Heaven on their minds
Commentary
At the opening of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas laments, "All your followers are blind / too much heaven on their minds." The critique raises a fair question. How much should heaven be on our minds? How much is too much? And, alternatively, how little is too little?
Heaven may be on our minds this week as we consider our three lections. It is not mentioned explicitly in any of the texts, but the hope of a perfect and ultimate destination is at play in each passage. God promised the troubled people of Isaiah's day that he had an ideal time and place in store for them in their future. The Christians in Thessalonica were very conscious of God's climactic future, and Jesus' teaching in Luke 21 details some of the birth pains that will precede and accompany that coming climax.
Jesus' North American followers today may not be guilty of the rock opera Judas' charge. Heaven may be too little on our minds, for we are easily preoccupied with this earth. Striking that balance between this world and the world to come is an ongoing challenge for God's people, and one that this week's passages give us opportunity to explore.
Isaiah 65:17-25
The promise that God is going "to create new heavens and a new earth" probably sounds to us -- and almost certainly sounds to our people -- like a New Testament promise. It is a New Testament promise, of course (see 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1), but not originally. Most American Christians, many of whom are unwitting Marcionists, need to be reminded of every point of commonality between the Testaments. God's desire to make all things new and perfect is not new with the New Testament. Hundreds of years before Jesus' earthly ministry, Isaiah declared this good promise from the heart of God.
The cosmic scale of God's promised new creation is notable. Isaiah and his contemporaries lived in a world of national gods. The Egyptians had their gods. So did the Babylonians, and so did Israel -- except that, in Israel's case, it was only one God. Several Old Testament passages that come out of times of international conflict reflect the prevailing paradigm of national or localized gods (see, for example, 1 Kings 20:23 and 2 Kings 19:10-12). In that theological context, therefore, it must have been difficult for the Jews to maintain the big-picture perspective that their God was the God. He was not God only of a narrow strip of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, struggling on Jerusalem's behalf with the gods of other nations. Rather, he was God of all creation, and this prophecy recalls that truth. In his perfect plan, Jerusalem may have a special place, but the scope of his will extends far beyond her walls. The heavens and the earth are his, and he will make them new.
The details of God's perfect picture remind me of my own New Year's resolutions, for they are something of a mixture. On the one hand, I like to envision and articulate how it's going to be in the New Year, and, on the other hand, I also find it encouraging to say how it is not going to be anymore.
That's a therapeutic thing for us to do from time to time: to declare how things are not going to be in the future. Sometimes it is stubbornness or selfishness speaking, and sometimes it is an unrealistic dream we're articulating. Still, within whatever hurt and frustration has characterized the past or present, we need to say that the future will be different.
Such is the good news for Isaiah's audience. Scholars disagree about the time and circumstances in which this latest section of Isaiah was written. Whatever the case, we can be certain that the people were somewhere in the neighborhood of trouble and difficulty. Whether it was ominous on the horizon, whether they were suffering in the midst of it, or whether they were fresh from its grip, trouble was not far away. To that troubled people, God promised that the future would be different, and a significant part of the difference was the bad stuff that would no longer be part of their experience (for example, no more weeping, cries of distress, infant deaths, fruitless labor, and so on).
The passage ends with the classic language and imagery of the peaceable kingdom, revisited here from much earlier in Isaiah's message (11:6-9). While certain things that threaten and diminish life are going to be eliminated, it is interesting to note what things do not fall in that category. Physical labor and dangerous animals, which can be the source of hardship and hazard, remain part of God's perfect picture. Those things will not be eliminated, but rather redeemed. The wolf and lion will not be kept off God's holy mountain, but instead they will live there harmlessly. Humans will not be freed from labor, but rather they will be delivered from fruitless and frustrating labor to "enjoy the work of their hands."
In the end, the passage calls Eden to mind. The full array of creatures is there, but there is a peaceful coexistence. While fallen Adam and Eve had been sentenced each to their own individual versions of hard labor (see Genesis 3:16-19), now "they shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity." The curse is reversed in God's perfect plan.
