November 17, 2013 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

It’s Right Outside Our Door

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 98
Isaiah 65:17–25
Luke 21:5–19

“This will give you an opportunity to testify.”
Luke 21:13 (NRSV)

At the most profound level, Christians talk about faith because it is a truly human act to want to tell the truth. . . . Christians believe that we cannot tell the truth, not the whole truth, without talking about God, and if we cannot tell the whole truth, we cannot be fully alive as human beings.

Thomas G. Long

Anyone who follows Jesus has a story to tell.

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

In the midst of our busy and technology-driven lives, once a week there is the opportunity to step back in time and find a refuge of sorts in the Saturday evening broadcast of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. I don’t get to listen to it every week, but I love it when I do. It fills me with nostalgia for a time that I know—well, a time I really only know through nostalgia. Let’s be honest: the closest childhood memory I have of listening to a radio show is watching Ralphie listen to the Little Orphan Annie broadcast in A Christmas Story. I grew up in front of a television set, not a radio.

But I love A Prairie Home Companion all the same—the traditional Americana folk music; the comedic skits; the fake sponsors; and, of course, Keillor’s centerpiece report of the news from his fictional hometown of Lake Wobegon, “the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve . . . where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Keillor’s folksy and deadpan delivery of quirky stories from this archetypal small town in the middle of Minnesota harkens back to a golden age of American culture. This self-aware caricature pays tribute to days gone by as it simultaneously critiques contemporary life and the clash of these diachronic cultures. Like any great work of literature, by focusing in on one particular segment of our population, Keillor is able to offer subtle commentary about all of us. Last night he had a long bit on lutefisk, something I’ve never eaten and hopefully never will, but I could still find myself in his story.

In our age of screens and high-speed digital technology, everything about A Prairie Home Companion is such a wonderful anachronism. But here’s the thing: it’s a total sham. We can call it nostalgia. We can call it caricature. For small-town America, it might, in fact, be descriptive of reality and relevant social commentary. But for those of us who live our lives in frenetic cities like Chicago, A Prairie Home Companion is essentially escapism. Like comfort food or a trip home to see grandma and grandpa, it gives us a reprieve from the intensity of city life. It evokes something about our childhood that we miss or something we’ve never had but somehow long for. Whether we are conscious of it or not, it subtly reminds us that this world that we live in isn’t exactly right.

If this analysis of A Prairie Home Companion is correct, it’s a very soft version of cultural discontent. Lake Wobegon won’t be the epicenter of a cultural revolution that changes the world as we know it. Garrison Keillor is more affable grandfather than dissident revolutionary.

Of course, our popular culture is full of much darker examples of cultural discontent. John Stroup and Glenn Shuck, two scholars of religion, call this cultural pessimism (John M. Stroup and Glenn W. Shuck, Escape into the Future: Cultural Pessimism and Its Religious Dimension in Contemporary American Popular Culture, 2007). In a research project that began in the relatively peaceful and prosperous times of the late 1990s, Stroup and Shuck examine cultural artifacts like the 1960s television show The Prisoner, the 1990s show The X-Files, the 1999 film Fight Club, and the evangelical Left Behind series of books and films to uncover a deep pessimism in American culture. By the time their book was published in 2007, we had experienced the impeachment of a U.S. President over a sex scandal, the collapse of the dot.com bubble, the Enron scandal, 9/11, and the beginning of our so-called “war on terror.”

In subsequent years we’ve watched this war carried out through questionable means such as torture and drone strikes; we’ve experienced economic crisis and recession; we’ve witnessed unprecedented security leaks that demonstrate the incredible extent of our nation’s intelligence-gathering activities; and we’ve seen our government shut down by political fighting and a bureaucracy incapable of launching a website. Add to this environmental crises like climate change and the proliferation of extreme weather events like we’ve experienced in recent days, the widening gap between the rich and the poor in our country and around the world, lingering racism and bigotry throughout our society, Chicago’s inability to effectively control gun violence or provide a quality education for all of its children, and a variety of other issues and it seems we have all the more reason to be cynical about the institutions on which we used to rely and be pessimistic about the future.

We can, of course, turn a blind eye to these realities—and in the affluent segments of the United States we typically do just that, convincing ourselves that things may not be perfect but they really aren’t that bad. Poverty is an unfortunate consequence of social mobility and economic growth. Dehumanizing our enemies and taking innocent lives when drones miss their mark is all just collateral damage in our war on terror. Gun violence is a regrettable but acceptable reality protected by our constitutional right to bear arms. And it really is a shame that many Chicago children have to walk across gang lines to get to substandard schools, but at least I know my kids are getting a good education.

