Dare to Hope, dare to Endure

Malachi 4:1-2a ‘For you the sun of righteousness shall rise.’

2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 ‘If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.’

Luke 21:5-19 ‘By your endurance you will gain your lives.’

‘Teacher, when will these things be,

and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?’

(Luke 21.7)

+

What a scene of turmoil, destruction, darkness and upheaval we have just had described in the Gospel reading: wars, rumours of wars, natural disaster and earthquake.

In the face of that, plenty of people might dare to answer the disciples’ question: ‘Teacher, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?’ by saying that, ‘it’s now, obviously.’

Glance at the news for a couple of minutes and it’s all there.

That’s how the modern secular mind reads the world today: destruction; disaster; wipeout; annihilation.

We all have a teleology – that’s an understanding of your ultimate object or aim in life.

And your teleology, understanding of the ultimate, determines how you live your life.

A teleology of destruction, disaster, wipeout and annihilation will shape your life in a similar way.

If the news and norms of today are all there is, then no wonder you’d be hopeless and left asking, ‘what’s the point of it all?’

There is a very different teleology for believers.

If you believe that there is a Creator – God – who has purpose and a mission for the world, who wills and desires the world to flourish and be at harmony, then you can’t see the world as others do.

The vital ingredients are that there is purpose and meaning in God’s world, all brought together in the virtue of ‘hope’, which abides and endures with faith and love (1 Corinthians 13.13).

Hope is very different from the general and vague spirit of an optimist.

The optimist will be terrified in the face of the news today, the arc of history does not seem to be bending towards a good outcome, let alone justice.

But hope is rooted in the expectation of God’s past, present and enduring action in the world.

Hope knows the end of the story.

The world is patterned in hope, even as tribulation, wars, rumours of wars, natural disaster and earthquakes unfold.

It is through the lens of hope that the believer sees the world, and his or her own life.

God’s purpose in the world is the restoration of all things in Christ.

It’s described in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21.1-4)

It's there in the Gospel reading today: Jesus looks to the time when we come through the tribulation and he says, ‘not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.’ (Luke 21.19)

That’s why St Paul can say:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8.18)

Indeed, he also says:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5.3-5)

The Gospel reading began with people staring at the Temple, a massive stone edifice ‘adorned with stones and offerings’ (Luke 21.5) and Jesus says it will all crumble.

The overarching narrative of the Bible is that the earthly Temple makes way for the gift of the heavenly, the Temple of Christ’s mystical body.

The first temple, as it were, was the Garden of Eden.

In that “temple” God placed the man and the woman to be at one with him in abundance and worship.

Their disobedience saw humanity expelled from the Garden Temple of paradise, and the consequence of that is the darkness in the world of deceit, corruption, violence and pain.

Many have tried building paradise on earth and failed: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their ilk, and look at how that went.

If you want to see the worst of  violence, destruction and human degradation just look at the atheistic regimes of the 20^th century.

And the will to create paradise on earth, on human terms, has not gone away.

To the believer God’s paradise, heaven, is His gift and will come in His time, not ours; is His vision, not ours; on His terms, not ours.

The Gospel calls us to place ourselves in God’s purposes and mission for the world, to see in the tumult a call to be steadfast, hope-filled, loving, faithful and to endure.

In all this, Jesus says, we have the opportunity to bear witness (Luke 21.13): witness to what? Surely to faith, and hope, and love: the three things that endure the tumult of the world.

In this new week, pray for hope, pray for endurance, pattern your life in the hope and expectation of the coming of the One who restores all things: hold on to faith, to hope and to love.

Amen.