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
From old Simeon's lifelong anticipation on, the New Testament throbs with a sense of expectation about God's coming kingdom. The Christmas story anticipates it (as in Matthew 2:1-6; Luke 1:69-71). John the Baptist and Jesus both come and proclaim it (see, for example, Matthew 3:1-2 and 4:17). That sense of expectation animated the mission of the early church. Even in the midst of suffering and persecution, the church took comfort in looking forward to Christ's victorious return and the establishment of God's unchallenged universal reign.
That return and reign were both very much on the minds of the Thessalonian Christians, and those subjects become major themes of both of Paul's epistles to Thessalonica.
We don't know with certainty what issues and attitudes prevailed in the first-century congregation in Thessalonica. As with so many New Testament epistles, we are put in the position of a police sketch artist -- not able to see the subject ourselves, we have to draw our picture based on what someone else saw. We read what Paul wrote to those Christians whom he had in view, and we draw our conclusions about them from the things he wrote to them.
One strange misunderstanding that Paul wrote to correct was the assumption that the Day of the Lord had already come (see 2:1-11). Perhaps that assumption contributed to the problem of idleness among some in the church that Paul addresses in our selected passage. Perhaps that sense of completion led to an air of complacency.
When I was a child, our family would drive thirteen hours one way to reach a little lake house where we would vacation together during the month of July. We all were exhausted by the time we arrived, of course. My sister and I, therefore, were inclined to go into the cottage and plop down to rest. My mom and dad, however, knew that there was a car to unload, clothes to put away, beds to make, and such. My sister and I just knew that we had arrived at our destination, and we were slightly blind to the work that remained to be done.
Perhaps some of that childishness prevailed in Thessalonica. Maybe, in their thinking that the Day of the Lord had already come, they plopped down with the mistaken satisfaction that they had arrived at their destination, neglecting the work that needed to be done.
Paul's juxtaposition of "idleness" and "busybodies" in verse 11 is insightful. The problem with idle people, of course, is usually not that they aren't doing anything. Rather, the problem is that what they are doing is not helpful, and is often destructive. The old truisms about idle hands and an idle mind are well founded, for the true danger of idleness is not inactivity but bad activity. A group of bored teenagers decides to pull some prank. A group of adult friends with nothing worthwhile to talk about fills their conversation instead with complaining, criticism, and gossip. King David, having passed on his wartime responsibilities, wandered about his bedroom and balcony in the middle of the day, ending up in great trouble (2 Samuel 11).
In contrast to the idleness of some in Thessalonica, Paul suggests a different style, and here his pastoral correction takes on a flavor that may be a bit distasteful to us. "You ought to imitate us," is his candid counsel to the Thessalonians.
On the one hand, of course, we recognize the reality that actions can speak louder than words. Certainly we know how hypocrisy -- a lifestyle at odds with one's proclamations -- can diminish and even nullify that proclamation. On the other hand, we are so careful to avoid seeming "holier than thou," and so cautious about appearing to set ourselves up above anyone else, that the instruction to "look at me" and "be like me" is nearly unthinkable.
For many of us, the pendulum has only recently begun to swing the other way -- away from the clergy-on-a-pedestal model -- and we welcome the change. We're glad for the chance to own our own humanness and to confess our faults and our frailties. Heaven forbid that we should try to climb back up on that pedestal voluntarily.
Still, the reality is that we human beings are largely imitative creatures. From the time we are babies, we learn how to do so much of what we do by imitating what we see those around us doing. I even had a boyhood friend who, though perfectly healthy, had a stilted and awkward walk simply because his father suffered from arthritis in his hips, and the boy had learned to walk like his dad.
As infants, we begin to imitate sounds whose meanings we don't yet understand. As children, we see what mommies and daddies do, and we begin to copy those behaviors. We learn skills, sports, and manners by watching and imitating those who train, coach, and raise us. Then there is the whole pop culture of mostly unworthy role models, whose examples influence how our teens dress, dance, talk, and think.
