Tag Archives: suffering

September 12, 2022 · 12:33 am

God will never leave us to drown

Photo by Phillip Flores on Unsplash

In this sermon, I take a deeper look at how our interactions with “the floods” of our modern lives can be changed by reflecting upon the promise found in the ancient tale of Noah’s flood. I do not suggest that no one ever drowns, or suffers, or dies. In the real world, people do. Yet, thanks be to God, not even death need be the end of our story. This sermon was preached on the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (September 11, 2022) at Christ Lutheran Church in Fredericksburg, VA. You can listen to the sermon on my companion podcast: S1, Ep19.

That such ancient stories as Noah’s ark should apply to us today, or even encourage us, might surprise some people…especially when the story of Noah is so violent and filled with death. If we think about it, despite the many baby rooms decorated with arks, animals, and rainbows, we don’t discover a children’s story. We encounter our God who goes to war against a prideful, self-centered, violent humanity. One point of the flood was to destroy and kill. (That does not seem like a very warm and fuzzy bedtime story to me.) Yet, we also should keep in mind that this God (our God) who judges, punishes, and destroys so often in the Hebrew scriptures is the same God who has come to save us. If we look deeper, we find God’s justice in tension with God’s mercy. We can find both law (a kind of accusation or judgement against us in our sin) and gospel (good news of God’s love come to save us). Remember, God also used the waters of the flood to make all things new.

         As humans, we tend to be myopic and dualistic in our thinking. We like to have things clearly labeled good and bad in our minds, but when the world is at its worst – if we step back – we find it is often somewhere in the in-between. In my own life, I know I can struggle with this at times. Some of you know that I have had a lot of challenges over the recent weeks. I could easily make a list of all the personal struggles and losses I have faced. Beyond personally having complications with COVID due to some immunity issues, I also had two extended family members die from COVID while I was recovering. That was sobering and a heavy burden. And while still ill, my truck broke down not once but twice. My trash disposal stopped disposing, and my air conditioner stopped conditioning on a ninety-degree day. There were other troubles too. I was like, “Where’s that kick me sign on my back. I want to get it off,” but I never found one. I was feeling overwhelmed and wondering what was going on.

Yet as I thought about it, I recognized that this is just kind of the way life goes sometimes. At times, problems do seem to come fast and furious, and things don’t work out. And, we actually know from research – and what we learn in the Bible bears this out – that if we can accept that we live in a fallen world and there are problems…if we can accept them, not meaning we never fight them by trying to do our best amidst them…yet if we accept them in the sense that we don’t dwell on them and recognize that God loves us and cares for us no matter what is going on…we actually can prove more resilient. We can do better fighting disease and in our relationships. We live in a troubled world, and sometimes troubles will come. We will be ok.

Yet even in the best of times, I could make a very long list of troubles at almost any time, because as a fallen human, my heart can easily focus on the bad, the fearful, my need for hope. Woe is Lou. Certainly, such troubles – some passing and some not in this life – can capture our attention. At some level, they need our attention, but we can go too far. We can dive to deep into our troubles. We can give up hope while focused solely on the bad, even though “no temptation has overtaken us except what is common to all of humankind.” And as Paul further suggests, when we are so tested, “God will provide us a way out.” (See 1 Corinthians 10:11-13.) These are common struggles and feelings that pop during dark or troubling times. My goodness, look in the Psalms and you can find such dilemmas of faith. Even Jesus on the cross (quoting the psalms) asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He might not have given up on God the Father, but Jesus in his humanity hurt. Although fully divine, he was fully humane too. His heart hurt, and he felt alone.

