Sermon for 26th Pentecost
Our Only Hope
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
Dr. Ben Johnson was my New Testament professor at my seminary, Hamma School of Theology. One day in his New Testament class, Ben - we were very informal at Hamma and were encouraged to call our professors by their first names - Ben asked each of us to name our favorite Bible verse. I quickly said mine was from Matthew 25, the last judgement, with Jesus separating the sheep from the goats, those saved, the sheep, from those condemned, the goats, based on how people had lived in relation to the poor and hungry.
Ben then asked me who I was in this story, something he often asked as we studied the Gospels. I responded that I hoped to be a sheep, among those saved. No, Ben replied, I don’t think you identify with the sheep, I think you want to be Jesus, determining who is saved and who is not!
Ouch! Judgement. I had to admit that there was certainly some truth in what Ben had said.
I thought of that exchange as I read today’s Gospel lesson from St. Mark, chapter 13, “not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
This text is NOT among my favorites. Okay, this text is probably among my least favorites in the Bible. Earthquakes, famines, wars – the end times!
If I asked each of you to name your favorite Bible texts, I am betting you also would not list Mark 13 among your favorites. Many people love John 3:16, “for God so loved the world.” Most of us are comforted by the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd,” even if we have never seen a shepherd. Others might name the Christmas story or the Easter story or one or more of Jesus’s Parables – Who doesn’t like and know the Good Samaritan story?
The well-known United Methodist preacher and teacher, Bishop Will Willimon, writes about a student mission trip to Honduras that he led while he was the Chaplain at Duke University. A group of students and others from Duke spent a couple of weeks in the impoverished village of San Marco, Honduras, running a makeshift health clinic. Each night, while they were in San Marco, the students would build a large fire and sit and talk with the villagers who could join them by the fire.
One evening, Willimon writes, one student had the bright idea to ask each person around the campfire to share their favorite Bible verse or verses, visitors and villagers alike. The group eagerly jumped into this task, sharing all of the familiar texts I have just mentioned and many others in English or Spanish.
Then one woman, a villager, said through an interpreter that her favorite text was today’s Gospel lesson from St. Mark chapter 13. Not one stone left unturned. Famine, earthquake, war and fire. She stated that this text gave her great comfort!
Great comfort! Bishop Willimon wondered how that could be for this woman or anyone. Later, Willimon writes, he asked a nurse who had sitting next to him the evening what this nurse knew about the woman who had shared her love for Mark 13. How could she love such a harsh Bible text? The nurse told WIllimon that the woman who shared Mark 13 as her favorite had lost three of her five children to infant malnutrition. Her life was hard, very hard, with war and starvation ever present.
What we hear as bad news, news about our status quo being upset by war and fire and earthquake, the loss of our homes, our jobs, our comfortable lifestyles, THIS woman heard Jesus speak of a new birth, that all of what we see as terrible events are a new beginning, the “beginning of birth pangs,” as the text tells us, the beginning of something new, something better for her, certainly better than the life of a mother who has watched her babies die in her arms and struggles for life every day.
When Jesus speaks of the end times, he is not predicting the future, especially our future. No, Jesus is speaking about the precariousness of the present! When Mark writes about these words of Jesus, Mark is trying to help the early Christians understand how the temple in Jerusalem could have been destroyed as it had been in those early years of Christianity.
Whatever the explanation, this is not the Jesus we like to hear – we like the Jesus who is a great moral teacher, the one who teaches compassion, who gives us a spiritual boast. No, this is the Jesus who challenges us in the present to live lives dedicated to others while we live in this world.
We have all watched this on the television news, especially in these last days. Again and again we have seen people interviewed who seemingly have lost everything in the recent wildfires – homes and possessions and even jobs, schools and churches – people who have lost everything in the recent wildfires and again and again they have said that these things are not important, that their loved ones and their family’s safety are what is important, not any worldly goods.
And this is what Jesus is also saying to us, once again in today’s Gospel, not to be invested in those things that ultimately do not matter – homes and jobs and cars and clothing. These are all temporary, precarious, as we have just witnessed once again in the fires that have swept our state. No, Jesus tells us that these small “deaths” are, or can be or should be, the beginning of something new, birth pangs of our new lives in Christ.
And, most importantly and once again, Jesus is telling us that no matter what happens to us in this world, we do have a guarantee – God’s eternal love for us, in all times, in all places.
Thus, in end times and regular times, in the midst of war or peace, when threatened by fire or famine or violence, God continues to love and care for us. Something better is coming for us all. God continues to be our hope, sometimes our only hope, but our hope nonetheless.
In just two weeks we will begin the season of Advent, the church’s new year. Advent is the season of hope and expectation, hope and expectation for Jesus to come again into our lives this Christmas. Despite whatever life brings us, whatever life throws at us, we have the hope for a Savior, Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God is our hope. Today and all days.
Thanks be to God who has given us the victory through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sunday, November 17-18, 2018
