Archives: Luke 21:5-19

Election: I Will Not Be Moving On, and Here’s Why

I was listening to a book by Jim Finley, the great Roman Catholic contemplative teacher, and he said something extraordinary.

He said, and I paraphrase here, “Great pain is always pointing to great unacknowledged truth.”

I can’t think of a more apt description of how our nation has been feeling this week.

This is not a pulpit sermon. I will not be preaching this to my congregation during Sunday morning worship.

It is instead a very personal reflection on what I have been experiencing in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump as our president, and how I see the scriptures relating to that.

Jesus is right with us in the beginning of our gospel lesson today.

“When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’”

This week many things were thrown down in our lives, first and foremost our image of what we thought America was, how far we thought America had come.

I think many of us really believed that with our first black president and the advent of marriage equality, our nation had really turned a corner.

We were living in a fool’s paradise. Continue reading

Gospel Tornado Siren

In our Gospel today, Jesus is speaking of very real threats to his followers.

They are walking in the temple and admiring how beautiful it is, adorned with rich stones and ornamentations, and he has to bring them abruptly back to Earth with a wake-up call.  While you are thinking about how beautiful these material things are, Jesus says, dangers are creeping up on you all around.

Jesus warns his followers of three types of danger.

The first is being led away by false teachers and false Messiahs.

The second is great external calamities like wars, earthquakes and famines.

And the third is losing faith because of betrayal by friends.

His original disciples were in danger of all these things happening to them literally.

How blessed we are that we as twenty-first century Americans are not in danger of famine or being put on trial and condemned to death for our faith.

Many of our brothers and sisters around the world are not so lucky. Continue reading