Like a horse, we humans tend to have blinders on while God wants us to take them off to see the bigger picture…so that we remember God’s promises. Instead, genetically, we tend to focus on the threat before us because that seems to need our attention most. Yet unlike the horses using blinders for protection (to keep them focused on their task), they don’t work so well for humans. We can miss opportunities and options with blinders on. We can overlook the good of God at work around us…the promise from God through Jesus that all things will work for the good of those that love God. It is a promise still being worked out even in the worst of times. We might forget that our story isn’t over yet…that God is still speaking…acting…loving. Indeed, God is still with us amidst any annoyance or suffering, even when we don’t see God. Jesus promises to always be with us to the end of the age.

So, how can a cataclysmic story like Noah’s help refocus our gaze….or help shape our own lives for the good that is promised us? Well, first off, in this story, we meet a God who isn’t far away…disengaged and thundering in the clouds. Our God cares…always cared…for us. Creation has come. The Fall has happened. Yet God doesn’t give up on us. God was paying attention to this world and its creatures, and God noticed there was a problem. Humanity had become consumed by evil thoughts and actions. Violence reigned in the world, and God cared that the fallen human condition did not reflect God’s will for humanity or even the tiniest of creepy crawly things crawling on the earth.

True, God’s sense of justice was pushed toward a breaking point back then. God was close to starting things over. Yet, God noticed one person, a man named Noah…just one in a world of many…and God’s own heart was moved to mercy. We hear that Noah found favor with God, not so much because Noah is perfect…we see later in scripture that he was not…but that Noah was righteous. “Noah walked with God,” we are told. In the Hebrew way of understanding…and remember this is a story preserved in the Hebrew scriptures…righteousness is not an abstract notion but rather consists in doing what is just and right in all relationships.[i] What is the fulfillment of the law? Not rigid perfection, but loving God with all that we are and our neighbor as ourselves. Noah finds favor with God because of his open heart…and thus God gifts Noah with unmerited grace.

Through Noah and his family, God will seek to correct humanity’s course…but not just humanity’s…all of creation’s course. And isn’t that also partly why we as Christians are told that we are gifted with God’s grace and saved through faith? Jesus came for the renewal of a fallen world…the ultimate creation of a new heaven and earth where we will live with our God forever. Notice…Noah’s call and Jesus’s own purpose are united in a shared goal. God’s vocation (so to speak) is seeking the welfare of the wider world, and we, as Christ’s body are invited to also play a part. We are part of that same story.

While the human heart can still turn from God and often tends to ignore God’s love, God turns toward the world and would not give up on it or us. Seeing the human heart in conflict with God’s own, the scriptures tell us that God’s heart filled with pain. God grieved and suffered much as a loving parent might when a child goes astray. Yet instead of turning away, God at the time of Noah decided to enter our brokenness[ii]…which of course, he will do even more intimately and ultimately through Jesus.  

No question, the flood was a horrific event with great loss from the human perspective. Yet, the flood also served to make all things new. People of that age saw God as a warrior, much as other gods were envisioned and understood at the time. And so, it is no small thing that God puts his bow down in the sky to declare peace. God covenants (or promises) to never destroy the world or its creatures in such a way again. God commands with steadfast love (as God first did at creation), “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1).

God’s decision for the flood was no arbitrary act. Amidst the flood, we find, as one scholar suggests, “a God who expresses sorrow and regret; a God who judges but doesn’t want to, and then not in arbitrary or annihilative ways; a God who goes beyond justice and determines to save some creatures, including every animal and bird; a God who commits to the future of a less than perfect world; a God open to change and doing things in new ways; a God who promises never to do this again.”[iii]

With the flood, there’s no real difference made in humanity, just less humans around.[iv] We remained sinners. Yet with God, through God, love has grown.[v] A new way is possible now. God commits to love us, not in spite of our sin, but because of it. Through the flood, we see the tension between God’s sense of justice and mercy resolved as God wills not to destroy but rather to save.[vi] And now, wrapped within that loving promise, Noah and Noah’s descendants can move forward through any challenges and horrors with confidence and hope…if they dare to believe.[vii]

When we face challenges…when we face pain…when we experience want or loneliness…we may encounter the same powerful God as Noah. We are asked to trust in God’s promises. Our hearts may cry, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” Yet we should try to remember that God’s heart is oriented toward us in love even then… perhaps even more so then. Why are we afraid, we of little faith? Why do we only look for the bad and the fearful instead of to the hills for God’s coming help? At such times, our worry can become a flood,[viii] and those floods might seem to last for too long a time. Yet God’s love for us is more enduring still. God will never leave us to drown. Jesus who has power over wind and wave has power over death itself, and he wills to claim us as God’s own forever. He died to make it so. Amen.

