Anxious Times

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Luke 21:25-36

In the Biblical worldview, we live in an “in-between” time, the time between Jesus’ first coming to inaugurate the Kingdom of God and when he comes again to bring the Kingdom in its fullness, a day which culminates in resurrection and creation being made new.  The Christian Gospel, contrary to popular belief, is way bigger than how we get to heaven when we die.  It is ultimately about God’s reign breaking in from heaven and coming to earth culminating with Jesus’ return, Creation being made anew, resurrection, a great setting of things to right,…and “He shall reign forever and ever.  Hallelujah. Hallelujah.”  Jesus was indeed being quite literal when he taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done” …where?... ”on earth as it is in heaven.” 

Our reading here from Luke known as Jesus’ Little Apocalypse points us towards that event, that day.  Granted Jesus says what he says in as weird a way as he could say it with these images of eclipses (signs in the moon and sun and stars), roaring seas, the shaking of the heavens amidst times of great anxiety, confusion, and cosmic upheaval.  These things sound so big and scary.

But, don’t worry.  I’m not going to go freaky on you.  These images are what we could call apocalyptic code phrases.  There was a genre of literature popular in Jesus’ day that Bible scholars have dubbed “Apocalyptic.”  The word means “to reveal or unveil”.  The Book of Revelation is the best-known example.  It was a way of talking in public about political things current to their day that wouldn’t get you in trouble.  What you did was use coded images that your community of faith knew the meaning of but those in power did not. 

If Jesus were to say outright that the God of the Jews was going to put an end to Caesar and his false reign, he would in turn be tried for treason and leading a revolt and rightly sentenced to crucifixion.  Since Jesus couldn’t say such a thing outright he used this apocalyptic imagery to make his point to his disciples. Eclipses represent divine acting and judgment upon those in power.  The roaring of the seas is the chaos among people that erupts when regimes fall.  The shaking of the heavens is the catastrophic changing and dismantling of institutions that people believe will never change, things like empires, banking institutions, democracy, and even the Church.  

One of the deeper points that Jesus makes here that is cloaked behind the imagery is that when the Kingdom draws near, when God draws near to act in history, things on earth get quite wonky.  To say this in a more personal way, great teachers of Christian spirituality past and present often remark that when God draws near to us personally as individuals or draws us closer to himself, turmoil and trying times erupt in our lives and having come through those times we come to realize that we have grown in faith and been changed to be more Christ-like, but most of all, we’re just more aware of God’s presence with us.  This happens for whole congregations as well.  And what Jesus is indicating here is that this happens for nations and all of humanity.  When God draws near things get wonky and so Jesus says “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near,…you know that the Kingdom of God is near.”

When God draws near, anxious times erupt.  It goes without saying that things are pretty anxious at present.  Economic concerns, the instability in the American political situation, the threat of a tariff war with the U.S., wars in the Middle East in which it seems like every step forward towards peace becomes a major disheartening and scary disappointment.  Changes in climate where storms are getting more severe.  Wildfires here and wildfires there.  We don’t feel it’s safe to let our children go out and run and play like we did as kids.  Anxiety, depression, and addiction are at epidemic levels.  All the while, for several decades now people have been abandoning the Christian faith left and right.  This may sound weird, but when God draws near we can safely say that the powers of darkness that are just out there behind the scenes can be expected to become all the more aggressive in lies and violence and orchestrating those things that come out of left field.  Jesus’ message here is when crazy overwhelming stuff is happening instead of burying our heads in the sands of anxiety, despair, and disillusionment, stand up and look around because God is somewhere in the midst of it.  God is drawing near to us, so we need to draw near to him.

Anxious times are the sign that we need to draw near to God because, and though it may not seem like it at face value, God is drawing near to us.  Jesus asks us to pray so that we may have the strength to escape the turmoil of the Kingdom drawing near and in turn find ourselves standing in his presence. 

It is my experience that we simply don’t get the importance of prayer.  In anxious times mostly what we see is people complaining, scapegoating people who are different, abandoning the faith, placing their hope in authoritarian figures.  We will do anything besides develop a deeper, more disciplined prayer life in which we open ourselves up to God’s presence.  When God draws near we need to draw near to God, but our inclination is to do completely the opposite; flee and become disillusioned and deceived.  There is a war going on right now and our only weapon is prayer.

