Saint Luke 21:15-19
A couple of Wednesday’s ago in the meditation at our service of Evening Prayer I mentioned a televangelist by the name of Jack Van Impe. Nobody, except Martin, had ever heard of him. It is not a surprise because he plays to a really small segment of an increasingly diminishing audience base.
In the early days of cable televangelists could be found almost everywhere. They usually broadcast from huge mega-churches with big choirs and even larger production numbers that would rival any variety show. Slowly, one by one, financial or sexual scandals ended their programs. Some were taken by the angel of death and their ministries collapsed soon after.
Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella are survivors even through their weekly presentation is among the strangest of the bunch.
It is just the two of them sitting at what could be a news set at any television station. Rexella reads a carefully selected news story and then Jack, using what he claims to be his encyclopedic knowledge of scripture, comes up with just the right Bible verse to show how “Current international events reflect exactly the conditions and happenings predicted throughout the Bible for the last days of this age.”
His website proclaims his goal as to alert “Millions . . . to the fact that Jesus is coming soon-perhaps today! We all need to be ready.” Further it points out that he has been at this “since 1948 and continues to be a leading voice in declaring the soon return of the Savior.”1
The juxtaposition of the word “soon” and the year “1948" makes the whole premise more than a little bit surreal to me.
As I told the group the other night, if you started waiting for a bus on Downer Place in 1948 and told me yesterday that you were sure it was coming “soon” I would certainly take you into the Parish House for a warm cup of coffee spiked with a little whiskey and call an Uber for you because clearly the bus wasn’t coming.
Yet people have been looking for signs of the end of the age since the beginning of time. In fact, some of them were standing next to Jesus and admiring the temple.
What is important to remember about the temple is that it wasn’t built the way any church in our day is built. From Our Saviour to the National Cathedral all of them have been built using the contributions of the faithful. The temple Jesus and his friends were looking at was a public works project.
It was begun by King Herod who, Scripture tells us, was a despicable human being. He was a misogynist, a slander, a bully, and a murderer of family, friends, and, after hearing about the possible birth of another king, a slayer of all the children three and under in Bethlehem. He had no moral compass. (Give this man a twitter account and he could have been someone we know!)
Still his people enjoyed a good economy that they believed he made possible for them and, like so many despots of our time and his, he was passionate about building things.
The Jewish Encyclopedia tells us: “He had adorned many cities and had erected many heathen temples; and it was not fitting that the temple of his capital should fall beneath these in magnificence. Probably, also, one of his motives was to placate the more pious of his subjects, whose sentiments he had often outraged.”2
The temple was part of a deal that Herod brokered with the people and their leaders: You let me do whatever I want and I will leave you alone.
This kind of uneasy peace can only last so long and we know that it didn’t last past 70 A.D. when the Romans laid siege to the city in a brutal battle that left Jerusalem in ruins with only the western wall of the temple standing.
For the readers of Luke, written 15 to 20 years after the complete destruction of Jerusalem, the days that Jesus said were coming, had arrived.
The temple had been destroyed. The stones had all fallen down -- actually, they had been burned up. For Luke’s readers the issue wasn't, "When is this going to happen," but, "Now that it has happened, what do we do? What does it mean?"
The first thing Jesus tells them is not to be led astray. There will be false messiahs and those who claim they can predict the future and about them Jesus could not be clearer: “Do not go after them.”3 “Do not fall for any of that.”4
Even though it may seem like the world is falling apart when we see wars, famines, earthquakes, and people of faith betrayed and persecuted if we focus a question such as: ‘when the end will come? When will it all come crumbling down?’ we may be missing the main point.
I’m not sure that Jesus described the end of the world so that you and I can stockpile food, move to a bunker and live in fear, or stand around and wait. What Jesus is calling us to do is to live our lives to the fullest. We are not waste our time trying to figure out when the end might come but to face the future with courage and hope.
That is what brought people to Jesus.
It is the hope that was expressed by Isaiah when he heard the word of the LORD say to him and to his people:
“Pay close attention now: I’m creating new heavens and a new earth. All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten, Look ahead with joy. Anticipate what I’m creating: I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy, create my people as pure delight"5
Strangely enough while Jesus is painting a dark picture of reality the Old Testament prophet Isaiah is offering “enduring witness to the positive power of hope.”6
[The words are] meant to reassure and inspire hope in struggling believers. And yet that hope does not deny the struggles and the pain. There are signs of chaos in the world and in ourselves. And yet, just as the prophets of old read the signs of the times as both frightening and hopeful, so must we. What seems to the world as a terrible time of chaos and destruction can be an opportunity to hold on and stand firm.
Though the prophecies of Luke 21 sound harsh, and though they are honest about the struggles still to be engaged, there is a strong word of faith in the ultimate fulfillment of God’s purposes and in God’s presence with believers.
When asked, “What time is it?” Christians are able to combine both realism and hope, honesty about the pain of the present age and yet confidence in the ultimate fulfillment of God’s will for the world. What time is it? It’s always the time where God is moving for redemption of all of this groaning creation, though the how and when of God’s redemption may not be self-evident to us. 7
I Know that I began our time together today having some fun with the biblical soothsaying skills of televangelist Jack van Impe but when I was searching for more information about him on-line I came across a website that reported that his program had been cancelled and he had died.
I was not surprised because he has been in wretched health for years and was 88.
Then I went to the website of his program and discovered that there he and his wife were in a taping to be aired yesterday talking about things that did indeed happen this past week. The crises he and Rexella were talking about were current! And while Jack didn’t look so good I was relieved that he was still with us and that the thirty minutes of pure free-association between he and his wife would still be around.
However, in reading on further, Jack became a perfect example of what Jesus and Isaiah were talking about. He was living his life between the now of this world and the “not yet” of the world to come. He seemed to understand that reports of the end, or our end, may come but we are called to press on.
I hate to admit it, but Van Impe was absolutely theologically correct when, commenting on his reported passing and his ill health, he said with a laugh: “Until the Lord takes me, I’m going to keep doing what He commanded [me] to do.”8
That’s right Jack! May what you said of yourself be true for us all!
__________
1. Jvim.com
2. George A. Barton, “The Temple of Herod.” The Jewish Encyclopedia. Accessed November 16, 2019. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14304-temple-of-herod.
3. St. Luke 21:8c. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
4. St. Luke 21:8c. (MSG) [MSG=The Message]
5. Isaiah 65:17-18. (MSG)
6. Martin E. Marty, “Could a Revived 'Theology of Hope' Restore Faith in Hopeless Times?” Religion News Service. November 5, 2019. https://www.ministrymatters.com/preach/entry/9937/could-a-revived-theology-of-hope-restore-faith-in-hopeless-times.
7. William H. Willimon, “What Time Is It?” Pulpit Resource 48, no. 4. Accessed November 16, 2019. https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/9825/november-17-2019-what-time-is-it.
8. “Jack Van Impe Dead Or Alive? Television Veteran's Health Status.” LIVERAMPUP. Accessed November 16, 2019. http://liverampup.com/entertainment/jack-van-impe-dead-alive-health.html.
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