Dragons or Dreams - 25th Sunday afterPentecost

Isaiah 65: 17-25
Luke 21:5-19

Back in the 1960s Bob Dylan wrote a song entitled “The times they are a changing.” And certainly we are living in an age of unprecedented change be that change seen in economic, scientific or cultural terms. Truly, they times they are a changing.

Of course, change can be seen as beneficial. The only people who tend to disagree with that possibility are those who would wish to look back to some golden age or other. But of course all such golden ages when explored turn out to be mythical.

Look for a moment to an article from the American publication, “Harpers weekly.”

“It is a gloomy moment in the history of our country. Not in the lifetime of most men has there been so much grave and deep apprehension; never has the future seemed so incalculable as at this time. The domestic economic situation is in chaos. Our dollar is weak throughout the world. Prices are so high as to be utterly impossible. The political cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty. It is a solemn moment of our troubles. No man can see an end.”

It could be today when economies built on debt and inflated property markets such as both the American and British economies are, are facing a time of reckoning. But hold it! Those words were written 150 years ago back in 1857. So if things seem a bit worrying with all the talks of a banking credit crisis, such anxieties are not exactly new.

But sometimes there is good reason to be concerned at what is going on around us. There is no grounds for a facile optimism that buries its head in the sand and pretends that all is well when it patently isn’t. Certainly any form of religion that ignores dark realities isn’t worth the time of day. But thankfully, the revelation of God that we find in the scriptures in no way ignore dark realities.

There most certainly are dark realities lying behind our reading from Isaiah. Now the Book of Isaiah is probably the product of 3 Isaiahs or centres of such thought. This morning we have heard from the third and last of these Isaiahs. The first has warned of dark times coming. And come they most certainly have. The land of Judah where he was based, has been destroyed and whilst those left have faced the struggle to eke out a subsistence existence in a devastated economy, the movers and shakers have been taken far away into a distant land, traumatised by the loss of all that was familiar. And from this land comes the voice of the second Isaiah. But now with the exiles having returned to the land from which their ancestors were taken, we hear the voice of a third Isaiah who sees the immensity of the task before the people and who accordingly has words both of hope and at times of despair.

Now let us move on for a moment and we find Jesus speaking in the grounds of the Temple in Jerusalem. And in his words, we are powerfully reminded of the dark side of life. Not only does he speak of imminent destruction of the Temple but he also speaks of a future of wars, natural disasters and persecution. Now, sometimes, people do a great violence to these verses. They have become the happy hunting ground of cranks and extremists who are desperately seeking clues as the end of the world and sometimes even of a mind to give events a push in favour of such a direction. But let’s just pause for a moment. When Luke produces his meditation of the life of Jesus, he did so for a community who were no so much looking at these events in the future but living through them in the present. You see, by the time that Luke’s Gospel was written, Jerusalem had paid the price for lsitening to its false Messiahs who preached rebellion, for after a 4 year war Jerusalem with its Temple had been raised to the ground. Elsewhere, Vesuvius had erupted and Pompei was no more. And an emerging community of followers of Jesus were paying a heavy price in terms of persecuton both from their relatives and friends who had remained within Judaism and from Roman power which had no time for communities that were less than wholehearted in their commitment to Rome and the imperial cult. So the things that Jesus was speaking about belonged not to the realms of fortune telling but to the realities of life for Luke’s readers.

Given that life has its dark side, how are we to respond without going into denial? Well, I think there is a clue as to what should not be our approach that can be discerned by looking at Jesus’ words in so far as they imply the destruction of the Temple. Whilst we venerate great buildings today and part of the horror of September 11th 2001 was to see those seemingly indestructible towers crumble to the ground, we can still lose sight of the significance of Jerusalem’s Temple. For this Temple was the economic centre of Palestine as well as being the religious centre of the Jewish faith that even then had spread to many cities through the diaspora. But more than that, it was seen as the very place where God dwelled and where God could be encountered by the High Priest. But more than that it was a whiz of a building upon which great resources had been invested since the project was begun by the baby killing Herod the Great 40 years before Jesus stood there. It was in short one of the great marvels of the world. Listen for a moment to this description of the Temple offered by the contemporary historian Josephus;

“The outward face of the Temple … wanted for nothing that was likely to surprise either men’s minds or their eyes, for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a fiery splendour, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays. But the temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow for.. those parts… that were not gilt they were exceedingly white.”

No wonder that the religious establishment and many of the crowd would have been shocked at the words of Jesus for his words of destruction could only mean the end of the world as they knew it.

And here is a warning to us. It is too easy to think that we can keep the dragons at bay by relying on great institutions, building or traditional ways of doing things. For if the time are a changing, these things are but temporary. Long after these events, in 410 the unthinkable happened. The Visgoths invaded and ransacked the city of Rome that had dominated the world for many centuries. A story is told that across the sea in Africa, three scholars looked out on the Mediterranean Sea and saw a boat coming from Rome. With its arrival, a messenger ran to bring the earth shattering news,

“Rome has fallen.”

The three scholars stood in shocked silence. Then one of them said;

“If Rome has fallen, what will become of civilisation?”

The second said;

“If Rome has fallen what will become of the Christian faith?”

And the third scholar, the Bishop of Hippo, whom we know today as St Augustine, wisely observed;

“Brothers, perhaps we have loved Rome too much.”

And in those words our attachment to the familiar is challenged. It is this that lies at the heart of the emphasis on seeking fresh expressions of being church for the tools of a past age may not be those for the present. After all the symbols of God can never be a replacement for the reality of God. Rather than be a people who hold on to the familiar, perhaps we need to slay the dragons by daring to dream some dreams. After all, Isaiah looking at a need for a new beginning after over half a century of tears, cries out a God given message;

“Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered nor will they be brought to mind.”

And he dreams on about a time of being settled and finding the peace that is shalom where the wellbeing of all is promoted - a dream that needs indeed to echo into our age. Meanwhile Jesus, encourages his followers not to be distracted by the turmoil all around them and to hold on to their faith even when the going is at its hardest. How do we respond? Jesus' answer is found in later verses;

“Stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

In other words, we are to keep our eyes on the big picture that is to be found not so much in the temporary things but in the unending love and grace of God as revealed in Jesus.

Of course, there are many a dragon in this world but our calling is to confront the dragons that destroy life by being a people who dream dreams and see visions. We are called to be a people who see the possibilities that come from God to confront the dragons of our age be they;

Despair

Poverty

Warfare

Persecution

Denial of humanity.


In a fortnight, on the first Sunday of Advent we shall begin the journey that will take us to Christmas. At Christmas we shall be reminded again that in Christ light has come into the world that darkness can never put out. And Christmas wil reveal that ultimately it is the dreams and not the dragons that will prevail.


This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on November 18th 2007