(Note: This blog entry is based on
the text for “Every Thing is Temporary” originally shared on November 13, 2024.
It was the 337th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living
Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced
with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Everything is temporary. Every-thing-is-temporary. The sooner we realize
that the sooner we can get prepared for what’s coming. That’s our primary
reason for optimism. Today, we’re going to find out why.
The elections are
over and there are a lot of people who are upset.
What will happen with a new political party
in power? How will the lives of those I care about change? How will the lives
of those who are the most vulnerable change? Will my life be better? Or worse?
Depending on your experience, you may be
indifferent to major changes in government or fear them.
Sally and I attended a public interview of
Natan Sharansky at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles last week. It was part
of a commemoration of Kristallnacht when, in 1939, the Nazi party and the
indifference of the German government resulted in the destruction of 267
synagogues, the damage or destruction of 7,000 Jewish businesses, and the
arrest and incarceration in concentration camps of 30,000 Jewish men.
Mr. Sharansky is best known in the West for
being a physicist in the former soviet union who was denied an exit visa to
Israel in 1973. His protest and refusal to accept this judgement led him and
others to become internationally known as “refuseniks”. As a result, he was
imprisoned for nine years, tortured, and was sometimes held in a dark cell with
barely bread and water, no visitors, no reading or writing materials, and no
human contact for extended periods.
Governments in our fallen world can be very
bad.
Depending on how you thought the
elections went last week, you may think that the world is coming to an end
right now, or that it is just the beginning of better times.
The current national administration, the
State of California, as well as many organizations and individuals, are
preparing for what is coming.
Christians are preparing too, but for
something bigger, and it’s foreshadowed in a new year.
A new Church Year will start on December 1st,
with four Sundays before Christmas, on the first Sunday of the Advent season.
It will start its focus on the history of salvation and will prepare us for the
story of new life in Jesus Christ.
But as the current Church Year comes to its
end, our readings from the Bible at our worship services will focus on the end
of the world as we know it, the coming of Jesus Christ in Judgment, the coming perfection
of the Reign of God, and the coming of a new heaven and a new earth.
What’s going to happen to us?
The text from the Gospels that will be read
in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, Mark
13:1-8, speaks to this question, beginning with Mark 13:1-2,
As he came out of the temple,
one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what
large buildings!” 2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these
great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be
thrown down.”
The disciples were mostly small-town guys.
They had traveled 90 miles from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem, the big city.
They were walking around like tourists!
Jesus knew the bigger picture, though, and He
was not impressed. He knew that God is eternal, that being created in God’s
image means that human beings may receive eternal life, but that every Created thing
is temporary.
The city of Jerusalem was destroyed
by the Roman Army during a Jewish rebellion in 70 A.D., about 35 years after
Jesus died and rose. There was not a stone left upon another in
Jerusalem, and the population that didn’t scatter to other nations was either
killed or taken into slavery.
Jerusalem would not be a predominantly
Jewish city again until the Modern Age.
But I don’t think that’s what Jesus was
talking about in this gospel text.
Look at how he describes the event and ends
the description of them in the remainder of this coming Sunday’s Gospel
reading, in Mark 13:3-8,
3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the
temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell
us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are
about to be accomplished?” 5 Then Jesus began to say to them,
“Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my
name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7 When
you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place,
but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against
nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various
places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
Jesus speaks of disruption and destruction.
He ends his description by saying that this is just the beginning of the birth
pangs.
Don’t let false Messiahs rob you of the hope
given to us by Jesus Christ. Many will try.
Jesus is speaking to his disciples about the
end of history, about the return of Jesus to judge the living and the dead.
About the new heaven and new earth! They are coming, and what is
broken will be repaired. They will be what they were created to be by God. That
is the source of our ultimate hope
Every thing is temporary, but God endures
forever.
About 3,000 years ago the writer of the
Bible’s book of Psalms, wrote in Psalm 146:3,
3 Do not put your
trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no
help.
You’d think that we would have learned that
by now. You’d think that we would remember that today, as we consider the end
of history in the second coming of Jesus Christ, we would remember that rulers
are temporary.
The psalm ends with a word of hope, in Psalm
146:10,
10 The Lord will
reign forever,
your God, O Zion, for
all generations.
Praise the Lord!
That’s the scale on which we live our
lives. Not in the next four years, but forever. And all of it is under God’s
reign.
Meanwhile, Jesus tells us, many pretenders will
come and claim to be Jesus. By one name or another, they will claim to be Our
Savior. They have been coming for thousands of years.
I went
to worship on Christmas Day at Redeemer Lutheran Church in the old city section
of Jerusalem when I was in college and was studying there in a term abroad. We
had some excitement.
A guy stood up in the middle of the pastor’s
sermon and shouted, “Jesus has returned! He has been reincarnated and is now a
12-year-old boy living in India”.
In case you are not a Lutheran, just so you
know, things like this do not normally happen in Lutheran churches. Someone
else stood up and said, “He is not! Jesus taught that we should always be
ready, because no one knows when the final judgement will come.” There was a
big commotion. Finally, things settled down and the Christmas Day worship
service went on.
Our worship still goes on, and we are still
called to be ready every day. I heard someone say that he stayed prepared by
living every day as if it was his last. “That’s why I never do laundry,” he
said. “Because who wants to do laundry on the last day of their life?” 😊
I don’t think that was what Jesus meant when
he called on us to be ready at all times.
I think that Jesus wants us to live in the living relationship with the
one true living God for which we were created. Jesus calls us to life by faith,
to be in his presence through the Word and the Sacraments. Jesus wants us to
stay awake!
People have been claiming for almost 2,000
years that they have figured out when Jesus will return in Judgement and
Re-creation. Whole Christian denominations and groups have risen and fallen
claiming to know when even Jesus did not claim to know.
And every single one of them has been
wrong.
But someday, someone is going to happen to
be right, but not in the ways that they think.
The signs of the end that Jesus mentions are
not there for us to have a schedule code to crack. Those signs are there to
show the meaning of the end, and the role that Christians play in the
revelation of it.
They are there to show us that life has
meaning and purpose and direction even in the worst of times, in the most
uncertain of times, and that God, and only God, is ultimately in control of how
everything ends and what happens after.
So, when we see massive brush fires,
earthquakes, volcanos, wars, and famines, and uncertain times, we see them not
as the beginning of the end, but as the end of the beginning.
Movies about the total breakdown of
civilization are popular today. They let us prepare for the worst. They encourage
us to imagine our best selves on the world’s terms.
Zombie movies and television shows, and
video games, are especially popular today. Zombies are already dead, so some
people view them as a stand-in for their fears for the future. Zombies can be
viewed as animated bodies, not people, and so can be destroyed without guilt.
These shows give us a way to think about a world in which everything has
been lost.
But that is not our world. And it never will
be. Every thing is temporary. But God, in whom we live and hope and have our
being, is forever. And God has given us eternal life through Jesus Christ: crucified,
risen, and coming again!
At the end of our Gospel text for this
Sunday Jesus says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
Events are coming that are the beginning,
not the end. That is our hope.
Paul writes, in Romans 8:18-25,
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not
worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For
the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;
20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own
will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that
the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain
the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know
that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and
not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the
Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our
bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is
not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for
what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Every thing is temporary but we, the born-again
children of God, have been given eternal life by Jesus on the cross. We are
God’s people, and no one and nothing can take that life away from us. It has
been given to us by God.
Every thing is temporary but we, God’s people, live with Him forever.
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