In The Meantime ...
Sermon
The Home Stretch
Matthew's Vision Of Servanthood In The End-Time
The End Of The World?
There are many who fear the end of the world and the catastrophes they believe will accompany it.
It's no wonder some people suspected we were experiencing "the beginning of the end" when they turned on the evening news October 17, 1989. That was the day a devastating earthquake shook the San Francisco area, tossing life around as if in a blender. People braced themselves for more than aftershocks.
Throughout much of human history there have been people running about with alarming predictions of the end of the world, and surprising numbers of people have gotten caught up in their claims of impending disaster and doom.
It has intensified in our time, at the end of an old and beginning of a new millennium. Christian fundamentalists and apocalyptic fringe groups make prophecies with increasing intensity. Our human capacity to destroy ourselves through such things as a nuclear apocalypse or global warming has added a secular dimension to this end--of--the--world fever.
A surprising forty to sixty percent of Americans surveyed in the 1990s had a sense of doomsday coming soon.1 People look with increasing suspicion at catastrophes like famine, war, AIDS, world hunger, chemical weapons, floods, and earthquakes.
Children have picked up on all this hovering fear, appropriating it into their personal encounters with calamity. Ten--year--old Andrew is one such example. He actually braced himself for the second coming of Jesus whenever a spring storm or tornado warning sent him and his family into the basement. It was loud. It was scary. And he prayed fearfully, worried that the end of the world was coming and afraid he wouldn't go to heaven.
We seem to forget that a long time ago Jesus told us not to be alarmed about these things. Earthly calamities are an inevitable part of this world's struggles, but "the end is not yet" (Matthew 24:6). Jesus assures us not to look to these catastrophes as the signs of the end. They are just the early twinges of the contractions that will eventually give birth to the new age.
Yet fear grips us and global calamities are not the only things that shake us up. Sometimes it takes just a sentence and our whole world is shaken. "The biopsy report came back positive for melanoma." "Ma'am, your husband's been in a terrible accident." Or a child hearing, "Daddy isn't going to live here anymore."
Whether personal or global, sometimes the earth shakes under our feet. When the world as we know it begins to come apart, Jesus says, "Don't be alarmed." Whether we fear the end--times or our own end or the end of things we hold dear, Jesus' words comfort us. This world is still God's, and things are not out of control. We are anchored in spite of life's storms.
Jesus redirects us. There is something far more threatening to concern us than the end--times, catastrophes, and calamities. It is the evil that exists in the world all around us.
The Real Problem
Stephen Biko, a black South African, experienced that evil. He was a leader and spokesperson for his people in the 1970s. Apartheid was flattening black homelands in the name of "public health," imprisoning black leaders in the name of "public safety," and preventing black opportunity in the name of "the public good."
White leaders said Biko's death in prison in 1977 was due to a hunger strike and his own refusal of intravenous nutrition. His badly beaten corpse, secretly photographed, showed otherwise.
One powerful person knew the truth: a white South African newspaper editor named Donald Woods. (The movie Cry Freedom dramatized his true--life story.) Woods' knowledge led him to challenge the apartheid system.
He, too, became vulnerable to apartheid's cruel self--preservation tactics. Banned from publishing, traveling, or meeting with more than one person at a time, Woods wrote a book exposing the truth. He'd have to leave South Africa to get the message out to the world, and he'd have to take his family with him.
Donald's wife Wendy, supportive up to that point, opposed his plan to depart the country. Wendy was unwilling to rip their five children from their schools, grandparents, and the only home they'd ever known. This was taking the cause too far, as she saw it.
Then a package was delivered to their home, anonymously addressed to the Woods children. It contained T--shirts bearing the face of Stephen Biko. Excitedly they scrambled to put them on, but they began screaming immediately. Those shirts, treated with some kind of chemical, instantly began to burn the skin right off the children's hands and arms and faces.
At that moment, it was as if Wendy heard more than the horrifying screams of her own children. It was as if she heard, through them, the agonizing screams of black children throughout South Africa's homelands - screams of pain, of injustice, of horror. Whoever would do this to innocent children must be stopped.
The package was traced to the local security police. That night, as Wendy and Donald put their burned and bandaged children to bed, Wendy told Donald, "I think that book should be published." The horrible truths must be told. The horror must stop. They embarked upon a dangerous plan to escape South Africa to publish the book.
In South Africa hatred had become well--organized and institutionalized.