As surely as we learn to speak and walk and cook and throw by imitating, we learn a good deal about how to be Christians by imitating. How we pray and worship, how we serve, what we emphasize -- these can all be largely the product of the examples that surround us. As pastors, we may see rather clearly what patterns prevail in different congregations we serve, and those established patterns are sometimes simply a function of imitation: the attitude or the style prevails by duplication.
The reality is that from a very early age, human beings begin imitating, and they are better served if surrounded by good examples rather than poor ones. Heaven forbid, therefore, that we should abdicate that pedestal. Perhaps we need to regain in part the Church of England's understanding of the priest's responsibility to be a "vicar" -- that is, a vicarious experience of Christ.
In the case of Paul and the Thessalonians, the exemplary pace set by the apostle was that of working for a living. We see Paul mention elsewhere his choice to be self-supporting rather than exercising his right to be supported by the churches (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 9:6-18; 2 Corinthians 11:7-10; Philippians 4:14-17). His point in those other references, however, is different from the point he is making to the Thessalonians, for here he combats the problem of idleness.
The problem of idleness may or may not resonate in your congregation or in mine. It is a problem at some times and in some places, but I don't think we would classify it among the "at every time and in every place" struggles. How Paul concludes this passage, however, is counsel that does apply to every Christian in every congregation: "Do not be weary in doing what is right."
From the earnest volunteer suffering from burnout to the spouse or parent who is tired of trying without response; from the teen struggling not to give in to peer pressure to the businessperson for whom unseen ethical choices are starting to seem like an expensive habit -- we have pews full of people who need to be encouraged not to become weary in doing what is right. Indeed, there may be a discouraged preacher and tired pastor in our pulpit this Sunday, too, who needs the same encouragement.
Luke 21:5-19
I spent part of my growing up years in Cleveland, Ohio. In the days of John D. Rockefeller, there was a neighborhood there known as Millionaires' Row. An elegant stretch of Euclid Avenue in turn-of-the-century Cleveland was lined with mansions belonging to the magnates and moguls of the day. I suspect that, in its glory years, residents could not have imagined the decrepit and dilapidated condition of that neighborhood a very few generations later.
Likewise, the people within earshot of Jesus that day by the Temple could not have imagined what would become of that glorious edifice just a few decades later. They stood marveling at the building, and rightly so. It must have been one of the proudest and loveliest structures in the whole region. We human beings have a hard time picturing something so stately and secure being decimated. Surely that was part of the shock of the footage from September 11th, 2001: We could hardly believe our eyes as those two towering landmarks in New York City collapsed to the ground.
Jesus proposed the unthinkable to the marveling bystanders: "As for these things that you see ... not one stone will be left upon another."
Naturally, Jesus' remark prompted a question. When?
Their interest in Jesus' answer is quite different from our interest in his answer. For Jesus' original audience, the whole matter was very close to home. There stood the Temple right before them. How menacingly soon would its destruction be? For us, on the other hand, Jesus' teaching is not tied to a landmark that is close to our hearts and right before our eyes. Since the prediction comes from 2,000 years ago, we naturally distance ourselves from it: We assume that it references either times and events long past (as the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D.) or times and events in the hazy, someday, distant future of the eschaton. While Jesus' hearers feared that his dreadful prediction was relevant to their time and place, the people in our pews honestly suspect that it is not relevant to theirs.
The irony is that Jesus' followers -- then and now -- may miss the real point of his teachings about the end. We hear him talking about the end, and we focus our attention on that end. His real point in this passage, as in others, however, is not the end per se, but life in the meantime. The coach does not point to the time remaining on the game clock to get his players thinking about what they'll do after the game. He points to the time remaining as a way of getting their heads more into the game itself. So it is with Jesus' teachings about the end.
In the present passage, when "life in the meantime" is characterized by difficulties and opportunities, by people abandoning us but God abiding with us, the details and contexts may change from one era to another. Those basic truths of the "meantime" remain always the same. That is an important affirmation for our congregations whose discipleship is being lived out in the meantime.
