November 15, 1998
Year C
Many of you know that I don’t come from a particularly religious family—
my immediate family is still not very religious, even to this day. My
parents were always puzzled about why I became a Christian—and they
were especially bewildered when I came out to them and then decided to
major in religion in college and then decided to go to seminary. The
reason I became interested in Christianity, and eventually became a
Christian goes back to my 13 or 14 year old interest in the End Times
and the book of Revelation. I loved to study the book of Revelation
when I was younger, as I know a lot of people do. But I remember back
then meeting men and women much older than me who had incredibly
elaborate and detailed interpretations about the book of Revelation.
In fact, it almost seemed as if that was all they could really discuss when
it came to Scripture. Ask them about the Beast of Babylon and they
could quote all the verses related to the Beast and give you a detailed
understanding of this figure in the Bible. But ask them where Jesus says
to love your neighbor and they probably would have headed to a
concordance or a Bible Help. And here we are fast approaching the
year 2000—I can only imagine how elaborate and ornate these
interpretations have become about the Book of Revelation! Remember
our passage from last week…how Jesus pointed us to life whenever the
issue of the afterlife came up?
It’s not really any different this week, as the Lectionary move us toward
the end of the Christian year…Advent, the beginning of the Christian
year is only two weeks away. But first we find Jesus in the temple and we
arrive amidst some admiring comments about the beauty of the Temple,
to which Jesus then says,“These things you are gazing at—the time will
come when not one stone will be left upon another; they will all be thrown
down.” He gives them a warning, a simple warning, really, that what they
see, what impresses them so much right now, will one day be no more,
will one day be demolished. And so these questioners see a chance to
have Jesus speak about the things to come—they ask him “Teacher,
when will that be? What will be the sign that these things are about to
happen?” And, of course, he doesn’t answer the question…he doesn’t
describe the signs that would precede and confirm the destruction he
just described…remember last week, when we wanted him to describe to
us what the afterlife was about, and instead he points us back to this
life…and so we shouldn’t be surprised when he doesn’t give us some
detailed answer about whatthe signs of the end times will be. Instead, he
issues three warnings, the first being not to be misled by those who claim
to be the Messiah and those who claim to know that the End is really
near. “Don’t follow them.” And then Jesus gives us a second
warning…this time, he tells us not to be afraid when we hear of wars and
insurrections, for those things are just going to happen, they’re bound to
happen, says Jesus. And for the third warning, Christ says that when the
end does comes, it will be startling in nature, supernatural in force and
terror…listen to how he describes it… ”Nation will go to war against
nation, kingdom against kingdom; there will be severe earthquakes,
famines and plagues in many places, and in the sky terrors and great
signs.” The End will not be something we could ever mistake for a
natural occurrence, its not something we could look back and say “How
could we have been mistaken about that?” as so many Christians have
done in the last 2,000 years. There will be no question about what is
happening, Jesus warns us. And then Jesus keeps moving us further
away from the question about the details about the End Times by what
he says next “But before all this happens” he says, “ they will seize you
and persecute you. You will be handed over to synagogues and put in
prison; you will be hauled before kings and governors for your allegiance
to me. This will be your opportunity to testify. So resolve not to prepare
your defense beforehand, because I myself will give you such words and
wisdom as no opponent can resist or refute. Even your parents and
brothers and sisters, your relations and friends, will betray you. Some of
you will be put to death; and everyone will hate you for your allegiance to
me. But not a hair of your head will be lost. By standing firm you will win
yourselves life.” “Look,” Jesus seems to be saying, “I know you want
details, but your missing the point, aren’t you? Your interested in what’s
goingto happen in the end and I am interested in WHAT KIND OF
DISCIPLES YOU WILL BE when the End comes.” Don’t miss the point,
Jesus is saying, the End is not the point—following me faithfully is the
point. I will give you what you need to get through this horrible time…I will
give you words you need to speak in your defense and for me. Christ
promises us the tools to be faithful disciples—but not the details that we
really want to know about what is going to happen at the end.
Even in the next verses after the passage we have before us today, in
which Christ talks more extensively about what happens when he returns
again, we still don’t get the details we really want. WHAT WE DO GET is
a promise of God’s faithfulness to be present with us and to give us the
strength to stand firm as disciples.
But we shouldn’t be surprised that we don’t get the details we want about
what happens in the future. There is a reason why the book of
Revelation is written in mysterious language…the details are not
important, but faithfulness to the end is what is important to the writer of
the book of Revelation. We didn’t get the details that we wanted about
the afterlife last week and we aren’t going to get the 1-2-3 countdown of
events we were hoping for in this passage, or even in the book of
Revelation. Jesus takes a question about the End Times and turns it
into a question about faithful discipleship. Will you stand and be firm
until the end, he ask us? So where does that leave us with those people
like me who sometimes become interested in Christianity because of End
Time stuff? Well, sometimes people who come to faith that way never
move forward, they never seem to get past the future—does that make
sense? Its just like my friend Phil whom I talked about last week—he was
so fascinated with the world to come that he missed the fact that God
meets us in this world before God meets us in the next world. It’s the
same with those who can never move past their fascination with the End
Times—they never realize that the point of Christianity is NOT
the future but our journey as disciples as we go towards the future. Let
the dead bury the dead, Christ says to a man who wants to put off his
journey as a disciple to sometime in the future—the time for discipleship
is now. The whole point of this passage is our discipleship and whether
we will be faithful disciples when real trouble comes. Will we? Or we will
get lost in the details and miss the whole point, as I could have done
when I was a teenager or like my friend Phil with his fascination with the
afterlife instead of this life. “Be faithful to me,” Christ says here, “I will
give you what you need to be faithful, just don’t get lost in the details,” he
is saying to us as he moves us past questions about details. It’s really
easy to get lost in theories about the future and in theories about the
afterlife…the challenge, really, is to stay in this world and this time and
be present in the struggles and joys of being faithful disciples of this
Christ, now, at this moment. Amen.
