Yup, little English language lesson, and a note about doing what you’re told. Because obedience!
Luke 21:25-36; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Psalm 25:1-10; Jeremiah 33:14-16
English is kind of a strange language. It’s a mishmash of several Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Frisian languages, with a heavy influence of Norman French after the 11th Century. Even then, it doesn’t quite explain some of the oddities. We say things that, to non-native English speakers, would make no sense. A “near miss”, for example, is really a near hit. The words “flammable” and “inflammable” mean exactly the same thing. It can get a little confusing.
This gets compounded when we have the tendency to do the opposite of what a phrase intends. How many times, in film or even in your own experience, when a person is told “Don’t look down!” does the person immediately look down? Or, my personal favorite, whenever I’m at a restaurant and I hear that my plate is hot, I feel compelled by the server’s magic mind control techniques to touch my plate and confirm if or not it is, indeed, hot.
But perhaps one of the strangest things that happens in English is phrases that intend for the hearer to do the exact opposite. I’m thinking in particular of the phrase, “Look out!” When you yell for someone to “look out”, you’re usually not intending them to actually look around and see what is going on, you want them to duck and cover because something is heading directly toward them and is going to perform a “near miss” on them. We say “Look out!” but we really mean “Duck!” or “Get down!” or something similar.
This can sometimes get in the way, especially when the person telling us to “look out” actually means to keep watch for something, like Jesus in today’s gospel lesson. But before we get into that, we need to know what’s been going on, cause we’re kind of jumping into this story at halftime. Jesus was in Jerusalem, not long after his Triumphal Entry and the clearing of the temple – a few days at most. His disciples were admiring the temple, commenting on the expense and beauty of it, but Jesus wasn’t having it and said, “The time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
The disciples, somewhat concerned by this, asked Jesus, “When will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” Now, we know that this prophecy of Jesus about the temple came true about 40 years later in the Siege of Jerusalem during the First Jewish-Roman War, but the disciples of course wouldn’t know that. Our gospel for today is part of Jesus’ answer to that question.
All in all, the things that Jesus are more than a little disconcerting, so he ends by saying, “When you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near… Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap… Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” Or, to summarize, Jesus is saying, “Look out!”
Remember what happens when someone says, “Look out”? We’re trained to duck and cover! So what do we do? When we hear about the end, we go into “protection mode”. Instead of keeping watch we hide. We look to things that are comfortable – things that we know. To give it a mildly military analogy, instead of standing on the battlements of the castle looking out for the approaching army and making preparations, we hide deep in the castle hoping they’ll just pass us by. Instead of always being on watch, we get weighed down with anxiety, as Jesus warned.
This isn’t how we’re supposed to live. We’re not called to hide out until everything has passed, we’re called to keep watch! Jesus even says, “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Our faith shouldn’t be reactive – waiting for things to pass us by or seeking to get back to how it used to be – instead, we should have a proactive faith. The gospel calls us to “go” not to “stay”. This church’s mission statement, “Embrace God’s Word; know Christ’s peace; share the Spirit’s promise,” sums up this sentiment. Even our name makes a statement in the community, but does the community even know who we are? Are we fulfilling our call to “look out”, or are we ducking and covering?