Our Gospel reading this morning finds Jesus and his disciples in an animated conversation about big changes that were coming to Jerusalem, the holy city at the center of their lives and ministry.
The conversation took place as Jesus was turning up the rhetorical heat on the people and the institutions who represented the religious status quo.
According to Jesus, these leading figures were leading the people astray.
“Woe to you, hypocrites!” declared Jesus. “You are like whitewashed tombs….[You] look beautiful [on the outside,] but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:27-28)
Leadership was corrupt and was corrupting the hearts of God’s people.
Jesus even went so far as to say that the Temple, the second one to stand on Temple Mount, would be destroyed, just like the first one.
The disciples were fascinated, curious, and probably a bit nervous.
Jesus was talking about big, history making changes, and they wanted to know how and when everything would come to pass, so they asked him.
That’s when things got weird.
The disciples knew that Jesus had a habit of answering questions with questions or a thought-provoking parable, but this time, his response really had their heads spinning.
First, he said that no one knew when this change would come, not even him, but then he started talking about Noah and the flood, and how people weren’t paying attention then, but that the disciples should pay attention now.
And on top of all that, he kept referring to himself as the Son of Man, an old term used by ancient prophets that carried all kinds of implications about who Jesus was, what he was going to accomplish, and the hopes that people placed upon him.
Jesus said,
For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. (Matthew 24:38-42)In order to help us unpack all of this, I’m going to follow Jesus’ lead.
When asked when change would come to Jerusalem, he threw his disciples a curveball and started talking about Noah’s Ark, so as we try to connect his words with our lives, I’m going to talk to you about volcanoes.
In 1980, after appearing to do nothing for one hundred forty years, Mount Saint Helens, a volcano in Washington state, woke up.
It started on March 15th. That’s when the mountain literally began to shake as magma, or molten rock, began to move closer to the surface.
As Mount Saint Helens continued to shake for several weeks, its appearance began to change, too. Steam vents emerged, as did a new crater. Mudslides caused by melting snow rolled down the slope. The atmosphere was charged with electricity. Lightning flashed.
The most ominous change on the mountain, however, was the growth of a gigantic bulge on its northside.
Marring what was once an almost perfect conical shape, this feature grew steadily as more and more magma pushed upward.
By May 18th, the northern slope was distended by more than 500 feet.
And then, just around 8:30 that morning, the northern slope of Mount Saint Helens exploded.
That eruption set off the largest landslide in recorded history and wiped away everything it encountered in a tsunami of mud, rocks, and melting glaciers.
Scientists have determined that the landslide traveled at speeds between 110 and 155 miles per hour and covered an area larger than Manhattan in debris.
And that was just the beginning.
Mount Saint Helens continued to erupt for several hours.
By the time it was over, 540,000,000 tons of ash had been spewed into the atmosphere, 1.1 billion dollars in damages had occurred, and 57 people were dead.
Like so many geological cataclysms, the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens is a powerful example of change that comes slowly, then all of a sudden.
Slow, then sudden change is a feature of the Bible’s major stories, too.
It’s said that the Israelites suffered as slaves in Egypt for centuries and wandered in the wilderness for forty years before the Jordan River miraculously parted before them and the Exodus finally ended as they entered the Promised Land.
Prophets like Elijah, Amos, Jeremiah, and Isaiah called God’s people back to covenant faithfulness for almost three hundred years, but it still hit the people like a sucker punch when Babylon’s army sacked Jerusalem and carried them into Exile.
And then there’s the slowest developing storyline of them all, the long burning fuse of hope that God would take action to make right what the people could not do for themselves, “the belief,” as Father David Neuhaus notes, “that God would eventually win victory against the forces of darkness and evil that have troubled the world since the expulsion from Eden.”(Vatican News)
A flickering flame of hope kept alive since the days of Eden, yet destined to light the way to restoration, renewal, and new life with God—this has everything to do with the way Jesus talked to his disciples.
It’s also the slow, then sudden change we remember and celebrate during Advent and Christmas.
If you’ve ever watched the classic Christmas Eve Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, then you’ve seen this hope on display.
In that service, which hasn’t changed the order of readings since 1919, the familiar elements of the Christmas story don’t even appear until lesson number five. That’s when the angel Gabriel visits the Virgin Mary.
Prior to that, it’s all about hope’s long arch.
The service begins with readings from the prophets and a selection from the story of Abraham, but in the very first lesson, worshippers hear how Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation and, in shame, “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.”
Everything that follows is about the incredible lengths to which God goes to correct that wrong and heal that wound.
Recounting our faith’s story in this way, the Service of Lessons and Carols helps us appreciate hope’s slow burning nature.
Hope also explains Jesus’ wild-eyed exchange with his disciples.
Jesus didn’t tell his disciples when the change they wanted was going to come, but there’s an urgency in his tone–like the urgency you would feel if you were talking to a friend and they’d suddenly disappeared.
If that happened to you, you’d stop dead in your tracks. You’d get dialed into your surroundings and what was happening all around you very quickly.
You’d be laser focused on figuring out what was going on.
And that’s exactly what Jesus wanted from his disciples.
He said,
Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. (Matthew 26:42-43)The ground beneath their feet was shaking and the pressure was building.
Something big was about to happen, but their hope was not in vain.
The conversation between Jesus and his disciples continued for a while.
We only read a small portion of it this morning, but Jesus goes on.
His tone becomes less “apocalyptic prophet” and more “the preacher of parables” that we know so well, but the whole discourse remains difficult to understand.
Until the end, that is, when he told the disciples something that made it all make sense.
Matthew tells us that,
When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” (Matthew 26:1-2)“The hopes and fears of all the years,” the heartaches of exiles and wanderers, the sermons Jesus preached, the miracles he performed, the way he loved all the people, on a cross, slowly, then all of a sudden, everything would change.
That brings us back to Lessons and Carols.
Beginning in the shadow of Eden’s shame, the service ends in the light of God’s love.
The ninth and final lesson is from John 1,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)You and I have a calling to walk in that light, to point the attention of others toward it, to follow where it leads, to worship in its presence.
Ultimately, I think our Gospel passage is about the challenges of living in this light, because, like the disciples, worry, fear, anxiety, our desire to do things our way–the creep of sin’s darkness–can blind us to what God is doing in our midst.
God’s word to us this morning, then, echoes what Jesus told his friends.
Stay awake.
Your hope is not in vain.
Change can come, slowly, then all of a sudden.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Image: Mount St. Helens on May 17, 1980, one day before the devastating eruption. The view is from Johnston's Ridge, six miles (10 kilometers) northwest of the volcano. Photo by Harry Glicken (Public Domain)
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