Proper 28C
In the name of God who shakes us,
who steadies us, and who shares in this life with us. Amen.
I think the gospel lesson this
morning was written by our dogs. It was
written earlier this week, when I went back to the back of the house after my
morning coffee to get ready to go to work, and didn’t allow them to come with
me. The baby gate and the door to the
hallway were shut, and they couldn’t believe they’d been left behind. They cried out in protest.
If I could have translated their
barks and howls into English, I’m pretty sure it would have gone something like
this: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will
be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will
be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”
I’m pretty sure that’s what they
were saying. Because, surely, they had
been abandoned for all time (a.k.a. about 20 minutes…).
When I started looking at this
gospel lesson earlier this week, I’ll admit that it made me a little
uncomfortable. Apocalyptic writings in
scripture like this always leave me a little uneasy. And when we’re uneasy, it can be helpful to
ask ourselves why we feel that way. Why
do the apocalyptic writings make me so uncomfortable? What is it about this particular genre of
biblical literature that makes me squirm?
It’s only when we face those kinds of questions that we can begin to
even think about learning from them. If
we allow them to just make us shut down, we’ll only ever gloss over them, and
never really engage with them and whatever wisdom they have to offer us.
For me, a lot of the disconnect
between my own experience and these kinds of writings isn’t so much about the
writings themselves, as it is about the context through which I typically hear
them. The apocalyptic, or “end of the
world” writings in the Bible have been so often coopted by the extreme flanks
of the religious right. There’s almost
nothing that folks from that worldview love more than expressions of the world
as depraved and falling apart. The
implication is that that’s what we’re all headed for if we don’t sign on to
their understanding of things.
That’s why these kinds of
writings never really connected for me.
They made me feel threatened, and they didn’t align with my own
experience of God – an experience more defined by grace and love than it is by
torment and fear.
So, as I stewed on this through
much of the week. I privately bemoaned
that I’d have to preach on it this week.
I toyed with just ignoring it and finding something else to preach
about. But then I heard it: the words of
Christ about the end of the world, as recounted through the experience of our
dogs.
What I heard from them this week
was that their world was falling apart.
They wanted nothing more than the status quo – for us to sit together,
with them sleeping in comfort and security, throughout the whole day, while I
sat with them. When I moved toward my
regular daily pattern of leaving them for a time, their hope for the world they
envisioned fell apart.
But, of course, I knew the world
wasn’t really falling apart. Our lives
were just progressing, the same as they do every day. And that’s when it hit me – apocalyptic
writings aren’t really about “the end of the world”. They’re about the ways that we all experience
our world as falling apart from time to time.
We’ve all had those
experiences. There are the big moments
when we worry that the world is falling apart: when major culture-wide crises
strike. Times like the beginnings of wars,
when the economy is struggling and the people who depend on it start
struggling, too, 9/11, the climate crisis...
But there are also times when our world feels like it’s falling apart,
but it’s just us. Times like when a
loved one dies, or when our own sense of security is threatened by violence or
economy or changing relationships, or whatever else. Times like that are almost even harder,
because we feel them alone. We feel like we’re alone. We don’t have the benefit of the experience
being shared by everyone around us.
We’re usually too self-conscious to express it, but often, in those
times, we feel like howling and crying like puppies when they can’t figure out
how to go on.
But the message of Christ isn’t
that the world is ending. Even when it
may feel that way, it’s not. The message
of Christ isn’t even that we can avoid having the world crumble around us if
we’d just get in line. There may be
churches out there who tell you that, but Jesus doesn’t. Instead, Jesus says, “Not a hair of your head
will perish. By your endurance you will
gain your souls.”
Even when it feels like the world
is crumbling around us, God has got our backs.
We’re not alone. Things may
change, but the thing that will never change is that we are loved more deeply
than we can imagine. We are cared for
more fully than we can fathom.
In the life of Jesus, this exchange
with the disciples came near the end.
For his followers, Jesus knew that it would soon feel like the world was
crumbling around them. They needed to be
reassured that even when times were hard, they wouldn’t be alone.
That’s why we hear these words
now. After today, there’s only one
Sunday left in the church year. And
then, in just two weeks, we’re on to Advent.
It’s hard to believe it’s already almost here. But the point of Advent and of Christmas is
to practice looking for Christ in our lives in ways that may have slipped by
the wayside in the past year. It’s about
looking for new ways of seeing Christ in ourselves, in the people we know, and
in the world all around us.
If we really allow ourselves to
engage in that mission, the world can start to feel very different than it does
today. It may even seem unstable. But just like I knew that leaving for a few
minutes wasn’t the actual end of the world for our dogs, Christ knows that
reconnecting with this way of engaging with others isn’t the actual end of the
world for us. Even when it feels like
the world is crumbling around us, we are still loved. We are still known, and seen, and held as
dear to the heart of God.
For the past couple of weeks, the
message on the sign out front has said, “Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to
let things go.” Well, let’s practice
letting some things go. Let’s practice
letting our world feel a little shaky so we can remember how strong it is in
the hands of God. Let’s practice letting
go so we’ll be free to encounter Christ in ways that we couldn’t before. The world isn’t really falling apart. The love of God is holding it together. Amen.
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