 Prayer is the very foundation of living the lives that God has entrusted to us.  The popular Christian author Oswald Chambers who wrote My Utmost for His Highest once said, “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”  We pray before doing things rather than understanding that prayer is what we are called to be doing always.  We are to live as those devoted to prayer, like monks and nuns. 

I bet you didn’t know it, but our Reformation roots hold that the everyday believer should live a life as devoted to prayer as any monk or nun does.  One of John Calvin’s main tasks of ministry in the Swiss city of Geneva where he pastored was to attempt to take the prayer-filled life that he had observed behind the walls of convents and monasteries and make it the way of life for the ordinary Christian.  Inside the walls of the monastery, the monks rose very early for morning prayer in which they prayed and read Psalms, and then ate and worked.  At mid-morning they prayed and read Psalms again.  Then around midday they had worship with communion and then worked some more.  In mid-afternoon they prayed and read Psalms again.  In the evening they had vespers and then again before bed they prayed and read Psalms.  Then at some point in the middle of the night they rose again to pray and read Psalms.  They also studied at some point in the day.  Calvin thought that all Christians, not just monks and nuns should follow that sort of a routine of prayer.

The Apostle Paul said, “Pray without ceasing.”  Many people try to train their minds to do just that.  Training the mind is crucial to living a sane and peaceful life.  If we do not choose to discipline our minds with prayer, we essentially let ourselves suffer or wallow in all forms of unhealthy thinking.  Therefore, the biggest part of living a devoted Christian life is disciplining our minds to pray and the rest of the Christian life will take care of itself and blossom.  Here’s a few suggestions on how to do that.

   In the Eastern Orthodox tradition they have the Jesus Prayer which they try to pray continually throughout the day.  “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”  They will pray that prayer over and over.  Months ago, we did a series on the Lord’s Prayer and I encouraged you to try to pray it continuously. 

Another way one might take down this road of continual prayer is the practice of the presence of God.  There was a Franciscan monk named Brother Lawrence who lived in the 1700’s who wrote a book chronicling his attempt to be aware of the presence of Jesus with him at all times.  Its title is The Practice of the Presence of God.  This practice was something I discovered back in my university days when one day it became inseparably clear to me that Jesus is with me always.  No prayers to be said, no bargains to be made, and even if I am in the midst of sinning, he is with me.  When Paul wrote in Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ he was not speaking of a metaphysical idea or some sort of conclusion that he arrived at by reason.  He was speaking of the unconditionally loving presence of Jesus with us through the Holy Spirit always.

Well, why all this talk about prayer?  Well, read the news.  With all that’s going on in the world the Kingdom of God is obviously drawing near.  Things are wonky to say the least.   Stand up.  Watch lest you miss something really wonderful that God is doing.  But more so…we Christians have a role to play in the drawing near of the Kingdom.  Hope comes alive in and through people who pray.  True strength, true grit, comes in and through prayer.  I know from my own spiritual journey that my struggles have been easier and I have grown as a person in Christ in the times that I have been a praying person. Living as prayerful people in a prayerful community is how God creates healing grounds in this anxious and confused world.  Jesus is breaking into the world with his Kingdom.  Prayer-filled Christian community is where he and his kingdom are most evident.  Friends, pray.  This world right now needs us to be praying.  Amen.

 

Stand Up in Hope

Luke 21:25-36
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I stand here this morning with a daunting task: to say something meaningful about the weirdest things Jesus ever said and to do it in half the time I normally have because we’re celebrating Communion this morning.  But perhaps Communion is the best sermon we could have today because the topic for this first Sunday of Advent is hope, particularly our hope of Jesus’ return from Glory to set up his Kingdom and put the world to right.  The earliest understanding of what the Lord Supper is is that it is a rehearsal of and participation by the Holy Spirit in the feast we will share with Jesus when he comes again.  Today we remind ourselves to look forward to that and live now accordingly.

But anyway, back to the weird stuff.  Jesus painted a pretty scary picture here of the way things will be when as he says the “times of the Nations (Gentiles) will be fulfilled”.  The sun, the moon, and the stars are going to show forth signs.  The nations will be in distress and it will get all the more confusing because the sea will roar and there will be waves, big waves.  People are going to faint in fear and there will be an overwhelming sense of doom because the world order as we know is going to end because the powers of the heavens are getting shaken.  And,…that’s when Jesus comes back.  And so Jesus says, “Stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.”  These things are like fig trees sprouting leaves being a sure indicator that summer is no doubt coming.  So also, when these weird, scary things begin to happen and the end of world order as we know it is upon us, so we can know that the kingdom of God is near.

