Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 21:5-19.
Right now, as we speak, sixteen nations are considered to be at war. The two that we hear about in the news are Russia and Ukraine, of course. Looking at the list I found, those are the only nations that fall into the pattern of “nation verses nation.” Yet other nations, from Afghanistan to Yemen, are experiencing civil wars and terrorist insurgencies. For example, northeastern Africa has widespread violence: a civil war in Somalia, a civil war in Ethiopia that has involvement from Eritrea, terrorist insurgency in Sudan, and ethnic violence in South Sudan, which only earned its independence a decade ago.
I looked at a list of “significant” earthquakes from USGS for the last year. I started copying the list but gave up after the second page. Just in the US, there have been significant earthquakes in Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon, South Carolina, and Georgia. Wikipedia indicates that there have been 1427 fatalities in 2022 due to earthquakes, with 1163 caused by a single earthquake in Afghanistan in June.
Then I looked at a list of the world’s hungriest countries. Many nations in Africa are struggling, some because of a history of war and ethnic conflict, others due to climatic changes. Closer to home, Haiti is experiencing substantial hunger after a series of earthquakes and hurricanes, which ravaged a nation that has a history of poor agricultural management and poor government.
Meanwhile, the world is still struggling with COVID-19. To date, this disease has claimed 6.6 million lives worldwide, close to one person of every thousand. Here in Rolla, we don’t talk about the pandemic very much, but it has certainly impacted our community and our institutions, including this church.
These are indeed the end times! Wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues. About ten minutes of news will make you think the world is coming apart at its seams. Even America, long a bastion of democracy and the world’s leading power, seems to be struggling. A poll that I saw on election day indicated that 69% of Americans are worried about the future of our democracy. I recently listened to an audiobook called The Four Threats. It argued that there are four conditions that threaten democracy: political polarization, debates over the boundaries of inclusion in the political process, economic inequality, and excessive executive power. Of course, the book argued that the four threats have coincided today like never before.
But the book also described past episodes when democracy was in peril. They mentioned the 1950s and ‘60s as a time of relative health, but remember that the 1960s saw the assassinations of a president, an attorney general, and two civil rights leaders, all capped off in 1970 by the Kent State Massacre. Maybe there were other signs of health, but there were signs of trouble as well.
Stepping back a couple of decades, we often think of FDR as a great president who piloted the nation through difficult times, and there is truth to that. However, his presidency also saw the biggest increase in executive power, flirting with autocracy, as he instituted quasi-socialist programs, all in defense against fascism and communism.
The worst episode for our democracy was in the 1860s, but in 1800, it was uncertain we would even have a democracy. The 1790s were a time when the Federalist party was in control. In 1800, the Electoral College was split, so the presidential choice was thrown to the House of Representatives. They took THREE MONTHS to agree to transfer power to Thomas Jefferson and his Republicans (the party that is now called the Democrats).
It is tempting to think that we are unique in our struggles, but actually, wars, earthquakes, famines, and plagues have been the norm throughout human history. Another audiobook I listened to recently was set in England in the 1300s. That century started off with the Great Famine in 1315, which also had a couple of recurrences. The Hundred Years’ War between England and France started in 1337. The Black Death hit in 1348. Altogether, the famine and plague killed about half of England’s population, yet the Hundred Years’ War continued until 1453. Bleak times indeed.
Jesus’s ministry occurred during another bleak time, which only got worse. Judea had been an independent nation just a century earlier, but was then ruled by the Roman Empire. Insurrection was in the air—the Zealots, such as the Apostle Simon the Zealot, advocated a violent solution. Other parties like the Sadducees advocated appeasement and cooperation. Everything came to a head in the late 60s, and then Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE. This indeed seemed like the end of the world for Judaism.
But it wasn’t. There wouldn’t be another independent Jewish state until 1948, but Judaism wasn’t destroyed—just changed. Two major religions came out of the crucible of this destruction. The Pharisees led a change to what we know as rabbinic Judaism. They started to assemble the Talmud, a collection of rabbinic teachings about the Torah. The Hebrew Bible that we know today began to crystallize. Meanwhile, Christianity began to coalesce into a distinct, recognizable religion. Followers of the Way realized that they had better write down what Jesus had taught, resulting in the four canonical Gospels and the diversity of epistles that eventually were chosen for inclusion in the New Testament, as well as many other non-canonical writings.
