November 14, 2010 - Pentecost + 25

Jesus' Love Endures
Luke 21:5-19
Pentecost + 25 – November 14, 2010

I'm going to play Captain Obvious this morning and say buildings are important to us. There's a practical reason for that of course – they protect us from the extremes of the weather, they give us a place to keep our stuff. But it's more than that, right? One building is not the same as the next. We get emotionally attached to certain buildings – to our homes or the homes of our families and friends, to our churches, sometimes even to where we work or where we go to school. Because buildings are so much more than just bricks or wood or stone. Important stuff happens in them. They hold our memories, and they are filled with our hopes for the future. They represent safety, security, stability.

The people with Jesus in the gospel today had a similar relationship with the temple. They point out its beauty and majesty as they walk through the temple with Jesus. And no wonder – it was built to impress, built to last. It was huge, built out of enormous stones cut precisely to fit perfectly on top of each other. The temple was massive, built on a deep foundation, and reaching up to the sky. It was solid. It felt permanent. But people weren't emotionally attached to the temple just because of its physical structure – it was because of all it represented. The memories and hopes and dreams of the people of Israel were housed there, yes, but even more than that, the temple was the place where God was. In all its glory, the temple was a symbol of God's protection, a sign of God's presence among them, a place that would always stand, because God was there.

So imagine how shocking it was to hear Jesus say that this same temple wouldn't last, that not one stone would be left upon another. If something as solid as the temple couldn't stand the test of time, what could? And Jesus goes on to list all of these other scary predictions: wars, natural disasters, deadly diseases; arrests and persecution and betrayal at the hands of your closest family and friends.

Bad enough to hear Jesus say that this is what was coming, but Luke's first readers, the people this gospel was originally written down for, they were living it out. Read Acts (which is like Luke, part 2, written by the same author), and you see all of these things coming to pass; and even the temple, that most permanent looking of buildings, it was destroyed by the Romans. Gone. And they were left with questions, filled with uncertainty. What do we do now, when all the things we thought would last, that we thought were secure, have crumbled around our feet?

We know that feeling. We have, all of us, put our trust in things that seemed solid, things that offer the promise of a bright, stable future. We build our lives around these things – marriages, friendships, careers, homes, retirement accounts, all the things that make for a good life. And when everything falls into place, when everything is going well, we see them as Jesus' listeners saw the temple: signs of God's blessings and love.

But what do we do when things start to fall apart, when the things we have placed our trust in are destroyed and crumbling around us and we stand in the wreckage? When a young wife and mother loses her husband unexpectedly to a heart attack? When a tragic, senseless accident changes everything in an instant? When the unemployment runs out or the stock market drops and takes your financial security with it? What do we do with the suffering caused by earthquakes or floods or deadly diseases? What do we do when our trust is shaken, when it seems like the world is about to come to an end?

Jesus says that these things will give us an opportunity to testify. And that doesn't seem so great; I think we'd rather skip those opportunities and have everything go along the way it was before. But it's not as though God causes hard times to come just to push us into giving a witness to our faith. And what Jesus is talking about isn't making up some silver lining, or making believe that everything is okay when it's not. Jesus never asks us to pretend things are okay when they're not. There is real pain in each of our lives. We face genuine disappointments and challenges and tragedies. And following Jesus doesn't mean that that's all gonna go away. It doesn't mean that we are going to be protected from difficulty. But when Jesus says that our hard times will give us a chance to testify, it's because there's something deeper going on, something stronger than our struggles.

It's what the disciples did testify to every chance they got – that despite our troubles, Jesus never leaves us. Jesus is always with us. It's a promise that's kind of hidden, kind of subtle in this reading – when Jesus says that he will give his people words & wisdom to speak – but if he's there to guide our words, it means he's there. He's present with us, in and through all of the hardships we face, no matter what they may be. He never leaves us to face our burdens alone.
That is what we are called to testify to – that even in our darkest times, Jesus is there. That was the steadfast witness the disciples gave: that Christ was always with them, that the love of God knows no end. In everything they did, they always pointed back to the God who was at work in the world, especially in those places where the need is the greatest, bringing healing where there is hurt, hope where there is despair, light where there is darkness.

It's not always easy to do. It can be a challenge to look at our situations and to see and feel God at work. But if we look, if we dare to seek Jesus, we are sure to find him, to feel him - through the support of our friends and family, through the strength that comes when we need it most, through the peace that passes understanding. It is a call to trust God's never-ending love for us, to believe that no matter what we are facing, we don't face it alone. And that is the only thing that enables us to endure. We can't do it on our own strength, but only when we lean on the one who holds us fast. When the whole world seems like it's crumbling look for Jesus, because he's there. All other things will fade away, but Jesus' love endures. That is the good news, so don't be shy. Talk about it. Testify! Someone else needs to hear it too.

Amen.