Tag Archives: apocalyptic

Beauty in the Rubble: A sermon for Proper28B, 2024

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Proper 28B

                                          November 17, 2024

It’s more than a little ironic that every three years we hear this gospel reading on what is for us the day of our Annual Meeting. After this service, we will gather in Vilas Hall to elect lay leadership for the coming year, to discuss our operating budget, and this year to get updates on the roof project and to embark on a fundraising campaign.

It’s doubly ironic this year because Jesus’ prediction: “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down!” is heard against the backdrop of masonry repairs taking place on our exterior to ensure the continued presence of Grace Church for future generations. Grace Church has stood on this site for 185 years now and we hope that what we are doing now and planning to do next year will preserve it for another century.

To top it all off, as I wrote these words, I could hear the sounds of demolition taking place in advance of the construction of the new History Center. Talk about not leaving one block upon another…

It may be tempting, though, in light of today’s gospel reading, to discredit the work we are doing, the money we are spending. Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple; his earlier actions in overturning the tables of the moneychangers; and the attack on those who were donating to the temple treasury may led us to include that buildings like temples are misguided. And there are certainly plenty of verses in scripture that might lead one to that conclusion: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”—for example. Protestant Christianity has often disparaged beautiful buildings; worship that includes beautiful vestments; images; even the music of organs and choirs. 

The verses we heard, the first verses of Mark 13, are an introduction to what scholars call “the little apocalypse.” It’s a genre of literature that emerged in the Hellenistic period, combining biblical symbolism and imagery with elements from other cultures and religions. While modern readers tend to assume that apocalyptic provides a guide to future events—the end times—in fact it’s coded language to help its readers understand their current historical context. 

For the gospel of Mark, that context was the Jewish revolt of 66-73 and the destruction of the temple. While scholars debate whether Mark was written just before or soon after Roman legions under the General, later Emperor Titus destroyed it, the conflict and the destruction loom over the gospel and especially this chapter. Later in the chapter come predictions that the followers of Jesus will be persecuted; that the temple will be profaned; that there will be earthquakes and signs in the heavens, and finally the Son of Man will come.

Such language both terrifies and fascinates us—to be clear, apocalyptic imagery and thinking are the ancestors of contemporary horror and fantasy literature and film. And we see how that imagery plays out in other segments of our culture, even in our political life.

In spite of the fact that apocalyptic has tended to be a fixation of conservative Protestantism in the US, it may seem like it is especially apt for the rest of us. It does seem like we are in the end times, with wars and rumors of war, collapsing cultural norms and institutions, climate catastrophe, and profound divisions in society that are often depicted in starkly oppositional terms: light v. darkness; good v. evil. It may seem like false prophets have arisen, claiming to speak in Jesus’ name, claiming “I am he” and leading many astray.

And it may feel like the stones are already crumbling around us, as the institutions we hold dear are being attacked and destroyed from inside and out. As we contemplate that destruction, both real and metaphorical, it may seem like there’s nothing we can do, that hopelessness, helplessness, impotence, despair, and acquiescence are the only options available.

In my sermon last week, I referred to small acts of defiance and hope—like the widow putting her two pennies into the temple treasury while the billionaires threw in their millions. But there are other, less confrontational things as well. 

Several recent post-service comments from visitors got me thinking. They all mentioned the beauty of our worship, our building, our music. It has occurred to me over the last couple of weeks that perhaps the most faithful, the most counter-cultural thing we can do is to create and sustain beauty. Beauty connects us to God, who created this universe and us in all our beauty and diversity. 

We might consider the place of our church in its built environment; surrounded by uninteresting buildings, opposite a state capitol built in the neo-classical style. The spire, tower, and walls of our church stand apart from other buildings; our courtyard gardens offer natural beauty in the midst of a brick, concrete, asphalt, and stone landscape. The interior of our nave lifts our eyes and hearts toward the heavens; the stained glass transforms sunlight into something ethereal, magical. Our music, the choir, organ, and hymns make our hearts soar into heavenly spheres.