This kind of sarcasm—and the cynicism, pessimism, and discontent that stand behind it—is not all that different from the prophetic vision of today’s two scripture readings. The oracle we heard from the book of Isaiah most likely comes from a period of time after the Babylonian Exile. God’s people had experienced the ultimate catastrophe: their capital city of Jerusalem and their sacred temple were destroyed by the Babylonian Empire, and their leaders were taken away into exile. Not only did this decimate the sovereignty of their kingdom, it shook the very foundations of their faith in God. Not only was God supposed to protect them, they believed that God could only be rightly worshiped in the Jerusalem temple, which was now reduced to a heap of rubble. So they asked, “Where is God now?”

During the exile, prophets and scribes helped the people rethink their theology and come to terms with their circumstances. They believed that God was ultimately responsible for the calamities they had experienced. And in time they also came to believe that God would redeem their suffering and restore their situation. But they didn’t envision this as a far-off redemption, delayed until after death. Their approach was not to hunker down and bide their time during this life, hoping for something better in the life to come. Rather, they believed with their entire beings that God was coming to transform the world as they knew it, in this life not in some afterlife. A “new heaven” and a “new earth” is the prophet’s way of describing the renewed, restored, and recreated world promised by God. No longer in this world will there be violence or suffering; life will be long and prosperous. No longer will people bear children to a world of horrors; peace and security will be the norm, not the exception.

Bible scholars call this an apocalyptic vision of the future. We tend to associate the word apocalypse with disaster or calamity—like the film Apocalypse Now. But apocalypse is a Greek word that simply means “revelation” or “uncovering.” It’s a vision of the way the world could be. Perhaps the way the world should be.

And so it is in our reading from the Gospel of Luke: Jesus speaks of the impending destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire, not at all unlike the turbulent times of Hebrew prophets like Isaiah. Scholars call this the “little apocalypse” of the Synoptic Gospels. It is a vision of the fate of the temple: “not even one stone will be left upon another. All will be demolished.” Once again, the world as God’s people knew it would be overturned and destroyed.

Understandably taken aback, his disciples wonder what will be the signs of this impending doom. Jesus goes on to describe what many refer to as the “end times.” But Jesus makes clear that it’s not a hard-stop kind of end. Rather, it’s more like the culmination of time, the telos or destination of God’s plan for history. There will be wars and insurrections and revolutions. There will be people claiming to speak for God, but they will be false prophets. There will be earthquakes, famines, and epidemics. There will be persecution and oppression.

In the second half of the twentieth century, in the shadow of the Cold War, a whole cottage industry of so-called prophetic literature developed. The aim was to correlate contemporary events with predictions and prophecies derived from particular readings of the Bible. Perhaps the most influential work of this genre was Hal Lindsey’s 1970 book The Late, Great Planet Earth. Designed to convince its readers that the end times were in fact upon us, this book shaped many of the beliefs and practices of evangelical Christian culture. In 2013, we now know that things didn’t play out exactly as Lindsey—or anyone else, for that matter—predicted.

It’s tempting, therefore, to dismiss such apocalyptic and eschatological scriptures as irrelevant at best and outright dangerous at worst. But if Christianity loses the apocalyptic urgency of Jesus and the prophets, we run the risk of losing sight of the very core of the gospel. Jesus proclaimed the emergence of God’s kingdom here and now. We misunderstand the gospel if we think it’s ultimately about what happens when we die. And we misunderstand the heart of Jesus if we if we fail to see that God is actively transforming, redeeming, and recreating the world as we know it.

Now, there is a major difference between us and Jesus and his followers that we need to be aware of as we study these texts. You see, they were subjects of an oppressive empire. By stark contrast, in today’s world we are the empire. For centuries, the church itself was co-opted by and colluded with empire. In both Roman Catholic and Protestant manifestations, we call this Christendom, and in many ways it was the driving force of Western culture up until the present day. So, whereas Jesus warned his followers that they would be persecuted by the empire because of his name, since the time of Constantine the church has more often than not been guilty of using Jesus’ name to conquer, persecute, and oppress others.

Fortunately, all of that is changing, and it’s changing quickly. Along with the other institutions of Western modernity that have been destabilizing in the postmodern world of the late twentieth and now early twenty-first centuries, Christendom in the West is also unraveling. It’s a longer story than we have time for this morning, but we most certainly now live in post-Christendom times. In the United States, especially in urban centers like Chicago, we see this clearly in the marginalization of church in American culture. The very fact that you are here right now, listening to this sermon, is a countercultural act that really finds no support and derives no benefit in our society. What would be more typical—and what is in fact supported and rewarded by our culture—is for you to sleep in, watch some morning news shows or read the newspaper, go out for brunch, go to your kids’ sporting events or practices, and do some shopping here on Michigan Avenue.

