What does this Scripture mean? There are preachers on radio and television who delight in conjuring with these words about wars and tumults, earthquakes, famines, and pestilences, terrors, and great signs in the heavens, and connecting them with current events in Afghanistan, India, the Middle East, Ethiopia, Central America, and Russia. (But one author has counted 300 wars in Europe in the last 300 years. How can anyone single out any single war as a sign that the end of the world is upon us?)
Some armchair psychologists analyze the audiences of preachers who make capital out of the Second Coming and dismiss them by saying, "They probably have a barren life. The electronic preachers are providing some excitement, an escape from their dull routine and perhaps even from their poverty or some other kind of trouble."
Notice the put-down. To believe in the Second Coming is to identify yourself as dull and miserable.
We take the Scriptures seriously. So what does this Gospel signify? Many of us may be carrying a burden of some kind and we do look forward to the time when we’ll be relieved. Yet our lives in Christ are far from dull and believing in him has not made us stupid. Since the charge comes up that Christianity is an escape, let’s deal with that: is Christianity an escape? On the basis of these words from Luke 21 I’m going to present two answers: No, we’re in the thick of the fight; and Yes, it’s an escape from the fear of Satan and his power.
I
First, is Christianity an escape? No, we’re in the thick of the fight.
Our Lord took pains to make it clear on ever so many occasions that to follow him is to take up a cross; he never promised escape. In today’s Gospel we hear him saying:
... You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.
We’re in the thick of the fight, the fight for our spirits.
There was Paul who’d first been on the other side, hauling Christians off to prison. And then after his conversion, he was himself flogged with whips, beaten with rods and pummeled with stones. In the thick of the fight, the fight for our spirits.
There were the hundreds and thousands of nameless disciples who were marched single file past a flame, and all they had to do was throw a pinch of incense in the fire and proclaim, "Caesar is Lord," and who didn’t do it and were then fed to lions to amuse the crowds in the Colosseum in Rome. In the thick of the fight, the fight for our spirits.
There was John Huss of Bohemia and there was Joan of Arc of France - both burned at the stake. There was Kaj Munk of Denmark, Lutheran pastor during World War II, who denounced the Nazis from his pulpit and who stood with the Jews Hitler was trying to snuff out. Kaj Munk’s body was found in a ditch riddled with bullets. In the thick of the fight, the fight for our spirits.
There were those who suffered because they challenged slavery and child labor and suppression of women’s rights. There was Martin Luther King Jr, his mother shot while she was playing the organ, himself arrested numerous times and then assassinated, while marshalling the forces of love and non-violence to protest the evils of racism. In the thick of the fight, the fight for our spirits.
What do we make of this Scripture? It gives us insight into the meaning of history, that history is the constant struggle between God and Satan. The wars and rumors of wars show that. The devil doesn’t want us to have an abundant life. Insecurity, terror, famine - all this makes Satan smile. The innocent accused by informers, betraying with a kiss their friends and kinfolk - this makes the devil cackle with laughter. That Christians should be hated by all for the sake of Christ - that makes him leap and and dance with frenzy and delight.
Is Christianity an escape? Far from it. We’re in the thick of the fight, the fight for our spirits. It’s said there have been more people killed by Nazis and Communists, slain for their faith in Christ, more martyrs in our time than in any other period of history. In our country we don’t expect that fate but we may still feel the enmity. For us the persecution may not be open and violent but lurking and subtle. I feel it in how the world stereotypes us - as in television and films, showing church members as blue-nosed, simple-minded killjoys, only fit to be ridiculed. I feel it in the ways the biblical virtue of compassion is derided, how politicians get elected by railing against welfare-cheaters. Yes, there may be some rascals getting a free lunch and I don’t like it either. I’m all for finding ways to get rid of them. Yet there are also defense contractors who charge $96 for a claw hammer. I’d rather pay my income taxes to help a family get on its feet. But to voice such an opinion is to make eyebrows raise and noses turn up.
We’re in the thick of the fight, the fight for our spirits. And also for our souls. Our Lord predicted false messiahs would arise:
Take heed that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name, saying, "I am he!" and, "The time is at hand!" Do not go after them.
In the Acts of the Apostles we read of several coming out of the woodwork soon after the first Easter: Theudas, Judas the Galilean, someone they called "The Egyptian," and Simon the magician. We could probably identify a host of false messiahs throughout history and in the present age. Surely Adolph Hitler was a depraved, self-advertised savior of the world.
Another kind of false messiah keeps arising, to deceive us regarding a fundamental doctrine. In the fight for our souls I’m convinced the devil doesn’t want us to understand grace - undeserved love. I’ve been amazed at how hard it is for some confirmation pupils just to remember what the word means, to say nothing of appreciating how it works. If we should finally start to catch on to some of its implications, the devil counterattacks; he moves in to confuse our heads and hearts. He sends a false messiah who gets us to thinking there’s no more law, that since God’s grace in Christ covers every sin, we may do whatever we wish. It makes no difference anyway. There’s no hell; God is too loving to send anyone there.
Satan keeps at us all the time. If he can’t get us to fall in the direction he’s pushing us, he’ll get around on the other side and give us a shove in the direction we’re leaning.
So is Christianity an escape? No! We’re in the thick of the fight, a fight for our spirits, a fight for our souls.
II
But now in the other part of this sermon, I will say yes, that Christianity is indeed an escape, an escape from the fear of Satan and his power.
I want to lead into this by referring to the opening section of today’s Gospel in which Luke reports some people were admiring the stones of the temple and its offerings. We’re told the stones were twenty to forty feet long and so thick that three men linked together could scarcely put their arms around them and that they weighed more than 100 tons apiece. The "offerings" Luke mentions were probably the permanent memorials, such as a table from the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy and a grape vine of solid gold, each cluster as tall as a man, given by Herod the Great. We can understand why the disciples were fascinated. Jesus tells them:
As for these things which you see, the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.
And so it was. Jerusalem fell to the Roman army in the year A.D. 70 after a desperate siege in which the inhabitants were reduced to cannibalism and in which the city was taken stone by stone. All that was left of the temple is what we now call "The Wailing Wall." It was traumatic. The temple was gone. The temple did not endure. What would become of the faith?
But the Lord had already been constructing another temple built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself the cornerstone. The temple in Jerusalem, the magnificent edifice of stone, did not endure, but the spiritual house of living stones will not pass away. "By your endurance you will gain your lives."
There were ten bloody persecutions from Nero to Diocletian, the last one the most violent, all aiming to knock down this spiritual house of living stones, to destroy it once for all. They did not succeed.
It was happening as Jesus had predicted:
They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake.
Our Lord encourages us: "Don’t worry what to say. I’ll give you a mouth and wisdom. This will be a time for you to bear testimony."
He himself set the pattern as they brought him before Governor Pilate. And the governor found out he was the one on trial. "What is truth?"
So did King Agrippa as he faced the prisoner Paul. "In a short time you think to make me a Christian!"
So did Quisling, puppet dictator of the Nazis in Norway during World War II, when facing the leader of the resistance, Bishop Berggray. Quisling shouted, "You should have your head chopped off." Answered Berggrav quietly, "Well, here I am."
Christianity is a certain escape from the fear of Satan and his power.
Though hordes of devils fill the land
All threatening to devour us,
We tremble not, unmoved we stand;
They cannot overpower us.
Let this world’s tyrant rage;
In battle we’ll engage!
His might is doomed to fail;
God’s judgment must prevail!
One little word subdues him.