[i] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/righteousness

[ii] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol 1. (1994). Nashville: Abingdon Press, p. 395.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Narrative Lectionary 324: Flood and Promise, a podcast by Working Preacher. September 2, 2018.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] The New interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1 (1994). Nashville: Abingdon Press.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] “Flood” by Jars of Clay.

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations for this post are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation.

© 2022 The Rev. Louis Florio. All content not held under another’s copyright may not be used without permission of the author.

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February 13, 2022 · 1:00 pm

Loved, Craddled, Blessed

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Is 49:15). Image: Mother and child, from Clipartkey. Used by permission.

The following sermon was offered at Christ Lutheran Church on February 13, 2022, the 6th Sunday after Epiphany. Due to the positive feedback and discussion, that followed, I am posting the text here. I have also embeded the worship service below. Primary text: Luke 6:17-26, the Beatitudes.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Well, settle in. This is a critically important discussion today, and it is one I know will be difficult for me, and likely for some of you – hopefully touching our hearts deeply. So, I will try to do my best. With St. Valentine’s Day upon us, it is a happy coincidence that our assigned lectionary readings lead us to reexamine the Beatitudes. The early Church consider them formative values that should shape our life together in the world. Yet I clearly recall as a youth forced to memorize them for confirmation, I really didn’t get them. I looked at them as maxims or even law like – a pronouncement from some distant God up high and far away. Perhaps that’s partly because the Beatitudes aren’t really meant to be memorized. They are meant to be integrated into one’s heart and soul, and that might take a mature faith born of suffering.

At their simplest, you can understand the Beatitudes as sayings of Jesus. Some of you might know or recall that our Jewish siblings often call what we know as the Ten Commandments the “Sayings of God.” Yes, they are at some level laws on how the community of faith should get along with one another and the world, but recall what Jesus and prophets said before him. The fullness of the law is love – in particular loving God and others as oneself.

And so, if you read Martin Luther’s Large Catechism or Rabbinical interpretations, they don’t always sound like stark law or mandates. They are a way of love…a means of walking through life with more joy and peace…literally walking humbly in the way of and with our God. The sayings – not numbered in the Bible but by people after the fact – are sometimes numbered differently, yet they are not legal codes. They are unique because through them God speaks love to those he has chosen, so that that they might…just might…become a blessing of love at work in the world. You can find moral and ethical dimensions to be sure, but they are all wrapped up in love.

With such a gift, it can be such a shame that we lack the understanding, the spiritual maturity, that they are meant to be so much more than Law. There’s Gospel infused into them too, because God spoke them and gave them to Moses for the people of God as a gift. God wanted the Israelites…and now through faith us…to become the Holy People of God…עם האלהים, a phrase in the Hebrew scriptures mentioned exhaustively and one I thus lift up to you often. We are a people set apart, made holy by God, called to live in holy ways, but not for our own sake. We are charged with a loving purpose in a fallen world.

Well, as scripture reveals to us, and our own more recent history makes plain, we cannot do this on our own. Scripture is a help. Thou “shalts and shalt nots” might inform, guide and challenge us to do better, but perhaps you have noticed that we live in a challenging world. Everything isn’t cherubs and boxes of chocolate. (My apologies to Forest Gump!) Love can be hard, and even when we try our best, we can fall, fail or suffer.