Application
Traditionally, people give more thought to the hereafter when the here-and-now isn't so good. The African slaves in colonial America often sang of the life beyond their present misery ("soon I will be done with the troubles of the world," "swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home," and so forth). Likewise, it was often times of persecution that brought the ancient Israelites or the early Christians to thinking and writing about heaven.
Of course, for as long as we are in this fallen world, the here-and-now isn't so good. Individually, we may be quite comfortable -- healthy, prosperous, and happily engaged in the activities of this life and this world -- but the here-and-now in the broader sense is not so good. In that sense, we ought to always be thinking about heaven.
The question, as we alluded to earlier, is what effect such heaven-mindedness will have on God's people. Will it spur them on in God's redemptive work in this world? Or, conversely, will a preoccupation with the world to come foster a kind of malaise about the present world?
The risk of worldly comfort is an indifference to heaven. The risk of heavenly preoccupation is complacency on earth. We follow one who calls us to be fully engaged in both heaven and earth, as exemplified by his prayer for God's will to be done "on earth as it is in heaven."
An Alternative Application
Isaiah 65:17-25.
We observed above the "no more shall there be" theme in God's promises in the Isaiah passage. I noted that my own New Year's resolutions have that quality to them, and that all of us at times need to be able to affirm that certain unhappy, unfavorable elements in the present will not be part of the future.
That element of the Isaiah lection is not unique to it. We see that way of talking about God's future in numerous places in scripture (see, for example, 2 Samuel 7:10; Psalm 37:10; Revelation 21:4; 22:5). And just as God's universal reign suggests certain evils that will be no more in the world, so his personal reign in an individual life suggests certain evils that will be no more in that life (see, for example, Ephesians 4:17--5:5; Colossians 3:1-10; 1 Peter 2:1, 11).
We are familiar with the leader -- coach, executive, elected official -- who comes in and says, "This is how it's going to be." Perhaps the Isaiah passage gives us a jumping off place for exploring how the Lord comes in and says, "This is how it is not going to be." From the mandated personal ethics to the global promise of no more sadness, pain, or distress, it is all good news for us.
Preaching The Psalm
Isaiah 12
This psalm embedded in the writing of Isaiah is a beautiful meditation on the journey we take as human beings from failure, to forgiveness, to gratitude, to praise.
In our failure we encounter the anger and disappointment of God. We have expectations for ourselves, expectations that are rooted in what we believe God expects of us. When we fail to live up to those expectations -- either by omission or commission, guilt is the result. If our actions or inactions have consequences, those consequences become for us the very embodiment of the wrath of God.
But then forgiveness comes. We find that God's anger "has turned away." In the act of contrition and whatever accompanying penance we may impose on ourselves, we encounter a gracious God whose interests are not in our destruction but in our salvation. As we encounter this forgiveness, we discover that guilt gives way to confidence. We feel our relationship with God mending. The anxiety that had before gripped us in our failure now gives way to hope with the acceptance God bestows on us. We are free, and are released from our sin.
To this there is but one response -- gratitude. We know that God was under no compulsion to forgive us. Forgiveness comes as a free and undeserved gift. There is no way to pay for it or pay it back. We can only be grateful. Out of that gratitude we experience a sense of joy. Isaiah writes that it is with this joy that we draw from the well of salvation. In other words, there is a reservoir of grace that will flow over us and refresh us for as long as we drink from its depths.
That's when the praise begins. "Sing praises to the Lord," Isaiah declares, "because he has done gloriously." That glory reaches as far as the skies and as deep as the depths of the earth. The glory of God reflects God's great creative power, the power to shape the heavens, but it also celebrates God's power to forgive lowly sinners. Because of God's grace, and because we are set free from our failure by that grace, we are able to lift our voices with the voices of the universe in singing praise to God.
Of course we know that the whole cycle is likely to begin again. As hard as it is to imagine, it is nonetheless true. We often move from failure to forgiveness to gratitude to praise, and then back to failure. Thankfully, God is long-suffering and kind. God will keep the way open for us to find our way back again and again to the well of salvation.
