25th Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 28, Year C, RCL
November 18, 2007
Gospel:
Luke 21:5-19
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."
They asked him, "Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" And he said, "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, `I am he!' and, `The time is near!' Do not go after them.
"When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
"But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So 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. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls."
It started out as such a great day. The disciples were sitting around the temple listening to Jesus tell parables. He had just finished the story about the poor widow who gave her only two copper coins to the temple treasury. Jesus holds up her willingness to give all she had, against the larger, but far less meaningful, contributions of the wealthy. The disciples, mostly poor fisherman, relished Jesus’ stories in which the rich get their comeuppance. An argument with the Sadducees, earlier in the day, had gone especially well. Even the Scribes, the educated among them, had been forced to accept that Jesus had won the debate. It was a great day to be a follower of Jesus.
Feeling self-satisfied, patting each other on the back, holding their heads up a little higher than usual, they began to speak about the temple, noticing, “how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God”. It was, in fact quite stunning. A remodeling project, began by Herod the Great in the previous century, was nearing completion and everyone was very pleased with how the refurbished temple was turning out.
But Jesus, for some reason hadn’t quite gotten into the spirit of things. He looked around, saw the same majestic temple walls the disciples had been admiring and said bluntly, “It’s all coming down.” “The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Sometimes Jesus could be such a downer. This was not “good news”. King Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the first temple some 500 years earlier. At that time Judea had been ransacked and God’s people had been carted off to Babylon as slaves. As if this vision were not bad enough, Jesus goes on to predict a future composed of wars, famines, plagues, persecution, arrest, imprisonment, and execution. And then, Jesus has the audacity to tell his disciples, “Do not be terrified.” I think I would be terrified.
Jesus, like the disciples had raised his head to consider the majestic, bejeweled stone walls of the surrounding temple. But then, out of the corner of his eye, Jesus noticed the soldiers -the Roman occupiers of Jerusalem. A half dozen of them - tall, lean, handsome – boys really, but armed as men of war – shields gleaming in the sunlight, sharpened swords at their sides. They laughed nervously, aware that their presence was resented. Individually, they meant no harm, but they understood that the stability, the prosperity of the nation state they represented, was dependent on keeping countries in every corner of the empire firmly under Roman control. They had an important job to do.
After launching a full-scale invasion of Jerusalem, the Romans had established an uneasy truce with the Jews there. Most people under Empire control were required to pay homage to Roman gods. These people who worshiped one God, rejecting the entire pantheon of perfectly fine Roman deities, were a curiosity to the Romans. Yet the people of Israel seemed so insistent on worshiping their one God that the Roman authorities had initially decided to allow it, provided they presented no threat to national security. Honoring the tacit truce, and following orders, the Roman soldiers kept a respectable distance from the temple – knowing that if they were to enter they risked inciting insurrection.
The disciples watched Jesus intently. They noticed him looking warily in the direction of the soldiers and wondered why the smile had quickly evaporated from his face. He answered their questioning glances, completely wrecking the lovely moment they were all sharing, by looking back at the temple walls and saying, “It’s all coming down”. “The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all… will…be…thrown… down”. Sometimes Jesus can really spoil a good time.
The temple party broke up, so, as the same story is told in Matthew and Mark, Jesus and the rest of the gathering got up and moved down the road a bit to the Mount of Olives. They could still see the temple from the Mount, but they were out of earshot of the Roman troops and the temple authorities. No sooner had they found semi-comfortable seats on the rocky slope, before Peter and his brothers blurted out, “When is this going to happen? How will we know when it is coming?
A prediction that the temple would fall was of no small concern to these disciples. Every Jewish child had grown up hearing stories of the fall of the first temple. They knew from their history lessons that with the destruction of the temple had come exile in Babylon, enslavement, near extinction as a people. The thought of this second temple being destroyed filled them with fear.
Seeing the panic envelope his beloved disciples’ faces, you might think that Jesus would take it a little easier on them. But no, he goes on to talk of the wars, the famines, the plagues, arrest, persecution, imprisonment, and execution that await them. And then, in the midst of this litany of horror, he tells the disciples, “do not be terrified.” Peter and his brothers began to think that maybe the fishing profession they left behind might not have been such a bad gig after all. They were terrorized, and beginning to understand, on those first days when God walked on earth, what it would mean to be a disciple of Christ. The hope that Jesus offers his terror stricken disciples is straightforward, “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Fast forward with me, if you will, some 50 years later to the time in which the Gospel of Luke was finally written. The occupation force stationed in Jerusalem was the Roman Tenth Legion, under the command of Titus, son of the Emperor Vespasian. The Jewish-Roman war of 66-71 AD, culminating in the temple’s destruction, had been decided, but not yet fully won. General Titus had unleashed the full fury of the Roman army on Judea, and, perhaps prematurely, marched in processional triumph into Rome. Yet, all organized opposition had not yet been crushed. Pockets of Jewish resistance to Roman power remained throughout the region. Fighting was sometimes fierce, but inevitably futile against the technological superiority of the Roman Legions.