In the midst of the demolition that surrounds us; the chaos in our world. In the presence of all the pain and suffering—the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine; the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene; the threats to our common life and to the social safety net on which so many of us rely, to appeal to beauty may seem like a frivolous, even futile thing. 

But beauty can restore us; sustain us, strengthen us. And beauty draws us to God. Perhaps no one said it better than St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote in his Confessions: 

Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee! For behold Thou were within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou hast made. Thou were with me and I was not with Thee. Iwas kept from Thee by those things, yet had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness: and Thou didst send forth Thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: Thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant forThee: I tasted Thee, and now hunger and thirst for Thee: Thou didst touch me, and I have burned for Thy peace.

As we plan for the coming year in the parish, and as we consider the future of our nation and the world, we may feel that Jesus’ words in Mark 13 speak directly to, and for us. The signs of apocalypse seem to be all around us. In that chaos, in the rubble, beauty still beckons to us, inspires us, draws us to God. May our desire and nurture of beauty in our building and our worship, draw others to God as well.

Listening to and reading Fleming Rutledge

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I had the opportunity to hear the Rev’d Fleming Rutledge speak today. Her presentation was entitled “What happened to Theology?” I went out of curiosity and because I have read two of her books in recent months. Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ(2018) accompanied me as I prepared and preached Advent in 2018 and last week, I read Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ(2015). I found both books challenging theologically and at times off-putting but engaging with them is time well spent. I had the same reaction to her presentation today.

One of the biggest challenges for me is simply her Barthian presuppositions. She contrasts Christian (biblical faith) with religion. The former originates with God; the latter with humans. I struggle with this for two reasons. First, because of the nature of scripture itself. Without going into a lengthy discussion, holy scripture is a compilation of books, deemed authoritative by human decisions, written by humans, using language which is also a product of human culture. Thus, revelation is necessary mediated through humans and to speak of God being the subject of theology, or that “scripture is the story God is telling of Godself” is true on the one hand, yet at the same time, it is also being told and preserved by humans.

Secondly, to contrast biblical (Christian) faith with religion is problematic in our religiously plural age. Does it result in a privileging of Christianity over against other religious traditions? Does it privilege Christianity over “not-Christianity” (ie., Judaism) in reading scripture? Does it overlook or ignore all of the ways in which the various forms of Christianity, historically and in the present are similar to other religious forms? Indeed, is it necessary for her project to make such distinctions?

 

One of the things she stressed today was the importance of learning and living in the biblical story. Whether or not I accept her views of the nature of revelation, I do agree that scripture tells the story of God, and that by wrestling with the story contained in scripture we encounter God, we learn about God’s relationship with humans, and we learn about human beings as well. To read scripture, to immerse oneself in scripture, is to immerse oneself in a conversation with God, in which God does the talking, but as we listen, we are compelled to ask questions, of ourselves, of the world, of scripture, and of God.

One of the things I appreciated most about Crucifixion was that instead of laying out a theory of the atonement, Rutledge explored the many images that the New Testament uses to talk about the crucifixion. Many of these images are problematic and challenging, but in her exposition, she showed their power to convey something unique and meaningful, without asserting that any single one conveyed all of the meaning of the cross. In that work, she very much shows what it means to enter the story of scripture, as she teases out the many possible meanings of “sacrifice” for example. She insists, for example, that it was an image used by early Christians, and for us to understand the faith of those early Christians, and for us to be faithful Christians in the twenty-first century, engaging with the entire range of biblical imagery concerning the cross helps us understand our faith, and perhaps come to deeper faith. I will never again be self-conscious about loving the great Lutheran passion chorales, for example.

I was as challenged by her emphasis on apocalyptic themes in Advent as I was by her appeal to take seriously the full range of biblical imagery surrounding the cross. Advent emphasizes the Second Coming in its scriptural passages as well as its hymnody much more strongly than it does the Nativity. Apocalyptic falls in and out of fashion as culture changes, and for many contemporary mainline Christians, its association with a particular emphasis in conservative Protestantism makes it suspect. Still, while scholars may debate the extent to which Jesus himself was an apocalyptic prophet or preacher, the fact of the matter is that early Christians, beginning with Paul, were convinced of his early return, and Paul’s letters are written with an urgency reflecting the imminence of the Second Coming. His theology is shaped by that apocalyptic perspective.

