November 28, 2004
Isaiah 21: 1-5 + Romans 13: 11-14 + Matthew 24: 37-44

Jesus stands with his disciples on the Mount of Olives. It is not a
“mountain” by our measure.It is just a hill that rises up out of the Kedron Valley To the west is the hill upon which Jerusalem is built. It is not as far as from here to Robinson Street.

In fact the distance is made greater because the road twists and turns as it goes down and up. You can hear the noise of the city from the Mount of Olives. There Jesus sees the Temple in all its grandeur and power, and he makes his prophecy. It was really more of an educated guess thana real surprisingly new idea about the future. The country was occupied by a hostile military power, and there was opposition and resistance that ran deep with resentment. His prophecy was not, at an historical level very profound; but it was not a political and historical prophecy. It was a prophecy rich in revealed truth and said more about God than about God than about a building, more about the distant future than about what would happen in less than twenty years. What was prophesy in the lifetime of Jesus was history by the time Matthew wrote this Gospel.

Matthew writes with hindsight about the Temple. He knows that the resurrection, not the crucifixion, is the summit and climax of the life of Jesus. He writes to Hebrew/Christian about this Temple to stir their visions and their hope of what is to come and propose an identity for this community of faith. They lived day in and day out asking one question: “When will Jesus come again?” Matthew, with the words and voice of Jesus gives them an answer. He tells them that no one will know, and therefore they shape and live their lives in anticipation and expectation with insight, foresight, and insight.

With foresight we see in the present the future we are building. We care and plan for our children. We look ahead to vacations and holidays. We save. We work. We build. We love. We support. These things turn our days and years into life. A look at these things gives us the skill or the power to prophesy about our future, because what we are doing these days is what we shall have left in the future when there are no more days If it’s all about getting more stuff or paying for the stuff in the future, then we will be doing that in the future; just getting more and still paying. If it’s all about looking good and being liked, then we’ll only “Look” good when time stands still, and that’s what I always hear people say when they look down at a body in a coffin: “Doesn’t he look good?”

With hindsight we change the future. We learn by experience. We see where things went wrong. We see wasted time and wasted people, and hindsight can help us to see in the past what we do not want to see in our future.

With insight we value the present, the moment in which we live, and recognize that what we have is pregnant with future potential. We know that now is the time to feed the hungry, that now is the time for forgive those we love and have hurt, and that now is the time to say “I love you” or “I’m proud of you”.
Matthew calls us to hindsight, for foresight, and insight. He offers us the hindsight of the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, and the response of the people of his time. He offers us the foresight of the resurrection and a vision of the Kingdom we shall unfold in the year to come. He offers us the insight that we are a new Temple, the living stones of a new community of faith.

Jesus looks forward

Matthew looks back

We must look within.

November 21, 2004

2 Samuel 5:1-3 + Colossians 1:12-20 + Luke 23:35-43

We come now to the end of Luke’s Gospel year, and the ultimate end of the journey Jesus has made to Jerusalem.

Now we know where he was leading us.

It is not to the city of the old covenant and temple, but outside the city.

It was not to the seat of proud power, but to the posture of humble service.

He took us to throne room with its riches and comforts,

but to a cross with its loneliness and suffering.

Yet from the throne of his cross he spoke his finest words

and delivered the most clear summary of his mission.

It is Luke’s summary of all that began in the Nazareth Synagogue

as Jesus stood up, took the scroll and began to read.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor

to proclaim liberty to captives,

recovery of sight to the blind

and freedom for the oppressed,

to proclaim a year of favor from God.”

In the genius of Luke’s writing, we see now that it is all complete.

The Jesus he gives us has done what he set out to do right up to and including his very last breath.

All his life he reached out to those who were outside, at the edges of life, the sinners, the tax collectors, the women, children, those without hope, and in his last breath, he does it one more time. He includes a condemned thief among those who will inherit His life and His relationship with His Father. No one who looks to Him will be without Hope and without a place before His Father.

What he proclaims in that Nazareth Synagogue comes as welcome news to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. The trouble lies in the last proclamation: “A Year of Favor From God.”

This is what I like to call: “Bible Speak”. It is a kind of very specific biblical language that refers to what is required in the book of Leviticus chapter 25: a Jubilee year every seventh year requiring the land to rest in order to restore its fertility, and every fifty years the Israelites were to restore their relationships with one another. It meant that they were to free slaves who were imprisoned for unpaid debts. It was all about forgiveness, righting relationships, and restoring the community to equality before God.

For a people who are more interested in what they call “justice” rather than forgiveness, this is a very unwelcome and difficult suggestion.

For a people who hold whole nations in debt with an economic system that keeps nations poor, a “Year of Favor” and not getting your money back with interest does not sound like a good idea.

For a people who would rather exact revenge and punish rather than forget and forgive, such a “Year of Favor” is seems like an insult and unfair.

None the less, the Year of Favor has been proclaimed by Jesus Christ from the Synagogue of Nazareth, and it was not a twelve-month year – it was and is another way of describing the Reign of God, the “Kingdom” of Jesus Christ.

