Testifying To Hope When Everything Is Falling Apart

I follow a couple of midwestern pastors who have a weekly podcast about the readings for each Sunday (pulpitfiction.com). They are polite and good natured as you would expect, and they are always thoughtful about interpreting scripture. Every now and then, though, when a really tough reading gets tossed their way, they resort to making comments with language that can be a little snarkier than usual. This week was one of those weeks, and it was delightful. In response to the gloomy gospel we just heard, they also posted a meme. At the top is a picture of the earth exploding, along with the phrase “The end is near.” Below that is a picture of Grumpy Cat, the cat with the famous frown and dour disposition, who simply says in response, “Good.” When it comes to religious topics as scary and overwhelming as the apocalypse, you really can’t beat a cat cartoon for a gentle way in.

Jesus was at the Temple in Jerusalem. People were busy marveling at its beauty. It wasn’t quite as grand as Solomon’s first Temple, but it was still pretty extraordinary. And people’s love for their holy place was immense. Jesus’ prediction of its destruction must have come as a shock. They quickly asked him when it would happen so that they could prepare themselves - perhaps emotionally or spiritually, and maybe financially, if they were going to need a building committee and a capital campaign. I might be reading into the situation as a rector. At any rate, Luke’s gospel was written some ten or twenty years after the Romans really did sack Jerusalem and destroy the Temple, so this scene in Luke’s gospel set up Jesus as a very successful prophet whose dire words were about to come true. Jesus then said that other awful things were going to happen – there would be false prophets, wars and insurrections, nations rising against nations, natural disasters, persecutions, even betrayals by friends and family. It would look like the end times. And his advice? Don’t be terrified. For the record, that’s a pretty standard move for him. He had a tendency to offer a word of peace in rough times, like during a storm, or in a locked room, whenever people were scared of the direction things seemed to be going. Don’t be terrified, he often said.

But that was not his only message at the Temple that day. He also said that the upcoming cataclysmic events would provide the opportunity to testify. Let that sink in for a minute. Testify. When everything is falling apart? We usually think of testifying as something we do when a prayer has been answered or a life saved in some way. We don’t think of uncertainty or anxiety as occasions for testimony. Yet Jesus was clear that that is precisely when to give an account of our faith, and to speak his words of love and faith and peace.

I think we should pause here for a minute and talk about the ever present danger of making theological mistakes. It’s clear that we humans have a tendency to read the signs of the times and decide what God is or is not doing. Take disasters for example. We go through them in our lives and wonder why God has done this to us. We also see disasters on the news, anything from Venice flooding to, perhaps, watching too many hours of impeachment hearings. Things can look pretty grim no matter which side of the political aisle you’re on. All of which is to say that we see disasters with some regularity and wonder if God is displeased or angry. And we have to watch out, because there are plenty of peddlers of gloom and doom out there, quick to scare us with their empty talk of “God’s plan.”

We can also make a theological mistake in sunnier times, too. Take the popular message of the prosperity gospel, for example. We can be lulled into thinking that if we just believe hard enough, more wealth or health or happiness will come our way. I don’t think God works that way, either. So when we hear apocalyptic verses in the bible, we need to be careful. We need to avoid the temptation to look for evidence of either God’s punishment in hard times or God’s rescue in good times. Because that was not Jesus’ point. When bad things happen, which they inevitably do, his advice was to testify. When everything seems to be falling apart, speak of your faith. I think that Jesus was never particularly interested in fair weather disciples. He trained his followers to remain faithful to God in all things, which is a deeply hopeful posture to take in this disaster-prone world of ours.

At its core, Christianity is a religion of hope. Hope in God’s abiding presence and love, hope in resurrected life, hope for the lost and the least, hope in the kingdom of heaven and our citizenship there. Jesus said, testify to that. Not to divine rescue or punishment, but to hope and to faith. Tell the story of your hope in something greater than what we see in this world. Witness to it. Use Jesus’ own words of love, and faith, and peace. Even when the world is shaken by momentous events, even when division seems so fierce, this world needs our hope. That’s the call that comes from any good biblical apocalypse. They are not meant to scare us, but to make us bold in our hope.

There is a gift in this way of thinking, and a great preacher named Fred Craddock described it like this. “Such thinking should keep our souls athletically trim, free of the weight of the excessive and useless. Such thinking should aid us in keeping gains and losses in perspective. Such thinking should chase away the demons... and cheer us with the news not only that today is a gift of God but also that in some tomorrow we will stand in the presence of the Son of man.”

So if, by chance, you ever get anxious, today’s gospel is for you. If you ever get stuck in a kind of worry loop about your own life, or about our community, or this nation or planet, Jesus’ message is for you. His divine word of peace has the power to cut through our spinning thoughts and remind us of God’s faithful presence in the midst of it all. And God waits for a response from us. Will we be faithful in return? The world is clearly a tumultuous place, it always has been. Sometimes even grand temples fall. Whenever disaster strikes, the false gods of gloom and doom show up and want us to worship them. We get to choose. The prophet Joshua once spoke to Israel with these words: “If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). The choice is ours, to serve our fears or to serve the true God. From time to time, an apocalypse is a powerfully good reminder.