Reliable

Luke 21:5-19

Do you know one of those people who seem to find it reassuring when things go badly?

 “See, it’s raining on the company picnic. I knew May would be too wet!”

“Oh, the projector isn’t working for the main presenter? I’m almost glad to have something to fix. This conference was going too smoothly to be real!”

Or maybe you’ve felt that way yourself sometimes – that it’s a relief to have your low expectations met. Or that it’s better to know the worst than to wonder. 

Today’s gospel, then, is for you. For all of us who sometimes find reassurance in disaster, even – well, especially – if you don’t enjoy the disaster at all.

Jesus is telling his disciples – and any of the crowd in the Temple who want to listen in – that the beautiful stonework of the house of God is going to be completely destroyed. Not only that, but the holy city will be at war, the “good guys’ are going to be arrested and put on trial, and terrorism, famine, and natural disasters will wash over them all.

It’s deeply distressing and disturbing. And it’s also meant to be reassuring; to be comforting and encouraging in two ways.

First, there’s Jesus’ promise to those disciples listening to him right there in the threatened Temple: In the midst of all that is awful, not a hair of your head will perish. You will be protected, you will speak God’s word, and you will “gain your souls” – an ambiguous phrase, but one that I believe means that we will become spiritually whole. Jesus promises protection and spiritual fulfillment when there’s disaster all around.

A promise that’s meant to give the disciples, give us, that confidence in the work of God that can counteract the natural fear, worry, and unrelenting stress of seeing everything else reliable destroyed and leave us confident and brave.

And this story is also meant to prove that Jesus’ word is reliable; that what he says to his disciples, to us, is both true and trustworthy.

By the time Luke is writing his gospel, you see, everything Jesus predicts for his disciples here has already happened. In the year 70 – a decade or two before Luke’s gospel narrative was probably completed, the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple was demolished by fire and occupying forces. By the time the Temple fell, Israel had experienced plenty of riots and uprisings, civil war and international war. 

The Christians who first read Luke’s account of Jesus already knew the stories of the arrests and trials that many of Jesus’ disciples and early church leaders had faced, the stories of inspired testimonies before governors and kings, and the stories of earthquakes, famine, and plagues experienced by many of the early Christian communities.

In other words, everything Jesus describes in this conversation in the Temple before his death had happened – and was known to have happened - by the community of disciples reading Luke’s story.

The story we hear Luke tell today is not just a story of Jesus promising protection and fulfillment when we are face to face with disaster.
It’s also a story that proves Jesus’ promises reliable: true, and trustworthy, proven by experience.

The good news that Luke wants us to know is that God’s Word is reliable. Jesus is trustworthy.

He’s right about the disasters we’ve seen and experienced, so he’s also right, reliable and true, about the promises we haven’t yet seen for ourselves, about the nearness of the kingdom of God that hasn’t quite come in the readers’ lifetimes – Luke’s first readers, or you and me.

This is important. It’s an essential matter of our faith. It’s critical for Luke’s audience, for you and me, to know that all of Jesus’ words of promise and resurrection are reliable; that on the eve of his own arrest and death the future is, in fact, assured by God beyond our doubt, fear, or failure.

It matters to anyone facing disaster – fire, flood or earthquake; the loss of a home, a precious job or activity, a loved one – that God’s care for us in danger and loss is absolutely dependable.

It matters to any of us losing trust in our world – in the safety of food, the reliability of the seasons, the stability and honesty of government, the security of our retirement or children – that God is trust-worthy beyond doubt.
It matters to our souls to believe, to know, that we will experience God’s faithfulness; that our own lives will prove God’s dependability not just in disaster but in the weariness and excitements of the everyday.

It matters to anyone following Jesus that Jesus is reliable, trustworthy, true. Or why are we even here?

It can be harder to know that God’s trustworthiness is meant for you and me, personally and together, when the disasters that roll over us – strokes or school shootings; home floods or work failures – aren’t the things predicted and promised protection by Jesus. Or when the bad news that floods our days from the internet or the TV – political upheaval or unearned prejudice or unreasonable weather – seems to have a lot more to do with human failures, our own or others, than with God’s plan for salvation.

But Jesus and Luke both want us to know not only that God is reliable for protection and spiritual growth in all that, but that Jesus can be relied on to make us witnesses of God’s truth in spite of anything that’s happening around us; in spite of our own doubts or ignorance, fears or failures.

And that speaking the reliable truth of God in the midst of a very unreliable world is in fact our purpose – yours and mine, confused and inexpert as we may be, just like those earliest disciples of Jesus.

When I am working with children to prepare prayers for our worship, I often ask questions about “who is in charge?” in order to prompt ideas about who needs to be prayed for in our country, or our community. Usually the children quickly name the president (or the police, or teachers, or parents, depending on the age of the group!). But this week, as my friends in the Preschool were helping me write the prayers for today, every time I asked the question “who is in charge?” – about our nation, our school, or any other group, including your families – one or two or three children answered “God.”

God is in charge.

On a day when every TV I passed was tuned to impeachment hearings; when I was struggling with exhaustion and migraine, in a week of worry about ill and injured friends and parishioners – when none of the everyday disasters were world-ending but nothing felt very godly – the word of God came loud and clear from our Trinity Preschoolers:

God is in charge.

And that reminder itself was proof in my own life that God is reliable. Trustworthy and true.

Not only to be present and protect and encourage, but to make us witnesses of that presence and power and love, to speak reliable truth even when we don’t know what we’re saying.

God is in charge.

And not only is God reliable; not only is Jesus trustworthy and true,

but Jesus makes us reliable, too.

God makes perfect teachers out of four and five year olds whose only business is to learn.

Jesus puts truth that you and I need to hear into the mouths of long ago disciples;

and Jesus puts truth that others need to hear into your mouth and mine.

As we put our trust in Jesus, God makes us trustworthy to stand with each other, with any of God’s people, in the face of national and natural disaster, or personal calamity or daily defaults.

God makes us reliable witnesses of what God is up to in the world in the midst of disasters and disappointments large and small (and the joys of daily life). Jesus makes us truer than we ourselves could ever be.

And by that steadfastness – by relying on the faithfulness of God in ourselves, in our community, and in Jesus – we gain our souls.