Peter Lockhart
Reflections on Luke 21:5-19
As Christians we believe that we have received a message of
good news in and through Jesus Christ.
Yet this morning we have read difficult words that have come to us from
Jesus. They are words which contain an
edge of prophecy, a prediction of calamity and suffering.
‘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.’
These words of prophecy have been used over the two
millennia since Jesus spoke them to offer hope in the midst of distress, hope
that Christ is coming; hope that the suffering that we see and experience has
meaning; even if the meaning is only the sign of God’s coming.
I am always wary of reading words of scripture too deeply
into the world around us but these words feel that they carry some weight this
week.
Just a few weeks ago we followed the news of unseasonal
bushfires in New South Wales and this week we have seen the heartbreaking
images flowing out of the Philippines in the wake of Typhon Haiyan, reportedly
the biggest Typhoon to ever reach landfall.
The devastation is immense.
At the UN convention on climate change the representative
from the Philippines, Yeb Sano, has gone on a hunger strike in solidarity with
his brother who has been working for three days without food in the wake of the
storm. He has been carrying the dead to
places to be buried.
For any of you, for any of us, who have personally lived
through times of trauma and heartache, through wars, through flood, through
drought we know that Jesus words of prophecy apply to the moments of our
ordinary lives in which we enter into extraordinary situations of pain and of suffering
and it is only in knowing the rest of the story of Jesus that we can find hope.
Jesus begins his prophecy with the words of the destruction
of the temple. In John’s gospel when
Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple he alludes to his own death and
then goes on to say that in three days I will raise it up again – he alludes to
his resurrection.
Without the words of hope which come from the resurrection
the idea of the suffering which Jesus prophesies leave us in darkness and
despair. Our suffering personal or
global comes without hope.
The resurrection says that even though death might swallow
us up new life awaits. New life awaits
those who have lived through hell on earth and God’s promise is for the renewal
of all things in Jesus.
The message of Jesus is not that God wills our suffering but
that God is with us in our suffering.
The message of God in Jesus is not that God wishes to destroy some but
not others or to unmake what God has made.
No, the message of God in Jesus is that suffering which we experience,
which I believe always remains cloaked in mystery, is not something which God
stands apart from. God is with us in
Jesus.
The message that we carry is good news, it is not easy or
unproblematic; it is not straightforward and painless; it is not trouble-free
and effortless but it is good. It is
message of resurrection, of life in the face of death, of creation in face of
oblivion, of hope in the face of despair.
On this day when we do and should find ourselves lamenting
for those who are suffering whether it be in the Philippines, or in NSW;
whether it be in Afghanistan or Syria, whether it be in our personal lives or
the lives of those whom we love let us hold on to the hope we have in Christ
Jesus and let us pray for the coming of God’s kingdom in all its fullness.
No comments:
Post a Comment