And so, out of love for us, Jesus offers us new sayings, blessings. (That’s really what beatitude means anyway – blessing.) These blessing will serve to draw us closer, more intimately toward God and one another. Yet unlike Moses’ experience, they are not sayings given directly to a prophet and by extension to the People of God. No, Jesus is God incarnate, and so these sayings are beyond special. They are not mediated but given directly to us. In a fallen world, these blessings recognize our suffering, but they tell us…promise us…God’s love is with us! Always with us! More than that, these sayings remind us that nothing can separate us from such a love.

 In Luke’s telling, his witness, of the Gospel, there are some significant differences from the account in Matthew 5. (I’m not going to address those in detail today. I’ve tried to explain why such differences exist in detail on Facebook, my blog, Bible studies, and elsewhere recently.) Yet, consider who Luke was. He was a human just like you and me. He was of likely Greek descent, many think a Gentile, but some suggest perhaps that he was a Hellenized Jew. And in his life and time, he had the good fortune to become a doctor, meet Paul in his travels, and become a coworker with him. Luke inherited these stories, and so in the Gospel according to Luke, we hear his witness of Jesus. Much as if you or I were telling a story, the truth is transmitted through his lens (his context and experience), and he likely wanted it to relate to and be understood by his audience – those many Gentiles and Hellenized Jews we know surrounded him. (They are who he first wrote to.) In short, Jesus is a God of suffering. No, not causing suffering, but Jesus is willing to suffer for us and with us, and ultimately the answer to all suffering in the world.

Through Luke’s vocation (as doctor and servant of Christ with Paul), Luke knew the extreme suffering of his century. Luke would have been all too familiar with sickness, injustice, poverty, violence and death and the grief that always results. Thus, Luke recognizes the special nature of Jesus as God who has profoundly come to us as one of us. Jesus came to share in that suffering and reach out to the outsider (like gentiles and widows, immigrants, the lonely, the sick in body and spirit). Jesus was and remains God with us in our imperfection and suffering. At the same time, Jesus came as the answer to the Fall. Jesus came to heal and restore. This is exactly what Luke remembers and shares with us as Jesus prepares to share his most central of teachings. Luke points out to us in the opening verses, “Jesus heals! Jesus saves! Jesus loves those entrusted to his care amidst the evil and loss of our very real world!”

At this point in the story, people didn’t fully understand Jesus yet. (I’m not sure we really do today. I know I don’t!) Still, in hearing of his teaching and preaching, as well as the authentic love that he gifted to others, crowds came from all around the region often walking miles and miles and miles. Luke tells us that the people were desperate, so desperate for hope and healing, that they wrestled with one another reaching out to Jesus just in the hope of touching him, for “power came out from him and healed all of them.”

It is here that Jesus chose to share Good News with the crowd – and with those who might come afterward – to all those yearning to just touch the hem of his garment…to experience a little bit of hope if nothing else. Jesus knows not all of those in need could touch him in that sea of humanity any more than we might with him now ascended to heaven. Yet, Jesus wants us to listen and believe.

So, listen to what Jesus says. Reread it when you get home, and then over and over again. Treasure and ponder these words. In the beatitudes, Jesus is telling us that he already loves us amidst our suffering, and he invites us to love others as best as we are able. Whatever our sufferings are – big or small; transitory or seemingly permanent – he is God with us and already loves us. We can rejoice when our crops fail as the prophet Habakkuk announces. We can cast all our cares upon him for he cares for us, as Peter urges. We can recognize with Mary in her song, the Magnificat (also in Luke’s Gospel), that our soul magnifies the Lord, and we can rejoice in God our savior, as lowly as we might be. John says in Revelation, there will be a day when all our tears and suffering will be washed away, a future filled with hope Jeremiah called it, but John, too, acknowledges we aren’t quite there yet. All creation groans for redemption, as Paul tells us, so why are we surprised at suffering. Indeed, Jesus suffered for us. Yet suffering is not all that there is, for God is not only with us, God in Jesus is for us. We belong now to Jesus, and not one of his sheep will be lost.

