“This will give you an
opportunity to testify… for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of
your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” St. Luke 21:13-14
The senior
warden and I were having lunch a few weeks ago over at the Hunter’s Inn, and I
asked the waiter if the reuben was any good.
I am, you see, a one sandwich man, and that sandwich is the reuben. If it’s Friday, I’ll have the fish and, on
occasion, the special. But if I’m out
for lunch, it’s usually a reuben. If I’m
to live here for many years to come, I need to figure out who serves the best
reuben in Potomac.
So, I asked the
waiter the important question: “is the reuben any good?” And he was that rare bird, the waiter of
probity. He answered me, “Well, people
like it. But I’m from New York, and they
toast it here instead of grilling it.
It’s just not the same.”
And I
thought to myself, I know just what he means.
Because I, too, have been to New York, even unto Katz’s Delicatessen on
the Lower East Side, where they make reubens of Biblical proportion.
Katz’s has been around for a long time. Their slogan, used continually since the forties,
is “buy a salami for your boy in the army.”
And when they say it, it rhymes.
They’ve got
liverwurst sandwiches and big plates of pickles and they brew their own strong
brown beer.
But it’s the
reuben, hand carved from colossal hunks of pastrami, that keeps the crowds
lined up out the door. The meat, tender
and full of flavor, the sauerkraut and the cheese just right, and grilled, for
heaven’s sake, not toasted. It’s one of
the great pleasures of this life to eat a reuben at Katz’s, most particularly if
you are a one sandwich man. And once
you’ve eaten one, you don’t need to eat anything else for at least twelve
hours.
But here’s
the problem, the one that I share with the honest waiter at the Hunter’s
Inn. Once you’ve had a reuben from
Katz’s, you can’t ever really enjoy any other reuben in quite the same
way. You now understand the full
potential of the sandwich, and the flaws of the ordinary one stand out ever so
clearly against it. There is one
sandwich in your hand, but the taste of another lingers somewhere in the deep
recesses of your mind, a taste of what could be, if only things were different.
In today’s
Gospel lesson, Jesus looks upon the Jerusalem temple, probably the grandest
thing he and his followers had ever seen.
And He tells them that, for the sake of God’s greater purposes, it too
will fall, so that something even more magnificent can take its place. Jesus has seen the glorious completion, you
see, God’s final plan has been unveiled to Him.
Ranked beside it, even the temple bright with its golden ornaments seems
partial, flawed, certain to fail.
Today’s
reading is part of what the scholars call the “apocalyptic discourse” in Saint
Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus told his disciples how it would be at the end. Like the prophets before Him, Jesus describes
the world turned upside down, the stable things of life broken to pieces. Wars, famines, catastrophe, lay ahead. Nothing is certain, nothing will last apart
from God’s promise that, in the end, He will reign over a new heavens and new
earth where “righteousness is at home.[1]”
When
situated beside that hope, even the greatest or most dire of earthly
circumstances pale in comparison. These
words are meant by Jesus to reassure His followers that the hardships they will
face are not signs that God has abandoned them, or that the Gospel is untrue.
But they
also serve as a necessary check to unreasonable expectations. The temple was the great project of its age,
the crowning masterpiece of Herod the Great, who had founded a new line of
Jewish kings. For many Jews of Jesus’ time, the simple existence of such a
splendid building was itself proof that God would always defend Israel from
harm. So long as the sacrifices were
offered every morning, they could not fail.
But Jesus
knows otherwise. Among those who heard
him, some would see the Roman armies destroy it completely in forty years’
time. No majestic building, no system of
government, no military juggernaut, no golden age lasts forever. We are fools if we put our deepest trust in
any human project. Jesus’ tale of woes
to come urges us to place our hopes in God alone, to be mindful of our own
sins, to push on, but with humility, deeply aware of the fragility of all human
projects.
The past
several months have been an apocalyptic time in the life of our republic. Much of the rhetoric used in the days leading
up to the election described a nation in crisis, unable to address our deepest
economic and diplomatic challenges. Time Magazine last week showed the two
presidential candidates holding up a sign that said “The End is Near.” It was, of course, a joke about how bothersome
the robocalls and television ads have been.
But did it not suggest something more, that our whole political system
and our shared culture is unravelling, and that such candidates as these are
symptoms of a terminal illness?
We have
elected an unexpected president, in what pundits are calling the greatest upset
in American history. We are deeply
divided. Some of us are joyful about the
prospect of a new leader with fresh methods. Others of us are frightened of the
things Mr. Trump has promised to do and the way he will respond to events he
cannot predict or fully control. His
could be the kind of presidency that changes the course of history. Perhaps Mr. Trump will make America great
again, and perhaps this is the beginning of the end of our experiment.
But we look
ahead. In the midst of the chaos and
uncertainty of this life, we scan the horizon for He who will come, as promised
long before, like the sun of righteousness, rising with healing in His
wings. We are citizens of a true and
lasting city, one not of this world’s making.
And as we worship the Lord this day, and share in the gifts of His grace,
we taste of the good things of the age to come.
Empires rise and fall, rulers come and go, but God’s kingdom stands
forever. Our opening hymn had it just
right:
Fading are the worldlings’
pleasures,
All
their boasted pomp and show;
Solid
joys and lasting treasures
None
but Zion’s children know.[2]
I had a
message early Wednesday morning from my friend Madeleine Davies, a reporter for
the Church Times in London. She wanted
to know what I thought the church should say in response to the election, and
her editor set her a deadline of 8:00 in the morning, Eastern Time. I was a little hazy, having been up past two
watching the returns, hoping to be sure who had really won the thing.
What I said to her was that the Church would be speaking into a fog of fear and resentment after
this election, and that it would be hard for anyone to hear what we need to
say. And though that might be true in
some ways, I think it was a mistake for me to say it. I was forgetting the words of Jesus in today’s
Gospel lesson and the testimony of the faithful repeatedly in ages past. These are the times when the church must
speak. In the midst of the chaos, through that fog of fear and resentment,
Christ has promised us, “You will have an opportunity to testify… I will give you words and
a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”
Because we
Christians have tasted of the glories of the world to come, this is our moment
to tell an anxious world some truths of “Zion, city of our God.” Our true homeland is a place of shelter for
the poor and weak, where no one is trod under.
All nations, tribes, peoples and languages gather at the feet of our
king, reconciled by the blood of His cross.
This is our
day to call a divided nation to peace. We
can model ways of listening to one another, so that we might discover the
things we all value and need. It’s our
time to advocate for the defenseless, speaking out against cruelty of any kind. But it’s also a time to show respect for a
man to whom God has granted authority, and to pray for him. Donald Trump is
neither savior nor antichrist. He is a
flawed man, who will soon begin a task that is beyond his capacities, as it is
beyond the capacities of anyone else who dares to assume it.
In the midst
of our common life, lived in prayer and self-giving love, we offer a foretaste
of the feast to come. The sweetness of that feast is a sign of hope to those who
fear and a call to humility for those who rejoice in earthly triumph. Today,
more than ever, America needs the church to be the church. This is our “opportunity to testify.”
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