Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 15th of November, the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B.  The Gospel reading for the day was Mark 13:1-8.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

I don’t know about you all, but it seems like this past week or so has been rough.  I mean, personally I had four people come to me with potential cancer diagnoses, the news was filled with stories of terrorist attacks on a plane in Egypt, bombings in Beirut, war, the plight of refugees fleeing war, and then Friday night happened and I think we all were suddenly assaulted with images from Paris of shootings and bombings and the chaos and confusion that comes in the immediate aftermath.  And it was scary; it was frightening to think that these people had gone to a concert, or to dinner, or to see a football game.  And now they are gone.  Over 100 people dead and over 300 people injured and the numbers keep rising.  And that is in addition to the almost 50 people killed in Beirut just one day prior.  A seemingly neverending tide of destruction. 

And I mean, if we look around us, we see, as Jesus put it, ‘wars and rumours of wars’ each and every day.  We are looking for certainty, for control, and all we see is pain and death.

The situation that we see in events like what happened in Paris and the fear that it causes could have easily been understood by the community that the author of the gospel of Mark lived in.  They had experienced years of rebellion against the Roman Empire which culminated in the Roman Empire tearing down the very same temple that Jesus and the disciples had just walked out of.  The same temple which seemed like it was so massive it would never fall, had fallen.  The Jewish people had been robbed of the physical center of their faith. 

And so there was fear, there was concern.  People wanted to know if this was the end?  Are we living in the ‘end times’?  And I think that, if you haven’t already, you will likely hear people start to ask that same question in the coming days. 

But instead of answering the direct question of the disciples about specific signs, Jesus instead suggests that until the fullness of the Kingdom of God has been brought into being, we will continue to experience the remnants of sin and death in our lives.   These are then made manifest through things like wars and rumours of wars; through famine, through disasters and illness.  Things that, quite frankly, usually make us afraid.

But it’s the next words of Christ to the disciples that I keep coming back to.  Jesus says, ‘Do not be alarmed.’  And this mimics a pattern in scripture.  There is a pattern of people encountering what would normally be a frightening situation and having God, or God’s messenger, tell them ‘Fear not!’ or ‘Do not be afraid!’ or, as in the reading today, ‘Do not be alarmed.’ 

So when we see death and destruction all around us, Jesus tells us don’t be afraid. 

And my first reaction is, really?  Don’t be afraid?  Senseless murder and death and Jesus basically says, ‘eh, don’t worry about it.’  Seriously, Jesus, I keep going over that in my head and it’s a really challenging thing.  It’s hard to comprehend. 

But what I’ve come to realize is that when we are confronted by the forces of sin and death, when we have our friends and loved ones facing frightening diagnoses, when we see children attacked and mutilated, when we see murder and destruction and we wonder if it’s going to happen in our city or our home next, we can do one of two things.

We can let fear win or we can have faith. 

Fear or faith.  That is our basic choice.

That was the choice of the disciples and the early Christians.  They could be afraid and hide and not proclaim the gospel or they could have faith and proclaim the crucified and risen Christ, even when doing so meant death.  Luther could have been afraid of Rome and not challenged the system of corruption that had overtaken the church or he could have faith and trust that God was continuing to create and reform and reveal Godself to the church, even if it meant excommunication and the threat of death.

The leaders of the civil rights movement could have been afraid and not challenged a system of oppression or they could have faith and trust that God is a God of liberation who is constantly working to free us from bondage and to deliver us into new life. 

So we can see that throughout history we are faced with this choice of fear or faith and today we are again standing on the edge and we can choose to either be afraid or to have faith in God and to trust that God is working for us in this world and is constantly creating, constantly making us new and constantly making this world new.

And again we can either let our fear control us or we can have faith that the same God who created us, the same God who died on the cross for us, the same God who is always with us is working in this world on our behalf. 

So when Jesus tells the disciples to not be alarmed when they see wars and terror and other signs of sin and death, what he is saying is have faith that God is working in the midst of the pain.

Sadly though we are already seeing people choosing fear.  Just watching the news we see people crying out for vengeance, as if murder has somehow become sanctioned, we see people expressing hatred towards the refugees from Syria and blaming them, but the refugees are running from the same people who committed the atrocities in Paris.  We even see people blaming the French as if anybody could ever deserve such an atrocity.  What we are seeing is the result of fear.

And I keep thinking about a quote, and while it is from Star Wars, I think it has great relevance to the situation.  Many of you may know it.  In talking about what leads to the dark side, Yoda tells us, ‘Fear is the path to the dark side.  Fear leads anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering.’ 

When we respond with fear, we respond, in essence, with sin.  We create more suffering in this world and we separate ourselves from God.  And that’s what these initial response that so many people are having does.  They separate us from the God who loves us.

But if we have faith, things are different.  There is a quote by Frederick Buechner, a renowned theologian, that says, ‘Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.’ 

What Beuchner is saying is just what Jesus told us.  God is with us throughout all of the things we might experience.  And we should rely on faith.

But what does it mean to have faith in the face of terrorism?  What does it mean to have faith in the face of death and destruction?  Having faith means loving.  God’s faithfulness is made manifest in God’s enduring love for us, in spite of our sin.  Our faithfulness then, is made manifest in our love for God and in our love for each other.

Our faithfulness means that we are called to love all of God’s creation, even those who seek to do us harm.  Our faithfulness means that we combat actions born out fear through love.  If fear ultimately leads to suffering, then faithfulness, love, ultimately leads to liberation and unity.

God defeats sin and death not with violence, but with love.  It was Christ’s love that won the day.  What will defeat the forces in the world that arrayed against, the forces of fear and hate like ISIS and Boko Harum isn’t the use of military power and creating more death and destruction.  It is through our acts of love and compassion, of our faithful prayer, that we will be part of God’s work and it is through that the God’s love will win the day.  The song isn’t ‘they will know we are Christian’s by our massive military force and our bombing of civilians’  it is ‘they will know we are Christians by our love.’

Brothers and sisters, God is active and present among us, daily baptizing us and forgiving, daily making us new and in the same way God is constantly working against the forces of sin and death in this world, bringing peace, bringing God’s kingdom here. Share God’s love with each other, share it with your neighbor, share it with a world in need of the hope that God brings us in the face of adversity. And because of that hope, because of that love, we can truly say, thanks be to God. Amen.