What is truth?

All the media are insistent in showing us the worst of whatever is happening around the world, and there is plenty of that, especially Isis that wants to murder anyone and everyone who does not agrees with their particularly despicable form of Islam.

There is much that is out of kilter in individual lives as well... so much is broken.

One could think of a supposed better time, perhaps a time in childhood in which things seemed to be better, more organized and manageable.

Perhaps it was a time when we did not have so many and weighty responsibilities, when the biggest worry was a few minutes of easily dispatched homework.

It was an illusion, of course.

There was more going on in that supposedly sunny time than we know or remember.

If the 1950s was the supposedly easy time, unless one knew about the hydrogen bombs threatening the world.

In the 1960s the threat was political assassinations and social upheaval.

In the 1970s it was the renewed onslaught of drugs.

In the 1980s it was Aids and promiscuity ever more rampant.

In the 1990s it was the accelerating breakdown of the family, and wars and rumors of wars.....

There was no easy decade; if anything, times are getting worse!

One might regard this situation as a disaster, but Jesus is pointing us to another conclusion.

When one is under the illusion that things are well-organized and stable, one is not willing to hear another analysis of the situation and a proposed remedy.

“Just be quiet and leave me alone,” we growl and harrumph.

But when things are unsettled inside and around us, then God can work on us and make a new situation for and with us.

The young adult said, 'I had my future all planned out.

I was on the fast track in my profession, and enjoyed my work.

And then things changed.

I guess I would say that God showed up.

It was always about my work, my projects, me, all me.

Then God showed up and I was flipped upside down.

My life isn't my own anymore.

It is God's work, God's projects, and a path that God wants me to walk.
And I will go about my profession in a very different way.”

It is this sort of disruption of plans that Christians are taught to call “Your redemption is drawing near.”

If we are coming today in expectation of easy, comforting words, we've been disappointed with what we have heard.

The lessons today are strange and unsettling.

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations.

People will faint with fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world....”

But that was not the end of the passage, but only its beginning.

“Now when these things happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

In the midst of what we see as chaos, God is beginning to do a new thing.

We can regard this as the best possible news, even if we have trouble seeing what the new things might be.

Let's pick a spot in history, the Reformation era.

In some ways it was truly an awful time.

There were recurring bouts of plague, wars ravaged Germany and elsewhere, the peasants' revolt was brutally put down, Luther and others thought that the end of the world was surely near.

Yet in the midst of all of that, Luther was granted an insight into the grace of God, the good gifts which we receive for the sake of Jesus Christ; Thomas Cranmer exercised the gift of clear expression as he translated the liturgy to English; John Calvin wrestled in Geneva with how the truth of the Gospel directs daily life; and the Roman part of the church was slowly able to straighten out some of the ways in which piety and practice are forever going astray.

It was not the fullness of heaven, but it was something.

In 1563 a pestilence broke out in Erfurt, killing 4,000 persons.

Ludwig Helmbold, rector of the university, sent his wife away from the city, so as to avoid the plague.

To comfort her on the road, he wrote a hymn, based on Psalm 73:23.

When in my darkest hour,

I can on him rely;

I have from him the power

All evil to defy.

And though the days grow rougher
And bring me great distress,

That day of bliss divine,

Which knows no end or measure,

And Christ, who is my pleasure,

Forever shall be mine.

The Spirit guides our ways

And faithfully will lead us

That nothing can impede us.

To God be all our praise!

[LBW 468.3,5,6]

There is a phrase at the beginning of the traditional announcement which I sing on Christmas Eve that has regularly bothered me. In the first few lines there is the phrase “..when all the world was at peace....”

It has always struck me as such an ironic phrase.

If there was an absence of war, it was because the Roman Legions were stronger than anyone else and brutally put down any opposition.

It was only 75 years earlier that Julius Caesar had seized power after a brutal civil war, and then himself fell victim to assassination.

There were tribesmen on the borders of the empire looking for any chance to invade and pillage.

And the province of Israel was a seething cauldron of resentment, with the zealots ready to ambush any Roman occupier they could.

“...all the world at peace'? Hardly.

And yet, in spite of the mess people made of it all, in that time and place, God chose to do this wonderful new thing, to come in the flesh.

Thanks be to God!

When we are in the midst of the present mess, it is hard to see what new things Jesus might be working among us, but they are here.

--A new person come through the door, and rather than demanding suspiciously “what do you want?” we are able to ask “I wonder what gift God brings to us by way of this person?”

--On the occasion that a plan does not work out, a championship is missed, or a relationship suffers, rather than saying that the whole world is falling apart we may discover that God is beginning to draw us in another direction, where a different opportunity, a new future will be beckoning.

--We can even use that big word “apocalyptic”, which means “revelation.”

The scriptures are to be a revelation, an uncovering of the truth about what is really going on in the world.

It is a something we would not have thought up on our own; it comes to us as foreign, something beyond the range of daily human experience.

It is a word from outside, and it is a good word.

Know that the Kingdom of God is drawing near; your redemption is coming upon us.

The world sees it only as one disaster after another; but through the eyes of faith we can deal with all of these things under the rubric “your redemption is drawing near.”

This means that it is a time for perseverance,

a time for praying boldly:

O Savior, rend the heavens wide;

Come down, come down with mighty stride. [LBW38.1] Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.