Theme: Here is all you and I need to know about the future: It will be filled with Christ’s Presences, and fulfilled with his Promises. This is our destiny as disciples of Jesus: filled presences, and fulfilled promises.

Exegesis: “The Word-Made-Flesh . . .”

The gospel text for this Sunday before Thanksgiving Sunday continues the theme of last week’s lectionary reading: predictions of impending destruction and the approach of the end times. Though it is not explicitly stated, the presumed audience here is Jesus’ disciples, who were last mentioned in chapter 20 (v.45). As Jesus begins this series of prophetic utterances, it is almost as if he is asking his disciples then (and now): “What do you want first? The bad news or the worse news?”

Jesus’ first bit of “bad news” is the complete destruction of the imposingly beautiful temple of Jerusalem. Around 20 BCE under Herod the Great’s rule, the temple had undergone extensive renovations and expansions that increased its physical size, its sheer grandeur, and its ultimate importance. A façade of gold plates gleamed against towering walls of white marble. The Jerusalem temple was not only the dazzling centerpiece for Jewish faith; it was also a political statement about the importance of Jerusalem in the Roman world.

Yet as soon as The Twelve take note of this sacred structure Jesus announces its impending doom, a destruction so complete that “not one stone will be left on another, every one of them will be thrown down” (v.6).

The alarmed disciples immediately pepper Jesus with questions about the timing of this catastrophe. Their questions ask not just for a prediction of the final eschatological “day’ when this destruction will occur. They demand Jesus provide them with a detailed prophetic map of all that will be encountered before that final day arrives.

Jesus’ response surprises everyone. He refuses to draw a straight line of cataclysmic events leading in inevitable, progressive fashion to the end of time. Instead, Jesus first counsels his disciples “Watch out that you are not deceived ” by those who will proclaim “the end is near” (v.8). Indeed, Jesus insists that any who make such predictions bare their own imposter status. Those who offer chiliastic charts and millennial time-tables are deceivers, falsifiers, and mischief makers. Jesus warns his disciples, “do not follow them” (v.8).

Yet Jesus now reveals more “bad news” to his listeners. “Wars and revolutions” will be features of the future, but these events do NOT serve as the welcome mat to the millennium. Jesus’ words are a wet blanket on the ardor of would-be revolutionaries or liberationist freedom-fighters who hope to hasten the arrival of the eschaton by actively participating in armed insurrections against established power structures. Participation in battles between nations and kingdoms, which to Jesus’ listeners would surely include a Jewish revolt against their Roman oppressors, is no guarantee that any end is lurking in the wings. Instead Jesus offers a laundry list of natural disasters that will also ravage “various” places and peoples. Even the occurrence of “fearful events and great signs from heaven” does not necessarily accompany the end of time as Jesus “predicts” it.

Instead of offering definitive portents that will usher in the finale of history, Jesus shifts his focus again to what will happen before these great wars and natural disasters. The disciples who had hoped Jesus would hand them super-powerful long-distance binoculars are now urged to focus on a much more immediate, and personally significant, future. It is here in Luke’s gospel that Jesus spells out the whole plot developed further in the writer’s second volume of writings, The Acts of the Apostles. For Luke, Jesus’ prophetic identity is not proved by any elaborate outline of the future, but by his warnings of what his disciples will face as they follow him.

First, “they will lay hands on you and persecute you” (v.12), language that recalls Jesus’ own fate (Luke 9:44; 18:32; Acts 8:3). Likewise, Jesus declares that both the religious and political authorities will participate in these persecutions, for “synagogues” and “prisons” will hold the disciples. Another echo of Jesus’ own future destiny is his pronouncement that the disciples will face both “kings and governors,” for in Luke 23:1-5, 13-25 Jesus is brought first before King Herod and then before the “hegemon” (governor or prefect) Pilate. While political authorities could imprison persons both as punishment and as insurance against flight before trial, the synagogues often used imprisonment to weed out disruptive ideas and individuals. Jesus makes it quite clear why the disciples will find themselves at odds with the authorities: it is “on account of my name” (v.12).

It only gets worse. Not only will the power structures be aligned against Jesus’ disciples. Followers of “The Way” may expect to be betrayed, even killed, by their own families-—“by parents, brothers, relatives and friends” (v.16). All this with the eschaton nowhere yet in sight.