After Jerusalem’s destruction and Roman dominance of the region, Titus brought his Fifth and Fifteenth Legions to coastal Caesarea where they could enjoy the spoils of victory. Here, and elsewhere, Jewish and Christian prisoners were compelled to battle wild animals and each other in the Roman amphitheatres. The 10th Legion, however, was permanently garrisoned in Jerusalem to prevent a resurgence of Jewish resistance. The intractability of Jewish nationalism convinced Roman leaders that a continued military occupation was necessary in order to maintain stability in the region.
Christ has died, the temple had been destroyed, the persecution, wars, famines, and plagues described by Jesus, engulfed much of the known world. The threatened and frightened bands of Jesus followers, met secretly in homes, fearful of what awaited them if they remained true to the teachings and example of Jesus. They were an irritant, a troublesome band of rebels and insurgents. A group that did not fit well within the Jewish mainstream, a persecuted minority themselves, but one that, for the moment had an uneasy and fragile way of maintaining existence within the larger Roman Empire. They are living in the midst of the trouble-filled times that we earlier heard Jesus predict. And it is to this audience that Luke’s words were intended: “Do not be terrified”. But, how could they not be?” To be a Christian then meant that you lived on the margins of mainstream society. Practicing your faith meant persecution by the Roman occupiers, betrayal by friends and family, spending time behind prison walls, facing brutal torture, and eventual execution. The message of hope that these early Christians received is concise and packed with the wisdom of the gospel: “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Eventually, the struggling and growing group of Jesus followers, simply became too much of a threat to the Roman sense of propriety. The infusion of radical love that Jesus brought to Judaism - the elevation of the sinner, the reconsideration of the law, the obsession with the plight of the poor and oppressed - proved to be more than the Romans could tolerate and so they determined that this corner of the Empire need to be made even more secure. Restricted to meeting in homes, the early Christians were subject to house-to-house searches by Roman troops. Persecution, arrest, imprisonment, and brutal execution became commonplace. Terror rained down on the Jesus followers. They too were learning, in a new context, what it meant to be a disciple of Christ. Jesus words echo down to these new Christian’s “Do not be terrified”. “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
So how are we, a people in a position to end war, to end plagues, to end famines – the citizens of a country that arrests, imprisons and executes more of its own people than any country on earth to - take this gospel message? As Christians, when we listen to a New Testament story, we tend to place ourselves in the shoes of the followers of Jesus. When we hear Jesus offering advice and instruction to those devoted to him, we assume that Jesus is talking to us as well. While there clearly is a message for us, I ask you to consider that the lesson we are to learn, might best be understood if we imagine that we are overhearing this gospel reading, standing as outsiders. We dare not listen with the ear of the persecuted, the victim of famine and plague and war. Nor as the detainee, the imprisoned, the tortured…because few of us have experienced that kind of fear. We should listen as the people in a position to do something about the terror experienced daily by God’s children, in every corner of the world. If we are able to relieve suffering, we have a responsibility to do so. Jesus did not come to make us safe. Jesus came to make us disciples.
Our country is engaged in what our leadership has labeled a war on terror. But as our archbishop Rowan Williams has pointed out, “ terrorism is not a place, not even a person, or a group of persons; it is a form of behavior.” The emotion of terror that our nation experienced in the wake of September 11th is not unique in the world’s past or present. Just as the Jesus followers were terrified by the experience of plagues and persecution that Jesus described, so countless numbers of God’s children experience terror every day. Surely the constant terror felt by the world’s hungry and sick and imprisoned is every bit as terrifying for them as the emotions our nation felt when the walls of the World Trade Center were all thrown down. Let’s be reminded that, for Christians, the world did not change on September 11, 2001. For Christians, the world changed during the celebration of Passover in the year of our Lord, A.D. 33.
The endurance, the perseverance that Jesus disciples were urged to practice in the face of the terror they experienced is not the same sort of endurance to which we are called. For we are not members of a persecuted minority residing at the edge of empire. Our religion is the religion of the empire. And as citizens of the most powerful country on the earth, a nation whose power dwarfs that of Imperial Rome, our economic well being, our security, our identity is aligned with the rich and powerful. Our task is to discover anew what it means to be a disciple of Christ living in an age of Empire. What is our response in an era in which famine exists, not because of drought or hoards of locust as in biblical times, but because the prosperous countries of the world have not shared their resources? What is the Christian response when millions of Africans are dying of AIDS, and we possess the drugs to alleviate their suffering, but choose not to share them? And if we are to truthfully wage a war on terror, shouldn’t it be focused on the grinding poverty that is the source of the terrified existence known to a third of our planet’s inhabitants.
Certainly we too are called to endurance, but the endurance we are asked to demonstrate is also a call to discipleship - a willingness to lose our lives in order to save them. As Christians we are called to walk in the shoes of the truly terrified. How else are we to gain our souls?