Citizens of that realm, those who choose life in “Jubilee” or in “Favor”

will be setting things right these days.

They will forgive debts.

They will see to the freedom of those who are captive,

not just in prisons,

but those who are captive in economic and social systems

that exploit them and hold them in bondage.

They will see that relationships are healed and restored to goodness by kindness.

Those who recognize their need for the Kingdom, or that year of Favor

and the chosen ones, the kin of God.

The one who speaks the loudest in today’s Gospel is one who knows what is to come. In asking Jesus to “remember” him, he asks for the relationship to continue:

a relationship that brings the promise of forgiveness and paradise.

The thief wants a relationship with one who is innocent yet suffers,

one who is abandoned, alone, helpless, powerless, betrayed, and misunderstood.

He knows something many of us are yet to learn.

He knows there is no future for him, and no hope to be found from those who are comfortable, connected, and in charge.

Those of us who can identify with him and make his prayer our own and those who hang on the crosses of their own lives or live with the painful consequences of their choices as he did, have every hope of hearing that final and power filled promise: “You will be with me in paradise.”

November 14, 2004

Malachi 3:19-20 + 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 + Luke 21:5-19

We are living among ruins.

The ruins of political systems, of formerly revered social structures,

and the ruins of economic well-being, of dreams and aspirations.

It is impossible to imagine anyone in this church not having

found themselves or their lives in ruins at least once.

There is no place on this earth where human beings dwell that does not have its ruins. It is not necessary to live at the time Luke wrote this Gospel to know about ruins. Ruined temples, wars, natural disasters, rejection by family and friends, persecutions:

these things go on all the time, in every age.

The idea that these things signify the end of time has an appeal

if for no other reason than to release us from the obligation of doing anything about it. That kind of thinking is the easy way out.

If after all, the end is really near, why bother to rebuild, restore, forgive, or expect anything else.

The temptation to dig a hole, lock the doors, hide inside, or deny it all is considerable. But that is not our option, at least, not the option of people whose lives are rooted in Jesus Christ.

There is actually a greater crises than all of those disasters.

The one we really face here in Norman, Oklahoma is, in most cases,

the converse of what Jesus foresaw.

Our crises is that nothing is happening.

It is all someone else’s problem somewhere else in the world.

We did not drive around any tanks or armored vehicles to get here.

No one dodged any bullets, and there’s no wall being built under the pretense of security.

I’ve never buried anyone who was killed for their faith.

This temple does not seem to be under any threat from a foreign army of occupation.

Precisely because nothing seems to be happening faithful people

are tempted by spiritualities and religious experiences that offer drama and entertainment.

The temptation to make religion a market commodity,

to shop around for the most convenient schedule,

to pick and choose what to believe and how to shape ones values

with the least amount of challenge, conversion, or change is highly seductive.

It’s as though we find a religion that fits us, rather than fitting ourselves into faith.

We stand in need of the same counsel Jesus gave his disciples before:

beware of being led astray, trust God, endure the boredom and emptiness that besiege us.

To the sick he says the same thing: “Your Faith will Save you.” Be strong, Endure.

The words of Jesus are sprinkled with obstinate hope

that contradict bleak surroundings and threats of disaster.

The most constant recurring theme in the Gospel of Luke is: “Do Not Fear.”

Prophets, trembling shepherds, faltering apostles hear those words again and again.

We are not promised escape.

We are promised that there is Life without end.

Endurance is not a passive state.

It is a deliberate act, a choice to rely on God’s promise.

There is no denying death, adversity, pain, sorrow, or disasters,

but these are not reason to give up. We are a people who look at life with hope.

That means, God is in charge, Providence rules the universe,

the world has been redeemed no matter how badly we mess it up

or what evil we do. We cannot finally destroy the goodness of life.

The virtue that emerges from this Gospel is Hope.

It is not the same as a wish. Those are based on flights of fancy.

Wishes may or may not come true, but God fulfills all hope.

Hope is based on a promise.

Jesus Christ wished he didn’t have to die,

but he had no real hope of avoiding the cross.

So, instead of wishing, he hoped. He hoped that his Father would keep his promise

by making something beautiful of his ugly death.

His hope was fulfilled beyond all imagination by his resurrection.

My friends, we hope because Jesus promised he would stay with us

wherever we go, whatever we do.

The sick and the frail among us who will shortly be anointed

must take courage from this gospel.

They live among us as unmistakable signs of hope.

They remind us of what the stakes are in this life as we come of age.

In our generation we can no longer confuse ignorance with bigotry,

blame poverty on laziness, excuse war as a last resort

any more than we can say that the sick are ill because of something their parents did. That thinking comes from another age.

Today we are people who live without fear,

not in hiding from the challenges of love, fidelity, and commitment,

not shopping around for entertainment or the easy way out,

but joyfully embracing Hope because Jesus remains true to his word,

and by endurance and perseverance, we shall secure our lives.