Surely, it is God who saves me; *I will trust in him and not be afraid. For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense, *and he will be my Savior.
Every four years, a significant portion of the United States feels that the world is coming to an end as a result of a national election. This election season is no different. For some the election of Donald Trump as our next President of the United States seems a great victory, ushering in change and vindication for what was seen as a time of wilderness. For others, Mr. Trump’s election is a shock to the system of everything that we hoped our country was becoming. This election has been different than any in my memory. This cycle has uncovered the racism, sexism, and nativism that has always been present in American society but was hidden under the cover of civility and multiculturalism.
From early on it was filled with statements and actions that produced fear, anger, and violence. And often this fear, anger, and violence was directed at the most vulnerable in our world—the poor, immigrants, people with disabilities, women, people of color, Muslims, Jews, and others who are easy to marginalize and blame for those ills we claim as our own.
Into this feeling of change and uncertainty steps the words from Luke’s Gospel. As “some” were admiring the beauty of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus tells 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.” (21:6) Jesus’ followers are astonished and want to know when and how they are to prepare. Jesus tells them that they are not to be terrified. That these stones will come down, but it is not the end of time. Wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines and plagues will come. And they will be persecuted because they follow the Christ. But they are not to follow false prophets who will lead them astray, rather they are to “testify” confident that God will be with them and will give them words and wisdom “that none of (their) opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” (21:15)
This apocalyptic story appears in the three Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And it uses language that is strange and unsettling to remind those who listened long ago and those who listen today, that it is God who is in charge. That we are not to place our hopes and our allegiance in institutions and powers that will surely disappoint. Rather, our trust is to be placed in our God of love and mercy who can be depended upon even when the walls shake and the world seems to be coming down around our ears. Jesus tells his listeners, “do not be terrified.”
Jesus is not describing a specific set of calamities. This event was old news. It had already happened. When the Gospel of Luke was believed to have been written, the temple had been destroyed by the Romans for at least 15 years. Rather the writer of Luke’s Gospel tells its listeners, even temples of massive stones can be destroyed. Don’t be terrified, despite what you experience as chaos and calamity. God is with us and God will keep God’s promise to us. You don’t need to be afraid. Nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, police officers ambushed, African-American churches vandalized and burned—this is your time to testify.
This is our opportunity to testify. Now is our time to speak the words that God gives us–a message that boldly makes known the Gospel of Christ. The chaos we have seen, the rhetoric we have heard, the violence we have witnessed has not ended now that the election is over. We must find a way to reach out to each other—not just in tolerance, but with the perfect love that casts out fear. We must boldly pray with, stand with, and radically love those who are most exposed and frightened for their safety in this new time. We need to stop admiring the stones of the temple and start following the One who turns them upside down, not leaving one unturned, until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Now is our opportunity to testify.
Now is our time to speak the Gospel to the brokenhearted. Now is our opportunity to speak the truth in love. Now is our opportunity to let the world know we are followers of Christ by our love for one another in a very unloving and too often unlovely world. Now is our opportunity to testify to the power of Jesus Christ to reconcile and forgive, to transform and redeem. Now is the time to really listen to each other, to hear one another’s pain and fear, and with God’s grace to find together the deeper hopes and dreams which all human beings share.
The reading from Third Isaiah offers a remarkable contrast to Luke’s Gospel this week, “For I am about to create a new heaven and a new earth…be glad and rejoice in what I am creating…no more will the sound of weeping be heard or the cry of distress…They will build houses and inhabit them…They shall not labor in vain.” Imagine. The wolf and the lamb—two natural enemies—shall feed together. Imagine. They shall not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain. Imagine. Can we imagine this new thing that God is doing right now in the midst of us? Can we imagine it even in the midst of nation against nation? Can we claim this vision and testify to it and seek to live it out in the streets?
In the days and weeks and months ahead there will be a need for much introspection which must begin with ourselves. We will need to pray and reflect on the state of our country and our role as citizens. Once again, many of us naively believed that we could place our loyalty in a political party or agenda. But this not where goodness, charity, or transformation of the world lies. God told Israel that they should never put their trust in “princes, horses, or chariots” (Psalm 20:7, 33: 16-17) but only in the love of God.
Now we are to testify. We are to testify to the gospel and to the God who longs for a new economy: “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat;” (65:21-22)
To God who longs for a new health care: “No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;” (65:20)
To God who longs for a new reconciled environment: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust!” (65:25)
And we are to reach out to those whose safety and dignity are threatened in the current rhetoric. Muslim women having their hijabs (head scarves) ripped off and cursed; African American sisters being shoved off the sidewalk, women especially vulnerable in a time when their bodies are objectified; a victory march by domestic terrorists, the Ku Klux Klan, in North Carolina, children of color being told that they are to “go home before you are sent home;” words of hate and degradation being slung at our brothers and sisters.
Bishop Fisher sent out a statement to help us find our voice and our work in this time of change and uncertainty. He said, “We are part of a movement that transcends election results. We are followers of Jesus Christ and as such we are called to treat one another with the love that enfolds us at every moment in human history. We are about God’s mission of mercy, compassion and hope. We must uphold the dignity of every human person; recommitting ourselves to the work of justice and to an incarnational faith which recognizes suffering and the very real wounds of the crucified among us. We need to return to purpose as we double-down on prayer.”[1]
In the wake of this election, there will be many who believe and feel that the end is near. The response may be to give up or turn away. But Jesus tells us that now it the time for us to testify to the Gospel and to God who is the God of peace, the God who is always creating new heavens and a new earth.
Now more than ever the world needs our love and justice and mercy. It needs our courage and community. Love this world with all you have. Connect with each other. Visit with strangers. Hold the door for someone. Notice beauty. Celebrate the things God is doing in this world, the miracles that pass before us each day. Work for justice. Care for our earth. Now is the time to testify and live out the perfect love that casts out fear, the love that longs and works for the time when hurt and destruction is no more.
This time calls for our best efforts and yet the call can seem overwhelming. It helped me to remember the words attributed to Oscar Romero, the fourth Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of San Salvador who in 1980 was murdered while celebrating Mass, “It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us…
This is what we are about: we plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development…
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”[2]
Now is the time. Testify.
[1] Bishop Douglas Fisher. Repairers of the Breach. November 9, 2016 https://blog.diocesewma.org/2016/11/09/repairers-of-the-breach-a-post-election-statement/
[2] Found on Suzanne Guthrie’s website http://www.edgeofenclosure.org