Pecot's Puttering

War and Rumors of War.  That was the phrase in Jesus’ mouth in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 24 to talk about the anxiety people had about the end of the world.  Faced with the strength and violence of the Roman Empire, the early Christians envisioned the end of the world, as we know it.  They looked for a time when all the suffering would end and Jesus would do what no one could get him to do when he was alive, that is, finally take control of everything with force – and by the way, the Christians right at the front of the battle lines conquering the world.  We love to envision ourselves as conquerors, the good guys, the victors.

But even in the parts of the Bible most filled with God’s retribution, it is God that is the actor, not us.

I think the scriptural passages talking about these end times offer a gentle suggestion.  Let’s leave the end of the world in God’s hands.  Even as bloody as things might get, our job is to trust, to love one another especially the ones who are hurting in the midst of it all, to work for justice, to restrain evil where we can, to tell people about the goodness of God and God’s transforming power, and to bring people to the place of their passion and call.

That is why the Christian church grew in early times, because in the face of violence, the early ancestors of our faith were able to celebrate life and live without being taken over by fear.  Their worship and prayer gave them strength to live in the face of death.  And they found that strength, somehow, in the story of Jesus dying on the cross.  They found strength in the story of Jesus on the night he was betrayed eating with his disciples.  They found strength in the stories of Jesus’ Word breaking out of the tomb and meeting them on whatever road they traveled doing the simple things that make up life.

In the next weeks many of us will be hurting – from fear, from grief, from economic hardship.  I lived through the1989 earthquake in Boulder Creek, and we noticed that it was months after the disaster that the really hard stuff began coming up.  Faced with unexpressed grief and anger, faced with economic hardships, the weight of the world came down.  People lost jobs, lost security in the future, lost homes, lost their minds.  A couple of months down the road from the disaster, people started to get irritable and they started hitting their spouses and children, snapping at their friends.  They started succumbing to depression and despair.  This is a natural, though difficult, result of a disaster.

Our job is not to wage war, but to work for peace.  Anxiety is overcome by love and by caring for the simple things in life.  Many of you, right now, are finding yourselves questioning the importance of certain things in your life.  And that is good.  But we find the answers centered in God’s sustaining love, and in Jesus’ call to love one another.  Pay attention to yourself and if you get depressed or outwardly angry, let your brothers and sisters in the church pray with you.  Ask for help.  Ask for prayer.  Celebrate life.  And seek out and work for justice.

Ted