“What's The Sign You're Looking For?”
Don't expect a roadmap to the end of the world
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Text: Matthew 24:1-14
I am forever amazed how after a natural disaster, the beginning of a war or a cataclysmic event in the universe, I actually get phone calls, e-mails and letters asking for a pastoral call to discuss whether what has taken place has any particular spiritual meaning. I am amazed when I think of those who look at the signs of the times and are more concerned for themselves and for what it might mean for the world, than for those for whom the terror has come.
I think perhaps this is exacerbated because we live in a time of instant mass communication. We are bombarded daily by up-to-the-minute news of events that occur around the world, whereas generations ago it might have taken days or weeks or even months for such news to reach us - if it ever did. Now, there is an immediacy to the information. Now, there is a sense in which one is almost present.
It is amazing, for example, how quickly this week people were talking about the tragedy in Madrid as they went to work on the subway or around the water cooler at their offices. What happens in Madrid at 9:01 affects what happens in our discussion at 9:05. We live in a world where we are bombarded by events. No tragedy, no war, nothing really is beyond the reach and the scope of our ability to discern and to know. It's an amazing world we are living in.
But because we live in such a world, it also means that our response to events is also immediate. The cumulative affect of these things causes us to ask questions of importance, to ask questions about the end time, to wonder whether this build-up of events is going to issue in the end of all things.
Within all three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, is this sense that there will be an end to the space/time universe as we know it. There is within Judaism an apocalyptic belief that the world will come to an end at some time, that the Messiah will arise, that Israel will be saved and that the world will somehow dissipate. Reading this week in the Qur'an, I turned to the following phrases in 56:
When the day that must come shall come suddenly, none shall treat that sudden coming as a lie. Day that shall abase, day that shall exult. When the earth shall be shaken with a shock and the mountains shall be crumbled and shall become shattered dust into three shall ye be divided.
Even in Islam there is this sense that Allah will judge all of time and that it will come to an end. Of course, in Christianity we turn very often to this morning's passage from the Gospel of Matthew, the passage where Jesus talks to the disciples about signs and symbols - the earth crumbling and falling away - the sign that everything will end after these things have taken place.
Is it any wonder that human beings, particularly those who are seekers, are asking questions about the ultimate destiny and fate of humanity when they hear about the conflicts, the problems, the famines and the floods? Well, I would like to suggest to you this morning that Jesus in this passage is not addressing that very issue straight on. He is responding to the disciples, who have a very particular historical question to ask Him: “When will the destruction of this current age end?”
They are asking Him a very personal question. They are concerned for their own fate and well-being. They know that something cataclysmic is going to take place and that Jesus is ultimately moving them and the world to some kind of an end, but they don't know what it is. They're not asking a philosophical question. They're not even asking a theological question. They're asking a practical question: “When will it all end? When will your ministry conclude?” And deep, down in the recesses of their souls, they are wondering what's going to happen to them.
Jesus responds in the light of the fundamental issue at stake - the fate of the Temple in Jerusalem. What Jesus is saying is in the context of the question of the future of the Temple. He tells them quite categorically that there will not be one stone that will remain on another, the Temple will be destroyed. You will hear all manner of things between now and then and many things will take place, he says, but the Temple will be destroyed.
Now, some scholars have looked at this text and recognized that the Bible was written after a very major cataclysmic event in AD 70, when the Temple was destroyed, 70 years after Jesus' birth. The Romans put up scaffolding around the Temple and set it on fire. All was destroyed except for the west wall - the Wailing Wall. People have speculated that maybe the words of Jesus were actually put into His mouth by the writers to make sense of the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Maybe this was coded language for what was happening in the early church, rather than Jesus' actual words to His disciples.
The problem with that logic is that what Jesus was saying in Matthew, He was also saying in Mark and Luke. What He was saying follows a thread throughout the whole of His ministry, namely, that He will bring an end to idolatry in any form. Jesus' death and resurrection will begin a new era so it is not inconceivable that Jesus would say such words to the disciples. Also, just because someone might have written something after an event doesn't mean that what was said before has no meaning.