Please notice just how vague Jesus is being.  What he is saying, the signs and so forth, are simply unimaginable events but yet it will be scary times.  It won’t be the end of the creation.  The word he uses for “world” in verse 26 isn’t “cosmos” which would mean the creation.  It’s a different word that means the world order, a word that was often used to mean the Roman Empire.  I don’t think Jesus was being so specific as to mean the end of the Roman Empire, which piddled out in the 400’s.  Rather, I think he means a world order structured on empires, a way of doing human civilization that tenaciously persists to the oppression of many peoples.  I think Jesus is saying that the Age of Empire will come to an end and will be replaced with the Kingdom of God.  When we see that happening, we, the followers of Jesus, are to stand up and raise our heads in hope because everything God has promised us will come to pass – new life, eternal life, life filled with the glory and presence of God; New Creation, Resurrection, no more sickness, sorrow, or death; no more evil; just peace, justice, and wholeness. 

Well, I probably just freaked you all out so I’ll rein it in a bit.  Again Jesus was quite vague I describing something that is unimaginable.  Just as no one expected him to enter the world as a baby, live life as we do, suffer the death of a treasoner, and then be resurrected; so what his second coming will be like is likely outside our box of expectations and imaginations.  But the lesson remains, when all Hell seems to be breaking loose on Earth, he is coming.

I think that’s something we can grasp onto in our own lives in the here and now.  When that diagnosis comes and our lives turn upside down, Jesus comes to be with us.  When marriages end, when families fall apart, when friendships fail, when death takes someone from us, Jesus comes to be with us.  When work ends, when our kids are in trouble, Jesus comes to be with us.  When all Hell breaks loose in our lives Jesus comes to be with us.

Therefore we must be those who when calamity strikes, we stand up and raise up our heads for we know there is reason to hope in Jesus.  Jesus does not leave us to fend for ourselves, to stand strong with a stiff upper lip, or to put our lives back together.  He comes to us and causes our relationship with him to deepen in faith, in the certainty of his love for us.  When Hell breaks loose on us, Jesus comes to be with us.  Y’all know how it goes:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;

The trumpet shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,

Even so, it is well with my soul.

Let us gather to his table looking forward to that day. Amen.

Pray So That You May Have Strength

Luke 21:25-36

We live in an “in-between” time, the time between Jesus’ first coming to inaugurate the Kingdom of God and when he comes again to bring the Kingdom in its fullness, a day which culminates in resurrection and creation being made new.  The Christian Gospel, contrary to popular belief, is not about how we get to heaven when we die.  It is ultimately about God’s reign breaking in from heaven and coming to earth culminating with Jesus’ return.  Jesus was indeed being quite literal when he taught us to pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…where?...on earth as it is in heaven.”  This passage that we read here from Luke points us towards that event, that day.

Granted Jesus says what he says in as weird a way as he could say it with these images of eclipses (signs in the moon and sun and stars), roaring seas, the shaking of the heavens amidst times of great anxiety, confusion, and cosmic upheaval.  Now, don’t worry.  I’m not going to go freaky on you.  These images are what we could call apocalyptic code phrases.  There was a genre of literature popular in Jesus’ day (of which the Book of Revelation is) that Bible scholars have dubbed “Apocalyptic.”  It was a way of talking about political things in public that wouldn’t get you in trouble.  What you did was use coded images that your community of faith understood the meaning of but those in power did not. 

If Jesus were to say outright that the God of the Jews was going to put an end to Caesar and his false reign, he would in turn be tried for treason and leading a revolt and sentenced to crucifixion.  Since Jesus couldn’t say that outright he uses this apocalyptic imagery to make his point to his disciples. Eclipses represent divine acting and judgment upon those in power.  The roaring of the seas is the chaos among people that erupts when regimes fall.  The shaking of the heavens is the catastrophic changing and dismantling of institutions that people believe will never change, things like empires, banking institutions, democracy, marriage, the Church, etc.  

One of the deeper points that Jesus makes here that is cloaked behind the imagery is that when the Kingdom draws near, when God does indeed act in history things on earth get quite wonky.  To say this in a more personal way, great teachers of Christian spirituality past and present often remark that when God is trying to draw near to us personally as individuals or draw us closer to himself his doing so causes turmoil and trying times in our lives but then having come through those times we come to realize that we have grown in faith and been changed to be more Christ-like.  This happens for whole congregations as well.  And what Jesus is indicating here is that this happens for nations and all of humanity.  When God draws near things get wonky and so Jesus says “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near,…you know that the Kingdom of God is near.”