Jesus’ “bad news/worse news” is more than offset by the ultimate good news he finally brings. In v.13 he declares that as his disciples stand before all these establishment enforcers, they will have the perfect opportunity to be “witnesses,” a word which originally carried the double meaning of “martyr” and “messenger.” This Lucan declaration will come to fruition again and again in Acts (3:15; 4:33; 5:32; 20:26) as the disciples do “bear witness”— sometimes under the direst of circumstances.

Jesus admonishes his disciples “not to worry” about preparing their own defense, for the Spirit will provide them with “words and wisdom” that will be beyond the abilities of any of their enemies to “resist or contradict” (v.15). Earlier in Luke Jesus had declared that the Holy Spirit would aid his disciples during times of persecution (12:11-12). Jesus’ suggests here the essential continuity between himself and the Spirit that will come upon the disciples in Acts. In Acts 6:10 Stephen is described as speaking with wisdom under the power of the Holy Spirit in such a way that his speechless opponents were “not able to resist his wisdom.” Likewise, when John and Peter confront the opposition in Acts 4:14, those adversaries found they “had nothing to contradict.”

But you can win and lose at the same time. Jesus’ continuing presence with his disciples, and their continuing “witness,” will result in awful ostracism from community and even family, earning them the honor of being “hated by all” (v.17). Yet despite Jesus’ dire descriptions of their future, Jesus concludes with the audacious affirmation that “not a hair on your head will perish.”

How can this be?

In Luke 12:7 Jesus assured his followers that “the hairs on your head are all counted.” In today’s text Jesus revealed that “they will put some of you to death” (v.16). Clearly, Jesus speaks here of a spiritual life that does not end with physical death. Through the activities of witnessing -testifying, standing up before the power structures, and even familial authorities the disciples engage in “hypomone” or “endurance.” It is this activity of faithfulness that enables Jesus’ disciples to “gain life,” even as they face death.

WORD to Words: “ . . . Dwells Among Us”

Did you hear the latest Disney news?

I’m sorry, when it comes to Disney we’re all failed cynics. Is there anyone who doesn’t take their kids to Disneyland or Disney World? Everyone loves Disney.

Here’s the latest news from Disney: Disneyland and Disney World are shutting down and rebuilding one of the rides. Do you know which one it is? Can you guess which one?

You got it . . .the ride with the theme song that bores its way into your skull like an earworm and won’t get out . . . . it just nestles in your ear, squirms and squiggles until you sing (let’s hear it now, “It’s a Small World After All, It’s a Small World After All . . .” Stop it before we can’t stop it.

Disney is rebuilding “It’s a Small World” because Americans have gotten too big for “Small World.” Our butts have gotten too big for our “Small World.”

In many ways this is the problem of the disciples in this morning’s gospel reading. The disciples have gotten too big for their britches, and Jesus is taking them down a notch.

Like you I was riveted by the images of the devastating fires that raged across southern California last month. The blow-torching Santa Ana winds spread wildfires across the hills and into neighborhoods at breakneck speed. In order to contact home-owner’s as quickly as possible, emergency evacuation officials put into effect a “reverse 9-1-1” operation.

Did you know until then there was such a thing? I didn’t. Do we have a “Reverse 9-1-1" in place here, does anyone know?

Instead of a panicked caller dialing a central 911 dispatch unit to report an emergency, the 911 operators called thousands of residents to warn them that they were about to find themselves in the middle of a 911 emergency. The “Reverse 9-1-1" calls were used to evacuate whole neighborhoods as the fierce flames blew into towns and consumed thousands of homes. Thanks to these personal “heads up” 911 calls, many Californians were able to flee to safety before the fires found them. 1800+ homes were lost, but lives were saved.

Where’s My Reverse 9-1-1?

The disciples in today’s gospel text seemed to be asking Jesus for a “Reverse 9-1-1.” As his hand-picked followers, didn’t they rate a personal 911 call from their master, revealing to them when the end of days, the eschaton itself, would be knocking on their door and what role they would play in it?

The disciples wanted to be prepared. Whether it was prepared to fight or flee, hunker-down or hide-out, isn’t quite clear. The future might be frightening, but to the disciples’ way of thinking, an unknown future was even more terrifying.

Jesus’ response refuses to give his disciples the comfort of a definitive, step-by-step time-line to the final Day of the Lord. Jesus doesn’t offer any “most direct” GPS map to the horizons of history. Instead he first declares the destruction of the temple, then moves BACK in time in nonlinear fashion to describe those who will falsely proclaim “the end is near.”

Jesus describes an awful litany of both human-created and natural disasters, but they seem to occupy no special place on any eschatological chart. Finally, he moves even further back from the precipice of the Parousia to focus on what his disciples will endure in their own days and times—-experiences that are in the future, to be sure, but nowhere near “the end of time.”

