November
17, 2013
Luke
21:5-19
Have
you ever seen the show on the Nat Geo Channel entitled Doomsday Preppers? It’s a show about families who spend much of
their time preparing for various end of the world scenarios. They have multiple years worth of food and
water stored up, weapons caches, hidden escape layers, and routinely practice
escape drills. At the end of each
episode, their efforts are evaluated by professional preppers to see how long they
would last given their current preparations.
Also, the events that they are preparing for are evaluated to see the
possibility of them actually happening…most of which are pretty small
odds. The idea behind prepping isn’t
unreasonable. Being able to provide and
care for the basic necessities for your family in the event of an unexpected
emergency is not a bad thing. Dave
Ramsey teaches financial preparedness is his financial peace university
courses, the fire departments tell us to have family escape plans in place in
the event of a fire, one of the mottos of the girl and boy scouts is “be
prepared.”
I
remember in the rush up to the year 2000 when it was thought that computers
would not be able to handle the turnover from 1999 to 2000 and would come
crashing down. My mom went out a couple
weeks before New Years and bought some extra canned goods and some bottle
water, just in case. We even stayed home
for New Years instead of going to my grandparents cottage in Evart, just in
case. Our preparations were modest in
comparison to what we saw on the news with folks buying out cases upon cases of
food and water, filling up multiple propane tanks and generators in case the
power went out. And, as we all know,
Midnight struck and the only thing that happened is that we wound up with extra
canned beans and bottled water.
Far
too often, it seems that our motivations to prepare for the unexpected come
from fear. Fear that something
absolutely terrible is going to happen.
Fear that more wars are going to break out, fear that someday,
someone…in a fit of rage or insanity…really is going to push the big red button
and unleash nuclear war upon the world.
Fear that storms like super storm Sandy and Typhoon Haiyan are going to
become more common unleashing absolute destruction.
We
find ourselves spending sleepless hours during the night wondering - What if
the cancer comes back? What if our
savings runs out before my spouse secures another job? What if I outlive my
retirement savings? What if the economy
tanks again and my pension disappears?
Then
what will we do?
Our
world has become a place that is in a constant state of anxiety over one thing
or another.
But
then we hear from Jesus, who tells us that we are not to fear. And what’s more, he tells us to not even
worry about being prepared.
When
we meet up with Jesus this morning, he is still in the temple, where he has
been since he entered into Jerusalem back in Chapter 19. After knocking around the merchants in the
temple square and turning over their tables, Jesus has occupied his time in the
temple teaching. Now the temple was a
beautiful place. Herod had used up an
abundance of financial resources in order to adorn the temple and make it an
architectural wonder. Openly, the
building and beautifying of the temple had been done for the glory of God…but
secretly it was also for Herod’s own glory as part of his motivation was to out
shine the temples of his pagan rivals in the area. Never the less, however, it was quite the
beautiful place and you can’t blame the folks who were with Jesus for marveling
at the stones and other items that adorned the temple.
Instead
of agreeing and saying “yeah, this is pretty cool,” which one might expect
since one of the focuses of the Gospel of Luke is on the temple, Jesus predicts
the temples destruction…something that those around him may not have
expected. He then goes on to speak of
wars and insurrections, natural disasters, arrests and betrayals. Capping it all with “do not be afraid”…which,
if we’re honest, is easier said than done when you’re in the midst of it
all. The world comes crashing down
around you and fear is natural reaction…the fight or flight response embedded
in our brains kicks in. We have to do
something, we have to be in control, we have to make sure that this is all
going to work out somehow…how can you tell me not to be afraid, Jesus? Because, frankly, I am.
And
frankly, the people who were the first to read Luke’s gospel were afraid,
too. When Luke wrote his Gospel, Jesus’
prediction of the destruction of the temple and of arrests and betrayals and
deaths and everything else wasn’t actually a prediction…it was a reality for
those early Christians. About fifteen to
twenty years before Luke wrote his gospel, Jerusalem had been attacked and
destroyed by Rome…and along with the destruction of the city came the
destruction of the temple. In addition
to this, the early Christians, whom Luke was writing the Gospel for, were being
persecuted at the hand of the Roman government and the synagogues. So when Luke’s Jesus speaks about these
things, they’re not predictions of things to come, but a reflection on things
that had already happened to Luke’s audience…things that caused great fear and
inspired folks to come out of the woodwork claiming they knew when the end was
coming.
But
the instructions Jesus has for the people around him in the temple are to not
be afraid and to not worry about being prepared. And while that may seem like something
outlandish, it really does make sense.
We
can have years worth of food stockpiled in cellars, enough generators to light
a city, and a list of alternative escape routes to our secret lairs but in the
end, there’s always the possibility that the food is going to spoil, the gas to
run the generators could go bad or run out, and the disaster we’ve spent so
much time preparing for could very well block even the best laid escape route
to the fallout shelter. Living our lives
preparing for the worst doesn’t lead to much of a life.
Instead
we are invited to place our trust in Christ, to look for Christ in every person
and every circumstance, and we are invited to not fear because…even in the most
unexpected circumstances, Christ is going to give us what we need to get
through it. And that is the best form of
preparation. When we place our trust in
Christ, we can resist the words of those who claim to know when the end is
coming, We are more able to see God at work in the midst of even the most dire
situations, we can live more faithfully using the testimony of scripture to
give us the vocabulary to testify to our faith, and we can be assured that our
God is never going to abandon or forsake us.
Sometimes
a little preparation is good. It can give us peace of mind that we are going to
be ready for unexpected circumstances.
But when our minds get caught up in the fear and anxiety that the world
throws at us, it can be easy to become so fixated upon preparations that we
forget to live. Christ is offering us an
alternative, one in which we are freed from the fear and anxiety to live fully
into the future that God has in store for us.
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