Heaven may be on our minds this week as we consider our three lections. It is not mentioned explicitly in any of the texts, but the hope of a perfect and ultimate destination is at play in each passage. God promised the troubled people of Isaiah's day that he had an ideal time and place in store for them in their future. The Christians in Thessalonica were very conscious of God's climactic future, and Jesus' teaching in Luke 21 details some of the birth pains that will precede and accompany that coming climax.
Jesus' North American followers today may not be guilty of the rock opera Judas' charge. Heaven may be too little on our minds, for we are easily preoccupied with this earth. Striking that balance between this world and the world to come is an ongoing challenge for God's people, and one that this week's passages give us opportunity to explore.
Isaiah 65:17-25
The promise that God is going "to create new heavens and a new earth" probably sounds to us -- and almost certainly sounds to our people -- like a New Testament promise. It is a New Testament promise, of course (see 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1), but not originally. Most American Christians, many of whom are unwitting Marcionists, need to be reminded of every point of commonality between the Testaments. God's desire to make all things new and perfect is not new with the New Testament. Hundreds of years before Jesus' earthly ministry, Isaiah declared this good promise from the heart of God.
The cosmic scale of God's promised new creation is notable. Isaiah and his contemporaries lived in a world of national gods. The Egyptians had their gods. So did the Babylonians, and so did Israel -- except that, in Israel's case, it was only one God. Several Old Testament passages that come out of times of international conflict reflect the prevailing paradigm of national or localized gods (see, for example, 1 Kings 20:23 and 2 Kings 19:10-12). In that theological context, therefore, it must have been difficult for the Jews to maintain the big-picture perspective that their God was the God. He was not God only of a narrow strip of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, struggling on Jerusalem's behalf with the gods of other nations. Rather, he was God of all creation, and this prophecy recalls that truth. In his perfect plan, Jerusalem may have a special place, but the scope of his will extends far beyond her walls. The heavens and the earth are his, and he will make them new.
The details of God's perfect picture remind me of my own New Year's resolutions, for they are something of a mixture. On the one hand, I like to envision and articulate how it's going to be in the New Year, and, on the other hand, I also find it encouraging to say how it is not going to be anymore.
That's a therapeutic thing for us to do from time to time: to declare how things are not going to be in the future. Sometimes it is stubbornness or selfishness speaking, and sometimes it is an unrealistic dream we're articulating. Still, within whatever hurt and frustration has characterized the past or present, we need to say that the future will be different.
Such is the good news for Isaiah's audience. Scholars disagree about the time and circumstances in which this latest section of Isaiah was written. Whatever the case, we can be certain that the people were somewhere in the neighborhood of trouble and difficulty. Whether it was ominous on the horizon, whether they were suffering in the midst of it, or whether they were fresh from its grip, trouble was not far away. To that troubled people, God promised that the future would be different, and a significant part of the difference was the bad stuff that would no longer be part of their experience (for example, no more weeping, cries of distress, infant deaths, fruitless labor, and so on).
The passage ends with the classic language and imagery of the peaceable kingdom, revisited here from much earlier in Isaiah's message (11:6-9). While certain things that threaten and diminish life are going to be eliminated, it is interesting to note what things do not fall in that category. Physical labor and dangerous animals, which can be the source of hardship and hazard, remain part of God's perfect picture. Those things will not be eliminated, but rather redeemed. The wolf and lion will not be kept off God's holy mountain, but instead they will live there harmlessly. Humans will not be freed from labor, but rather they will be delivered from fruitless and frustrating labor to "enjoy the work of their hands."
In the end, the passage calls Eden to mind. The full array of creatures is there, but there is a peaceful coexistence. While fallen Adam and Eve had been sentenced each to their own individual versions of hard labor (see Genesis 3:16-19), now "they shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity." The curse is reversed in God's perfect plan.