What I am getting at is that all of scripture is filled with similar promises. The Beatitudes bring these promises into focus telling us that we should not trust our eyes or other senses. God is already blessing us with fortitude, hope, understanding and counsel and so much more. When we don’t have the words, we are promised the Holy Spirit lifts up our deepest needs and wounds to God. Life is hard…we might even at times rightly use more forceful, descriptive words than that…but don’t think for a moment that God’s love has abandoned us…abandoned you! Hope truly can be born of suffering.

At times, we might kid ourselves to think that we can just keep our chins up and make it through. We might internalize and deny our pain or the pain of the world. Yet we lie to ourselves when we share the old maxim, “God won’t give us anything more than we can handle,” for in the verse that inspires such hubris (1 Corinthians 10:13), we are instead told that our suffering is just part of our world…common at some level to one and all of us…but Paul actually writes, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, [but if you are] with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Did you catch that? When we feel overwhelmed and cannot go on, when all hope seems lost, and we might feel like the biggest losers of victims in the world, dead inside, God will be there to bless us! Jesus plans our resurrection! It is God who will give us the way out and a way forward…always. It is God who will turn our suffering on its head and declare ultimate blessing. Even in suffering, more is going on than we can see or understand. God’s love for us overflows. Just hang on to the promise like a life preserver.

Now, I know I have gone on longer than normal, and I am the only thing standing between you and your Super Bowl fair, but please bear with me. After all, this is among the most important passages of promise offered us in scripture. As Christians we need to consider where we can testify to the Good News, and that can often come from our own stories and experience. So, I want to share one difficult but profound experience of grace from my life.

If you have experienced the death of a child, or experienced such deep loss in any way, you might relate to the seemingly inconsolable pain that such an experience can create. My wife and I have no children, which is a kind of loss for us emotionally, but I have experienced the death of beloved children at very young ages that I have had deep relationships with – a cousin at 16, and children and youth that I cared for in mission and other vocations. I have also seen children and infants brutalized and sometimes die. And as a police, hospital, and hospice chaplain, I have walked alongside officers, and nurses and families that have shared in such tragedies and walk wounded afterward as a result…often brought to tears just at the memory. How can we speak love at such times? Well, we can try to because God is there…perhaps hidden…hard to see…but our God who is love is there. So, we are asked to press on, reach out, and watch and wait for Jesus.

As a young chaplain, I was called to the hospital from home. A newborn infant had just died, and the family was gathered. The family had already been presented a memory box with a hand and footprint, a lock of hair and other small mementos of an all too short life. I came into the room not knowing exactly what to expect. I didn’t know what I could say, as I’m pretty sure no human words are ever good enough. As I turned the corner, almost startling me from my thoughts…there was the mom, held by the dad, right in front of me. The mom in her turn was lovingly, ever so gently, cradling her baby’s body in her arms. (It is an image I will never forget.) They had been praying…praying so very hard…and yet their beloved child had been taken from them. It was brutal. It was unfair. It remains beyond understanding. “That God would take a child from its mother as she prayed” was appalling.[i] I think a little bit of me died in that room in that moment.

Then awkwardly, hopefully, the mom reached out to me. She asked me to hold the baby in my own arms and bless the gift that it was and remained to them. And in that sacred moment, and still today, I know that as hard as it was to see through their tears and now my own, God was with us. God was in that shared love found in family and community. God was in the mom’s eyes looking at me with love and hope. God was in the caregivers and volunteers who supported them and those like them. I discovered that God was even trying to break into the world through me and my own heart which was now being torn apart. It wasn’t being torn for the sake of suffering. No, in that suffering, my heart was being opened so that that I could better welcome and embrace those in need before me.