Most of the time it's much more subtle than that. Jesus warns us that while we wait for God's final fulfillment, we live in a world of decaying love that can be seen in human cruelty to other humans. Matthew 24 lists signs of this evil: torture, killings, and hatred (v. 10); deceit (v. 11); lawlessness and love grown cold (v. 12). These are the real threats to God's people and God's kingdom of love.
We are living "in the meantime" between Jesus' first and second comings, and we are truly living "in the mean time" of the sinful human heart.
Miracles In The Meantime ...
Donald Woods' book, Biko, was published. Little by little the world heard and confronted the secret evils of apartheid, and we watched with astonishment as apartheid ended abruptly in 1990. President F. W. de Klerk proclaimed its formal end with the release of black leader Nelson Mandela after 28 years in prison and the legalization of black African political organizations. It was a miracle.
Apartheid crumbled, but evil still persists around us. Racial intolerance and ethnic cleansing continue throughout our world. Meanness is demonstrated in such things as school violence and road rage, domestic abuse and social disrespect.
As we face the evil of the world, we carry the end--times vigil into the twenty--first century. Although the kingdom of heaven is present in some ways with the coming of Jesus, its fulfillment remains primarily in the future. The cry heard through the centuries continues to go up, "How long?" How long must we wait?
In the meantime ... Doomsday prophets try to "seek out" God's secret codes and try to decipher when God will come out of "hiding" to establish the kingdom. But we are not playing a game of "end--times hide--and--seek" with God. Although it is intriguing to try to figure out when the end of the world will come, we cannot. "No one knows," says Jesus, "not even the angels or the Son, only the Father" (Matthew 23:36). This is not something we should worry about.
In the meantime ... we cannot hide in the basement, like little Andrew in a storm, only praying fearfully for our own salvation. Our concerns are bigger than ourselves.
In the meantime ... we may not sit passively and wait for divine intervention at the last to save us from ourselves and each other. Stephen Biko could not sit passively watching while apartheid killed his people. Donald and Wendy Woods could not sit passively hoping for apartheid's cruelty to end. They each had to do something. So do we.
In the meantime ... we must confront evil, even when dangerous. We must continue as long as there are places within our own lives and throughout the globe where love has grown cold. Our courage and confidence are in God's powerful love, which overpowers and defeats evil. Miracles still occur.
In the meantime ... our job is to claim and proclaim this Good News! "... and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14).
____________
1. Richard Kyle, The Last Days Are Here Again: A History Of The End Times (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), p. 16.
There are many who fear the end of the world and the catastrophes they believe will accompany it.
It's no wonder some people suspected we were experiencing "the beginning of the end" when they turned on the evening news October 17, 1989. That was the day a devastating earthquake shook the San Francisco area, tossing life around as if in a blender. People braced themselves for more than aftershocks.
Throughout much of human history there have been people running about with alarming predictions of the end of the world, and surprising numbers of people have gotten caught up in their claims of impending disaster and doom.
It has intensified in our time, at the end of an old and beginning of a new millennium. Christian fundamentalists and apocalyptic fringe groups make prophecies with increasing intensity. Our human capacity to destroy ourselves through such things as a nuclear apocalypse or global warming has added a secular dimension to this end--of--the--world fever.
A surprising forty to sixty percent of Americans surveyed in the 1990s had a sense of doomsday coming soon.1 People look with increasing suspicion at catastrophes like famine, war, AIDS, world hunger, chemical weapons, floods, and earthquakes.
Children have picked up on all this hovering fear, appropriating it into their personal encounters with calamity. Ten--year--old Andrew is one such example. He actually braced himself for the second coming of Jesus whenever a spring storm or tornado warning sent him and his family into the basement. It was loud. It was scary. And he prayed fearfully, worried that the end of the world was coming and afraid he wouldn't go to heaven.
We seem to forget that a long time ago Jesus told us not to be alarmed about these things. Earthly calamities are an inevitable part of this world's struggles, but "the end is not yet" (Matthew 24:6). Jesus assures us not to look to these catastrophes as the signs of the end. They are just the early twinges of the contractions that will eventually give birth to the new age.
Yet fear grips us and global calamities are not the only things that shake us up. Sometimes it takes just a sentence and our whole world is shaken. "The biopsy report came back positive for melanoma." "Ma'am, your husband's been in a terrible accident." Or a child hearing, "Daddy isn't going to live here anymore."
Whether personal or global, sometimes the earth shakes under our feet. When the world as we know it begins to come apart, Jesus says, "Don't be alarmed." Whether we fear the end--times or our own end or the end of things we hold dear, Jesus' words comfort us. This world is still God's, and things are not out of control. We are anchored in spite of life's storms.
