Living in the
Wake of the World
Isaiah 65:17-25 Luke
21:5-19
Ordinary 33 Year C
Sunday following the
Federal General Election
November 13, 2016
First Presbyterian
Church Batesville, AR
The Rev. Dr. Robert
Wm Lowry
I remember
what happened right before and I remember thinking, how did I wind up in the
water, but what happened between seeing my friend Ann trip and finding myself
bobbing in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico watching the boat mercifully turn
back to pick me up is a bit of a blur. Somehow
when I reached out to help keep her from falling I went over the back of the
boat.
You
wouldn’t think it looking at the small-ish charter boat we hired for a day of
fishing during Spring Break, but that little thing created a pretty intense
wake as it sped away. Coughing out the
water I managed to swallow and floating with the help of my life vest, I felt
the wake of the boat pull me left, right, front, back, and down all at the same
time.
It didn’t
take long for the water to settle, but in the moment that moment seemed like
forever and for a second as I was spinning at the mercy of the churned up water
I thought the wake might win.
Being a
disciple of Jesus must have felt a bit like that at times.
Whether
their own encounter with the gospel had the urgency of Mark’s telling, the
radical re-visioning of Matthew’s, or the narrative we have today in the midst
of Luke’s theology of radical hospitality, by this point in Jesus’ ministry the
disciples found themselves bobbing in the water wondering which way was up.
Jesus, at
every turn, had upended their perceptions of the world, themselves, and
God. He was as disruptive a force as any
they had ever encountered. Every time
they think they have their footing, Jesus pulls from under them the
preconceptions and perceptions they have of the world and leaves them spinning
in his wake.
Still, in
the midst of all of Jesus’ pedagogical and theological heaving too and fro,
they had the Temple. It wasn’t going
anywhere.
The Temple
was as close to eternal as the world could come. In addition to its traditional role as the
footstool of YHWH and the place where the divine of heaven came into contact
with the profane of the world, that building housed the hope of the people of
Israel.
It was
YHWH’s house.
Their
house.
It was the
place where the hopes and dreams and promise of generations were stored and
cherished. It was the place where each
generation deposited its hopes for the next.
High
priests and rulers would come and go, but the timber and stone of the second
temple bore a sense of eternity anchored in the world. It was their sure
foundation.
So of
course Jesus throws it into the roiling waters in his wake and tells them that
the day will come when not one stone will stand on another and this monument to
eternity and their understanding of God would come crashing down to the ground.
Words
cannot do justice to the weight of that declaration.
The day
would come when the house of YHWH, the storehouse of their hope, the place
where generations had looked with eyes fixed on eternity would come crashing
down and be left nothing but a pile of rubble in the streets of Jerusalem. To be sure, there were issues with the temple
and Jesus had repeatedly shown the disciples that the emperor, or in this case
the Sadducees, had no clothes as he repeatedly laid low the powers of the
world. But still, that building- that hulking
edifice- was solid and sure.
So when
Jesus tells them that the day will come when not a stone will be left on stone,
their hearts must have descended to their bowels. There really isn’t a word to capture the
feelings engendered as those words of Jesus’ were hanging in the air.
Despair?
Hopelessness?
Hollowness?
They all
come close but they don’t quite capture the all-encompassing feeling of loss
that would accompany the broken stones and splintered timbers of the house of
YHWH.
The closest
word I have ever heard to capture that feeling is the Korean word “Han.” Han lacks a simple translation into English
because it is a word that means more than its definition. It is a state of being rather than simply a
description of a feeling. Suh nam-Jong,
a wonderful Korean theologian describes Han as:
“unresolved
resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the
overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one’s guts and
bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take
revenge and to right the wrong- all these combined are Han.”
The
disciples, when they heard Jesus telling them of the coming destruction of the
temple, must have found themselves in a posture of Han.
In that
moment swept up in the wake of the world, their moment of Han must have seemed
like an eternity waiting to sweep over them and drag them to the bottom of an
endless sea of heartache and despair.
We don’t
have the second temple in 21st century America, but we do have
places where we put our faith in the eternal; those places where we invest our
hopes of the moment and of moments yet to come.
It isn’t a building or even a city.
I would wager to say that when push
comes to shove, our temple is the ballot box; the embodiment in the world of
our democratic ideals. The ballot box is
the place where, from time to time, we tick a piece of paper and cast our hopes
into the mix with those of our neighbors and pray that in the end ours will
carry the day.
We saw some measure of that hope
play out on Tuesday night.
As the election returns came in and
the states were colored blue or red by the network talking heads, half of our
nation were elated that their hopes for the future were triumphant while half
of our nation found themselves slipping into despair.
