this Christ-work, this servant work we’ve heard Jesus call us to this summer and fall, all that is ours to do, but it’s ours to do with the comfort and strength of God in our hearts.

So, Haggai says to his people, you can rebuild the Temple. God will be with you, and it will happen. Paul says to the Thessalonians, you can do your calling as followers of Christ, get out of your idleness, step up and be Christ, because you are not alone, God is with you. And Jesus’ calling to you and to me is grounded in our reality of being resurrection children. As Paul said to the Ephesians last week, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead now works in you.

And that’s how this world will be changed. That’s how God will restore all things.

It’s all about the heart, it turns out.

“Take courage,” Haggai says. Courage, literally heart-strength. That’s God’s gift to you. And that’s good news to all who suffer from injustice and oppression, all who despair over the devastation of this world, all who are torn from their families by our own indifferent and wicked leaders, all who struggle to be heard and seen for who they are, all who in any way wonder where God is, and whether God sees any of this, and whether God is going to do anything. God says, I am here. You are not alone. And in these my children – in you, God means! – I am bringing healing and life.

Dear friends, God is with you, giving your heart courage, and you are needed to make a difference. If God can raise Jesus, God can bring life to anything that is dead. And you will be a part of that. And so will I, and all God’s children, until the whole creation sings again.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

https://youtu.be/GulMuNVSeEI