The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost - November 16, 2025

St. Pauls - Proper 28— November 16, 2025

Even amid a difficult, dark time in Israel’s history, the prophet Isaiah testifies to God’s promise one day, some day to bring a new heaven and new earth. That is what our OT reading is about.

No wonder that we often read those stirring words at funerals. New heaven and a new earth,  the wolf and lamb will grace together, …no weeping or crying ever again.

It’s almost too good to believe.

That’s what many have said since Isaiah pronounced this prophesy so long ago. The new heaven and new earth didn’t come, hasn’t come in twenty-five hundred years since Isaiah spoke. That’s a long time to wait for God’s promised new heaven and new earth to be fulfilled.

Listen! Says the world. You can still hear the sound of weeping or crying. Check out CNN and you’ll find that this world, for any of its beauty, is for millions a world of horrors. A lamb, in too close proximity to a wolf will not be there for long.

That’s what the world says. What do we, as people who claim to be blessed by the LORD, have to say in response?

In today’s  gospel, people were admiring the grand, eternal looking temple. Jesus gives them some bad news: the glorious temple will be demolished. What?

More bad news: Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other. There will be great earthquakes and wide-scale food shortages and epidemics. Sounds like Jesus watches either Fox or CNN, doesn’t it?

Sometimes we bring our troubles on ourselves. But there are other times when the heartache is greater than our own devising. We find ourselves to be victims of forces out of our control. No matter the cause of our troubles, Jesus says… By our endurance, we will gain our souls.

And that endurance is needed as Jesus tells the disciples that there will not only be natural and human-made disasters, there will be persecution of his followers: They will take you into custody and harass you because of your faith. They will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.

And what does Jesus tell his followers about how they should respond to the natural disasters or persecution? Jesus characterizes such times of pain as, an opportunity to testify. He even tells us that he will give us the words to say in defense.

An historic rebuke to the Christian faith has been, If Jesus Christ is the redeemer, why doesn’t the world look more redeemed? Isaiah promised, Jesus prophesied, no more crying or tears, no more injustice and violence.

Okay Christians. How do you explain that it didn’t happen in Israel in the Sixth Century before Christ or in the Twenty-first Century after.

When Rachel got her diagnosis, the whole church grieved, along with her family. Her husband asked for prayers. He was a relatively new Christian. A young woman, in her thirties! We prayed. A fund was begun in the congregation to help them with some of the expenses not covered by insurance. We prayed. In six months, we gathered for her funeral. I don’t remember, but I expect we read from Isaiah at the service. We so wanted the service, with its readings, to be helpful to the young, grieving husband.

It wasn’t. How well I remember his question, followed by a declaration: Preacher, if this is what you call a loving God I want no part of it. What do you say about a God who created a world where a wonderful Christian can be taken away in the prime of her life?

What do we say?

Sorry, come up with some explanation for all those Israelis were horrendously killed, kidnapped, massacred and for all those innocent Palestinian children killed in the crossfire in Gaza, then I’ll go to church with you sometime, said the young man after I issued an invitation to visit our church.

Explanation? Justification? Rationale? What do we say?

You are such a smart person, gifted, intellectually curious, a critical thinker. What are you doing being a Baptist? That was actually the question a professor actually asked a former student of mine. Well, what ought she to say in response?

Isaiah hears God make a sweeping, cosmic, 

world-changing promise to Israel. One day, someday, the Creator will fix anything that’s wrong, inhuman, or hurtful about creation. One day, there’ll be no more weeping or tears.

Maybe Jesus had that in the back of his mind when he prophesied that before any grand completion of God’s designs for God’s creation, there will be earth-shaking events, widespread pain and suffering. Jesus’ people will be persecuted by powerful people in high places.

And yet…this will be a time for you to testify. What shall we say? Jesus promises that he will somehow miraculously provide us with testimony.

I don’t know if Jesus gave me the right words to say to the young man who asked me the poignant question upon the death of his dear wife. Maybe I heard Jesus wrong. But here’s sort of what I said in response to his, What do you say about a God who created a world where a wonderful Christian can be taken away in the prime of her life?

