Testimony

Text: Isaiah 65:17-25, Luke 21:5-9

For many years now, I have spent a lot of time with the Old Testament prophets. Their offerings can be pretty tough, filled with images of unrelenting warfare, destruction and desolation; stories of people streaming away from smoking cities, seeking refuge, of people being rounded up and led away into exile, with hooks around their necks. 

Among other things, the prophets were engaged with a theological and existential question: If God is on our side, then why was the the center of our life together(for them, the Temple) destroyed and God’s people scattered or taken captive?

Various prophets voice various “reasons” for the destruction. Some cite wrongful worship: You have bowed down to idols, they say, and have been unfaithful to your God. 

Others add the danger of political maneuverings: You put your trust in, and made alliances with, Egypt or Assyria instead of trusting in your God. 

Still others point to injustice in society: your leaders push aside the people they are supposed to be caring for to get to the food and water first; and you yourselves, like heedless animals going to the river to drink, thoughtlessly foul everyone else’s water with your feet.  You trample the poor and the needy and do not care for the widow and orphan or show hospitality to the alien in your land, and therefore God is turning the Divine face away from you, they say.

It’s a complicated mix of religion, politics, governance, and morality.

Which, actually, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

These days, what now seems to be an endless election season in our nation has started to feel like a long siege of our own centers of communal life. It has become a season that is never actually over, so that accusations, dire predictions, handwringing, and angry blaming just seem to be part of every day news and experience. 

We just keep fighting and blaming and allowing the outrage machine to play us and keep us all stirred up before, during, and still continuing after the day we cast our votes.

Many of us are not comfortable with this level is discord and wish to move past it quickly. We are polite Virginia Episcopalians and there’s a certain veneer under which we place our differences. But last week’s election results confirm what was clear two years ago and four years before that: we the people are not united. 

Our nation is seriously divided and we don’t see ourselves as a people but more like member of opposing teams. And we have to support our team no matter what.

But God does call us to be a people, and so here we are in church together, listening for the word of God, wondering what are we called to, as the people of God, in this divided world?

And the word from Jesus today is this: In times of upheaval, you will be given an opportunity to testify. And by your endurance, you will gain your soul. 

This is a time for us to testify to our faith. And here is the testimony I believe we - you and I - are called to give, no matter which political side we are on: That God is love. That God says the outcast, the poor, the alien, the lost are precious. 

That we - you and I - denounce hateful language, bullying, threats, intimidation, bigotry of every kind, harassment, contempt, vandalism and violence. 

That we - you and I - stand up for the powerless and marginalized and take their situations seriously. 

That we stand up for them by not keeping quiet about ill treatment and bad behavior. That we not shrug and say that’s just the way things are now, allowing individual children of God to be lumped together and dehumanized and made into issues so that we can feel ok about whatever is going to befall them because they are black or gay or pregnant or seeking asylum or addicted or unhoused or just on the other team.

Testifying is not just about using words to say how God has treated you well and we don’t know why God has treated others less well as if it’s God who discriminates and denigrates instead of humans.

We - you and I - are called to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and imprisoned, to welcome the stranger. We are called to work for their welfare as well as our own. We may have to think pretty hard, and get way outside our comfort zones, to determine who exactly our neighbors are And how exactly we are needed to love them. 

But in addition to not lumping people together into categories we are called to sometimes actually go stand beside someone who needs protection  - even to go out and find them so we can stand beside them - and to teach our children to do so, too.

We always are called to do these things, of course. This is our work for life as followers of Jesus. But our testimony to and in the world as faithful witnesses of the Gospel is crucial now, in the face of such obvious division. 

This is a time for the Church to be the Church and shine the light of Christ as brightly as we possibly can, by our words and our deeds. And by our endurance, we will gain our souls……..

We are going to be reading from the prophets for the rest of this year as we move toward Advent and then through Advent to Christmas. And we’ll see that most of the prophets spoke not only of destruction, but also of reconciliation and restoration, as Isaiah declares today. And of course eventually that’s what we all hope for. God is going to bring good out of chaos, in God’s time, that swords will be beaten into plowshares and we will not study war any more. That God will return the people from whatever is holding them captive. That there will be no more weeping or children born for calamity, and the people will live in peace.

The vision of the new Jerusalem, the holy place God will bring forth some day is a vision we desperately need to hold on to.

But right now, in the meantime, in these hard times of division and distressing upheaval, we have work to do. Our work is to testify to the world about the love of God then,and to love our neighbors, to do so not just with our words but with our very lives.

And if we keep our eyes and ears on Jesus, he will show us the way.