It would not be an hyperbole to say
that for many the results of Tuesday night’s election were the doorway to a
sense of Han-like despair. Before the
sun rose on this new reality, thousands had taken to the streets in
protest. For many our President-elect
represents everything our sacred temple of democracy is NOT. And with his election, the sure foundation of
faith in democracy was shaken and shattered; our temple was destroyed in one
fatal electoral blow.
In fairness, for many of the half
who celebrated on Tuesday night, the last 8 years have, for many, seemed like a
slow-motion destruction of that same temple of democracy. For them President Obama and not
President-elect Trump represents the crack in the foundation and the risk of
the whole thing tumbling down.
Either way,
the foundations are being shaken and the temple of our hope seems at risk of
tumbling down. Many do not know where to
turn, so we turn to the one place that makes sense; the Word of God.
So, sitting
here in the wake of the most divisive election of most of our life times;
watching as the hopes and fears of our nation collide; seeing the
reverberations of the electoral aftermath shake if not shatter our temple of
hope, we turn to scripture and ask, “What does Jesus have to say to us in this
moment?”
WWJS- What would Jesus say?
For some it
is tempting to say, “Jesus would say that this election restored hope” and for others to proclaim “Jesus agrees that hope died on Tuesday night.” In truth, I think what Jesus would say to us
today in answer to our pleading question about the future of our temple of
democracy is precisely what the disciples heard about the temple in Jerusalem,
“the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be
thrown down.”
This temple
will suffer the same fate as the temple in Jerusalem. Not because of Obama and not because of
Trump, but because it is the nature of earthly things to come to an end.
What the
disciples needed to learn was that the temple was just a building. It could not doom their history or their hope
anymore than it could hold them. They,
like we, are held eternally in one place and one place only; the loving hands
of God. So Jesus reminds us…
there will
be wars and rumors of wars;
there will
be Obamas and there will be Trumps;
there will
be temples built and temples destroyed;
but none of
these- none of them- is the end God
has in store for the children of God.
I had to be
reminded of that on Wednesday morning.
Like so many of our neighbors, I found myself paralyzed by despair over
the results of this election. Those who
know me will not be shocked by that revelation about my political leanings! I woke up hoping it had been a bad dream only
to turn on my iPad, look at the Washington Post, and see that my temple had indeed
been dismantled one electoral vote at a time.
The storehouse of my hopes sat in rubble with not one stone standing on
another.
A good
friend and pastor who shares my political leanings (but thankfully not my sense
of despair) sent me a text in reply to my message of doom, gloom, and impending
relocation to Canada. She sent me the
first question of the Heidelberg Catechism:
What
is your only comfort in life and in death?
That
I am not my own, but belong body and soul, both in life and in death, to my
faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
My temple had not been destroyed!
My temple died for me, rose for me,
and reigns in glory for me.
My temple advocates for me at the
right had of God the father almighty.
My temple is not subject to the
ballot box or the Electoral College or any other
folly of the mind of humankind.
Those 500 year-old words reminded
me that neither my salvation nor yours depends on an election or a
candidate. The best candidate cannot
usher in the kingdom of God and the worst cannot prevent God ushering it
in.
In body and in soul, in life and in
death, we belong to Christ.
That is our hope in every moment
when we find our earthly temple shaken. It
is the promise that endures through every iteration of the ups and downs that
life can throw our way.
It is a promise that does not
respect party or perspective;
that is held in monopoly not by the
right the left or the center.
that leads us out of despair
ushering us beyond a state of Han;
that reminds us each and every day
that our God of eternity is a God of hope and promise who wants nothing but
what is right and good for ALL of God’s children.
It is the hope that reaches into
the waters and pulls us out of the wake of the world.
And that hope is also our charge as
the people of Christ in the world.
After 18 months of bile, vitriol,
and the wholesale appealing to the least in our natures, our communities and
our neighbors are hurting.
If we are going to live into this
promise as the children of God, there can be no room for the thrill of victory
or the agony of defeat in elections.
There can be room only for the urgent work of hope and reconciliation
for which Christ has elected us!
That is our charge today and in
every day to come because that is what it means to belong body and soul to the
one who gave his life so we might find ours.
It is not an easy charge, but it is
truly ours.
May God bless our nation, our
President-elect, and each and every disciple of Christ. As this new era in our civic life unfolds, may
we all have the courage to proclaim with tireless voices lifted to the heavens the
gospel of grace, peace, and wholeness in a broken world until justice rolls
like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Sola Deo Gloria! To God alone be the glory!
Amen.
