Hope, in a world gone wrong
Proper 26 Luke 21: 5-19
I came across an article this week entitled “What is wrong with the world?”.
It gave a few suggestions:
- Tribalism – the sort of nationalism which oppresses others
- The lack of a common vision for good
- Inequality of wealth and resources – which leads to envy and hatred
- Lack of love for people who are ‘not like us’.
I know that the same author has written, too, about the importance for the world of forgiveness,
faith in God
and love for the widest possible definition of family.
He’s also written one of the hymns in our hymnbook – "O God of earth & altar" – it’s GK Chesterton, author of the Father Brown stories, and a convert to Catholicism. His article ‘what is wrong with the world?’ was written in 1910.
It feels as though there is always a dissatisfaction with the way things are, which can resonate down the decades and even centuries – not surprisingly, of course, because our world can never be perfect.
And maybe you are not thinking about the way the whole world is, because your own world has been shaken in the last few weeks – by the death of friends or family, by illness and a creeping sense of mortality, by a growing fear that we are doomed.
We have had more funerals in the pastorate in the last month than I’ve ever known in my time here as your minister – with at least two more being organized right now; and my older brother, Frank, died recently and we are arranging his funeral for December 1st. This is a time of grieving for many of us.
And sometimes in our lives the state of the world and our personal experiences coincide, and leave us very ready to hear some hard-headed realism.. but also desperate for words of hope.
So I was really struck by today’s Gospel reading, where it seems that we are caught between realism and hope.
This reading is in chapter 21 of Luke's gospel, and Jesus is in Jerusalem for the last time. In the very next chapter Luke will tell us the story of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest. Here we read Jesus speaking to his followers as he faces right into a very bleak death.
It is a relentlessly difficult reading. Jesus says to his followers quite clearly – don’t get carried away by the splendour of the temple – the fine stones and ornaments. Don’t put your trust in your fine building – because it won’t last.
In fact, the Temple was destroyed by the Roman army about 40 years later – even the massive stones of the temple will be left in ruin. The Jewish people will need to reshape their faith without a temple – relying only on their local synagogues as places where they can study and pray and hope for the future.
Jesus warns his followers that there will be change, that they can’t expect things to stay the same.
We know this feeling, don’t we? Our chapels are not what they were. We have lost, are losing, key people from our histories, and we don’t yet know what the future will look like.
Our buildings are – mostly – OK – but we know that maintenance will always keep us finding new things that need doing.
So if we can’t put our trust in buildings, in solid bricks & mortar, what can we trust?
People? Jesus says “Take care you are not misled. For many will come saying ‘ I am he’ and ‘the time has come’. Do not follow them”.
So however charismatic a leader, or whatever the claim they make for themselves, we mustn’t put our trust in other people to tell us what to do, either.
No, Jesus says, when you’re really up against it, when you’re seized and persecuted and made to stand up in court to defend yourselves “I myself will give you such words and wisdom as no opponent can resist or refute”. God’s Spirit, given by Jesus, will be what saves us when we face the ultimate test.
We can’t and we shouldn’t trust buildings or people: but we can trust God – the power of God the Father, given by the Son through the Spirit: God is what we can always rely on.
When life seems hard, Jesus promises the Spirit.
The Spirit who comforts, holds, calms, guides, soothes, fills us.
That doesn’t mean that we can sit back, stop caring, and hope God will sort it out.
God’s spirit, the power of God, will come to help those who follow Jesus – but only when they are really up against it – arrested, imprisoned, and put in trial.
Yet in the midst of that trial God will strengthen them and give them the right words to say.
When we feel at our lowest, God’s spirit will come to strengthen us, to help us bear what must be borne, and never to despair.
And as the church of God continues to move forward, how can we be open to the work of the Spirit in the way we pray and work together for the sake of the world around us?
How can we allow God’s Spirit to change us, so that we can be agents of forgiveness love and belonging in a world in which all these things seem to be in short supply?
We could turn to another wise Catholic for inspiration.
When Pope Leo 14th gave his first apostolic blessing on May 8th this year, many people were hoping for words which could inspire a world marked by loneliness, division and spiritual confusion.
What Leo said was simple, but spoke of comfort, assurance and the invitation to every listener to renew a relationship with God.
“God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail!”
God loves us, so, as our service book says in one of the prayers for a funeral, “Let us grieve, but not as those without hope”.
May the grace of God be with us, and lead us into God’s future. Amen.
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