At the heart of apocalyptic is both the sense of a cosmic struggle between good and evil as well is a firm belief that in the end God will make all things right. In our context, it may be that such a worldview helps us make sense of our world better than any other.

 

But to return to the theme of her talk, as I left I wondered whether Rutledge is fighting a losing battle. Given the changes in our culture, the decline of Christianity, the multiple claims on our allegiances, is the sort of deep engagement with scripture even possible? In her talk and in the question and answer follow up, she told stories of people who were biblical theologians, people who were soaked in scripture and able to see God at work in the world through eyes opened by an intimate relationship with the text. Is that even possible any more? Are the kinds of “biblical theologians” Rutledge calls for a nearly extinct species, destroyed because the habitat that gave birth to and nurtured them is now a barren desert?

 

 

 

 

Not one stone will be left: A Sermon for Proper 28, Year B (Annual Meeting) 2018

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 We are nearing the end of the liturgical year. In the church, the new year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which this year falls on December 2. But there’s a sense in which our gospel readings in the weeks leading up to that day help us prepare for Advent. Indeed some preachers and liturgists extend the season of Advent back three Sundays and advocate for a seven-week season of Advent.

There are at least two reasons for this move. The first reason for this extension of Advent is, I suspect, largely cultural. Since retailers replace their Halloween merchandise with their Holiday merchandise, and radio stations and satellite services have already started playing holiday music, extending Advent to the beginning of November is a way of offering a counter narrative to the excesses and consumerism of the Holiday season. The second reason for this longer Advent is that our gospel readings for these three Sundays are drawn from Jesus’ teachings concerning his return. They are what we call Apocalyptic literature.

Apocalyptic, which derives from a Greek word meaning revealing, emerged in the second century BCE during a period of crisis among the Jewish people. The central chapters of the book of Daniel are the earliest example of this type of literature. It is symbolic, full of strange beings. It presumes a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, in which ultimately, the good will prevail. While it seems to be describing events that will take place at a future time, in fact, it is describing in highly symbolic terms what is happening in the world right now. So, from time to time, after describing some event or some figure, a beast with seven horns, for example, the author will provide a clue, or a hint, and say, “let the reader understand.” Apocalyptic was also the context in which the idea of the resurrection of the dead first became popular, among the earliest clear references to the idea is in fact in the verses from Daniel in today’s first reading.

As I said, the world of apocalyptic is full of fear and danger, and we live in a context which is full of such imagery and events. Whether it’s mass shootings, terrorism, the continuous wars, or the wildfires that have transformed the landscape of California, taken lives, and changed the lives of so many people, our world seems to be collapsing around us. In such a context, Jesus’ words sound ominous indeed.

Today’s gospel, though written about two millennia ago, comes from a time and a community that were experiencing some of the same fear and uncertainty that we face as a world. As I’ve said before, it’s likely that Mark was written during the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation, and either shortly before, or after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. We date the gospel to this particular historical moment in part because of the very verses we heard today—the disciples marveling at the size and grandeur of the temple, and Jesus’ prediction of its destruction.

The Jewish Rebellion and the destruction of the temple constituted a cataclysmic change for Judaism. It was also of enormous significance for the tiny community of Jesus’ followers, who were caught in the midst of the conflict. As they looked around at what was happening around them, as they probably fled the violence, they were also reflecting back on Jesus himself, the hopes and faith he had instilled in them. As we have seen throughout this year, Jesus proclaimed the coming of God’s reign. It’s quite likely that many of those in this tiny community forty years later saw in the Jewish revolt and the Roman response, signs of Jesus’ imminent return.

