In our weekly Pilgrims in Christ adult formation class, we recently looked at the story of salvation in Holy Scripture. Our task was to extract a large story from the varied and sometimes conflicting micro-narratives of the Bible. As preparation for this class, I asked class members to create three timelines of their own lives. These timelines are all charted on three parallel horizontal lines drawn on a ledger-sized piece of paper. The first line is used to graph notable moments in one’s life through peaks and valleys. Presumably, one’s birth would be a peak, and the loss of a job or a death in the family would be a valley.
The second line on the piece of paper is used for mapping one’s life in relationship to the Church. Here, baptism and confirmation would be high points, but a period away from the Church would be a valley. And then on the third line, one charts a relationship with God, which can often be very different from one’s relationship with the Church.
After creating these three separate timelines, the task is to see where peaks and valleys line up by sketching vertical dashed lines connecting the three timelines at key moments. When I have done this exercise myself, I have found that times of struggle with the Church have often been times of profound depth in my relationship with God. And, surprisingly, a seemingly robust phase in the life of the Church might prove to be a valley in one’s relationship with God if it contains no more than lip service to the Gospel.
This timeline exercise is, of course, subjective on many levels. The shape of the graph depends on the person doing the graphing. But the advantage of prayerfully undertaking this exercise is that it challenges, even subverts, grand metanarratives that logically follow from our ordered Western minds. Isn’t it true that we value neat and tidy stories? Don’t we often make easy causal connections between earthly disaster and divine punishment? Can we find anything other than despair in the valleys of our lives?
This is a fitting question when today in Luke’s Gospel we hear Jesus predicting terrifying events that will mark the end of time. From the vantage point of the historical persons in Luke’s narrative, these times are in the future. But the vantage point of Luke the evangelist and all who have heard or read his Gospel since its conception is different. Some of what Jesus predicted has already happened. In the aftermath of Jesus’ passion and death, in the earliest days of the Church, persecutions of his disciples had already begun. And in 70 A.D., the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, before we believe Luke’s Gospel to have been written.
If we were to chart all these disastrous events on timelines, what would they look like? Wouldn’t the graphs depend on the perspective of the one creating them? From the perspective of those in the Gospel story who are hearing Jesus’s terrifying words, I would imagine timelines full of deep valleys at some undetermined point in the future. On the line charting one’s relationship with God, perhaps there would also be a series of valleys.
But I wonder what a timeline would look like for us, hearing and reading this story millennia after Luke authored his text? Would the persecutions and tragic events predicted by Jesus be only valleys on a timeline? Or can we see more at work? Sometimes it’s only in hindsight that we can discern where God has been at work in our lives.
It seems that Jesus was all too aware of the human proclivity to react rather than respond. This is, after all, the essence of his words in the passage we have heard today from Luke’s Gospel. When the first signs of trouble appear, it will be an age ripe for charlatans. False prophets will come and lead many astray by pretending to be the Messiah. People will prematurely think it’s the end of the world. Many will be tempted to cower in anxiety and fear. There will be earnest attempts to pinpoint the exact date of the end of time. Indeed, a knowledge of the destruction to come will be yet another temptation to plan for one’s defense ahead of time. It will be a temptation to react to events rather than respond to God.
It’s rather difficult, I think, to listen to Jesus’s words and predictions without being overcome with anxiety. There is a reptilian fight-or-flight instinct that we can’t shake when we think of natural disasters, persecution, and final judgment. The greatest temptation is to reactivity.
Is it any surprise that we are conditioned to behave in this way? There are many reasons to be reactive. As we gather here in this church, our world is in the midst of war. Our local community is awash in senseless violence. Divisive partisanship has rent this nation apart. The Church herself is fractured by schisms, infighting, and petty squabbles. And while we may not be physically persecuted for our faith, our general culture is hardly supportive of Christian discipleship, if not outright hostile.
Add to this the other anxieties of life. Rising prices, an unstable economic market, and environmental destruction do not lower our blood pressure. It is, in fact, very difficult to discern anything good in the news that is blasted our way 24/7. The temptation is to plan, plan, and plan in an attempt to attain a security the world cannot offer. And when disaster strikes, whether it’s financial or personal, our only help seems to be to plead for God to rescue us from the valley and raise us to a peak in our life’s timeline. Indeed, wouldn’t we rather just dispense with every valley on the timeline of our lives?
But Jesus’s words are a reminder to avoid easy deception. They are a reminder to respond, not to react. It’s precisely in the times that are most difficult for us that we will be most vulnerable to deceit because we will be reactive. When we are broken and beset by tragedy and when we are aimless and without guidance, there will always be others to swoop in and promise to raise us from the valley to a new peak in life. Many false prophets will give us easy answers and impose their own metanarrative of triumphalism on our suffering and pain. Some within the Church will try to give us facile assurance to take the edge off discipleship.
And on this Commitment Sunday, where we offer our pledges of financial support to God’s ministry in this parish, we are perhaps more acutely aware than usual of our precarious financial situation. In a valley of anxiety over fiscal sustainability, our greatest temptation will be to assume defeat and to live out of scarcity rather than abundance. Unless we plan every detail of our future, there will be no more peaks on the horizon. We will be tempted to react every time another part of the roof leaks or our meager investments drop yet again. We will long for some miraculous bequest to raise us from the valley to a new financial peak.
But hidden in Jesus’s difficult words of impending destruction is the best news we could possibly imagine. If we could imagine a timeline graph, the valleys of our lives might actually align with the moments where we are most in tune with God’s will and desire for us. Zooming out on these timelines from God’s perspective can show us that times of difficulty are, in fact, our shining moments. They are perhaps our most profound moments. From out of the depths, God himself will give us the words and wisdom to respond with his good news for the world. In these valleys, the good news is most needed. With patience and endurance, God will help us respond and not react.
Dear people of Good Shepherd, there will always be a temptation to react rather than respond. There will never be a moment in our parish’s future that will be free from anxiety, since temptations to worry will always be a part of our lives on this side of heaven.
But we should not fear our unknown future. This is not a time to react. The present time is a gift. It’s a time to respond. When we are deep in a valley on our life’s timeline, God is yet giving us a mouth of wisdom to proclaim his good news. God is giving us a future, but we must wait patiently on him to tell us what to say and to do. God is inviting us to respond in love and not to react in fear. And no matter what happens and no matter how low our valleys may seem to be, if we wait on God, he will show us how to respond. And not a hair of our head will ever perish.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
November 13, 2022