In fact, one could argue that Christianity as we know it today would not exist if Jerusalem had not been destroyed. Up until that time, Judaism comprised several sects: Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, Christians, and probably others whose names I don’t know. Everything in Jewish life revolved around the Temple, just as other religions had temples for their gods. They didn’t worship an idol as in those other temples, but they still believed in the need for transactional sacrifices, certain animals that needed to be sacrificed in certain ways for certain conditions, and only in the Temple where God was specially present. Throughout Paul’s letters, we see tension between Jewish Christians who still thought that such sacrifices were necessary, as well as other prescribed observances like circumcision, and who still were attached to the life of the Temple and synagogue, versus the Gentile Christians who saw no need for continuing a system that seemed to be a relic of the time before their Messiah came to usher in a new age. After the destruction of the Temple, everyone had to re-think the system. Most of the Jewish sects collapsed, leaving only the Pharisees. Meanwhile, Gentile Christians had no particular attachment to Jewish traditions, much less to Jerusalem, so they were freed to follow the Way that Jesus Christ had taught them through his apostles.
At any rate, in April of 70 CE, just before Passover, the Roman army surrounded Jerusalem and laid siege. Jewish factions within Jerusalem fought amongst themselves, weakening their defense. On August 30, the Romans finally overwhelmed the defenders and set fire to the Temple. Over the following month, fighting continued and ultimately, all of Jerusalem was burned to the ground.
We are conditioned to believe that fire is bad. In fact, around my department on campus, I strongly discourage people from using the “F” word after we had an actual fire in 2016. That fire in our building was hugely expensive, and not just financially. Everything was saturated with smoke; all of the carpet and ceiling tiles had to be replaced, as well as much of the HVAC equipment and some of the classroom equipment. But fire can also be restorative. Consider wildfires. If you are living in the urban fringe and a wildfire threatens your home, sure, it’s very bad. But in many ecosystems, fire is actually a necessary part of the life cycle. Fire clears away the dead wood and debris. Where I hunt in Colorado, there is a mountainside that suffered a wildfire a decade or so ago. Now, you can see the damage, but you can also see that aspens have completely filled the space that was left. Prairies require periodic fires to cause certain seeds to germinate.
Most animals fear fire, but humans long ago learned to control and use fire. Early agrarian societies saw the way prairies and woodlands responded to fire and used it to create farmland and to renew their fields after harvest. We use fire every day to cook our food and heat our homes and workplaces and power our cars. Industry is built on fire, from primitive forges and glass blowing furnaces to modern coal-fired power plants. Fire is a tool. Like any tool, it can be dangerous when used incorrectly, but it is also an essential component of modern society.
Malachi said, “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” Many people read these kinds of eschatological writings and identify with the evildoers. They fear the day of the Lord at the end of the age, worried that they won’t make the cut. Like I said last week, they’re afraid that they haven’t earned enough on God’s ACT and will be burned up. But really, apocalyptic writings are supposed to bring us comfort. They are supposed to remind us that no matter what happens, no matter how much evildoers seem to succeed in this world, in the end, God wins. In the end, God will remove evil from all Creation and form Christ’s peaceable kingdom. God’s fire is the restorative work of the Spirit, burning away all of the evil within us and purifying each one of us.
Jesus’s friends said, Look how awesome the Temple is! Jesus said, Everything is temporary. The Temple is nice, sure, but one day, it will be destroyed. One day, there will be wars, and earthquakes, and famines, and plagues. But you know what? That doesn’t matter. Whatever happens, I will be there with you. My words will never pass away, but will live within you.
This is one of those days. Today, there are wars, and earthquakes, and famines, and plagues. Today, there are believers being put out of their churches and separated from God’s kingdom. Today, there are Christians around the world being persecuted. Today, there are churches that are struggling to survive. We are indeed living in the end times.
Everyone, everywhere, throughout history, for the two thousand years since Jesus’s death and for two thousand or ten thousand more years to come, has lived through or will live through their own end times. And yet, Christ’s kingdom survives. It is here among us, wherever and whenever we come together in Christ’s name. The Day of the Lord comes and the fire of God’s wrath burns away the evil within us each. As Solzhenitsyn said, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Jesus will kindle his fire and burn away whatever doesn’t serve his kingdom, like a refiner’s fire. He will purify each one of us and put his words in our hearts.
Jesus said, the tribulations that will come upon each of us will be an opportunity to testify. If we trust our own intellect and our own wisdom to guide us through the time of trial, maybe we’ll do well, maybe we won’t. But if we trust in Jesus Christ to lead us, to show us the right path, to give us words and wisdom, then nobody and nothing can stand against us.
These are the end times. But what comes after the end is not death and destruction, but new life in Jesus. Let us seek to trust that God will carry us through the end and into a new beginning, freed from the constraints of everything that doesn’t serve the coming kingdom, freed from hate and anger and resentment and jealousy, filled instead with the deep love that is God’s wisdom. Amen.
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