You can almost hear the conversations of that community in Jesus’ words. He warns against false prophets—those who claim to be Jesus, those who claim to know when Jesus will return. All of the catastrophes, the wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, and the like. There were people wondering whether these things were signs of Jesus’ return, signs of the end times. Of course, as we imagine first-century Christians wondering about these things, we know all too well that many contemporary Christians, and many in secular society, too, are fascinated with predictions of the end times.

Jesus’ words concerning his return are elicited by an observation of one of his disciples. Let me give you some background. In Mark’s chronology, this takes place of Tuesday in Holy. On Sunday, Jesus and his disciples made the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we reenact on Palm Sunday. After that, Jesus went to the temple and looked around.. Then he and his disciples left the city and spent the night in Bethlehem. On Monday, they returned to the temple, and overturned the moneychangers’ tables, after which they returned to Bethany. They came back to the temple on Tuesday where Jesus had a number of encounters with groups of Jews, the chief priests and scribes, some Pharisees and Herodians, some Sadducees. After the story of the widow’s mite which we heard last Sunday, they left the temple again, which is when this story takes place.

Once again, it’s as if the disciples are completely oblivious to what Jesus has just said, or has been saying all along. It’s the sort of remark we make as tourists, “Look at how big the stones are!” It’s the sort of remark I often hear when visitors come to Grace: “Wow, what a beautiful church!” Jesus’ retort may have been intended by Mark to reflect the reality that after Rome destroyed the temple, not a single stone was left standing but it’s an important reminder to us as well.

It’s not about the stones, even if it is our responsibility to make sure the stones of this building remain intact. The Jewish temple, Grace Church, are supposed to be places where people encounter God, where they experience the love of Christ and are transformed by that encounter. The beauty of our spaces, both inside and out, are meant to offer such opportunities, to invite people into relationship with God.

One way of thinking about all those encounters Jesus had with Jewish groups in the temple before this, from the moneychangers to the chief priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees, is to see them as challenges to the immediacy and accessibility of people to God. Spaces create barriers; institutions establish and maintain boundaries, communities dictate who’s in and who’s out. Jesus challenged all of those efforts to limit accessibility to God, to set boundaries. The threat he posed was part of what led to his arrest and execution.

2000 years later, those tendencies remain. We focus on the stones, not on God. Sometimes, instead of being a means of access to God, the building becomes our God, and we worship it or focus all of our energies and attention on it rather than on what it is supposed to be. Sometimes, a building can also be seen as an impediment, that it requires resources that might better be expended in other ways, in outreach to the community, for example. Striking the right balance is always a challenge, but I believe we at Grace do that.

I was reminded of the power and possibility of our spaces to connect us with God on Friday evening of this week. Corrie and I were walking on the square just as our bells began to ring at 6:00 pm. Hearing them from the other side of the square wasn’t just a distraction or noise. The sound of the bells reminded me of all that they represent: the faithful people who installed and now maintained them, their sound reminding me of God’s presence in this city, even on a Friday evening.

That is what our spaces should do—our building, our bells, our gardens, all should remind passersby of God’s presence in the world, and invite people to experience and enter into that presence more deeply, whether here at Grace or in other places or other ways in their personal lives.

We don’t know how long Grace Church will remain standing, whether for fifty, or a hundred, or five hundred years. But there will come a time, I suspect, when stone will no longer stand on stone, when there will only be rubble. But until that time comes, in God’s time, it is our responsibility, our mission, to ensure that our buildings and our congregation, are places where people encounter, experience, and share God’s love.

Revealing Revelation: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 2016

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Today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter. It’s referred to informally as Good Shepherd Sunday, because each year on this day we hear similar readings. The gospel reading always comes from the 10th chapter of John which is Jesus’ discourse on the Good Shepherd. The Psalm appointed for the day is always Psalm 23, the best-known and most-loved of all of the Psalms. The image of the good shepherd is an important one historically, and in spite of the fact that we have come very far from the pastoral setting of subsistence agriculture in ancient Palestine, the notion of God as a good shepherd who cares for us as a shepherd cares for his flock, continues to resonate. Continue reading →

The New Jerusalem: Lectionary reflections for 5 Easter, Year C.