In the midst of this new post-Christendom reality, we have a choice. If we so choose, mainline Protestantism can continue to fade into the sunset of the past. We could try to survive by accommodating ourselves to the vaguely-spiritual-butnot-religious least common denominator of American culture. (This is actually the greatest temptation of progressive churches like ours, especially as the wider society trends toward the values of acceptance and inclusion that we have preached for years.) Or we can look at the destabilization of the world around us, the legion of crises that threaten our world and its inhabitants, all of those things that create pessimism and discontent in our culture and in ourselves, and boldly proclaim that God has already initiated the transformation of the world and that each of us are invited to participate in this radical rebirth—a new heaven and a new earth.

Jesus suggested that persecution would provide his followers with an opportunity to testify or bear witness before others of the truth, wisdom, and power of the gospel. Let’s be honest: Christianity in the United States may grow more and more marginalized, but we’re certainly not persecuted, and I seriously doubt that we will be anytime soon. Those that suggest otherwise are mostly engaging in culture war fear-mongering. But Jesus’ call to bear witness—to testify—to the truth of what God is doing in the world is just as urgent for us as it was for his first followers. The situations are radically different to be sure, but the call is still the same.

Esteemed commentators like Walter Brueggemann talk about post-Christendom as a kind of exile (Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles, 1997). Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel help us understand what this metaphor might mean for our time and our situation. But exile only works as a metaphor if we recognize and remember what we heard from Isaiah today: that we aren’t going back to the old Jerusalem that was taken from us. We aren’t going back to the old Christendom. Rather, God is building a new Jerusalem in our midst—a new heaven and a new earth.

I actually think that our situation is more like a diaspora than an exile. For centuries, and still to this day, Jewish people have lived outside of their homeland of Israel yet have committed themselves to preserving and maintaining their religious and cultural heritage as minorities in the midst of the dominant societies and cultures in which they find themselves. This is an oversimplification, to be sure, but in large part they do this by telling and retelling their story—their particular story—to each other and to emerging generations. If you have ever participated in a Sabbath dinner or Passover Seder, you know what this looks like.

Friends, in the midst of our rapidly changing world, as the church is pushed more and more to the margins of society, as we figure out how to live in a world of diversity and pluralism, we need to relearn and retell our story—our particular story. We need to reclaim the ancient Christian practice of testimony. That word scares many of us, I know. It conjures fears of being trapped in an airplane seat next to someone really eager to tell you about Jesus. That’s not exactly what I’m talking about. But we can’t throw out a core expression of Christian discipleship because we don’t like how some of our sisters and brothers do it.

Kenda Creasy Dean is a professor of youth ministry and practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. She suggests that one of the key elements of successful faith formation is an understanding of the community’s God-story. How do we tell our story and the story of the world through the lens of our trust in God? How do we relearn to express our hopes, desires, motivations, and passions with unapologetically theological language? (Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, 2010).

We have to practice, says Tom Long, a theologian and professor of homiletics. “We are not born knowing how to talk about our faith. It is not second nature for us to know how to speak faithfully, how to tell God’s story amid the other stories crowding the landscape of our culture. The ability to give useful and true testimony has to be acquired and learned through experience” (Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, 2004, p. 31). We have to practice.

When she introduced the practice of testimony into her typically reserved New England congregation, pastor and author Lillian Daniel made one rule when she invited congregation members to take the mic and tell their story: whatever you talk about, you can’t leave out God. She didn’t want her congregation to present their church résumés or lists of activities and accomplishments. She didn’t want to hear stories she could just as easily hear on NPR. She challenged her flock to tell the stories of their life through the lens of faith (Lillian Daniel, Tell It Like It Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony, 2006).

Friends, that’s our challenge too.

Why do you come to this place? Why did you join this church? Why do you do what you do in the world? Are you content with the world as it is, or have you caught God’s vision of the world as it should be?

Why do you follow Jesus? What difference does it make in your life? What difference does it make for the world?

Wars and rumors of wars. Insurrections and revolutions. Violence and suffering. Injustice and oppression. Hunger and homelessness. Poverty and disaster. All of these things, and so much more. It’s right outside our door.

Now, testify.

Amen.

Notes
The title of this sermon and the closing line come from the Rage Against the Machine Song “Testify.”