Take, for example, the fact that Canada won the gold medal in hockey at the Olympics. Now, were those who said beforehand that Canada would win because they had the best players, somehow not accurate or correct? Do their words no longer have any meaning just because they actually came true? By no means. Jesus could well have said these words to His disciples, and on that basis I will move forward this morning.
That is not to suggest, however, that the impact of AD 70 did not influence those who wrote the gospels as well. The point I want to make is that what Jesus said to His disciples was a part of the totality of His gospel. He knew and understood that the Temple would be purified, one way or another. You can see this when He casts out the money-changers for having made the Temple into a den of thieves. You can see this all the way through where Jesus states very strongly that something is going to change.
The problem is that Jesus was preparing the disciples for His cross. He was preparing them for His death and return and the persecution that would follow if they kept that faith after His death and resurrection. What we have done very often with that text is to try to make it immediately relevant to our day and age without any thought to what Jesus was actually saying to His disciples at that time. We pick it out of time and make it a universal statement and then when we hear of rumours of war, kingdoms turning against kingdoms, floods and earthquakes and pestilence and famine, immediately we think it's about us. How arrogant we are!
Jesus was saying something powerful to His disciples, and that is what I want us to take home today. Because Jesus says later on in Matthew that we do not know the time or the season, we do not know the hour, even He did not know when the Son of Man would come again. He did not know when the consummation of history would take place. He was concerned with addressing the concerns of the disciples and He was saying two things to them.
The first was that they must have the gift of discernment. Jesus is not telling the disciples when the end will come, He is telling them what will lead up to it, and that in the meantime they must be discerning. They - and we - must watch carefully what takes place and, most of all, keep the faith.
Throughout the ages many people have prophesied about the future. I went not long ago to a website and read some of the greatest and most erroneous prophecies and picked out three just to show how even the wisest among us can get it wrong.
For example, Irving Fisher, who was a professor of economics at Yale wrote: “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” He wrote that in 1929. My favourite one is this: “I'm just glad that it will be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” This was said by Gary Cooper when he decided to turn down the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. And one that is very relevant for today: “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Written by Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment, in 1977 - not very long ago.
Even the brightest and the best, even the wisest in so many areas can get it wrong, and they can get it very wrong. Often, when we gaze into our crystal ball, when we interpret the signs of the times, we think that only our immediate knowledge is absolute.
Take, for example, astrology. In this chaotic world, people want to know what is going to happen to them. They want to phone in to find out what to do and be. Many want a concrete sense of what the future is going to bring, and there is an especially insatiable need for people to have something solid, to know what the future will bring, when we hear of wars and rumours of wars. It was almost pathological a year ago, when the war in Iraq began. People were uncertain and frightened and wanted to know what tomorrow would bring. We have a generation that is growing up with that passion and desire. What signs, seekers are saying, can we have to point the way?
The problem is, God does not give us these clear signs that point to what will happen tomorrow. What Christ offers us is faith in Him now. That's what He offers us. Not some sign to the future, not some guarantee. What He wants is trust and faith and discernment. Jesus knew that there would be many false prophets who would come along, that there would be people who'd say, “I am the Christ.” And there have been a legion of them over the last 2,000 years. He knew there will be those who will persecute the faithful. That has also been happening for 2,000 years. There will be wars and rumours of wars, there will be all manner of people that will tell you false truths to make you feel better and they will lead us astray. There are no guarantees, even, I'm afraid to say, in belonging to a certain denomination.
There's a lovely story about three ministers talking about Jesus' return. The big question among them was what church He would attend. Now, the Anglican was so dogmatic about it all, he said: “He'll come back as an Anglican, because we have apostolic succession. He's got to come back to us.”
The Pentecostal minister said: “No, he's going to come back to us because we have the enthusiasm. He'll want to be with us.”
The United minister responded: “No, no, no, no! Jesus will become United. Why would He change after all these years?”
