November 18, 2007
The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 28, Year C)
Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9 - First Song of Isaiah (Isaiah 12:2-6);
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19
Every priest has to take exams, the General Ordination Exams, in order to be ordained, and you must show competence in seven different areas, ranging for church history to pastoral response. The year I took the exams they were all “closed book” questions and the thirty or so of us who were taking them that year all brought our typewriters and/or word processors (no lap tops in evidence then!) to the exam room with our one new, unmarked and un-annotated bible, prayer book, and a glass of water (no bottles of water then either) to one room with many power cords and began.
We were blessed with a former college professor as one of us, and she was bound and determined that we would all pass our exams. So she had us in a regimented series of study sessions ahead of time and then the first day of our exams, which lasted five days, she gave us each a purple sweat shirt that said, “Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance: for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”
And we took our exams, more as one group than as individuals though, of course, we didn’t talk to each other during the exams, only as they were over, or during meals while they were going on.
We didn’t all pass, although most of us did, but I do know that we did better on them because we were a team doing it. We were rooting not just for ourselves but for each other. For some of us the idea that God would give us the words to say rang true, and we could point to circumstances when what came out of us in the way of answers was truly nothing we “knew,” but something God had managed to funnel through us for the exams.
We took very ancient words, a literal translation to us, but words meant for a population about to be persecuted for their belief in the risen Jesus and gave them a new meaning for us in our circumstances. Certainly, we were not persecuted, but “authorities” just as certainly had a say in what our lives would be or wouldn’t be from that point on. And that is the amazing thing about “the word of God” as told to us in the bible: the words are ancient, from another time and another place when the words had very different meanings for those who heard them for the first time from what they do for us. But still the meaning we can get from scripture as a guide for our own lives and faith is timeless.
And so we read the apocalyptical references like “not one stone will be left unturned” or when there are “wars and insurrections” and think that the story means us today. And many an author and religious zealot has been able to grab our attention and play to our fears by proclaiming “this” the day that is spoken of so vividly in the bible, the last day before the end of the world and God’s final judgment of us. Oh, we are warned against “those who would lead us astray,” which, of course, only begs the question, who is the right one and who is the false one? And how do we know, when signs of ending are all around us, that this is not the time when the world will end and God will step in and in blissful mercy end all of the warring and hatred that there is in the world?
And I guess we need to answer that by going back to the basics of biblical interpretation. We must know what was going on at the time the particular piece of scripture was written. We must know the political and religious overtones of that day. And in that day there was much discord in the world; the Roman army was powerful and unilateral. There was more than a little conflict between the religious Jews, and even the not so religious, the secular Jews, of the day, and the Romans and the new Christians. And the new Christians, being the smallest in number and the least powerful due to their fewer numbers, were the persecuted underdog.
We are not the persecuted underdog any longer and so this passage can’t make sense in the context of the place of Christianity in our culture. We have to remake it and claim it in the context of our culture here and now. And so, as we did in seminary with our exams, scripture can give us strength or insight or words of wisdom that transcend time and circumstance.
In this case today, pointing a finger at someone and saying, “You are the false witness, and I am the true witness,” is a bit arrogant at best. Seeing the wars and saying they are a sign that the world is coming to an end, or reporting the earthquakes that have taken place in the last few weeks as though they were the precursor to a cataclysmic world end is likewise a bit silly. There are earthquakes every year, indeed every day. There has never been a time that I know of in recorded history when there wasn’t a war going on someplace. There has never been a time when one nation was not seen as the enemy of another. So surely this time is not any worse than any other time.
Yet there are those who persist in saying these signs are signs of our times: “the world is ending and we better do something about it.” Be it to change our own lives into something determined by the ones making the “predication,” or to demand a political change, or – well, you name it. Always it is about someone else making a determination of what we should do, or what should be done by others. Yet, I do not think that is the intention of this passage at all. I think what this passage is calling us all to, is a greater awareness of whom we are dependent upon, and asking us to live each day as if it were one of our last days: loving those we love, being fair and just, forgiving, healing, looking forward, not to the destruction of the earth but to the coming of God’s permanent reign of love. To trust that is what is coming – and knowing Advent is just around the corner – that isn’t a big leap for us.
I hope none of us will be arrested and persecuted. I hope we will not be seduced by false witnesses or be victims of earthquakes, famine, or plague. But if we are, then I further hope that we will not see it as the end of the world, but rather the reality of living in a not yet kingdom of God world, still unfinished, a product of a wonderful gift from God and the often unwise actions of creation, of humans like you and me.
But what I really hope is that you each will be able to imagine yourself wearing a purple sweat shirt with the words, “Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance: for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to with stand or contradict.” And then that you will be able to trust its sentiment. For God does put words in our mouths, even to this day, if we have the bravery to let go of what we want to say and let God say it instead, even in the face of pestilence, peril, earthquake, and famine.
May we each find that truth in our own hearts and our own lives.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd