Memories of my father are as vivid in my heart and mind today, thirty years beyond his going home, as on the day those memories were in the making. Mother is included, too, but for my purpose here, I mention Dad especially. To my youthful mind he always seemed to be on top of it. He was down to earth, lived in the midst of life’s realities, and never soared on clouds with spiritual fanaticism. The gospel according to Dad included frequent trips with us to Green Bay Packer football games and Milwaukee Brewer baseball games, batting fly balls to the boys (he was denied the special privilege of girls) out on his rural church lawn, soft-spoken but incisive comments on world news events, gardening and chicken farming on the parsonage acreage, and foremost a faithful pastor’s ministry.

Frequently across the years of memory I have recalled the line he often wrote in letters to our family after we had gone from home: "Our chronic weakness is not that we expect too much from God, but that we trust him for too little." Or when the rural parish that he served could not be isolated any longer from the jitters of our time, his comments would include, as he described reactions he had seen to fearful incidents, "Where is that calm confidence that underneath are the everlasting arms?" He was a patient man, especially patient with his sons, seldom agitated, seldom stressed. No matter what would happen, he seemed to know that everything would be all right. In fact, the only times I can recall his agitation came when listening to a Packer-Bear game, when the margin narrowed and he was not sure that everything would be all right. Except for that, he always seemed to be on top of it, for God would have the final word, not in football, but in history and in life.

The virtue of his patience is not one that I inherited. Sometimes I recall him telling me, "Don’t swat at flies with a baseball bat." Frequently he shared the secret of his patience, something about drawing strength from the certainty of God’s promise, but I have had to work at that, and have not even now attained. It has to do with faith, and trust, and hope, and how to stay on top of it.

Life With Its Ups and Downs

In this frenetic century, which has always seemed to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown, the sense of being on top of it needs careful cultivation. I suspect that there are many like myself who have a problem here, for statistics on this ulcered, hypertensive generation seem to bear out that suspicion. Children of the heavenly Father are bombarded in this anxious age as everybody is. We are caught up in the tensions and the stresses life imposes, and the prospect of the third millennium ahead for those who can endure that long are not as bright as prophets with rose-colored glasses might propose. The unprecedented pace of progress will quicken even more, but the brave new world continues to be threatened by an endless list of hideous possibilities. Our security has never been more insecure. Friendships have never been more tenuous. Vaunted progress has never been more tested. The highs of our drug culture have become the lows of desperation. When we reach the top in one sense, we are at the bottom in another. To say life has its ups and downs is much too mild.

Approaching the End

The clock ticks down now on another year of grace, and Jesus has a word to say to us about the future just ahead and the future in the long haul. It is not a pretty picture that he paints. He doesn’t share the hope of politicians who promise us a golden age of glory, a great society, a generation of peace, a world of social justice with respect for human rights. The torch that was "passed to a generation born in this century" has not been burning with strong flame. Nor does our Lord have much confidence in the efforts of church politicians who envision a bright future for the Kingdom in this world, who prattle with a be-happy gospel, especially not if we confuse our little kingdoms with his Kingdom. He has a better word on how to stay on top of it. It is this, that when everything is dark and there is no flickering match at the end of the tunnel, look up through the darkness, raise your heads, fear not, for "I have overcome the world." "Not a hair of your head will perish." "By your endurance you will gain your lives." The final chapter, the final page, the final paragraph is certain. The outcome is sure. Wait. Wait patiently! We have his promise.

Disaster Ahead

That’s the word in this great chapter from Saint Luke. Our Lord was in the temple at Jerusalem, just a few days from the Cross. Although this temple ran a distant second to the glory of the temple that was Solomon’s, this was a beauty, too, almost enough to rival the cathedrals that have been the symbols of the Christian glory since - Saint Paul’s in London, the Duomo in Milan, Saint Patrick’s in New York, the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, or even that magnificent new edifice that Pastor Jones’ church built on Prosperity Avenue to make a name for itself. Jesus heard the comments of the curious tourists in the crowd, expressing wonder at the beauty of the stones for which the lowly widow had contributed her offering, and Jesus said, "As for these things which you see, the day will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down."

It had to shake his followers! That this temple where they sought the presence of the living God would be destroyed, this place that was the bulwark of the Hebrew faith, or these attractive churches that we build, the impressive organized religion we are proud of, the budgets we raise and the numbers we gather in with our crusades - that all of this goes down the pipes, has to shake his followers. These are the measuring tools of our effectiveness.

But it seems that his disciples were not shaken in the least. The immanent disaster that they faced, the devastation of the temple that had been their pride, the complete destruction of the holy city, nothing seemed to shake them greatly. "When will this be?" they asked, "And what will be the sign when this is about to take place?" Their question indicated that they looked for this event to herald the arrival of the Messiah and the Messianic age, the fulfillment of their hopes and longings, the golden age, the great society, the brave new world of social justice, apartheid ended, terrorism finished, inflation at point zero, interest rates below the usury level, an economic boom without the bust, a bullish market, AIDS cured and cancer conquered, no more nukes.