He also says that we should pray so that we may have the strength to escape the turmoil of the Kingdom drawing near and in turn stand in his presence.  It is my experience that we simply don’t get the importance of prayer.  We are very utilitarian about it as opposed to seeing it as the very foundation of living these lives that God has entrusted to us.  The popular Christian author Oswald Chambers who wrote My Utmost for His Highest once said, ““Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”  We pray before doing things rather than understanding that prayer is what we are always called to be doing.  We are to live as those devoted to prayer, like monks and nuns. 

I bet you didn’t know it, but our Reformation roots hold that the everyday believer should live a life as devoted to prayer as any monk or nun supposedly does.  One of John Calvin’s main tasks of ministry was to attempt to take the prayer-filled life that he had observed behind the walls of convents and monasteries and make it the way of life for the ordinary Christian.  Inside the walls of the monastery, the monks rose very early for morning prayer in which they prayed and read Psalms, and then ate and worked.  At mid-morning they prayed and read Psalms again.  The around midday they had worship with communion and then worked some more.  In mid-afternoon they prayed and read Psalms again.  In the evening they had vespers and then again before bed they prayed and read Psalms.  Then at some point in the middle of the night they rose again to pray and read Psalms.  They also studied at some point in the day as well.  Roman Catholic priests follow something called the Liturgy of Hours which follows this schedule and if followed, you will have prayed through all of the Psalms in a forty day period and also read a good chunk of the Bible in a year.  Calvin and others did not see why one had to live in a monastery to follow this routine of prayer.  Give it a shot.

There is another aspect of the life devoted to prayer that is not so routine-ish and needs mentioning.  Paul said, “Pray without ceasing,” and so many people try to train their minds to do just that.  Training the mind is crucial to living a sane and peaceful life.  If we do not choose to discipline our minds with prayer, we essentially let ourselves suffer or wallow in all forms of unhealthy thinking.  Therefore, the biggest part of living a devoted Christian life is disciplining our minds to pray and the rest of the Christian life will take care of itself and blossom.  Here’s a few suggestions on how to do that.

   In the Eastern Orthodox tradition they have the Jesus Prayer which they try to pray continually throughout the day.  “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”  They will pray that prayer over and over.  Many carry a rosary with them to keep them mindful of the task.  I’ve attempted this and can honestly say that once established in it you will find that it becomes a rhythm or even a song in the back of your mind that you just pray automatically.  There’s a book called The Way of the Pilgrim that chronicles the life of an anonymous peasant as he learns to discipline himself to pray the prayer.  I recommend you find and read it.  You can do this with the Lord’s Prayer as well.

Similar to this is a method of prayerful Bible study called Lectio Divina.  It involves taking a verse of Scripture, memorizing it, and disciplining yourself to pray it continually.  I once did this verse by verse with the Sermon on the Mount a few years back.  It took 140 some days and I finished with a deeper knowing of Jesus’ personality especially his non-judgemental and forgiving side. 

Another way one might take down this road of continual prayer is the practice of the presence of God.  There was a Franciscan monk named Brother Lawrence who lived in the 1700’s who wrote a book chronicling his attempt to be aware of the presence of Jesus with him at all times.  Its title is The Practice of the Presence of God.  This practice was something I discovered back in my university days when one day it became inseparably clear to me that Jesus is with me always.  No prayers to be said, no bargains to be made, and even if I am in the midst of sinning, he is with me.  When Paul wrote in Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ he was not speaking of a metaphysical idea or some sort of conclusion that he arrived at by reason.  He was speaking of the unconditionally loving presence of Jesus with us through the Holy Spirit always.

Well, why all this talk about prayer?  Well, read the news.  With all that’s going on in the world the Kingdom of God is obviously drawing near.  Things are wonky to say the least.   Stand up.  Watch lest you miss something really wonderful that God is doing.  But moreso…we Christians have a role to play in the drawing near of the Kingdom.  Hope comes alive in and through people who pray.  True strength, true grit, comes in and through prayer.  I know from my own spiritual journey my struggles have been easier and I have grown as a person in Christ in the times that I have been a praying man. Living as prayerful people in prayerful community is how God creates healing grounds in this anxious and confused world.  Jesus is breaking into the world with his Kingdom.  Prayer-filled Christian community is where he and his kingdom are most evident.  Friends, pray.  This world needs us to be praying.  Amen.