Do You Not Know How to Interpret the Present Time?

“Trust in God and keep your powder dry.” 

This is a saying that’s often attributed to Oliver Cromwell, who is a dubious role model at best, but there’s some wisdom in it that we probably should consider. 

It came to mind for me this week when the urgency of our scriptures collided with the urgency of events happening in the world and I realized that I, we, need to do some real discernment about how to respond. 

Listen to how Jesus opens our lesson from Luke today: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

Well, goodness, Jesus, that sounds pretty dire.  I mean, I’m pretty stressed out too but I’m not talking about burning down the earth. 

But maybe that’s the problem.  God knows the news about climate change and genocide and the rising tide of fascism in our country gets more dire every single day.  What are we to do as people of faith?  What is our response? 

Well, I’m not going to dictate that, we figure that out together.  But I’ll tell you my first piece of discernment, and that’s that we need to keep our powder dry because we are in for a long haul.  Both politically and ecologically, things are bad and getting worse, and I really think they’re going to continue to get worse for a long time. 

I remember one particular moment when I had a similar realization, right at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. 

It was late March, early April of 2020.  The rector got a phone call from the county who asked if our church would be willing to serve as overflow morgue space if there were too many dead bodies from the pandemic for the hospitals and the coroner to handle them.  She had called to ask my opinion.  And that’s when I realized, and I said to her, we need to keep our powder dry because we’re in for a long haul. 

It turned out that there was enough mitigation of Covid that our church never had to face that grim duty of housing deceased neighbors, but that phone call was a piercing moment of clarity for me with regard to what we might be facing and what we might be called up on as faith leaders to stand up and do.

And I’m asking the same question right now, specifically with regard to the rise of authoritarianism in our country.  I know where we are may seem far away from Washington, D.C., but it’s not.  When the reach of ICE is national, and immigrants and queer people and people of color and women are openly being spoken of as enemies to be deported or subjects to be ruled, nowhere is safe from Christian nationalism.  And we, who bear the name of Jesus in the same way those who are taking his name in vain do, have a responsibility.  We know that, we just have to figure out how to carry it out.

Every day I have new respect for the folks living in Germany in the 1930s. A lot of us grew up hearing stories of the Second World War, admiring the courage and fortitude of those who acted to save or shield persecuted people from the Nazis.  And in those stories, there is such moral clarity.  My immature understanding of that time was that people knew exactly what was happening and they knew exactly how and when to take action.  The only deciding factor was whether they had to courage to stand up and do it.

But now I have what I think is a better understanding of what it might have felt like. 

Every day, I say to myself, “Is this really happening?  Is it fair to call this open fascism? Am I overreacting or underreacting?” 

If the spectrum of action goes from one far extreme like sending a letter bomb to the White House (not the right decision), or snuggling into my privilege and turning a blind eye (also not the right decision), how do I find myself in that range of actions and decisions? 

In Berlin, in 1933, how did people trying to do the right thing know when it was time to take a Jewish person into their home for hiding?  How did they know it was time to risk arrest by speaking out or taking direct action?

I think a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the leader of the Confessing Church, the Christians who resisted the Third Reich, and his tortured discernment of whether violence was acceptable in defense of the defenseless.  He fought his way through prayer and crying out to God and scouring the scriptures trying to figure out the faithful response to the atrocities he was seeing. 

He actually did decide on violence by the end, that assassinating Hitler was morally justified.  And it didn’t even matter how far he’d decided to compromise his ethics, the plot he was involved in did not succeed and the Nazis killed him anyway.  He was hanged right before the end of the war.

In some ways it’s easier to tell myself that I am overreacting, that it’s really not that bad, that I’m so influenced by the 24-hour rage cycle that we call the news that I’ve become hysterical.  The country did not disintegrate during the first Trump term and it won’t now. 

But that attitude lets me off the hook. 

And Jesus’ words struck me to the heart this week: “”When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

He’s telling us to face the truth. 

And we’re best able to do that in community, together, to talk about what’s going on and what our faithful response should be. 

In many ways, we already know what our faithful response should be.  None of us in Missouri are going to influence the president’s opinions or actions, and frankly, we’re not likely to influence the political direction of our state, which is firmly allied with him.  We are strangers in a strange land, but we are not alone.

There are a lot of people around us who hear the Bible’s command to care for the widow and orphan, to welcome the migrant, to feed the hungry and bind up the brokenhearted, and take those commands seriously.  I think that part of the call, the vocation of our church in this season, is to be a refuge and a haven for all those people in this county who believe in kindness, peace, justice, and love of neighbor and who understand that it does not look like what is happening in this country. 

In many ways, that is already true.  A lot of you are here because you came from places who were preaching love of neighbor, but whose ways of carrying it out felt like exclusion and even hatred to you.

So I think that it matters that we live into the call to be a haven and a refuge for people who understand the love of God in a way that cuts against the dominant image of Christianity in America today.

And I think that’s important for two reasons.  First, we need to be a safe place for all those who have felt excluded and victimized out in the world.  And second, we need to be the well of strength needed to live in a world descending into enmity and violence and continue to proclaim God’s desire for justice and love.  We are here to shield and protect, and we are here to empower and equip.

And I have our country particularly on my mind this week because of our lesson from Hebrews.  I love this text, for a lot of reasons, but it always makes me think about America because it comes right after one of the passages that are used if a church wants to celebrate the Eucharist on the 4^th of July. 

Right before the part of Hebrews we read today, it says, “All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland…as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”

And we do desire a better country.  And we’re capable of being a better country. 

The author of Hebrews goes on to tell of all the terrible things our ancestors in faith endured: stoning, mocking, flogging, chains and imprisonment.  How did they endure? They endured because of their faith, the faith that they held in common with one another.

And the faith that they held in common with us. 

Listen to this absolutely remarkable verse: “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.” 

They would not, apart from us, be made perfect.  

They could not obtain the fullness of God’s promises until God’s family was made complete.  They sheltered the light, they clung to hope, they stiffened their spines and fought for justice not just for themselves, for God, but for us.  They knew God’s promise was not fulfilled if someone was missing from it.  And we are part of that circle of wholeness and life that is the dream of God.

As are the people who will come after us. 

There is a future out there, no matter how dire things seem now, and we are called to endure whatever we must to make sure that the flame of the Gospel of Jesus Christ does not go out, so we can hand it on to those who come after us. 

We will not see the fullness of God’s promises because God’s family is not complete.  There are more people to welcome in, here and now, next year, ten years out, a thousand years from now.

\Because even amidst the uncertainty, the fear, the struggle, as the shadows close in around us, we are doing this, as the author of Hebrews says, for the same reason Jesus endured the Cross: for the sake of the joy. 

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

We fight fascism for the sake of the joy.

The joy of being together.  The joy of loving one another.  The joy of renouncing our privilege. The joy of bearing suffering for others.   The joy of trying to find our way forward together, the joy of coming to worship, the joy of studying scripture, the joy of a handshake or a hug when we walk into church each Sunday.

Every day that we’re alive and free and together is one more day to do our best for God’s people and God’s work among us.  So let’s do it together.