I said that I did believe that God created a world in which there are people who are given to each of us as gifts of God, people like his beloved. But God created us to be creatures, frail, finite beings who are subject to some of the same trials and sicknesses as other creatures. God loves us in our creatureliness. God loves us now, in this all too brief life, and promises to love us forever. That doesn’t make losing those we love any less painful, but it does put our pain in context.

And just remember, I may have also said, It’s possible that God grieves your loss right along with you.

My words, my testimony, didn’t seem to mean much to him at the time but maybe it did years later. I heard he was active in a church and had restarted his life, in spite of his loss.

Sometimes a promise like that Isaiah heard — new heaven and new earth — keeps you going when the going is rough, to know that God has a different, better future in mind than the present.

People, believers and not, fail to live the lives God intended for them. Evil is real. And seductive. People keep thinking they can solve their problems and protect themselves by armies and swords and bombs. They are wrong. This way is not God’s way. That’s what I testified to the one who felt the Gaza war nullified any belief in a good God.

Besides, it’s possible that God grieves and is angrier about what’s happened in that part of the world, than you are. Remember, that’s home to Jesus Christ.

I have no proof that my testimonial countered his questions, but I do have lots of proof that sometimes God works with our words to make our words mean and do more than we knew how to make them mean and do. So maybe, by God’s grace, there’s hope.

This Sunday’s scripture, from Isaiah or Luke’s gospel are promises. All promises are in the future tense. The present is not the last word on God. Today, tears. Tomorrow, no more tears or crying or war anymore.

I resent your professor’s implication, with what he said to you, I told my former student, that Christian belief is irrational, that Christian hope is nothing but fantasy. Our beliefs are based upon our experience and convictions about who God is and what God is up to. Sorry if the professor doesn’t know who God is and what God is doing. I guess, according to Jesus, it’s up to us to tell the professor about the God he thinks he’s too smart to believe in.

Okay, that wasn’t much of a testimony. Still, I’ve found it is the nature of Jesus to take our limited witness and work it up into something better. Isn’t that sort of what Jesus promises in this Sunday’s gospel?

The world is being redeemed, will be redeemed, and is on its way there. We’re not there yet, not by a longshot. But Jesus promises that, by his work in the world, we’re on the way. It’s our job to, in word and deed, show and tell that truth, for people to catch a glimpse of God in each of us.

For me, the great challenge of the Gospel is not simply to bear the apocalypse, but to bear it well.  To bear it with the courage, calm, and faith Jesus calls me to practice in this passage.  

We need to begin by envisioning ourselves in the disciples’ place, listening in bewilderment as Jesus pops my spiritual bubbles, here are some of the questions I’m asking:

• What lies and illusions do I mistake for truth?

• In what memories or traditions do I attempt to house God? 

• On what shiny religious edifice do I pin my hopes, instead of trusting Jesus? (My denomination?  My church?  My spiritual heritage?)   

• Why do I cling to permanence when Jesus invites me to evolve?

• Am I willing to sit with the fact that things fall apart?  (Things I love, things I built, things I cried and prayed and strived for?)   

• Can I embrace a journey of faith that includes rubble, ruin, and failure? 

For many of us, this has been an emotionally and spiritually time.  We need look no further than the daily news to see apocalyptic images scarier than any Hollywood might produce.   

In this troubling context, it’s easy to despair.  Or to grow numb.  Or to let exhaustion win.  But it’s precisely now, now when the world around us feels the most apocalyptic, that we have to respond with resilience, courage, and truthful, unflinching witness.  It’s precisely now, when systemic evil and age old brokenness threaten to bring us to ruin that we have to testify without fear and without shame to the Good News that is the Gospel.  What’s happening is not death, but birth.  Yes, the birth pangs hurt.  They hurt so appallingly much.  But God is our midwife, and what God births will never lead to desolation.  Yes, we are called to bear witness in the ruins, but rest assured: these birth pangs will end in joy.  By our endurance, we will gain our souls.

You’ve got something to say.