Hope and Endurance
Texts: Isaiah 65.17-25; Luke 21.5-19.
When the exiles returned to Jerusalem, their prophets imagined a time
when the misery of former times would no longer be remembered: the
fundamental injustice and corruption of Hebrew society in the period
before Jerusalem's destruction; the fall of Jerusalem to the foreign
invader; the captivity of Israel's noble families in Babylon. In
the passage from Isaiah, the prophet declares that these memories of
trauma and disgrace are to be put aside forever, because God has begun
the work of making a new Jerusalem out of the ashes of the old. A
Jerusalem characterised by peace, or Shalom.
Where the former Jerusalem had ignored the terms of covenant with
Yahweh, this new Jerusalem would be a 'joy and delight' to its
God. The resources of Israel would no longer be concentrated into
the hands of the aristocratic few. The peasantry would no longer
suffer the early deaths of malnutrition and disease, because they would
now enjoy equal access to the land's bounty. Neither would the
majority be alienated from the fruits of their labour. No longer
would they work for others without just recompense. No, in this
new Jerusalem of Yahweh's making, the poor would live in the houses
they built and enjoy the harvest of their planting. Shalom.
Alongside these covenantal social reforms, the prophet anticipates a
new depth of spiritual communion between the people and their
God. In former times, the people had cried out to God for
deliverance from their ills. Yet God, on many occasions, had
seemed distant and unresponsive: as distant an unresponsive as their
sins had made them. But now God would come closer than ever
before. Even before the cry of distress came to people's lips,
God would already be present to offer assurance and care. Here
the prophet implies not so much a change in God as a change in the
people's approach to God. In times gone by, the people would cry
out to God for help. Yet they had shown little inclination to
mend their ways by returning to the peaceful terms of the
covenant. The prophet dreams of a time when the spirituality of
the people is thoroughly covenantal, where the people are more
intimately and wholeheartedly lovers of God. Shalom.
Finally, the prophet indulges in a little cosmological dreaming.
Not only will the people enjoy peace, but the non-human order also. The
imagery here is quite beautiful:
The wolf and the lamb shall feed
together;
the lion shall eat straw like an ox;
. . . they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.
This is a vision of cosmic peace, where even 'natural' enmities have
been put aside; where even carnivores have become vegetarian!
Now, contrast all of that with the rather bleak vision of Jerusalem
presented by Luke's gospel, a Jerusalem that would have been profoundly
disappointing to the prophets we've been discussing. For this
Jerusalem of the 1st century, far from experiencing covenantal Shalom,
is once more the scene of terror and dismay, this time at the hands of
the Romans. At the time in which Luke writes, the temple, which
so poignantly symbolised the hope of Shalom for so many Jews, was once
more in ruins. And with it, one might conclude, so was the
ancient Hebraic dream of peace.
How does a community deal with disappointment on this scale,
particularly a religious community, which has dreamed such wonderful
dreams—dreams about a world reborn to justice, truth and love?
How did the black community of America cope when their great dreamer,
Martin Luther King Jr., was taken by a sniper's bullet? How did
the Salvadoran community deal with the death of their courageous
archbishop, Oscar Romero, who had dared to imagine an El Salvador where
the poor would be destitute no longer? The easiest thing to do,
it seems to me, is to give up the dream, to conclude that the dream is
a hoax; or, perhaps, that such dreams belong to an era of
idealism which we have wisely left behind. People who come to
such conclusions often join the very forces against which they have
raged for so long. Like the hippies of the peace and love
generation, who grew up to become the kings of western capitalism, thus
demonstrating that they were just as greedy and just as individualistic
as anybody else.
I must confess to having felt the temptation to abandon the Christian
dream on many occasions. Whenever I see a disaster like that
happening in the Sudan at present, I feel that temptation. Or in
Palestine, or in Iraq. For these conflicts are not, in any way,
fated or necessary. They are the results of centuries of
co-operation between ethnically-based oligarchies and foreign
colonialism. They are the result of the greedy exercise of power
and a basic lack of care for people and their future. For
years, ordinary Palestinians, Iraquis and Sudanese have been agitating
against the power of the few over their lives. And, eventually,
they all gained a victory of sorts. The promise of free elections
and an end to violence. Yet now, as we speak, the dreams which
came into being through the poet-politicians of each of these
communities . . . with so many dead, where is all that now?
And when I see the decline of genuine Christian witness in the midst of
our own increasingly stratified and materialistic society, I ask myself
the question: what am I to do? How can I resist the power
of these enormous forces?
In that context, the exhortations of Jesus for those who are being
persecuted take on a new power. Here in the western church we are
not being persecuted with the ferocity that Christians were being
persecuted towards the close of the new Testament period. And we
are not being killed and maimed like countless Christian workers in
Africa, Burma and the middle-east. But we are facing a time of
terrible decision. In the face of the colonising and secularising
forces of western capitalism, how are we to respond? Do we simply
join in with it all? Do we simply capitulate to the New World
Order where the rich get richer and the poor die young. Or do we
somehow find the Christian dream once more. And live by it, no
matter how difficult.
Jesus stands amongst us this morning, as he did in the Lukan community
of old, and encourages us to keep living the dream. 'Don't run after
false messiahs', he says. These are the (so-called) evangelical
preachers who promise peace when there is no peace, who promise a
personal relationship with a “Jesus” who does nothing except numb your
heart and spirit to the realities of everyday life in much the same way
as alcohol does. A real Messiah would ask us to bear witness to
the Christian dream right in the middle of everyday life, with our eyes
open and our hearts and minds alert. Which is precisely what
Jesus asks of us: to offer a critique of everyday life in the light of
Shalom. To protest. To say it is not good enough that so
many thousands of children die of malnutrition, that Aboriginal
children were stolen from their families, that the resources of the
future are being exported to provide for the greed of today.
Don't be afraid, says Jesus, when you make your protest before even the
captains of industry or the officials of government. If you keep
living in the dream—if you allow it to well up into your thinking, your
feeling, your praying—then you will find wisdom and words to do it
justice.
But most of all, when all seems lost, when the whole world seems mad on
destroying itself, keep believing the dream. For if you do this,
you will, in the end, actually become the dream. You will, in the
words of the new Testament, become its body and spirit in the
world. For the dream is Christ—all that he did and said as an
incarnation of God’s own dreaming or Spirit. Insofar as we allow
Christ to become the primary compass for our own living, insofar as we
allow his own dream and Spirit to become ours, that is the extent to
which the kingdom of Shalom will arrive in our own place and time. That
is how the dream will stay alive in the world. So what will you
do? Capitulate to the way things are? Or make yourself
available for God’s dreaming?
Glory be to God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as in the beginning, so
now, and forever. Amen.
Garry Deverell
24th Sunday after Pentecost, 2004
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