We are given no absolutes in these matters. Our interpretations are finite, they are fallible and they are flawed. But Jesus does not, and never did, look just to these things to point to the future. He is saying to these disciples, “Look, there will be famines and floods and the temple will be destroyed, but what I want from you is to persevere. I want you to persevere. I want you to keep the faith. When you see me hanging on that cross I want you to keep your faith. The darkness will not last. In those three days between now and that moment when I come back, I'm telling you to keep the faith. When you are persecuted even when I come back, I want you to keep the faith.”
The power of the church and the power of the martyrs and the power of the faithful is not that they can point to a sign right here and now and say, “Here it is. It's all going to be over.” Rather, they can point to Christ and say, “He is here with us now.” There is also another thing: Not only must we have discernment, the discernment of faith, the discernment that stays close to God, we must also have dedication. We must endure.
A lot of modern religion is very much partial, helter-skelter and hot and cold. A lot of our commitment to the faith, to the church, even our commitment to good causes in the world vacillates with how we feel at any given moment, rather than enduring.
I was reading an interview from 1995 with Sir Paul McCartney in Billboard Magazine. He was asked whether it was easy to write songs and what his favourite song was. He said: “Believe it or not, the songs we wrote that I like best were often the hardest to write,” and he gave an example. He said he had a beautiful tune in his head, but he couldn't get the opening lyric out of his mind. It haunted him for months and months as he listened to the tune: “Scrambled eggs, Oh my dear how I love your legs.” That was the phrase. He said, “I couldn't get it out of my mind. It had this beautiful tune that wouldn't go with the words, but I couldn't get rid of the words. So, I had to put it to one side and keep working at it and working at it until finally I found an opening phrase: 'Yesterday, all my troubles were so far away.'” And there it was, his favourite song, the most popular of all their songs, there it was. But he had to persevere to get there.
You not only have to receive faith, you have to keep it. When we look for signs and symbols in the world around us and we feel insecure, then we remember what our faith really means and how valuable it is. It is our faith in Christ that is our foundation, and not just our belief that time and space will come to an end. The latter can be very dangerous.
In the 1800s in the northeastern United States, there was a great religious revival led by William Miller, from which the term “Millerism” came. William Miller had people really worked up about the end of the world, so much so that he actually set a date when he believed, by looking back to the Book of Daniel, that the world would end. It was October 22, 1844. People were leaving the church in droves. They were actually getting ready for this event. Many of them sold their property, many of them stopped caring for one another, they believed that the world would end so imminently, and there was this great revival. They went to their homes and waited. On October 23, 1844, there was what was known as the Great Disappointment. They had sold everything and nothing happened.
Part of the problem that we have, my friends, is that when we hear of all these things, we get caught up with them, looking for that sign and we forget what really matters. Think about it, in 1970 there was the terrible disaster in Chittagong, Bangladesh when a cyclone killed half a million people. In July 1976, there was an earthquake in China, and a quarter of a million people died. In August 1997, Hurricane Andrew (would you believe they'd call it that?) hit the United States and caused $25 billion in damages (the lesson is to not make Andrew angry). And just in December in Bam, Iran, 41,000 people died.
When we look at these cataclysms do we do what the Millerites did? Do we sell our property, run to the hills and wait for it all to end? Or, are we followers of Jesus Christ? Do we not care for the world around us? Do we not love the people who face these disasters? Do we not seek to embrace them? And, in the midst of it, do we not keep our faith? For in fact, my friends, there is only one sign of God's grace, one symbol to which we should look, one faith that we should keep and that is the cross. The cross for which Jesus was preparing His disciples.
Now, my friends, I do believe that Christ will come again. And I do believe that sometime in time, paradoxically, time will end. But I do not believe, and I never will, that God is going to give us a neat little road map and say, “Here it is, get ready.” What He says to us is: “Believe in me now. Listen to the Spirit. Keep the faith. That's the only sign you need in a world that often trembles.” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.