Twenty-fifth Pentecost

             November 18, 2007

     Joe was nearing the end of this earthly life.  His wife, Mary, walked into his bedroom and asked if he had any last requests? 

     “Yes, there is, sweetheart.  Before I meet my maker,” Joe said in a weak voice, “I’d like a piece of that favorite coconut-cream pie you make.”

     “How about a cookie instead?” she asked.  “I was saving the pie for the visitation after your service.”

      I also appreciate the element of truth in the story of the Associated Press journalist who was assigned to the Jerusalem bureau.  She took an apartment overlooking the Wailing Wall.  Every day when she looked out, she saw an old Jewish man praying vigorously.  So the journalist went down and introduced herself to the old gentleman.  She asked him, “I noticed that you come to the Wall every day.  How long have you been doing this and for what do you pray?”

     The old fellow said, “I have come here to pray every day for twenty-five years.  In the morning I pray for world peace and then for the brotherhood of man.  I go home, have a cup of tea, and I come back and pray for the eradication of illness and disease from the earth.”

     The journalist is amazed.  “How does it make you feel to come here every day for twenty-five years and pray for those things?”

     The old man looked at her sadly and said, “Like I’m talking to a wall!”

      Of course, the Wailing Wall is all that remains of the magnificent temple talked about in today’s Gospel from Luke.  The entourage has reached the outskirts of Jerusalem.  Across the Kidron Valley they gazed at the temple and marveled at the grandeur of it.  It was a miraculous piece of engineering and would shine like gold in the reflected sunlight.  Some in the traveling party remarked at such stateliness.  Then Rabbi Jesus spoke to them.  “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

     What an incredible thing to say!  He was correct, of course.  Not too many years later the temple is destroyed and the people scattered.  It would take nineteen hundred years for the people to return to their homeland.  Only something called the Wailing Wall would be standing when they did return.

     Rabbi Jesus made the comment to teach certain things about the Christian life.  He could read the signs of history.  People might have missed the approaching disaster, but Jesus saw what was about to happen.  He looked through the eyes of God; vision that is always 20/20 and a picture that is stark and brilliant in its realism.

     Jesus was also completely honest with his hearers.  This is what you can expect if you decide to follow me and this is not the easy way, but the way of heroes.  He promised that those who decided to follow him would never have to meet tribulations alone.  Christians throughout history have shared that in those times of torture and imprisonment, even those times when they awaited death, they were aware of the presence of Jesus the Christ.  He assured them that they would share a safety that no threat on earth could change.  “Not a hair of your head will perish.”  That’s not a physical promise, but a spiritual one.  Just a surface reading of history will show that many have lost not only hair but their whole heads.  The deeper meaning here is that those who cast their lot with Rabbi Jesus may lose their life but can never lose their soul.

     So, what is behind this passage in Luke’s telling of the Good News?  Why would Jesus make such a dire prediction?  We have to look at certain teachings that every Jew would know.  Time was divided into two distinct periods.  There was the present age, popularly seen as evil and beyond redemption and leading to destruction.  The age to come was seen as the Golden Age of God and of Jewish supremacy.  Between the two was the Day of the Lord, which would be a time of upheaval and destruction, leading to the new age.  It would be a day of terror.  It would come suddenly, like a thief in the night.  The physical world would be shattered.  The Day of the Lord was the dominant theme of religious thought in the day in which Jesus lived and preached and taught.

     Then there was the prophetic voice of God foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem.  In 70 AD Jerusalem did fall and terrible was the destruction thereof.  The Roman armies first cut of the city from the outside.  The people were reduced to barbarism in order to try to survive.  The historian Josephus reported that as many a million people died and another hundred thousand were taken into captivity.  The nation was obliterated, the Temple was burned, and the long struggle to reestablish the nation began.

     Also, there is the whole concept of the Second Coming of Jesus.  Jesus understood that he would return again and the early church waited and expected that to happen very shortly.  Before the Second Coming there would be many false messiahs claiming to be the awaited one.  Do not be led astray, Jesus reminded his hearers.  That warning would apply not just to a person, but to a political system, an economic construct, or a philosophy as well.

     Finally, there is the statement by Jesus that his followers would undergo persecutions, torture, and hardships.  For the first three hundred years of the Christian experience that was very much the reality of life.  The report about the First Council of Nicaea indicated that clearly 60% of those who attended bore marks on their bodies of severe torture and persecution.  Many walked with a limp, from having their legs broken.  Many had been blinded, others bore scars from being burned or stabbed.  All had relatives and friends who had been killed.  They gathered to fight for the orthodox faith; they had every right to attend, having paid a great price for admission.

     We need to heed the warning of the Gospel.  Our security will not result from a fail-safe system or star-wars shield, not from a wall defining who is in and who is out, and not from adopting or defeating an “ism.”  Our life will not be made easier by embracing a false messiah or some particular political persuasion.  Our security is finally a spiritual one.  It is through our endurance that we might gain our souls.

     Remember that God is faithful and we are loved more than we can ever know.  Chaos may seem to surround us, but the one who has redeemed us for God is the one who says to the storm, “Peace, be still.”  It is that voice that promises that not a hair on our heads will perish.  Perhaps we have to settle for a cookie and, at times, it may seem like we are talking to a wall, but endure.  God is faithful and keeps all promises.  That is enough for me.  Amen.

         ~The Rev. G. Thomas Mustard