The coming of the Messiah was and still remains the hope of Israel. Pilgrims to Jerusalem will notice in the eastern wall the Golden Gate through which, it is suggested, the Messiah will arrive. The gate was blocked by Sultan Suleiman, as the story goes, to insure that no messiah would ever come through that gate. But Christians, too, with the Apostle Paul have turned their eyes to that decisive day when the kingdom in its fulness will break through and be revealed, and when history ends at the Messiah’s throne. Our fervent prayer, "Thy kingdom come," reflects the hope that has ever been the church’s secret strength, the assurance of the promised victory of God. From that perspective, knowing what the final outcome of our history will be, we live and do our mission now with confidence, always on top of it. We can live with heads and hearts uplifted, not with confidence in human progress, but because in Christ the old has passed away and in the tiny mustard seed the hidden kingdom of our Lord is on the way.

The Hopeless, the Hoping, and the Hopeful

Recently I heard the differences described between the hopeless, the hoping, and the hopeful. The hopeless folk have given up on life and God, and have become despairing, negative, and cynical. The hoping folk are looking for some sign of hope, reading messages in fortune cookies, studying their horoscope, buying tickets at the lottery, and meanwhile watching out for black cats on their pathway. But the hopeful are the people who can see God’s end and new beginnings in his promise.

The Warning

Jesus did not answer the disciples’ question. Instead he issued a broad warning about false messiahs who would claim the office of messiah, saying, "I am he. The time is at hand." Do not be led astray. And instead of giving them a sign as they had asked, he said that in the latter days there would be tragedies and wars, and while this often has been understood to mean that judgment and the end were on the immediate horizon, he added, "But the end will not be at once." Nation against nation, war and tumult, earthquake, famine, pestilence - these are bold reminders that the world will not go on forever, that the fulness and the revelation of the kingdom is certain, but that his coming in the day of victory will not be fixed amid our end-time fireworks.

There Will Be Work to Do

First, there will be work to do. Luke in his evangel says it this way, that "the gospel must first be preached to all nations." That’s our in-the-meantime business, and we are to be perpetually on top of it. It will not be easy, for if the Master traveled pathways of rejection to the Cross, can his followers expect a better road? "They will lay their hands on you," he said, "and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, dragged before kings and emperors and governors for my name’s sake." We may be subjected in our time not so much to persecution as to scorn, or simply being ignored, or if persecution, it might be more likely from within than from without. But this will be a time for testimony, not a time to retreat into a holding pattern. It will be a time for witness, not for speculation on the where, the when, the how.

Our work, if one may call it work, is to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom, the Christ who was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our salvation. "Repent and believe the gospel ... The kingdom is at hand ... For God so loved the world ... Your sins are forgiven ... Christ brought life and immortality to light ... Because I live, you, too, shall live." The Gospel of the Kingdom is our message. Wait! Wait, I say, on the Lord.

But I mean active waiting. A recent journal published by a national church body carried a full-page commentary on the mission of that church beneath the headline Lutheran Evangelism is a Joke. You can be certain that this commentary flushed out several dozen letters to the editor. It might have been Episcopalian or Methodist or Presbyterian or any of the mainline structures which hide wholesale losses behind religious hype while they preserve their proper Presbyterian procedures, their Episcopal succession, or their Lutheran orthodoxy - in general, their good company. The truth is bolder than fiction. We have not been on top of it.

This is a time for testimony to the Cross and Resurrection, and the final victory of Christ. In a recent Easter Sunday worship, fifteen minutes into a sleepy moral essay on love, I distracted my spouse by writing on the service folder, "I thought this was Easter. Do I have the wrong day?" The resurrection Word had been silenced. There was no Eucharist to save the day. But there were lilies in the chancel.

Testimony - the resurrection Gospel certainly, but also testimony through our Spirit-led demeanor. That calm confidence that underneath are the everlasting arms is not possible without the resurrection Gospel, but in the resurrection Word is power that preserves us from the shakes and shivers of the day. The assurance that endurance will secure our lives enables us to stay on top of it and live above the perils of the present even though we live within them. The promise of his triumph in the end and in his purpose also makes us masters of the situation now and people full of hope, so full that it spills over in a faithful witness. We do not play with cards that have been dealt to us, as people say with gritting teeth, clenched fist, and growling stomach. We are working with the love of God that has been given us and that enables us, even when the mountains threaten to fall over on us.

We have his promise, the promise sealed because the tomb’s seal was broken. In the impatience I did not inherit from my father, I need that promise, and that ought to be enough, even for me.