The End of the World As We Know It

Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

A man with no political experience, treated as a long shot for his entire campaign, has won the US presidential election. The Cubs have won the World Series. 

This is my last Sunday with you.

In big ways and small, healthy and painful, sublime and ridiculous, things are not the way they used to be, and they won’t be again.

Whoever you voted for, however delighted or devastated you have been this week, however you care or don’t about baseball or pastoral transitions, the end of what we know and have gotten comfortable with is here.

Not the end of the world, period.

But the end of the world as we know it.

This is what Jesus is talking about today, too.

The center of faith and identity will be torn down, unrecognizably destroyed, he tells his disciples. The world will be filled with false prophets, dangerous leaders, wars, riots, revolutions, famine, disease, natural disaster.

That’s worse than anything that’s happening to us, here, today – but it probably resonates for many with some of what we’ve felt recently.
Change brings loss, even when it’s good change.
Some changes bring overwhelming fear.

And those are the kinds Jesus is talking about today.

If they aren’t happening to you now, they will.

Or they have in the past.

Because the world never, actually, stays as we know it.

And right now, my world is changing fast and hard.

I have been heartbroken this week.

In a good way, in a way that speaks of enduring love, as I have said goodbye to many of you.

In a not so good way, as I have struggled with feelings of betrayal and anger, and have shared the fears of friends and colleagues who see their hard-won safety eroding under proposed new policies, or have been harassed or threatened by individuals whose bitterness and intolerance have been released by the election results.

Others are feeling betrayed and angry because their faithful and perhaps difficult vote is being characterized by many as stupidity and thoughtless bigotry.

With the best of intentions, by accident, in love – and in some few cases, on purpose – we are hurting one another.

So my heart keeps breaking, but that’s what it’s supposed to do.

I think that’s what all our hearts are supposed to do when the world we’ve known is ending.

Because protecting ourselves, protecting our hearts from breaking, means withdrawing from our love for one another, for God’s world, and for God.

Protecting our hearts from breaking is what tempts us into pursuing false prophets– the ones who promise cheap safety or triumph without hard, ongoing, open-hearted work – on every part of the social and political spectrum.

Protecting our hearts from breaking is what leads us to build defenses around ourselves so strong that the Holy Spirit has a hard time finding a way in.

Broken hearts hurt.

But letting our hearts break when the world we know is ending – when we are losing a person, a way of life, a trust – letting our hearts break is part of giving ourselves over to love, and staying open to God in the chaos or the loss.

And when we leave our hearts open God rebuilds the world with us.

You heard the promises of the world God plans to build from the prophet Isaiah this morning. Those promises are independent of who the pastor or the president is, how hurt or relieved you feel about either, or which church you go to.

And you heard what Jesus said to his disciples about what to do when the world you know is ending: Testify. 

Keep your heart and your mind open for what God is going to do with you even when you feel upset or threatened, when you are betrayed or endangered, keep yourself open to how God is going to speak through you.

Be witnesses for God’s grace and justice and stand up for the Kingdom of God, even while it feels like it is shattering into a million pieces. 

That's hard to do. And Jesus doesn’t promise it will all be okay.

(Oh, if only he would!)

But his instruction to testify is also a promise – a promise that God will not let us down.

God will not let you go, in the midst of chaos or devastation.  God will be with you, and will speak through you to the world – if we are willing to take the risk of keeping our hearts wide open in the face of danger and loss.

This week, moments of anger and grief, and stories of unleashed aggression and bitter backlash have been accompanied by stories of people acting with love, generosity, hope; caring for one another above and beyond the usual; building connections in ways they couldn’t have imagined before this change in the world we know.

These are the witnesses God needs. 

In every whirlwind of chaos, every end of the world as we know it, the signs of disaster are accompanied by the signs of God’s kingdom breaking through.

And Jesus tells us to be those people. Tells us to be the signs of God's kingdom in the midst of the world's uncertainty, and our own.

So if you are heartbroken or if you are happy about the election results, you are called to testify – to hold the friends you grieve or celebrate with to the standards of human dignity, generosity, and hospitality, to the rejection of evil and the nurturing of the holy.

If you fear for Calvary or if you are full of confidence and trust, you are called to testify to your dreams and hopes, to witness with your ongoing presence here – even when here is not what you want it to be – to show up, to share yourself, and to listen to others, so that the strength of Calvary can be nurtured among you and revealed to the world in service and celebration.

If your world is changing for some other reason – the loss of a job or a loved one, an illness, something unimaginable – you are called to testify, to let God bear witness with your life and words to the eternal promise of love and compassion.

We are called to keep our hearts open to what God may do with us, even in the hardest times and places. To refuse to build the inner walls that protect us, and stay open to how God will preach the gospel with your life – and to how God will reveal that gospel to you in the lives of those who seem so different from you.

So share your dreams, your hopes, your transformations. Testify with word and action to the importance of the promises we make and renew at baptism: to continue to pray and worship and work together, to share good news, to repent and seek reconciliation and renewal, to truly look for Christ in every person, to love and serve both friends and strangers as Christ, and to respect and uphold the dignity of every human being.

Because that call to testify is a promise, to us and to the world, in change and uncertainty and loss, that God will not let us down. That God will never let us go, and will be with us, right through the end of the world as we know it, however long it takes, however often it happens, right through until we build, together with God, the world as God dreams it will be.