God's Redemption of Disaster
Preacher: Fr. Ted Lewis

November 15, 2009

Hebrews 10:30-31
Mark 13:14-27

I am going to speak of a paradox, an acute one. It consists in God’s paradoxical ability to take what from the world’s standpoint can only be disastrous and to transform it, in Christ, into redemption and blessing. Both our Scripture readings this morning, from Hebrews and from Mark, convey this. They convey also the need to trust God that this will happen. For he grants it not out of necessity, as though we deserved it, but by grace.

Not only have we heard these readings this morning, we have celebrated the baptism of Eva. You may wonder what connection the foregoing has with the sacrament of her regeneration, her incorporation into Christ’s body. In fact it has much to do. For baptism has a cautionary as well as a celebratory side. St. Paul brings this out when in his letter to the Romans he says (6.3) “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” The sacrifice of Isaac, in which at the Lord’s command Abraham prepares to offer up his only son, is relevant here too. We are baptized into Christ’s death so that we may rise into his life. Abraham offers up his son so that he may receive him back. But in both cases a letting go is necessary, a handing over to God. Those of us who are parents come to an understanding of this eventually. I know that Eva’s parents have already.

But our readings are our main concern now. Before launching on this sermon, I should explain that it does not come solely from me. Instead it draws on the discussion of these passages in the Standing Under the Scriptures class, which I lead on Sunday mornings at 9 in the library. So far as I am aware, such a thing has not been done at All Saints’ before, although in a minor way I draw on the class discussions in the Wednesday midday Eucharists which I celebrate. And I am excited about it. Regarding the class, so far as possible we put aside our preconceptions and look at what is actually in the Scriptures. And our discoveries I think would justify calling the class also the Excitement of the Scriptures. However, you should blame this sermon’s shortcomings on me.

And as in the class, I will go directly to the Scriptures in this sermon, without apology, without an anecdote to catch your attention. This is on the premise that the Scriptures are central, that all else follows from them and not they from some intellectual or other framework. Further, as there is nothing of greater hardness with which to cut a diamond, so there is nothing so exciting as the Scriptures themselves.

Now for this Sunday’s readings. They are prescribed by the lectionary, not by me. If you find them hard to take, I would not blame you. For they speak, to begin with, of the shaking of the foundations, of the overturning of what one is accustomed to rely on, and of the profound disorientation which this produces. And from this, in our humanity, we resolutely turn aside. As a nation we have been largely shielded from such experiences and so have been able so to turn. But others undergo them daily, as in the Congo where some five million have perished in the conflicts there. And as individuals we may not be shielded; we may confront a terminal illness or a marital break-down. This experience, in its subjectivity, was given its classic expression by the prophet Jeremiah. In the looming shadow of the Babylonian destruction of Israel and the exile of its people, he exclaimed:

I looked on the earth and lo, it was waste and void,
And to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains and lo, they were quaking,
And all the hills moved to and fro.
I looked and lo, there was no man,
And all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked and lo, the fruitful land was a desert
And all its cities were laid in ruins
Before the Lord, before his fierce anger (4.23-26).

This is what our readings speak of in their beginning. But not in their end. In their end they speak of the transformation of disaster, of turning it into deliverance and redemption, of disorientation becoming reorientation. This is what Christ brings about. Indeed, only through him can it come about. But in order that it can, we must put our trust in him, becoming centered wholly in him. We will see how this is so as we look at the specifics of our readings.

The one from Hebrews is on page 1366 in the pew Bibles, to which please turn. It is from chapter 10 verses 31 to 39. Its first verse, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” was famously featured by the Puritan divine Jonathan Edwards in his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” delivered in 1741 in Connecticut. But subsequently the reading seems mild enough—until we look at it closely. For then we see that it speaks of “being publicly exposed to abuse and affliction,” of imprisonment, of “the plundering of your possessions.” What this refers to is the persecution of the early church under the Roman Empire: persecution by authorities religious and political, by opportunistic mobs. .It was persecuted because its faith of necessity went against the prevailing political and social culture. As for how it felt to have one’s possessions plundered, we can gain some idea by thinking of the loss of our investments in the recent financial crisis, or on the take-over of our church building by some overarching authority. And yet—and yet—the reading speaks of this as being accepted μετα χαρας, “joyfully.” And it gives the reason: “you knew that you yourselves had a better possession, and an abiding one.” This knowledge could have come only through Christ. For he himself was their better, their abiding, possession. And in their not losing hold of him, in their coming to be wholly centered on him, he will be their reward.

By the way, when I spoke of the seizure of our church building, I did not mean to suggest that this was likely. Indeed, present signs indicate otherwise. But such things have happened to other churches. Just last month the building of St. Luke’s Anglican Church in La Crescenta, California, was taken over by the diocese of Los Angeles. And as it was being taken over, pursuant to court order, its marquee displayed a version of this very verse from Hebrews: “You joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property.”

What the Hebrews passage alludes to is expressed most forcefully in our reading from Mark. This is on page 1195 in the pew Bibles, chapter 13, verses 14-27. It comes from what is known as the Little Apocalypse, which is Jesus’ response to the disciples when they exclaim over the temple and other buildings they see in Jerusalem. In effect he says that however substantial and permanent these may look, they are doomed. The desolating sacrilege he speaks of is usually taken as referring to the coming destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 AD and the setting up of their standards in its place. But Jesus goes on to generalize the catastrophe, as did Jeremiah. It will be such as to require dropping everything and fleeing to the mountains. Their distress will be overwhelming. Moreover, it will cause people to reach out to false prophets and false messiahs, as is the tendency in times of utter distress. And the earthly disorder, temporal and spiritual, will be matched by disorder in the heavens, as the sun is darkened, the moon ceases to shine, and the stars fall from their places.

But what seems the end of everything is instead the moment of triumph. For just at this time the Son of man will come in clouds, with great power and glory. Here we have the pattern of Jesus’ death and resurrection, in which all seemed lost but in fact everything was gained. Only now, instead of taking place just on Calvary, it is on a cosmic scale. And the lesson for us is profound, indeed the profoundest of all. When things seem to be darkest, when all seems lost, this is actually the sign of Christ’s coming upon us. As Martin Luther put it, “When a man believes himself to be utterly lost, light breaks.” Therefore we need not despair, in fact it behoves us not to despair. For then we will miss out on this greatest of triumphs, for failure to perceive it. And the triumph involves not just a reversal of fortunes. It proclaims the power of God, no matter how great the catastrophe, to redeem, and more than redeem, it.

To be sure, implicit in this passage, as also in our Hebrews reading, is the expectation of the second coming of Christ, his coming imminently. This expectation pervades the New Testament; the New Testament and likewise the early church with its tremendous missionary outreach are incomprehensible without it. One might suppose that this expectation was not fulfilled and so is no longer relevant. But it does have application in our day; it brings out like nothing else the importance of now as the time in which to act, as if there would be no further opportunity, and so to participate in the urgency of the early church.

The attention we have been paying to Scripture here comports with the centrality we seek to accord it in our Standing Under the Scriptures class. It comports also with our collect for today, penned by Archbishop Cranmer 460 years ago. Formerly this was the collect for the second Sunday in Advent, which thus came to be known as Bible Sunday. We open our Standing Under the Scriptures class by praying it. It is on page 184 in the Prayer Book. Let us conclude by praying it now.