 This was a difficult, horrific event, perhaps one of the worst of my life and certainly their own. Why did this happen? I had and have no answer. Yet with that small body cradled in my arms, I recognized (perhaps it was God speaking) that God was cradling us in our suffering. It wasn’t about me and my abilities as a chaplain or human at all. God was at work, and Jesus opened my eyes to it. And so, I found I was empowered to bear this moment and perhaps somehow serve as a sign of grace to try to bear them up too…perhaps simply by my presence then…and perhaps now in my testifying of this sacred moment to you…As I walk on from it, even as it wounded me, healing was and is still entering the world.

As a Christian singer who experienced the loss of her own baby wrote in a song I deeply love and appreciate: “This is what it means to be held; How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life; And you survive. This is what it is to be loved; And to know that the promise was; [that] When everything fell, we’d be held.”[ii] I wish I could speak a word, and all your pain and the pain of the world would be gone. And, I don’t pretend to know why God has allowed things to be this way with so much suffering and pain. Yet I do know this…“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

My beloved, God is with you and loves you. It is Jesus, after all, who said this, and proved it through his own suffering, death, and resurrection, so that we might experience life with him. These blessings are not about you, your strength of faith, or your perfection. They aren’t really about suffering either, even as they call us to be something (someone) more in the face of the suffering that is in the world. These blessings are about a new reality whether you believe it or not…God is active in our lives and our world – a God who is only love.

Go to Jesus as you can, not as you hope that you might. Reach out to him even when he seems too far away (if not hidden) from you, or when you think your suffering might be more or less than the crowd around you. For you and your struggles matter to Jesus, and he is already reaching out to you. Jesus is with you, always with you, and it is he who cradles you lovingly in his arms. Receive the blessing and believe. Amen.

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[i] Natalie Grant, “Held” (2006).

[ii] Natalie Grant, “Held” (2006).

© 2021 The Rev. Louis Florio. All content not held under another’s copyright may not be used without permission of the author.

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November 17, 2021 · 5:02 pm

Living Amidst Wars and Rumors of Wars

The following sermon was offered at Christ Lutheran Church on November 14, 2021, the 25th Sunday after Pentecost. Due to the positive feedback and discussion, that followed, I am posting the text here. I have also embeded the worship service below. In the video, the sermon starts at approximately the 10:50 minute mark. Primary text: Mark 13:1-8.

Image by Justin on Unsplash. Used by permission.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.  

As our church year comes toward an end, our lectionary circles back to some topics and stories that come from the end of Jesus’ life – things we would often here in Lent just before the victory of Easter. Today, Jesus has entered Jerusalem for the Passover Festival, and he knows it will be for the last time. He fully understands that he is there to die. As Mark’s account starts out, Jesus was tempted three times by Satan, and here the cosmic battle will be settled once and for all. Jesus will tramp the devil under his foot, not by being a king in the earthly sense, but through his suffering, death on the cross, and ultimate resurrection.

Yet in the face of this tension, he’s teaching his disciples about what is to come – at some level, what to expect – but also why to maintain our hope. Through Jesus, God reveals what one scholar calls “a future toward an end.”[i] It is a linear faith in a way. Thanks to the teachings of Jesus and the scriptures, we know the starting point (the Fall) and on the other extreme we know the ending point (full restoration as Jesus comes again). “God is shaping a future toward an end,” yet there are not many timeline details.[ii] As Luther noted, our peace during this time of temptation and tribulation comes from a God who seems often hidden. We “are going uphill and downhill and uphill again. One moment it is night, the next day, and then it is soon night again.”[iii] Martin Luther did not know of such things, but what he is basically describing is that this unfolding of history can seem like a terrifying roller coaster ride.

While it is true that I jumped out of planes in the US Army, and I’ve rappelled from great heights and faced dangerous circumstances at times in my previous vocations, I’m not a big fan of roller coaster rides. There’s just something about them that bothers me – not so much the height, nor the twist and turns, nor even any light show modern coasters might offer us…mostly, I hate the feeling of lost control. We must depend on the architects, engineers, and maintenance people to keep us safe. We are just along for the ride.

