What is Jesus Saying?
November 15, 2009
Pastor Paul
Sermon for November 15, 2009 Pentecost 28B
Texts:
Isaiah 2:1-5
Mark 13:1-8(9-37)
Sermon Title: What is Jesus Saying?
Friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from the God who made you, the Christ who loves you, the Holy Spirit, who lives in you. Amen
I recall my first homiletics professor at the seminary, Dr. Arndt Halvorson. At the seminary that call it homiletics, but it is just another word for preaching. Homiletics sounds smarter perhaps.
I remember the first day we had preaching lab, which was a breakdown of the larger classroom into a setting of about 8-9 students, where we listened to one another’s sermons and offered critique. Basically, it was preaching in front of preachers. It was there in preaching lab that Dr. Halvorson was at his finest, as a teacher.
On the first day of lab, he looked around at this room of budding preachers and said, “when you get to your first call, get up on Monday and work on the sermon. If you don’t finish that day, get up on Tuesday and work on your sermon. If you still haven’t finished, get up on Wednesday and keep working on it. If that is the only thing you get done that week, you have done your job.”
In other words, ‘be working on preaching all the time.’
Dr. Halvorson was nearing retirement, so he said exactly what he wanted to say, without any need to impress us.
One time he offered this sage preaching advice. He said, “if you are preaching over the heads of the hearers, it doesn’t mean that you are smarter than they are. It just means that you are a lousy shot.” He just said it like it was, so I feel blessed to have heard from him when I did.
On one occasion, he shared the story of his wife’s response to his sermon. He began his work as a parish pastor, developing the sermon writing and delivery techniques he would one day teach to us. He recalled the Sunday, when he returned home from church and sat down at the table for lunch with his family. As he was accustomed to do, he asked his wife what she thought of the sermon that day(again, if you don’t want to know, don’t ask, he would say). She asked, “what was that word you kept using over and over again in the sermon?”
“Do you mean eschatological?” Arndt replied, with some sense of pride. “Yeh,” she said. “Don’t ever use that word again.”
Well, today’s gospel is concerned with things eschatological from an apocalyptic viewpoint, and if I were to stop there in my preaching, I would be leaving you in an ontological state of distress, which as Dr. Halvorson so aptly stated, would make me “a lousy shot.”
What’s a preacher to do? The scriptures are often difficult to understand. At times the language of the text and the topic addressed are not matters for the fragile of soul nor simple of mind.
Jesus speaks of the temple in Jerusalem being thrown down. He speaks of wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines. This passage in our Gospel is a part of a 37 verse discourse by Jesus on the end times, on the dread and desolation they will face. This 13th chapter of Mark, the longest speech by Jesus in this Gospel, is Mark’s equivalent of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, and it is equally, or more, difficult to understand.
What is Jesus saying today?
Well, eschatology comes from a Greek word, eschatos, which means “last”, and whenever you hear “ology”, it means “the study of”, so eschatology is the study of last things, most often in terms of the final events in the history of the world, or at least the ultimate destiny of humanity. To state it more simply, ‘will we know what the signs are when the world is about to end, and what will become of us when that happens.’
What is Jesus saying today?
Now apocalyptic is another word to explore, because today we are looking at a text that would be considered both eschatological(concerned with last things) and apocalyptic which comes from another Greek word(are you starting to feel edumacated now?), apocalypsis, which means “a lifting of the veil” or “revelation” meaning, something that was hidden and not known becomes revealed in an ultimate way, such as signs of the end times.
The truth is, in their origin, these texts of Christian Scripture were intended to be sources of comfort and strength in times of distress. However, in the hands of enlightened 21st century thinkers, they have become scientific definitions of when the world is actually going to end, which was not their original intent.
What is Jesus saying today?
In other words, 1st century(and even earlier) eschatological writing and preaching was offered as hope for the consummation and perfection of God’s relationship with the world, not like we hear in the modern interpretation, which is all about destruction and desolation.
No words of scripture are more misused, misinterpreted or misrepresented than the book of Revelation. I find it unsettling and even distressing that two authors who write a series of books called, “Left Behind,” make gazillions of dollars off the misdirected fear of people, by misrepresenting the scriptures. The Book of Revelation was written to be a word of comfort and hope to a people whose lives and whose world appeared to be ending soon. They are words intended to speak of the sovereignty of God, another big word that just means, “dear people, God is in charge of this world. It does not belong to the tyrants of this age, nor of any age. God reigns and will not let your lives be forgotten, lost nor destroyed, because ‘this is my Father’s world.’
What is Jesus saying today?
Every generation has had it’s share of eschatological fanatics, those who make bold predictions of the return of Christ and the end of the world. In the days of Martin Luther, there was a lay preacher named Melchior Hoffman, who on the eve of the Protestant Reformation in 1526, wrote up a pamphlet on the 12th chapter of the Book of Daniel(another eschatological work of the scripture), saying that the world would end in 7 years, on Easter 1533.
A German bookseller named Hans Nut said that he was herald of Christ sent to announce the Second Coming. This would occur exactly three years after the start of the Peasant’s War in 1527. (yes, his name actually was Hans Nut).
Bishop Frederick Nausea(yes, that is his name), predicted that the world would end in 1532, after hearing a single report of bloody crosses appearing in the sky alongside a comet.
Even Martin Luther offered a reflection that the world certainly wouldn’t last more than another 300 years, because “God cannot, and will not suffer this world much longer.”
In 1971, Hal Lindsey’s book entitled, “The Late Great Planet Earth,” a prediction of the end of the world, based upon an interpretation of the Book of Revelation and the establishment of Israel in 1948, sold a whopping 28 million copies.
So, what is Jesus saying today?
Jesus is saying that the wars in this world, the acts of tyrannical rulers, the evil of destruction, the suffering of the innocents is not the end. Jesus is saying that God will be God and that our suffering is not in vain.
Jesus is also saying, do not be duped, deceived nor distracted by voices that claim to know what God is doing in an eschatological apocalyptic sense of God’s doing. Jesus is saying that certainty of knowledge is a dangerous road for us creatures. Jesus reminds his disciples in Acts 1, prior to his final departure from them, “it is not for you to know the times nor the seasons which God has set by God’s authority, but when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be witnesses.”
So, what is it for us to do? Be witnesses to the truth that God in Jesus Christ is in charge of the world. Witnesses to the truth that God in Jesus Christ is a loving, forgiving God. Witnesses to the truth that we are to live our days loving God, neighbor and self with all of our heart, soul and strength, trusting that the greater questions of life will be just that…questions…and it is our place to trust, follow and surrender all that we do not know and cannot understand.
What is Jesus saying today?(tone changes to some understanding)
Maybe Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations said it best when he wrote, “do not seek death, death will find you. Instead, live each day in such a way that death becomes a fulfillment.”
Be prepared, be on guard, be ready, Jesus says. If death comes tomorrow, live today in such a way that the end is not distressing nor destructive. Live today in such a way that death is a welcome and invited guest. Live today in such a way that eschatological endings and apocalyptic unveilings draw you closer to the God who loves you so!
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