Text: Luke 21:5-19
The Longwave Group, an investment firm out of Vancouver, demonstrates four seasons in a lifetime economic, financial and investment map: Spring, summer, autumn, and winter. These seasons are a recurring 70 year cycle so that each person will ideally live through each of the four seasons once in a lifetime. The current season in this paradigm is winter. The winter season began on January 15, 2000 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 11,750 points. That was the peak of consumer confidence. The winter season is characterized by a concern, fear, panic and despair. Money becomes very scarce. There are unprecedented bankruptcies - personal, corporate, and government. Gold bullion and gold equities rise in the face of huge financial and economic crisis. There is a decline into depression. That quick overview of one season of one season in a financial cycle provides an orientation toward the concept of recurring cycles within the market.
In our text today, Jesus speaks of a cycle in the life of the temple in Jerusalem. "When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he 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." They asked him, "Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" (Luke 21:6-7) Many words have been spilled over the centuries about the temple in Jerusalem and how it was destroyed in the century after Jesus and rebuilt in the past century. Many evangelical and fundamentalist Christian writers focus on the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem as a sign that we living in the end times when Jesus will come again as described in various apocalyptic texts in the Gospels and in Revelation. Jesus himself warned against trying to decipher this cycle when he said that not even he knew when the end time would come but only God knew that. He seems to suggest we just shouldn't go there in trying to decipher that code.
Yet already within the New Testament itself we see the beginning of a tendency to look back, to recall time past in which things had happened. The end times hope, that is, the belief that the last times were at hand, seems to be slackening by the time Luke writes his gospel and the writing of church history begins with the book of Acts. Remembering comes to be almost as important as anticipating even before the first century is done.
So today, instead of going where Jesus himself has warned us not to go but in keeping with the theme of cycles within the Kingdom of God, we will consider the liturgical cycle of Christian worship. The liturgical year is a recurring 12 month cycle of Sundays within the worship services of a church. The church shows what is most important to its life by the way it keeps time. A sense of time is the foundation for Christian worship.
In the early church, Sunday stood out above all other days as the weekly anniversary of the resurrection. Every Sunday witnesses to the risen Lord. Each Sunday testifies to the resurrection. Every Sunday is a weekly little Easter or rather every Easter is a yearly great Sunday. The primacy of Sunday and the resurrection is clear.
As Sunday witnessed to Jesus Christ, so too, the Christian year (liturgical year or church year) became a structure for remembering the Lord. It was, above all else, faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The early church revealed their faith by how they kept time.
Easter was the highlight of the Christian year in the early church because on Easter we glimpse a new landscape--the age to come--and experience a sense of holy awe at the significance of the resurrection for human life. The shape of the age to come reveals a new people of God, a new humanity.
Therefore, Easter faith recalls the past, especially the awesome act of God in raising the crucified Christ from the grave. Easter hope looks to the promised future, to that which awaits us. Easter love celebrates the presence of the crucified and risen Christ who is now among us, reconciling us as one people. Resurrection faith asserts that by grace we are born again into the new humanity of Jesus Christ. We are called to new life for God and for neighbors. As representatives of the new humanity we walk in newness of life.
Closely connected with Easter are two seasons: Lent and the long Easter season. Lent was a time of preparation for all Christians, baptized or not. It begins on a day much later know as Ash Wednesday, from the imposition of ashes on the foreheads of all Christians.
Far more important was the Easter Season, the 50 days extending the celebration of Easter through the Day of Pentecost. The great 50 days were at first far more important than the forty days of Lent. It makes you wonder why modern Christians concentrate on Lent, the season of sorrow, rather than on Easter, the season of joy. The resurrection was and is remembered by a day each week--Sunday; a Sunday each year--Easter Day; and a season--the Easter Season. There can be no doubt about the centrality of the resurrection in the life and faith of the early church. Easter was the number one holiday in the early church. Easter ruled.
Skipping ahead in the liturgical cycle, today is the last Sunday in Ordinary Time. In church usage, the term "ordinary" means that which is standard, normative, usual, or typical. For example, ordinary elements of worship such as the Lord's Prayer, the Doxology, and the Apostle's Creed are said or sung week after week. As the standard elements of worship, they are called "ordinaries." They are the elements that are common to worship every Sunday.
In like manner, week after week, Sunday "ordinarily" celebrates the resurrection and the unfolding of the new creation. The standard for worship is the ordinary time of Sunday in the week-to-week progression of time.
Twice each year, however, Ordinary Time is heightened by the extra-ordinary Sundays that intensify our celebration of the birth and death and resurrection of Christ. We call these special seasons the Christmas cycle and the Easter cycle. The Christmas cycle of Sundays is called Advent. The Easter cycle of Sundays begins with Lent, peaks on Easter Sunday, and ends on Pentecost Sunday.
At the beginning and end of each of these periods are transitional Sundays that move the church from what has preceded to what is to follow. The Sundays that conclude this part of Ordinary Time, and especially the final Sunday before Advent, point us toward the Second Coming of Christ. These Sundays move the church toward Advent with its focus on the new age that is to come.
As of today, Ordinary Time is over in the liturgical cycle. Next Sunday--the last Sunday of the church year--is Christ the King Sunday. Then, on the Sunday after next we begin a new church year on the First Sunday of Advent. May God be with us as we close out this church year. It has been a noteworthy year for St. John's. We have shared our dreams and vision for the church in the Desserts with the Pastor. We have refurbished our office building and the sanctuary. We have pledged or time, talents, and money in support of Christ's work through our congregation and presbytery. Just this weekend we successfully hosted a meeting of New Covenant Presbytery.
As we come to the close of this liturgical cycle, God is doing a new work here. The new pattern that God is stitching together has to do with three words: Missional, Connectional, and Incarnational. Our mission will become more hands on and less about giving money to others to do mission for us. Our relationships with others will become more about discovering what needs they have that are unfilled. We will then become incarnational as we meet those needs in the name of and as the representative of Christ. More and more, we will become the hands and feet of Christ serving people in this community and around the world. Less and less, we will be sending money out to other organizations to support them as they do mission for us. This is the new pattern that God is creating at St. John's. This is a new pattern for living out our mission statement of making disciples by meeting human needs. So we see, in more than ways than one, ordinary time is over.
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The Rev. Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas, on November 14, 2010 (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)