That said, I will go on one when someone like a niece or nephew begs me too, but I will tell you my survival secret. I just try to keep my sight on one direction or point before me and quiet the voices within me through prayer. I know the goal, and I trust that I will make it. That’s not too unlike life. As children of God, it is helpful to keep our eyes on Jesus and the victory before us, and when the voices of doubt and darkness spring into our head, we must try to shout them down with God’s promises. “Get back Satan! We are loved. We are saved even as we are being saved.” God is helping us no matter what we can see with our eyes, and we are already victorious through our faith and baptism. No matter what happens, good, bad or indifferent, all is well, because God will give us “the power to win through to the end.”[iv]  

If we judge our situation purely by reason or experience, we will always be wrong. Jesus teaches that faith is the key to true understanding. So, when Jesus’ disciples begin to marvel at the architecture and enormity of the Temple, they were not wrong. It was truly something with some of its stones weighing tons and individual stones proving a larger in size than some homes of the day. They were right to be amazed! King Herod the Great had expanded the Second Temple into his own work of art and glory. It was meant to be a testimony not simply of the supremacy of the Hebrew God, not only speaking of the place of the Jewish nation in the world…It also screamed of his greatness. The Jewish Temple existed as a centerpiece of Jewish identity and meaning – politically, culturally, and religiously. All sacrifices to God were meant to be made there and nowhere else. It was the place where their all-powerful God was meant to reside literally and figuratively at the center of God’s chosen people.

Yes, the Philistines had destroyed the previous Tent of Meeting and stolen the Ark of the Covenant when some priests had been unfaithful, but God gave it back. And when the people lost their way, had turned against God, the Babylonians did come in and destroy Solomon’s Temple, the First Temple that replaced the Tent of Meeting, and forced a 70-year exile of the Jewish people, but God had forgiven them. God brought them home after 70 years for a new Temple to be constructed and better days ahead. The idea of this third great Temple, the widely expanded and ornate Temple of Herod the Great, would ever be destroyed was unbelievable for most people. To destroy the Temple with its cultic and national significance, as a wonder of the world, seemed an utter impossibility. It would be an unbelievable threat to the truth of God’s promise that God would love and protect them forever.

And so, as the disciples cry out in wonder, “Look at that Temple!” Jesus deeply shocks them to their own foundations by saying, “It is not going to last. It will be destroyed.” Not only that, but he also uses this prophesy to open the door to a greater mystery yet. Jesus will die. In the eyes of the world, he will be destroyed, but he will rise again. His closest and oldest friends, his most intimate group of Apostles, have come far enough in faith not to doubt him even if this makes them fearful. When they have a chance to speak alone with him, Peter, James, John, and Andrew ask when this will be and what signs should they look for. They want to be ready. They hunger for some sense of control. In a sign of some mercy, Jesus tells them there are basically four signs: false messiahs; wars and rumors of wars; earthquakes and other disasters; and persecution.[v]

Notice, as with scripture itself, Jesus doesn’t provide details. It will all be revealed to his followers when the time is right, and as we are ready. Indeed, at some level, his prophesy came true by 70 AD. There were false prophets and calamities and persecution immediately following Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Church faced many growing pains and threats as did the Jewish people. And finally, the Roman Empire grew tired of the rebellious Jews in Judea, and the Romans destroyed everything. The great city of Jerusalem was sacked, the people scattered in an exile reaching into the twentieth Century after World War 2, and the Temple torn down. The riches that had been dedicated to our God of life and love would now be used to help build the famous Colosseum of Rome, a place of persecution, battle, and death. All that is really left of the Temple are some foundation stones, commonly called the Western Wall today.  

As a result, many contemporaries, even Paul who died in about 67 AD, assumed Jesus would return and the dead would be resurrected soon and very soon. Still, time is relative when it comes to God. That day has not yet come to pass. Like the original believers, we are left to wait in hope…to hold on to our shared belief. God’s plan was and is yet unfolding, and nothing, not even death itself, will stop God’s love from coming to its full fruition.

