33rd Sunday in
Ordinary Time, Year C. Luke 21:5-19.
AIM: To assure
the hearers that God is with us in times of trial.
AThere will be powerful earthquakes,
famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs
will come from the sky.@ That sounds like some kind of antique science fiction. What
is Jesus telling us?
Let=s look at the passage in context. To
people who were admiring the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus says: AAll that you see here B the day will come when there will
not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.@ The people who heard those words
would have thought them either shocking or crazy B as shocking and crazy as the
statement of a hypothetical Manhattan tour guide
on September 10, 2001, to tourists gawking at the World Trade
Center: ATake a good look folks. It won=t be here tomorrow.@
Jesus= prediction about the destruction of
their beloved Temple
was made to people who had been told times without number that they were God=s people. He had chosen them, from
all other peoples on earth. He had promised to be with them and to protect them
always. How could God permit the destruction of his earthly dwelling place?
Small wonder that the people ask: ATeacher, when will this happen? And
what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?@
Jesus= reply to these questions, as so
often, is disappointing. He tells them they don=t need a timetable. They should
distrust anyone who offers one. >If you are living as my followers,= Jesus tells them in effect, >future trials and even disasters will
not defeat you. Stay close to God and you will have nothing to fear, even when
everything around you is collapsing: your nation, your church, your own
personal life.=
Luke recorded Jesus= words in his gospel to reassure his
own Christian community amid difficulties and persecution. Their trials are not
ours. But the truth behind the strange sounding language in today=s gospel remains. Today, as in Luke=s time, we are witnessing a struggle
between the forces of good and evil: in the world, in our own county, in the
Church, in our own personal lives. We need not look far to see evidence of evil=s power. We find it in the newspaper
each morning, and in the evening news on television. We feel in our own hearts
and minds the dark forces that threaten to drag us down from what, in the
depths of our being, we most deeply long to do and to be.
Jesus never promised to preserve us
from trials or even from disasters. He promises to be with us amid
disasters. Jesus made that promise out of his own experience. Taunted on Calvary to produce a final dramatic proof of his claim to
be God=s Son, by coming down from the cross,
he remained silent. Jesus had really to die. Only then could he be raised by
God=s power to a new and higher life
beyond suffering, disaster, and death.
If Jesus was not preserved from
suffering and death, how can we expect to be immune? Neither the Church, nor
any nation, nor any individual has any guarantee from God that things will
always work out, that catastrophes will be averted.
Jesus Christ gives one guarantee
only. He will always support with the power of his Holy Spirit those who try to
be faithful to him; and in the end (though not necessarily before then), the
power of good will prove stronger than the power of evil B because it is the power of God.
That is the message of today=s gospel.
How should we respond to that
message? Jesus tells us in the final sentence of our gospel reading: ABy your perseverance you will secure
your lives.@ This perseverance is not something
we can summon up from within simply by willpower, by gritting our teeth,
holding the right thought, or (as the saying goes) Ahanging in there.@ The perseverance Jesus commands must
be given to us from without.
That is why we are here once again:
to receive from God strength to endure the humanly unendurable; to hope when we
see no reason for hope; to continue the journey when we feel our strength at an
end and we are tempted to give up.
We receive this power to persevere in
Holy Communion. We receive it also, however, at what the second Vatican Council
taught us to call once again, as our Catholic forbears did almost two millennia
ago, the table of the word. From the rich storehouse of Holy Scripture listen,
in conclusion, to a passage from the prophet Isaiah. Though not in our readings
today, it was surely familiar to Jesus. It is quite possible that he knew it by
heart. It is the source of the contemporary hymn, AOn eagle=s wings.@
ADo you not know, have you not heard?
The Lord, the everlasting God, creator of the wide world, grows neither weary
nor faint; no man can fathom his understanding. He gives vigor to the weary,
new strength to the exhausted. Young men may grow weary and faint, even in
their prime they may stumble and fall; but those who look to the Lord will win
new strength, they will grow wings like eagles; they will run and not be weary,
they will march on and never grow faint.@
(Isaiah 40:28-31, NEB)
No comments:
Post a Comment