Proper 28
The Ven Richard I. Cluett
Imagine that you are living in a time of great conflict. The powers of chaos seem to rule. The temporal powers of nations and armies are warring around you. Revolutionary bands are mounting armed resistance to gain power over their own lives and freedom for their people. Chaos reigns. You expect the worst. You expect the end of life as you have known it. You are searching everywhere and anywhere for some way through this time. Some reason to hope.
You find yourself huddled in a cave with others and someone reads to you the words from the Book of Daniel. “The Lord spoke to Daniel in a vision and said, ‘… Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.’”
There will come a time when wars and rumors of wars will cease. There will be a time when swords are turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. There will come a time when Anguish will end.There will come a time when God will reign. And you live in hope, even in the worst of times.
A couple of centuries later, Jesus and his disciples stand in the courtyard of the magnificent Temple built by Solomon to the glory of God. But as we heard again last week it had become a place where the name of God was used to enrich a few at the expense of all others. Jesus had said, “They devour the houses of widows.”
And today he proclaims that the day will come when what had been perverted by greed will be laid waste, “Not one stone will be left here upon another, they will all be thrown down.” And that will be the beginning of the birth of the age in which truly God will reign.
And if you go to Jerusalem today and walk your way through the narrow streets of the Old City, you will eventually come to the site where the Temple stood. And you see that it has been thrown down, stone by stone, until all that is left is the wall of the foundation. Even if you have not seen it, you have heard of it. It is called The Wailing Wall.
As you stand looking down at it, you see devout people laying their pain, their worries and anxieties, laying their fears, placing the burdens of their hearts before God at the foot of the wall. Some literally placing them on little scraps of paper into the crevices between the remaining stones.
Leading up to that terrible time, in Mark’s Gospel we hear Jesus say that there will be many who would lead the people, including his disciples, astray. They would offer all kinds of false hopes. Perhaps claiming military engagement, or even promising eventual and complete victory. Some will try to speak with the voice of Jesus and get them to go “My way, this way, not that way. Go this way. Live according to my rules.”
And if you think this only happens in the rare cults we read about or see on television, I want to tell you that it has happened even in parishes and dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the Christian Era. For the past year my work has been care for those who have been so led astray, used, abused, and finally left behind.
It was not only in the time of Daniel, nor only in the time of Jess, or solely in the time of the evangelist Mark, or the author of the Letter to the Hebrews that these things occurred.
The issue was then in those dangerous times and is now, where and how do we hear the voice of Jesus? Whose voice do we listen to? Which call do we follow? How do we follow in his way? Where do we seek our salvation? Do we have any reason at all to hope?
Did you ever wonder why the Bible has all those stories, the kind that inspired the Left Behind Series? All the apocalyptic stories of the fall of the Temple and Armageddon? All the prophecies in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures of doom and gloom?
This apocalyptic literature was written and has been preserved because they point to the worst circumstances of life. The authors weren’t prognosticating the future, no fortune telling, pointing to cataclysmic events that would be happening in the far and distant future. No reading of Tea leaves. They were reading the signs of their times. They were writing from the context of their lives. The stories were created out of their experience.
Have you known Anguish or Agony? Have you ever been truly afraid? Have you ever been terrorized by demons, or powers, or forces which you could not control? Have you ever been lost and not known which way to turn, or not known who, what or how to follow to get to safety? Have you suffered a great loss and been left feeling bereft, totally alone?
That’s what these stories are about. They are talking about the all too familiar perils and pitfalls of life, real life, all human life, our lives. Their subject is “When bad things happen to good people?”
They are a call, a reminder, a warning to stay close to the one who is the source of strength, the one whose way is true, the one with whose image we have been created, and redeemed and saved, and who is always present in every circumstance of life, and even we believe, present beyond this life, beyond the grave, the one in whom we can trust and in whom we will ultimately rest from all our labors, all our strivings, all our fears, all our wanderings, all our pain – and find perfect peace.
If you want to be reminded from time to time who that is, who has come in Jesus of Nazareth to announce and bring into being this new age, pull out your prayer book or your bible and slowly, quietly read Psalm 139 and receive the gift that is contained there for you. Listen.
I know you through and through - I know everything about you. The very hairs of your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to me, I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you - even in your wanderings. I know every one of your problems. I know your need and your worries. And yes, I know all your sins. But I tell you again that I love you - not for what you have or haven't done - I love you for you. ~ With thanks to Mother Theresa.
There is a wonderful hymn that sings these truths:
Look around you, can you see?
Times are troubled, people grieve.
See the violence, feel the hardness,
all my people – weep with me.
Walk among them. I’ll go with you.
Reach out to them with my hands.
Suffer with me and together
we will serve them, help them stand.
Forgive us father; hear our prayer.
we would walk with you anywhere,
through your suffering – with forgiveness,
take your life into the world.
Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.
The Good News in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is “God reigns – the Alpha and the Omega, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty." No matter what, God reigns.