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We’ve been reading from the Book of Revelation during this season of Easter. This is the only sustained engagement of the lectionary with the last book in the New Testament. That’s a shame, I suppose, because the richness of the other readings and the difficulties inherent in interpreting and preaching Revelation divert our attention. Looking back through my sermon files, it’s hardly a coincidence that my sermons in the Easter season rarely deal substantively with Revelation before the Fifth Sunday of Easter. There’s another reason for the sudden appearance of Revelation in my preaching in the Fifth and Sixth Sundays of Easter. It’s because, the lectionary readings for those weeks introduce John’s vision of the New Jerusalem.

As a reminder, on earlier Sundays we heard from the very beginning of the book (Rev. 1:4-8) and two different visions of heavenly worship: Rev. 5:11-14 and Rev. 7:9-17. Taken together, these readings along with those for the sixth and seventh Sundays of Easter do little to provide a full introduction to this complex, important, and enigmatic work. And I can’t do that in a blog post, either. Barbara Rossing’s commentaries on Working Preacher offer some introduction and her books also provide understandings of Revelation that go beyond the sensationalistic end-time prophecies of Hal Lindsey and Left Behind.

I spent a good bit of time during my academic career both as a scholar and a teacher, thinking about apocalyptic literature and the apocalyptic worldview. As a preacher and pastor, I have been especially interested in the contrasting images of human community and urban life presented in Revelation. There are two cities described in the book. One is the city John sees coming down from heaven, the New Jerusalem. We only catch a glimpse of it in this week’s reading but God, speaking for the first time in the book since its opening verses, has this to say:

“See, the home of God is with mortals.

He will dwell with them as their God;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

A fuller description of the New Jerusalem is provided in later in chapter 21 in 22 (excerpts from which are the reading for next Sunday). The key feature highlighted by the lectionary is the absence of a space set apart for God: “I saw no temple in the city; for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.”

The New Jerusalem is the second of two cities in Revelation. The other is Rome. We see its fullest description in Rev. 17 when John sees a vision of a whore clothed in purple and scarlet, with the inscription “Babylon the Great, Mother of whores.” She is seated on seven mountains, a clear reference to the seven hills of Rome. Revelation is a text that seeks to instruct its readers in the evils of Rome and in its eternal and totalistic enmity toward the Christian faith. John’s readers were meant to receive assurance that their suffering would be rewarded and that at the end God would prevail.

The vision of a city filled with the divine presence and filled as well with people from all the nations of the world joined in their worship of God redeems the overwhelming biblical understanding of the city as evil, from Genesis, where it is said that Cain founded the first city although through to Revelation itself. The New Jerusalem though is a redeemed and re-created city, inhabited by God and mortals, a community where there is no religious, social, or ethnic difference.

We have all sorts of ideas about ideal human community. In the twenty-first century, we might think of the nuclear family as the model for human community and many of us think of the church as “family” as well. I would guess that few of us would imagine a city as an ideal human community. Cities are dirty, noisy, full of crime. But cities are also redemptive and places where God’s grace is present. They might also be places where God is present everywhere and not just within the boundaries of the buildings or boxes within which we try to confine God.

The Antichrist is back in the news!

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First, an oped in the New York Times.

For some evangelicals, President Obama is troubling. The specious theories about his place of birth, his internationalist tendencies, his measured support for Israel and his Nobel Peace Prize fit their long-held expectations about the Antichrist. So does his commitment to expanding the reach of government in areas like health care.

As if to prove Sutton’s point, a heckler calls President Obama the antichrist: http://youtu.be/9cP-FTX5tVg

A review of Richard Landes’ new book on secular apocalypticism:

Despite the lack of subtlety in his treatment of Islam, Landes’ arguments are convincing: that by diminishing the milennialist influence, viewing it through a narrow Enlightenment-centric lens, or ignoring it altogether, the “bats” overlook a dangerous historical force; and second, that we need to better understand how such ideas shift from the fringes to the center. Above all, Heaven on Earth convinces the reader that secular movements are often far more religious than we tend to acknowledge.