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
From old Simeon's lifelong anticipation on, the New Testament throbs with a sense of expectation about God's coming kingdom. The Christmas story anticipates it (as in Matthew 2:1-6; Luke 1:69-71). John the Baptist and Jesus both come and proclaim it (see, for example, Matthew 3:1-2 and 4:17). That sense of expectation animated the mission of the early church. Even in the midst of suffering and persecution, the church took comfort in looking forward to Christ's victorious return and the establishment of God's unchallenged universal reign.
That return and reign were both very much on the minds of the Thessalonian Christians, and those subjects become major themes of both of Paul's epistles to Thessalonica.
We don't know with certainty what issues and attitudes prevailed in the first-century congregation in Thessalonica. As with so many New Testament epistles, we are put in the position of a police sketch artist -- not able to see the subject ourselves, we have to draw our picture based on what someone else saw. We read what Paul wrote to those Christians whom he had in view, and we draw our conclusions about them from the things he wrote to them.
One strange misunderstanding that Paul wrote to correct was the assumption that the Day of the Lord had already come (see 2:1-11). Perhaps that assumption contributed to the problem of idleness among some in the church that Paul addresses in our selected passage. Perhaps that sense of completion led to an air of complacency.
When I was a child, our family would drive thirteen hours one way to reach a little lake house where we would vacation together during the month of July. We all were exhausted by the time we arrived, of course. My sister and I, therefore, were inclined to go into the cottage and plop down to rest. My mom and dad, however, knew that there was a car to unload, clothes to put away, beds to make, and such. My sister and I just knew that we had arrived at our destination, and we were slightly blind to the work that remained to be done.
Perhaps some of that childishness prevailed in Thessalonica. Maybe, in their thinking that the Day of the Lord had already come, they plopped down with the mistaken satisfaction that they had arrived at their destination, neglecting the work that needed to be done.
Paul's juxtaposition of "idleness" and "busybodies" in verse 11 is insightful. The problem with idle people, of course, is usually not that they aren't doing anything. Rather, the problem is that what they are doing is not helpful, and is often destructive. The old truisms about idle hands and an idle mind are well founded, for the true danger of idleness is not inactivity but bad activity. A group of bored teenagers decides to pull some prank. A group of adult friends with nothing worthwhile to talk about fills their conversation instead with complaining, criticism, and gossip. King David, having passed on his wartime responsibilities, wandered about his bedroom and balcony in the middle of the day, ending up in great trouble (2 Samuel 11).
In contrast to the idleness of some in Thessalonica, Paul suggests a different style, and here his pastoral correction takes on a flavor that may be a bit distasteful to us. "You ought to imitate us," is his candid counsel to the Thessalonians.
On the one hand, of course, we recognize the reality that actions can speak louder than words. Certainly we know how hypocrisy -- a lifestyle at odds with one's proclamations -- can diminish and even nullify that proclamation. On the other hand, we are so careful to avoid seeming "holier than thou," and so cautious about appearing to set ourselves up above anyone else, that the instruction to "look at me" and "be like me" is nearly unthinkable.
For many of us, the pendulum has only recently begun to swing the other way -- away from the clergy-on-a-pedestal model -- and we welcome the change. We're glad for the chance to own our own humanness and to confess our faults and our frailties. Heaven forbid that we should try to climb back up on that pedestal voluntarily.
Still, the reality is that we human beings are largely imitative creatures. From the time we are babies, we learn how to do so much of what we do by imitating what we see those around us doing. I even had a boyhood friend who, though perfectly healthy, had a stilted and awkward walk simply because his father suffered from arthritis in his hips, and the boy had learned to walk like his dad.
As infants, we begin to imitate sounds whose meanings we don't yet understand. As children, we see what mommies and daddies do, and we begin to copy those behaviors. We learn skills, sports, and manners by watching and imitating those who train, coach, and raise us. Then there is the whole pop culture of mostly unworthy role models, whose examples influence how our teens dress, dance, talk, and think.
