"Hope Beyond the Horrors of This World" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 16, 2025
Scripture:  Luke 21:5-19


OK – so reading this passage from the gospel of Luke that _____ just read for us, I can’t help but wonder if Jesus was watching the news from 2025 when he was speaking.  “Many will come in my name and claim to be acting on my behalf, but they are only there to lead you astray.”  “Nation will rise against nation; and kingdom will rise against kingdom.”  “There will be famines in some places, and plagues in others.”  “They will arrest my followers, and bring you before kings and governors.”

Seriously Jesus – could you see our planet in this moment when you were speaking 2000 years ago?!

In our world today, Jesus’s message of love is being twisted and manipulated for political gain.  Wars are dragging on, ceasefires are crumbling, the world is becoming more and more divided.  Famines – oh, the pictures of starving children in Gaza are heartbreaking.  And plagues – even though the pandemic is over, Covid continues to circulate; as of this week, Canada has lost our status as a measles-free country; and mis-trust of health authorities means that diseases are likely to continue to spread more easily.  Followers of Jesus, including clergy, are being tear gassed, arrested, ziptied, for daring to speak out against unjust government practices.

Seriously Jesus – were you watching a 2025 news channel just before you spoke to your disciples???

I’m joking, but it brings up a very good point.  These sorts of things have happened throughout all of history.  In Jesus’s time, and in the time when the author of Luke was writing, the oppressive government persecuting and arresting his followers was the Roman Empire.  Plagues and famines have happened everywhere and every-when – often linked to social inequality and lack of access to basic needs.  And I don’t think that there has ever been a time without war, a time when nation didn’t rise up against nation – in Jesus’s time, the Roman Empire might have been known for the Roman Peace, the Pax Romana, but it was a peace that was enforced through violence, or the threat of violence.

These apocalyptic readings in the bible can be scary, especially if you try to interpret them as predicting the future.  I’m sure that many of you have heard this passage and passages like this interpreted in a way that says that these wars and earthquakes are part of God’s plan for the unfolding of the end of the world and the return of Jesus; thank you Left Behind series!  (And if you haven’t encountered the Left Behind novels and movies, consider yourself lucky!)

But if you read this passage carefully, Jesus actually says the opposite.  He is actually saying that these scary things have no connection to God’s unfolding plan for the world.  For example, “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”

These sorts of things just happen.  They aren’t part of God’s plan – in fact, I think that these things run contrary to God’s plan for the world.

So if a preacher’s job is to proclaim good news to the congregation, where is the good news in what Jesus is saying about wars and earthquakes and the collapse of the temple?  There really isn’t much good news in here.

I could latch on to that final verse – “by your endurance you will gain your souls” – and I could go on about making meaning out of suffering; but to someone who is in the midst of suffering, reminding them that some day they may be able to see the gifts that the suffering gave them isn’t much comfort.

So where is there good news for 2025 in the reading that we just heard?

If I’m being honest, I don’t know if there is much good news in this passage; unless there is some comfort in knowing that all of these things aren’t part of God’s plan.

 

Image Credit: AgnusDay

 

Where I might turn for good news this morning is in one of the passages assigned to today that we didn’t hear read this morning, and I hope that you don’t think that I’m cheating by bringing it in now.

The Old Testament reading assigned to this week comes from Isaiah Chapter 65, verses 17-25; and here, the prophet is painting a picture of the new heavens and the new earth that God is going to create.  Let me read just a part of this passage

“For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice in what I am creating… no more shall the sound of weeping be heard, nor the cry of distress. No more shall there be an infant who lives only a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime…  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox… They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.”

This is certainly a much more beautiful picture than the one that Jesus paints for us, but I think that it’s interesting to hold the two pictures up beside each other.  Because if Jesus is painting a picture of the world the way that it is, God is showing us through Isaiah the world as God dreams it to be, and the world as it will one day be.

And I think that this is where hope lies.  You’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again – hope, true hope isn’t just wishful thinking.  Hope means trusting that the world won’t always be this broken; it means trusting that God’s plan for the world, this vision of Isaiah, will one day unfold and become reality.

And it is holding fast to this vision that can give us the strength and the endurance to get through the horrors of the world as it is right now.  And even more than that, I think that maybe this vision of the way the world will be some day can give us the motivation and the courage to stand up to the forces of evil in the world – to look at them and say, “You will not prevail.”  When we hold fast to the vision of the world the way it will be some day, we can start living as if some day is now.  We can do what is in our power to make sure that hungry people are well fed, to make sure that everyone has equal access to health care and social supports, to advocate for a world without violence and war.

All because we trust that some day, this will be the reality throughout all of God’s creation.  All because we hold fast to this hope.  And may God strengthen this hope within each one of us, and keep the vision of God’s world in front of our eyes.  Amen.