How is this Good News?

December 2, 2018

Luke 21:25-36

Yikes.

A parishioner at my previous church used to talk about how sometimes she would hear some shocking reading, and then the priest would announce “The Gospel of the Lord!” and everyone would respond “Praise to you Lord Christ!”  And she would just look around in disbelief at the people sitting there, apparently undisturbed by what they’d just heard. She said sometimes she wanted to shake us all and shout out “WHAT? How can that possibly be good news?”

I’m sure this would have been one of those readings.

Here we are, minding our own business on this first weekend of Advent.  We’re looking forward to Christmas, and getting ready for it. We are starting to be surrounded by beauty and celebration. The Scottish Christmas walk this weekend.  Twinkling lights turning Old Town into a fairy world. Making pretty Advent wreaths to adorn our tables with candlelight. Starting to hear Christmas music on the radio.

And we come in here, expecting to hear some pretty story that will start us on the path to Christmas.  Something that'll get us in the mood for the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

But rather than preceding Jesus’ birth, this reading takes place right before the plot to kill Jesus unfolds.  And so instead of sweet baby Jesus in utero, we get stern adult Jesus talking about the earth being turned upside down and the heavens shaken.  In place of an angel bringing “tidings of great joy,” we get the Son of Man coming in a cloud for the judgment day.

This reading is not one of our childhood favorites.  This isn’t fit for a Peanuts Christmas special but for some dystopian horror movie.  This prickly gospel crashes headlong and unwelcome into the pleasure of the season, bringing doom and gloom and fear and foreboding.

“WHAT? How can that possibly be good news?”

This reading rubs us raw, it stops us in our tracks. And maybe it hits too close to home.

Because we are surrounded by violence and hate, natural disasters, wars and injustice and poverty.  Just this week the CDC reported another year of declining life expectancy due in part to the opioid epidemic increased suicide rates.  

And it’s hard to believe this reading wouldn’t have hit just as close to home to the folks for whom it was originally written.

The followers of Jesus were suffering under Roman oppression and persecuted by both the empire and the Jewish rulers for whom this sect felt like a threat.  Their lives were precarious and unstable. The doom and gloom that Jesus mentioned probably didn’t feel so far-fetched.

Maybe our human brokenness is all too apparent in its own unique way in every age.    

Do we really need to be reminded of it?

We’d all like a softer passage, a gentler Jesus, thank you very much.

But maybe what we get is just what we need as we prepare ourselves to enter the mystery of Christmas.  Maybe what we need isn’t more parties and shopping and lists. Maybe what we really need is to be shocked awake.  To sharpen our expectations. To make space for Christ to be born in us and in the world. Maybe what we need is to have someone shake us and force us to ask: “WHAT?  Where is the good news?”

Interestingly, this grim story from Luke’s Gospel comes directly after a conversation Jesus has with people remarking on the temple’s architecture and majesty.  These people are raving about how the temple is “adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.”  

And Jesus predicts that it will all fall to pieces.  

The people are horrified: “Oh, no, how could this be?”  Jesus thinks they are a little too concerned about the trappings of their faith - the building, their customs and traditions. And so, in this passage that we hear today, Jesus is warning them that the real risk has nothing to do with the external things, but with the substance of their faith - a faith they’ll need to get them through the hard times that are sure to surround them.

Maybe we need that warning too.  

When I was in seminary, a national study about religious faith came out that horrified everyone in the church business.  

The study was focused on American teenagers. And the good news was that three out of four American teens claimed to be Christian and most were affiliated with a religious organization. The bad news was that their faith was fairly meaningless.  Few of them thought faith mattered at all for their daily life. Almost none could articulate much at all about their faith that would distinguish it from any other religion.

Ten years later, the study followed up with this same cohort of people, now no longer teenagers but adults.  And not much had changed.

And the really bad news, the part that indicts all of us, was the finding that they’re getting their belief system from the rest of us.  The study found that the vast majority of teens mirror their parents’ religious faith, with other relatives, mentors and ministers being influential predictors as well.  

The research team found that rather than Christianity, the religion the most of us seem to be practicing is what the study called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

They found 5 guiding beliefs of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.  
2. God wants us to be good, nice and fair to each other.  
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about myself.  
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.  
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

In other words, Be nice, Feel good, and Leave God in the Background.  

These studies sent shockwaves through the church world -- church people asking “Oh, no, how could this be?”  But it’s hard to believe anyone paying attention could be very surprised. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism seems pretty much like what we see when we look around our individualistic, consumeristic, capitalist society.  Be nice, feel good, and leave God loosely connected in the background - seems like a pretty fair description of mainstream religious faith. But, as the researchers pointed out, it isn’t Christianity. And, as Jesus points out, it won’t see us through the hard times that are sure to surround us.

If we leave God in the background, we miss the One who loves us with reckless abandon and breaks into our world and into our lives to make all things new.

If we aim only to be nice and feel good, we don’t hear the challenge to love our enemies, care for the vulnerable, see God in the stranger, live with courage and reject fear.

So while we might wish for a softer passage, maybe what we need is to be shocked into bolder faith and deeper commitment.  To be reminded that Christianity calls us to live in a radical way as bright lights in a sea of darkness. To claim our faith as a source of our identity that leads us to follow Jesus into the world. To become partners with God in the advent of a new reality.  

Jesus tells the folks gathered around him that when they find themselves surrounded by disasters and mistreatment and violence, they should “Stand up and raise their heads, because their redemption is drawing near.” Or, as another translation puts it: “Up on your feet. Stand tall with your heads high. Help is on the way!”

At first glance this reading might make us what to yell out: “WHAT?  How is this good news?” At first glance Jesus looks like an angry preacher in Times Square holding up a sign of judgment and screaming that “The End Is Near!”  

But the closer we look the more we can see that this isn’t so much a word of judgment but a word of hope. This is our God-with-us. The one who comes to be among us; to be one of us.  The one who walks with us even in the midst of disaster and suffering and pain. The one who promises: “The kingdom of God is all around you, even now!”

We are being shaken awake by a God that wants to matter in our lives.

And that, my friends, is very good news indeed.