As surely as we learn to speak and walk and cook and throw by imitating, we learn a good deal about how to be Christians by imitating. How we pray and worship, how we serve, what we emphasize -- these can all be largely the product of the examples that surround us. As pastors, we may see rather clearly what patterns prevail in different congregations we serve, and those established patterns are sometimes simply a function of imitation: the attitude or the style prevails by duplication.
The reality is that from a very early age, human beings begin imitating, and they are better served if surrounded by good examples rather than poor ones. Heaven forbid, therefore, that we should abdicate that pedestal. Perhaps we need to regain in part the Church of England's understanding of the priest's responsibility to be a "vicar" -- that is, a vicarious experience of Christ.
In the case of Paul and the Thessalonians, the exemplary pace set by the apostle was that of working for a living. We see Paul mention elsewhere his choice to be self-supporting rather than exercising his right to be supported by the churches (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 9:6-18; 2 Corinthians 11:7-10; Philippians 4:14-17). His point in those other references, however, is different from the point he is making to the Thessalonians, for here he combats the problem of idleness.
The problem of idleness may or may not resonate in your congregation or in mine. It is a problem at some times and in some places, but I don't think we would classify it among the "at every time and in every place" struggles. How Paul concludes this passage, however, is counsel that does apply to every Christian in every congregation: "Do not be weary in doing what is right."
From the earnest volunteer suffering from burnout to the spouse or parent who is tired of trying without response; from the teen struggling not to give in to peer pressure to the businessperson for whom unseen ethical choices are starting to seem like an expensive habit -- we have pews full of people who need to be encouraged not to become weary in doing what is right. Indeed, there may be a discouraged preacher and tired pastor in our pulpit this Sunday, too, who needs the same encouragement.
Luke 21:5-19
I spent part of my growing up years in Cleveland, Ohio. In the days of John D. Rockefeller, there was a neighborhood there known as Millionaires' Row. An elegant stretch of Euclid Avenue in turn-of-the-century Cleveland was lined with mansions belonging to the magnates and moguls of the day. I suspect that, in its glory years, residents could not have imagined the decrepit and dilapidated condition of that neighborhood a very few generations later.
Likewise, the people within earshot of Jesus that day by the Temple could not have imagined what would become of that glorious edifice just a few decades later. They stood marveling at the building, and rightly so. It must have been one of the proudest and loveliest structures in the whole region. We human beings have a hard time picturing something so stately and secure being decimated. Surely that was part of the shock of the footage from September 11th, 2001: We could hardly believe our eyes as those two towering landmarks in New York City collapsed to the ground.
Jesus proposed the unthinkable to the marveling bystanders: "As for these things that you see ... not one stone will be left upon another."
Naturally, Jesus' remark prompted a question. When?
Their interest in Jesus' answer is quite different from our interest in his answer. For Jesus' original audience, the whole matter was very close to home. There stood the Temple right before them. How menacingly soon would its destruction be? For us, on the other hand, Jesus' teaching is not tied to a landmark that is close to our hearts and right before our eyes. Since the prediction comes from 2,000 years ago, we naturally distance ourselves from it: We assume that it references either times and events long past (as the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D.) or times and events in the hazy, someday, distant future of the eschaton. While Jesus' hearers feared that his dreadful prediction was relevant to their time and place, the people in our pews honestly suspect that it is not relevant to theirs.
The irony is that Jesus' followers -- then and now -- may miss the real point of his teachings about the end. We hear him talking about the end, and we focus our attention on that end. His real point in this passage, as in others, however, is not the end per se, but life in the meantime. The coach does not point to the time remaining on the game clock to get his players thinking about what they'll do after the game. He points to the time remaining as a way of getting their heads more into the game itself. So it is with Jesus' teachings about the end.
In the present passage, when "life in the meantime" is characterized by difficulties and opportunities, by people abandoning us but God abiding with us, the details and contexts may change from one era to another. Those basic truths of the "meantime" remain always the same. That is an important affirmation for our congregations whose discipleship is being lived out in the meantime.
