Transcript
These things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately. Please be seated.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There are two pastors, let’s say local Methodist pastor and a local Baptist pastor of a small town. They were known for being a bit alarmist, always thumping their Bibles, warning their flock to choose the right way, be true to their faith, follow Jesus Christ. One day, they decided to help their community, not just their church members, but the whole town. So, they went out and started waving signs that said things like, “Turn around” or “The end is near.” And cars honked their horns and kept driving by or some of them even accelerated. And as the cars drove past the pastors, you could hear the tires squeal and the brakes scream as cars slid to a stop. A mess of traffic like we’re so familiar with in Hampton. Finally, the Methodist pastor turns to the Baptist pastor and says, “Maybe we should change our signs. No one seems to realize the road is closed up ahead.”
Honestly, how many of us, if we saw some crazy people standing on the side of the road with signs that said stuff like, “Turn the other way,” or, “The end is near,” how many of us would heed their words? How many of us would simply keep going and come to the end of a road blocked due to construction or whatever? Technically, it happened to me on Friday morning, just before I sat down to write this. I was driving back from Newport News and my GPS said to get off on 64. She knows. I have that feeling in traffic, too. My GPS told me to get off of 64 at Mercury Boulevard. And convinced I knew what I was doing better than my GPS, I flew right past the exit just in time to complete stop because of traffic.
Again, how many of us are given warnings, told by those who probably know better, see the signs and warnings and flashing lights, and decide to just keep going, to keep doing what we’re doing, be via driving on 64 eastbound, or even something bigger like putting our lived faith into our own successes and our own authority and our own accomplishments rather than living what we profess every Sunday and hopefully most days in between, do, which is faith in a God who is omnisient, who is all knowing. Who knows which way is the right way and which way is traffic or the end of the road or the wrong turn or whatever it is that is up ahead that will derail our plans.
The gospel reading today is kind of a reminder of this. It’s kind of like those signs people hold on street corners and sometimes even yell into bullhorns, “Repent, the end is near. Choose the right way. only Jesus can save. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be someone holding a sign. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that on a billboard recently. And now Jesus is saying it, too. Repent. The end is near. And yet Jesus adds another twist to this message because yes, Jesus acknowledges the fact that the end will happen and even that it might be nearer than we want, but whatever we think will mean the end, it still will be the end immediately.
And Jesus isn’t just talking about road construction. Jesus is talking about wars and insurrections, nations arising against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms, great earthquakes and famines and plagues and dreadful potence and great signs and even persecution and arrest and death. And yet, even in all that chaos and unpredictability and destruction, even in all that, the end will not follow immediately.
There’s a passage in First Kings that’s in the Old Testament. It’s chapter 19. It’s one of my absolute favorite passages of scripture. I often think of it, especially in the midst of all the various chaos that unfolds around me in life. The passage starts with Elijah being told to go to Horeb and stand on the mountain in order to meet God. And the passage continues, “Now there was a great wind so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake.” But the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a sound of sheer silence. And that is where God is in the sheer silence. So when we are so busy distracted by all the noise of the chaos that is the wars and insurrections and great earthquakes and famines and plagues and dreadful portance, know that God is not there because God is in the sound of sheer silence.
Jesus doesn’t go as far as to explicitly say this. Instead, he talks about the destruction, the chaos, and the persecution. And then he says, “The end will not follow immediately,” hinting that after all the chaos, violence will come and with the silence, God will come.
And here’s the deal. Even though it is so easy to imagine that what we are seeing on the news, what we are witnessing happen around the world across the country, even in our own neighborhoods, that is still not the indication that the end is near, no matter what. In fact, with Jesus saying that not one stone will be left upon another, that’s not even predictive. It’s not trying to predict the future by the off by the time the author was writing this down as Luke’s gospel. The destruction of that temple had already happened. So instead of the text being predictive telling us what will happen as we us all of creation all and as we get closer to Christ the King Sunday we are reminded that the world is definitely not perfect. In fact, the world is very, very, very far from perfect. And Jesus’s messages get more and more glum, full of apocalyptic imaging depicting the end of the world.
So, part of today’s message is just the end is near. Literally, the end of the church calendar is near. And also at some point the end will be near as in the end of the world as we know it. The end of this world. Being Christian doesn’t get us a quote pass out of all the pain and struggle that is this life. Instead it gives us a ticket to get into whatever the next life will be. the life that we heard about in the Old Testament reading from Isaiah, where no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distraction, where they shall not build and another inhabit them, where they shall not plant and another eat, the new heaven and the new earth, where Jesus will be waiting for us with God in the sheer silence of peace.
Peace from the chaos of this world. Peace from the chaos of our own thoughts and needs and desires. Peace from the chaos of the expectations we as a society put upon ourselves. A peace that passes all understanding and will remain with us always. We just have to hold on and wait. put our trust in a God who surely saves each and every single one of us because we are created by inconsequentially loved by the God who saves.
Yes, the end is nearish and what we see in the world today certainly seems to reflect what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading. But the hope, the hope is that God isn’t in chaos. God is in sheer silence. And even with all these signs, Jesus says, “The end will not follow immediately.” Have faith and know that when the end finally comes, we will be saved because we believe and we live our faith. A faith in a God who is in the silent and who promises peace. Amen.