Jesus redirects us. There is something far more threatening to concern us than the end--times, catastrophes, and calamities. It is the evil that exists in the world all around us.
The Real Problem
Stephen Biko, a black South African, experienced that evil. He was a leader and spokesperson for his people in the 1970s. Apartheid was flattening black homelands in the name of "public health," imprisoning black leaders in the name of "public safety," and preventing black opportunity in the name of "the public good."
White leaders said Biko's death in prison in 1977 was due to a hunger strike and his own refusal of intravenous nutrition. His badly beaten corpse, secretly photographed, showed otherwise.
One powerful person knew the truth: a white South African newspaper editor named Donald Woods. (The movie Cry Freedom dramatized his true--life story.) Woods' knowledge led him to challenge the apartheid system.
He, too, became vulnerable to apartheid's cruel self--preservation tactics. Banned from publishing, traveling, or meeting with more than one person at a time, Woods wrote a book exposing the truth. He'd have to leave South Africa to get the message out to the world, and he'd have to take his family with him.
Donald's wife Wendy, supportive up to that point, opposed his plan to depart the country. Wendy was unwilling to rip their five children from their schools, grandparents, and the only home they'd ever known. This was taking the cause too far, as she saw it.
Then a package was delivered to their home, anonymously addressed to the Woods children. It contained T--shirts bearing the face of Stephen Biko. Excitedly they scrambled to put them on, but they began screaming immediately. Those shirts, treated with some kind of chemical, instantly began to burn the skin right off the children's hands and arms and faces.
At that moment, it was as if Wendy heard more than the horrifying screams of her own children. It was as if she heard, through them, the agonizing screams of black children throughout South Africa's homelands - screams of pain, of injustice, of horror. Whoever would do this to innocent children must be stopped.
The package was traced to the local security police. That night, as Wendy and Donald put their burned and bandaged children to bed, Wendy told Donald, "I think that book should be published." The horrible truths must be told. The horror must stop. They embarked upon a dangerous plan to escape South Africa to publish the book.
In South Africa hatred had become well--organized and institutionalized.
Most of the time it's much more subtle than that. Jesus warns us that while we wait for God's final fulfillment, we live in a world of decaying love that can be seen in human cruelty to other humans. Matthew 24 lists signs of this evil: torture, killings, and hatred (v. 10); deceit (v. 11); lawlessness and love grown cold (v. 12). These are the real threats to God's people and God's kingdom of love.
We are living "in the meantime" between Jesus' first and second comings, and we are truly living "in the mean time" of the sinful human heart.
Miracles In The Meantime ...
Donald Woods' book, Biko, was published. Little by little the world heard and confronted the secret evils of apartheid, and we watched with astonishment as apartheid ended abruptly in 1990. President F. W. de Klerk proclaimed its formal end with the release of black leader Nelson Mandela after 28 years in prison and the legalization of black African political organizations. It was a miracle.
Apartheid crumbled, but evil still persists around us. Racial intolerance and ethnic cleansing continue throughout our world. Meanness is demonstrated in such things as school violence and road rage, domestic abuse and social disrespect.
As we face the evil of the world, we carry the end--times vigil into the twenty--first century. Although the kingdom of heaven is present in some ways with the coming of Jesus, its fulfillment remains primarily in the future. The cry heard through the centuries continues to go up, "How long?" How long must we wait?
In the meantime ... Doomsday prophets try to "seek out" God's secret codes and try to decipher when God will come out of "hiding" to establish the kingdom. But we are not playing a game of "end--times hide--and--seek" with God. Although it is intriguing to try to figure out when the end of the world will come, we cannot. "No one knows," says Jesus, "not even the angels or the Son, only the Father" (Matthew 23:36). This is not something we should worry about.
In the meantime ... we cannot hide in the basement, like little Andrew in a storm, only praying fearfully for our own salvation. Our concerns are bigger than ourselves.
In the meantime ... we may not sit passively and wait for divine intervention at the last to save us from ourselves and each other. Stephen Biko could not sit passively watching while apartheid killed his people. Donald and Wendy Woods could not sit passively hoping for apartheid's cruelty to end. They each had to do something. So do we.
In the meantime ... we must confront evil, even when dangerous. We must continue as long as there are places within our own lives and throughout the globe where love has grown cold. Our courage and confidence are in God's powerful love, which overpowers and defeats evil. Miracles still occur.
In the meantime ... our job is to claim and proclaim this Good News! "... and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14).
____________
1. Richard Kyle, The Last Days Are Here Again: A History Of The End Times (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), p. 16.