Application
Traditionally, people give more thought to the hereafter when the here-and-now isn't so good. The African slaves in colonial America often sang of the life beyond their present misery ("soon I will be done with the troubles of the world," "swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home," and so forth). Likewise, it was often times of persecution that brought the ancient Israelites or the early Christians to thinking and writing about heaven.
Of course, for as long as we are in this fallen world, the here-and-now isn't so good. Individually, we may be quite comfortable -- healthy, prosperous, and happily engaged in the activities of this life and this world -- but the here-and-now in the broader sense is not so good. In that sense, we ought to always be thinking about heaven.
The question, as we alluded to earlier, is what effect such heaven-mindedness will have on God's people. Will it spur them on in God's redemptive work in this world? Or, conversely, will a preoccupation with the world to come foster a kind of malaise about the present world?
The risk of worldly comfort is an indifference to heaven. The risk of heavenly preoccupation is complacency on earth. We follow one who calls us to be fully engaged in both heaven and earth, as exemplified by his prayer for God's will to be done "on earth as it is in heaven."
An Alternative Application
Isaiah 65:17-25.
We observed above the "no more shall there be" theme in God's promises in the Isaiah passage. I noted that my own New Year's resolutions have that quality to them, and that all of us at times need to be able to affirm that certain unhappy, unfavorable elements in the present will not be part of the future.
That element of the Isaiah lection is not unique to it. We see that way of talking about God's future in numerous places in scripture (see, for example, 2 Samuel 7:10; Psalm 37:10; Revelation 21:4; 22:5). And just as God's universal reign suggests certain evils that will be no more in the world, so his personal reign in an individual life suggests certain evils that will be no more in that life (see, for example, Ephesians 4:17--5:5; Colossians 3:1-10; 1 Peter 2:1, 11).
We are familiar with the leader -- coach, executive, elected official -- who comes in and says, "This is how it's going to be." Perhaps the Isaiah passage gives us a jumping off place for exploring how the Lord comes in and says, "This is how it is not going to be." From the mandated personal ethics to the global promise of no more sadness, pain, or distress, it is all good news for us.
Preaching The Psalm
Isaiah 12
This psalm embedded in the writing of Isaiah is a beautiful meditation on the journey we take as human beings from failure, to forgiveness, to gratitude, to praise.
In our failure we encounter the anger and disappointment of God. We have expectations for ourselves, expectations that are rooted in what we believe God expects of us. When we fail to live up to those expectations -- either by omission or commission, guilt is the result. If our actions or inactions have consequences, those consequences become for us the very embodiment of the wrath of God.
But then forgiveness comes. We find that God's anger "has turned away." In the act of contrition and whatever accompanying penance we may impose on ourselves, we encounter a gracious God whose interests are not in our destruction but in our salvation. As we encounter this forgiveness, we discover that guilt gives way to confidence. We feel our relationship with God mending. The anxiety that had before gripped us in our failure now gives way to hope with the acceptance God bestows on us. We are free, and are released from our sin.
To this there is but one response -- gratitude. We know that God was under no compulsion to forgive us. Forgiveness comes as a free and undeserved gift. There is no way to pay for it or pay it back. We can only be grateful. Out of that gratitude we experience a sense of joy. Isaiah writes that it is with this joy that we draw from the well of salvation. In other words, there is a reservoir of grace that will flow over us and refresh us for as long as we drink from its depths.
That's when the praise begins. "Sing praises to the Lord," Isaiah declares, "because he has done gloriously." That glory reaches as far as the skies and as deep as the depths of the earth. The glory of God reflects God's great creative power, the power to shape the heavens, but it also celebrates God's power to forgive lowly sinners. Because of God's grace, and because we are set free from our failure by that grace, we are able to lift our voices with the voices of the universe in singing praise to God.
Of course we know that the whole cycle is likely to begin again. As hard as it is to imagine, it is nonetheless true. We often move from failure to forgiveness to gratitude to praise, and then back to failure. Thankfully, God is long-suffering and kind. God will keep the way open for us to find our way back again and again to the well of salvation.
