Proper 29 / Year C
Lue 21:5-19
This morning’s readings take us on a wild
rollercoaster-like ride of highs and lows – from promises of restoration and
long-life to warnings of imminent destruction and persecution. Of these two visions we might want to ask,
well, which will it be: the best of times or the worst of times? The answer is both. Life is rift with harsh realities, but there
is always something hopeful which lies beyond.
Our readings direct our attention to this Gospel hope.
It is about 33 AD when Jesus makes his startling claim
about the future destruction of the Temple.
By the time Luke writes down Jesus’ words some four decades later, it
has come to pass. The Roman army has
sacked Jerusalem and torn down the spiritual and political center of Jewish life. Christians, who initially functioned as a
subset within Judaism, now are being persecuted for their faith. It is the worst of times.
Isaiah writes some 600 years earlier to a people
living in exile. They too have seen
their Temple destroyed – this time by the Babylonians. Jerusalem is ruins and, of those not killed,
everyone with any value has been forced from their homeland to live in
servitude in Babylon. But some time has
passed, again about 40 years, and a new thing is about to happen. An army from Persia is defeating the
Babylonians and with each liberated city exiles are allowed to return
home. Isaiah foresees the best of times
on the horizon.
So, our rollercoaster readings take us from
destruction to restoration. Did you
notice what connects the two experiences?
It is the last thing Jesus says in today’s readings, “By your endurance
you will gain your souls.” While we
cannot avoid the worst life throws at us, there is a possibility we will be
transformed by these experiences.
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote he wished for all he cared
about “suffering, desolation, ill-treatment, [and] indignities” because he believed
the only way to know what a person is worth is to observe how he or she
endures. Well, I would never wish
adversity for anyone, but I do recognize how these experiences in my own life have
developed capacities and characteristics I could have received in no other way.
The Rev. Sam Wells is a visiting professor in
Christian Ethics from Kings College in London.
Earlier this year he spoke to people at St.
Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. Four months later, on June 16, a gunman
opened fire at an event in the Parish Hall and killed three parishioners before
being subdued. Four months after this
devastating incident, Wells returned to help the people of St. Stephen’s make
sense of what they have experienced.
Wells highlighted
four words which he believes describes how this tragedy has affected the people
of the congregation:
· Powerlessness – the
realization we are vulnerable and, while some measures can be put in place,
nothing can ensure our safety.
· Violation – what
happened goes against everything the community holds dear.
· Humiliation –
becoming the people everyone pities or wants to avoid because they don’t know
what to say.
· Wells says, “Once
these dramatic storm clouds have begun to separate just a little, what abides
is a profound sadness” – the forth word.
He went on to make
a distinction between the words hurt
and damage:
When someone has
been murdered, there’s the grief, fear, dismay, anger and harrowing loss among
those left behind. That’s the hurt, and,
while it’s profound, permanent, and powerful, it can over time begin to find a
place among other hurts in one’s own life and in the world. But there’s also the physical reality of a
person no longer being alive. That’s
something no one can do a single thing to change. It’s unalterable. That’s the damage.
When it comes to
hurt, he says, healing can happen, but depending on the severity of the wound,
may take a long time. The notion of healing
is not an appropriate or helpful when applied to damage. No amount of healing will bring back to life
three dear souls who were killed. Still,
Wells suggests horror can turn into wisdom:
A broken limb can
heal; a severed limb can’t. That
doesn’t mean we have to be stuck forever…
We need to recognise, painfully and slowly, but soberly, honestly and
realistically, what can change and what can’t, and put our energies towards
where transformation can still occur, ghastly as this situation is and will in
many senses always remain.
Wells finished his
talk with these words:
My
real prayer is that [you], like Martha and Mary, will see the glory of God. I pray that [you] will one day look back on
this time as a season when [you] were most fully alive, more grateful than ever
before for the birds that chirrup each morning, the taste of water or milk or
cornbread, the wonder of having been born; that [you] will be in this time
closer to [your] family and friends than ever before, able to express
affections and articulate sentiments [you’d] never previously found ways to
share; that [you’d] feel God’s presence in a wholly new way, that [you’d]
recognise [yourself] as God’s child, created for God’s enjoyment, fulfilled in
enjoying God in return… A disaster or
terrible setback can be the beginning of something wonderful, good and true,
and not just… the end of all hopes, dreams and plans.
In all of this I
hear the words of Jesus, “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Orson F. Whitney, a 20th
century leader in the Church of Ladder-day Saints, said this:
No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is
wasted. It ministers to our education,
to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and
humility. All that we suffer and all
that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our
characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender
and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God.
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