Today we stand almost two thousand years distant from the time this text was written. Does this mean we are closer to some End? Or are Jesus’ words still speaking to a struggling bunch of disciples looking for a short cut and secret spectacles into the future?

Time-Travel with the Spirit

Close your eyes. Let’s do a little time travel. Time travel with your imagination. Envision yourself with Jesus. Where do you find yourself? Where in time are you meeting?

[You could make this a karaoke moment and get people to share where they are meeting with Jesus.]

If you’re like most people, you’re meeting Jesus in the past. Most of us “time travel” backwards and so we see ourselves conversing with a Jesus of Galilee who wears sandals and robe, and sits amidst a dusty rural Israelite landscape.

Here’s the problem with time-travel that takes us backward: in that familiar, expected setting Jesus is easily objectified. The Jesus of the past can be studied, admired, worshiped, prayed to, even loved. But a past Jesus cannot be lived.

The living Jesus is not found in the past. The living Jesus is always ahead of us, in the future. To follow Jesus is to follow the future. To follow Jesus is to summon the courage of the future: the courage to lean forward and face the future, a future filled with possibilities, probabilities, perils and impossibilities.

In the language of the Internet, there is “push technology” and there is “pull technology.” Pull technology is where you are “pulled” into cyberspace. To follow Jesus is to not be pushed from behind into the future; to follow Jesus is to be pulled from in front into the future, where Jesus already is. Jesus wants to pull you forward into your future . . . . but that means you meet him in front of you, coming to you from the future, pulling you out of boats and comfort zones and havens of refuge to walk by faith and not by sight.

Push or Pull?

In the gospels, over and over again, it says: “And Jesus went ahead of them;” or “and Jesus went ahead of his disciples.” Jesus is always going “ahead of us.” We are always catching up to him. When Jesus ascended, he ascended as much to the future as to the heavens. In liturgy we remember the future, and the Christ who comes to us from the future ushers us into the Father’s presence. Jesus has already gone ahead of us. To dare to face the wind is to dare to turn and face Jesus, who comes to us from the future.

The disciples in today’s Luke text could only envision a future that would come to an end at the eschaton. Jesus pointed them towards a different kind of future by promising that his presence, his Spirit, would be there for them until the end of time. “I will never leave you or forsake you,” Jesus promised. How can the future be feared when we are promised a future filled with Christ’s presence and fulfilled with Christ’s promises?

Did you hear what I said? This is all that we need to know about the future: it will be filled with Christ’s presence, and fulfilled with Christ’s promises.

Bishop N.T. Wright writes in his recent book on Paul: A Fresh Perspective (2006) that the Spirit is a gift of God from the future and that our participation in the Spirit enables us to move beyond duty to our destiny. I love that word “Destiny.” There is a church in Broken Arrow, OK (suburb of Tulsa) with the name “Destiny.” It may just be my favorite name for a church: Destiny Church (www.destinychurch.com).

All of us arrive on the planet with a destiny ahead of us. Jesus does not call us to live a life of duty, but to live a life of destiny. We can claim our destiny because we can count on two things: 1) it will be a destiny filled with Christ’s presences, and 2) it will be a destiny fulfilled with Christ’s promises.

In fact, Jesus pointed his disciples then, and now, less to our participation in the eschaton of the future than to our participation in the eschaton of the now.

The disciples wanted Jesus to tell them WHEN the eschaton would arrive.

Jesus wanted to tell them WHO the eschaton was.

The “Day of the Lord” is everyday, if we live out the life of Christ as our destiny.

“We Beheld God’s Glory:” Animations, Illuminations, Illustration, Ruminations, Applications

If you have time, you might want to develop this Time-Travel theme a little more, using the GPS imagery of how to live your destiny, to arrive at your destination, and inhabit your future filled with Christ’s presences and fulfilled with his promises.

To Time-Travel to your destiny, let the GPS spiritual navigation system take you. GP[squared]S might be a memorable acronym for how you join Jesus in what he’s up to in the future. Based on the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden, the gospel story is about the healing of the four brokennesses of the human species: broken relations with God, with other People, with planet Earth, and with the self.

Here is the GPS Spiritual Navigation System:

G=heal broken relationships with God

P=heal broken relationships with People

P=heal broken relationships with the Planet

S=heal broken relationships with Self

Navigate your spiritual life in these 4 GPPS directions, and your destiny will be filled and fulfilled.