Sermon 14th September, 2010

May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts be now and ever acceptable in your sight, O God our strength and our hope. Amen.

When the “end of the world” threatens, what is to be our response? When injustice persists; when needless suffering is perpetuated, how are we to behave?

These are the questions that lie behind today’s readings. And each in their own way speaks to our human need for answers in places of great powerlessness and despair. Three responses are proposed which for shorthand we’ll call, woe, wonder and work.
Let’s think about the gospel first. It’s full of words that provide fear and anxiety in us – ‘all will be thrown down”, “beware”, “earthquakes, famines, plagues, portents, persecutions…betrayal – hatred” – and if we were to read a little further desolation, vengeance, wrath, distress and indeed woe.”

These are the words of tragedy – as a young student of the classics I learnt to declaim in Ancient Greek “feu feu oh poppoi, poppoi, poppoi” – which roughly translated means O alas, alas and woe is me!’ In our culture we do not use such language enough. Confronted by the terrible evils and sadness’s of the world, we are inclined to keep a stiff upper lip and refuse to comment. The advent of TV and the internet, constantly bringing us news of disasters from across the globe, has tended to harden and lessen our responses to the human need we see so frequently. We feel powerless and are inclined to avert our gaze. It is good to be reminded that the Scriptures provide some more positive answers to the worlds ills – the first of which, as Luke’s gospel makes clear – is to acknowledge the woes – to be ready to say “yes, these things are happening and we cannot deny or ignore them” – but there is more, and there is hope.

By the time Luke wrote his gospel, the disasters Jesus is here described as predicting had already taken place. The Temple had been razed to the ground, and the world – as the Jews of Jesus day knew it – has already come to an end. Luke portrays Jesus as encouraging his disciples not to lose their focus when troubles come – and to focus on God and not on the troubles that surround them; vital advice in a time of persecution. It is important that we recognise the gospel writer’s concern to provide help for those in present difficulties.

Some people are inclined to read texts like this one as a kind of “timetable to judgment”, using signs that supposedly signal its appearance. Such a reading can be used to frighten others into conversion or repentance, but such was not in my view, in any way the intention of Jesus. Rather he was encouraging his followers in the face of “woes” to trust; to keep following him and to be assured that “not a hair of your head will perish.” Such words of hope belong to the language and spirit of prophecy, rather than its debased form – apocalyptic, into which religious writers are inclined to fall in time of stress. Luke’s persecuted church community was under stress, and it is not surprising that some apocalyptic writing resulted. But even in the midst of this, Luke’s Jesus promises a positive outcome, “by your endurance you will gain your souls”. It is a hope being expressed in time of trial rather as the young Jew Anne Frank hiding in Nazi ridden Holland writes.

Isaiah on the other hand is writing having come out the other side of a time of stress and exile, as the Jewish community of his day moves into a time of restoration and re-building.
His key words are very different – create rejoice, delight, joy, blessed, “build and inhabit”; “plant and eat”.

These last two phrases are especially significant. The community in exile had been living with constant uncertainty – they had no assurance of being able to live in the houses they built, or even of seeing a harvest for their crops. Isaiah speaks from the secure place of restitution of the promise of continuity and freedom from fear.

Isaiah produces not a timetable of destructive signs, but the vision of a better world, whose signs will be “more than natural” – as the wolf and lamb feed together, and the lion eats straw like the ox. Some would see such language as mere utopian dreaming. But this is the language no longer of woe, but of wonder – wonder at what God can do; wonder at the infinite possibilities of divine creativity. Without such wonder we are lost indeed, in a wilderness of our own making.

The understanding that justice, and transformation and peace are possible, is essential to human well being and to our relationship with the divine. God is seen in times of woe, in the “wonder filled” ways in which humans respond with acts of courage and compassion and endurance. Yes, terrible things have always happened, and will continue to happen in our world; but human beings filled with the gifts of the Spirit, love and joy and peace, will continue to transform those disasters. And the proper response to that transformation is wonder.
But there remains a third way in which we are to respond to the disasters of our lives and worlds – and that is work.

Now I have to say that 2 Thess 3.10 in particular – “anyone unwilling to work should not ear” – has been subject to some harmful misinterpretation over the years. The so-called “Protestant work ethic”, which takes its cue from such texts – while it has stimulated much progress and industry – has also stigmatised the unemployed and disabled, and led to attitudes that were unhelpful and uncharitable in some circumstances. So why is this injunction to “work” useful, in the face of the disasters of this world?

Well we have to realise that the Thessalonians who had fallen into the ‘idleness’ for which Paul reproaches them, had done so for a reason. They believed that the end of the world and Jesus’ return was absolutely imminent. So therefore there was little point in working – what’s the use of building a house if it will be destroyed next week? Or planting a vineyard – or anything e else for that matter.

Paul is seeking to remind them that Jesus told us quite clearly that no-one knows when the end will be, and therefore in the meanwhile we are to do our work quietly and earn our own living.

And work of course does not just mean our paid occupation if we are lucky enough to have one. It means the work we do for the Kingdom of God. It means everything we do to lessen the woes of others, and increase the wonder in the world.

And in writing this I can’t help thinking of Kath Vinecombe – she was 91, but not only still jumping; still involved – still working for Red Cross, and Save the Children. She knew she couldn’t live for ever, that her jumping days were numbered – but she kept on quietly working for the things that bring new creation and transformation.
So let’s be like her – let’s acknowledge the woes and work to transform them into wonder. Amen