November 17, 2013
As a kid in the 70’s and 80’s
I remember watching a lot of shows on TV about Nostradamus.
They stick out in my mind because
I would watch them with both interest and dread.
Remember Nostradamus? They have some current shows about him,
But he was all the rage in the 70’s and 80’s/
He was a man who lived in the 16th century
who wrote predictions that some people felt
had come true in history.
Experts said that he gave some dates and pretty specific
details for disastrous world events that would happen
like the rise of Napoleon and Hitler.
It was pretty convincing stuff –
especially if you’re an impressionable young kid.
And in these shows, they would inevitably read some of his predictions
for our lifetime and try to interpret them,
this is the part that filled me with dread.
They talked about what his vague poetry could mean,
Was the beacon of the new world New York City?
Does his line eaten by the dragon mean that
it would be engulfed in a tornado?
And they would show pictures of
Cataclysmic events: earthquakes, natural disasters
the rise of terrible leaders that would
throw the world into war, things that would change the world.
I would watch these in fear
wondering what the future would hold for our world.
I don’t think I was afraid of my own death.
I was afraid of the end - the end of everything
with or without me there to see it.
Of course, many of those type of events have happened.
Maybe not quite the way Nostradamus and the
TV shows described, but we have seen awful events
that have changed the world to some extent.
There was 9-11, terrible wars that don’t seem to end, AIDS,
Hurricane Katrina, Sandy, the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan,
and the nuclear disaster there that is still going on now.
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| Church in Tacloban, Philippines |
Thousands and thousands are dead, more missing,
11 million people displaced, no food, water,
no relief for those who have survived.
I know we all have been praying for the desperate situation
those people are in now, and we have to continue to pray for them.
And through all these events, the world has changed.
and natural and human disasters are just one part of those changes.
Technology, attitudes, the way we behave, sexuality,
racial relations, economic situations,
things that Nostradamus didn’t even touch on have changed the world.
It is not the same place that it was in the 80’s
And yet, when you think about it,
there is still so much that has remained the same.
The end of everything that I feared would happen
when I was watching the shows about Nostradamus never really materialized.
Jesus seems to be doing a little Nostradamus
in today’s gospel. He’s talking about the future in frightening terms.
Earthquakes, wars, famine, disease, and persecution.
It’s a hard message to hear from Jesus,
one that has thrown many people into a sleepless frenzy, I know.
But I don’t think Jesus is saying these things
to make people frightened,
he’s saying them so we won’t jump to the end
like I did when I was a kid.
Jesus is saying: These things will happen,
these things happen all the time.
You will see plenty of pain and destruction, violence,
and death, maybe even your own death.
But when you see and hear these things: don’t be afraid.
Because the end is not here yet.
Jesus wants us to put things like this in perspective.
Things may seem disastrous, unrecoverable, hopeless.
But don’t believe what you see. It is not the end.
This temple that they were sitting by
when Jesus said this was amazing.
Many of the stones that were used to build it weighed 28 tons.
Some were bigger than that.
the outer court could hold 400,000 people
it was a marvel of architecture and ingenuity
It was beautiful and impressive,
It still would be today if it were still standing.
So when Jesus to talked about the destruction of this place
The disciples’ imagination must have been racing:
what kind of force would make that happen?
What kind of violence and destruction would our people see?
And this was God’s house, where God’s people came to worship.
If the temple was destroyed, would all our people be destroyed?
And what would become of God? Would the world lose trust in God
if God’s house and God’s people were gone?
And at the same time, even though it was God’s temple
and where the people of God worshipped,
the disciples and other Jewish people knew how
King Herod had built it:
He levied brutal taxes on the people.
He worked in collusion with the Romans who oppressed Jewish citizens.
He built it abusing thousands of slaves and low paid workers.
And they also knew why King Herod built it to be so big and so impressive.
He built it so he could out-do the pagan temples built by pagan rulers.
It was a statement by Herod to show off his choice of gods
and to show his own power and glory off before others.
In a world of many Gods, the ruler with the biggest temple wins.
Herod believed he won. The temple was proof of God’s greatness.
And Herod’s glory was solidified in those 28 ton stones.
Herod’s faith rested on his achievement,
it rested on the grandeur of the building,
it’s strength, it’s ability to stand, it’s beauty.
To many people the temple itself had become an idol.
And Jesus said it would come down.
So the end of the temple would also
mean the end of Jewish dominance in the area.
It would be the end of the Jewish place and rule in Jerusalem.
It would be an end to the life they knew.
Jesus says, you will see many frightening things,
but don’t be terrified – it won’t be the end.
The end of the temple is not the end of God.
It is not the end of Christ, it’s not the end of
God’s relationship with God’s people.
Of course we know now,
the temple would be destroyed less than 50 years after Jesus lived.
The people who read or heard the gospel of Luke for the first time
would have remembered it first-hand.
Many people died, many things were destroyed
and life would never be exactly the same for any of them.
But like we have seen happen in so many other places,
the remnants stood up in the midst of the devastation
and doctored their wounds and helped one another and
bravely went on to the next day adjusting their lives around the calamities,
with renewed faith and stronger dependence on God
because of what they’ve been through.
As a priest who serves at a church in Tacloban,
the hardest hit city in the Philippines said:
"Despite what happened, we still believe in God.
The church may have been destroyed, but our faith is intact,
as believers, as a people of God, our faith has not been destroyed."
God does not stand or fall with buildings or
governments, or economies, or cities, or churches, or leaders.
God does not depend on things being the same.
And God’s relationship with God’s people does not depend
on the outward signs of peace or prosperity or beauty
so we shouldn’t look to them for our security.
This world is flawed and fragile and volatile
but our trust is not in the world or what it holds.
Jesus is telling his friends and us:
Don’t anchor your faith in the strength of a temple,
Or in success, or in beauty, or your good fortune.
Rest your faith in God and God alone through all things.
Then you will be able to see strength
and beauty and fortune in the midst of hell
because you know that God will there with us.
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