This section of Mark’s Gospel is often called his “Little Apocalypse.” He briefly shares Christ’s teaching not just about the end of the Temple but seemingly also about the end of the world. The ending of the world is still going on all around us. We see those four signs! I think a theologian from Valparaiso University (a Lutheran school in Indiana) is correct when she asserts that we all experience our own “Little Apocalypses” throughout our life.[vi] We have days when we wonder, “How can I do this? What’s going to happen to me?” Or, as a pastoral care professor of mine used to remind us that we suffer a little bit of death every day.[vii]

“The Devil is in the details,” people say, and when it comes to the end of the world (or when and how our own life will play out), it is likely a blessing God doesn’t let us fully in on the details of what lies before us. It might distract us from the blessings of today or cause us unnecessary fear. Instead, Jesus provides us the key to it all in verse 7, “do not be alarmed; this must take place.” This must take place. We don’t fully know why. We cannot fully understand where and when or even how. Yet, we know this, we are and remain God’s beloved. This…God has promised us. We are only asked to trust the architect, builder, and maintainer of our lives.

I wish that I could tell you that we will experience no more suffering, loss, or failure ahead, but that would be a lie. It would be unbiblical. Even Jesus had to die, so why do we resist that we must too? All the powers of the world remain against him, and if we cling to him, they will resist us too. We are part of this cosmic battle being played out to its end,[viii] and we are gifted the power to choose whose side we want to be on. We can choose to trust Jesus or not.

Last week, I saw a man on television who claimed to be sent from Jesus while peddling his “miracle water.” Used appropriately, it was said to save you from poverty. Although claimed to be “free,” I discovered through research that it has somehow made him a very wealthy man. False prophets are among us still, and some people give them power over their lives. Of earthquakes, and famines and plagues, wars and rumors of war, oh, we have had our fill. Just watch or read the news if you dare. Yet, God isn’t done with us or the world yet. We don’t know why, but the end is still to come. With that end, a new heaven and earth will come too – a new beginning. More is in store than what we can see, understand, or even imagine.

A reading from The Word in Season (those little daily devotional guides available in our welcome area) gave me a lot to think about recently. On November 6, an entry really challenged me, as I faced the life and death struggle of yet another friend from COVID-19. The author pointed out that Jesus was indeed a master storyteller. As when he spoke about the lilies of the field, he was a great poet. “But when necessary, he was able to speak with simple directness, ‘Have faith in God.’” Have faith in God. There’s an urgency there and a call to utter dependence if not total surrender. Do we trust our God who is love or not? “‘Have faith in God,’ said Jesus, and live the love that can make the whole world whole.”[ix] That’s all we can ultimately do – trust while seeking to live in love. Other than that, strap in and hang on. With God in control, we are in for one awesome ride – one which can only end in joy and laughter over all we have been through together….all that God has gotten us through together. That is God’s promise to us. That is God’s plan, and we can trust it. Amen.  

[i] Brobst-Renaud, A. (November 14, 2021). Working Preacher. Commentary on Mark 13:1-8.

[ii] Langknecht, H. (November 15, 2009). Working Preacher. Commentary on Mark 13:1-8.

[iii] Luther, M. Sermon on St. Peter and St. Paul’s Day,” EA6:294f.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Card, M. (2012). Mark: The Gospel of Passion. Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. p. 159.

[vi] Brobst-Renaud, A. Working Preacher.

[vii] His name was The Rev. Charles Brown, PhD, Union Theological Seminary.

[viii] We believe as Lutherans that the battle was won with Jesus’ cross and resurrection, but the powers of sin, death and the Devil fight on it their death throws until Jesus returns.

[ix] Word in Season (October, November, December 2021 edition). p. 39.

As noted above, our worship service can be found below. The sermon begins at about the 10:50 minute mark.

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