November 17, 2019 When Will the Mess End?

November 17 Luke 21.5-19 “When Will the Mess End?”  Banner- When Will It All Be Over? Pastor Jacqueline Hines

God designed us to enjoy beauty. Beauty is everywhere. There are beautiful flowers. The sun rise and sunset are beautiful. The work of human hands is beautiful. Children are beautiful. God’s people are beautiful. The bible speaks of the beauty of holiness. Holiness brings to mind pure hearts, Kindness and truth that make life beautiful!

In Jesus’ day, the disciples noticed how beautiful the temple was. The stones were magnificent. Great leaders and their family tribes had sacrificed and worked for 46 years by the sweat of their brow to create a structure that was glorious and reflective of a great God.

Building something beautiful takes time, energy, community, and consistency! It took 2000 years to build the Great Wall of China that provided protection from invaders,  14 years to build the Brooklyn bridge connecting communities, and 10 years to build the Panama Canal that made safer water travels.  Building is beautiful.

Jesus stood in front of the beautiful stone temple admiring it with the disciples. Those stones represented endurance. Endurance is a beautiful thing. Have you seen the wall of St. Vincent’s church on Route 23. Jeremiah Wright rebuilt it, and it is stunningly beautiful. If you have ever seen our United Methodist church that closed a few years ago in Spring City, you have noted that the stones are simply breathtaking. They are even larger than the beautiful stones that we have here at Bethel. There is a new church worshipping in there now called Regeneration.

Verse 6 tells us that suddenly Jesus launches into a very deep subject. He tells them that all “All good things must come to an end.” So it seems. Jesus, of all people knows, life comes to an end, then comes new life. Beauty fades and a new type of beauty is born. Nothing stays the same, whether things change naturally with time or whether they are destroyed before their time, nothing stays the same. Jesus tells them that this beautiful temple will be torn down.  They were anxious to know when such a terrible thing would happen, but Jesus spoke in generalities rather than specifics. Apparently, all they needed to know was that destruction was coming.

It turns out the temple was destroyed by the Romans 40 or so years later in A.D. 70, when Jewish folk revolted, growing tired of Roman rule. All they needed to know was that destruction was coming. The Romans came and destroyed the beautiful temple and just as Jesus said, not one stone was left on top of another.  By then, the disciples were all gone to glory.

Jesus was not saying that the Temple will deteriorate by nature or neglect. Jesus was talking about destruction of the Temple by human hands, wars, hatred, violence, and earthquakes, plagues and famines that speak out God’s wrath and warnings. Human destruction is constant somewhere in this world. When there are no wars, there are rumors of wars. Destruction is a part of the human condition. This week alone we heard of riots in Hong Kong, another high school shooting in California, unspeakable acts committed in the darkness of night.

As the disciples were trying to figure out why Jesus was focusing on destruction while they were enjoying the beautiful stones that had endured for their entire lifetime, Jesus declared in verse 18 that not a hair on their heads would be harmed. 

Of course, Jesus was not promising that they would not die or suffer like everybody else, though the Holy Spirit is greater than any of our burdens. Jesus was affirming that they would never perish because eternal life is greater than life in the flesh. Their acts of love and righteousness would last forever in this life and the next. New life and resurrected life are just as real as war and hatred and senseless violence.

Jesus also declared that they could save their souls if the endured.  If you are willing to manage all this trouble and still trust in God and pray about everything, if you can still seek God diligently, serve God faithfully, and obey God quickly, if you can endure, your souls will be saved according to verse 19. That is your relationship with God will be saved.

We spend our lives anxiously caring for our relationships or trying to save our relationships. This can be a good. Still, how easy it is to forget that the most important relationship is our relationship with God. When we hear that phrase, “They sold their soul to the devil” don’t we understand it to mean that someone has turned their back on God that they have made a deal with the devil for something that is definitely not good or godly?  They no longer possess their soul.

John Wesley, founder of Methodism started small groups in 1739. Nearly a dozen people came to him for spiritual direction when they felt convicted of their sins. He gathered them and instructed them  - as he put it so famously – to watch over one another in love .  (That was the name of a book our SPRC committee was given to read as a way of returning to our Methodist roots that emphasized loving one another and helping one another to stay close to God.)

Early Methodist groups would start meetings with this one profound question – How is it with your soul? Not just how are you? But how is it with your soul? That question makes us ask ourselves – Am I chasing after God as if my life depended on God? What am I doing to stay in love with God? To grow spiritually? To be still long enough to realize I am loved with an everlasting love and that I was bought with a price when I was a hostage to my sinful nature?  Am I doing anything to hinder my relationship with God? What is your daily answer?

None of the beautiful things humans build stay the same forever. Everything always either naturally needs repair, restoration, regeneration or refurbishing at one point or another. But, when the grand ideas, institutions, and buildings we build are torn down by hate and greed, rather than naturally deteriorate, it is not the end of the world for Christians. Destruction is a signal, an alarm prompting us to draw closer to God until God directs us to build something good, create something beautiful, and heal something broken. Now is always the time to get closer to God for direction, for destruction is part of our past, our present, and our future. No matter what comes and no matter what goes, God is always in the business of building, restoring, creating and healing. And, of course, we too want to be about our creator’s business. May it be so today and every day! Amen.