Lenten Preaching Series: Barbara Brown Taylor

15:20 Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire and lighten us with your celestial fire. For if you are with us, then nothing else matters. And if you are not with us, nothing else matters. Be with us then, we pray, in the name of your beloved. Amen. So I'm so sorry you had to hear that.

15:46 At lunchtime, no less, on a Sunday Thursday in Memphis, Tennessee, you had every right to come here for 30 minutes of rest, from the sirens both inside and outside your heads before heading to the waffle shop for some chicken salad and Boston cream pie. Then, bam, apocalypse now, like the desolating sacrilege just strolled in here smelling like fresh tar and sat down right next to you. Churches are called sanctuaries for a reason. In some countries, including this one, people still flee to places like this when they're being chased by people who mean to do them harm. When they can't think of any other safe place to run, they search the sky for a steeple and hope that the door below it isn't locked. because right or wrong, there's the expectation that this is a place of peace and of protection where the Bayad guys slam into an invisible barrier at the door and bounce back into the street when they hit it.

16:57 Even on an ordinary Thursday, there's the reasonable expectation that this is a place where a certain order prevails, where people have sat in these same pews since 1832, praying prayers that Christians have prayed for centuries to a God who's been around a lot longer than that. Just yesterday, someone noticed the descending dove on my necklace and pointed to that stained glass window installed, I think, more than 100 years ago with the same image on it, continuity.

17:32 One of religion's central functions is to provide this kind of community to people whose lives are both fragile and short. Even if you make it to a hundred, you won't last as long as a nice chest of drawers. or a really good piece of crystal. I mean, every time I use my grandma Lucy's fancy etched wine glass, I can't believe she's been gone for almost 70 years while I am still holding that glass in my hand. Whose idea was that? For a glass to last longer than a grandma. Maybe that's what we're really doing here this morning, hoping to deepen our ties to the eternal God who can give fragile people like us something to hold on to when the headlines howl and the walls shake and the earth moves beneath our feet.

18:34 I don't remember things being so bad 70 years ago, but I think that's because I was four years old. My father came through the Great Depression, My mother peeled the tinfoil off her gum wrappers to aid the war effort during World War II. When I was six, my first grade teacher taught us how to crawl under our desks in case of nuclear attack. That would have been the Bay of Pigs, right? Then Korea and Vietnam, all those assassinations in the 60s, the Cold War with Russia. Then there was a little giddy period of disco dancing and free love before the AIDS epidemic and then the Gulf War and Rwanda and 9-11. These days, I think it would be hard for even the most ardent optimist to argue with the poet William Butler Yeats, who wrote, Things fall apart.

19:42 In a poem called The Second Coming, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed. And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

20:09 He wrote that in 1921. But my point is that if you came here looking for sanctuary from the world outside, I'm afraid today's not your day. That awful bit at the beginning of that reading came straight out of Jesus' mouth, the good shepherd of the sheep, describing a doomsday full of sacrilege and suffering and woe. Episcopalians are often protected from such things, not only by education and some wealth, but also, I think, by an unflappably sensible way of reading Scripture that helps us ignore some of the more flamboyant parts. I'll bet most of you, if you're Episcopalian, can count on one hand the number of sermons you've heard on the book of Revelation in an Episcopal church. Am I right?

21:02 I'm pretty sure your clergy have given you no help at all in identifying the Antichrist, interpreting the mark of the beast, or figuring out whether the rapture will happen before, or during, or after the Great Tribulation. True or false? When I taught at Piedmont College, I offered a special topics course on apocalyptic literature, something I knew little about before offering the class. Fifteen students showed up, which was pretty good, including several who had read the entire Left Behind series, and only one of whom was an unflappable Episcopalian. By the time final exams finally came around, honest to goodness, the biggest surprise was my own naivete about what a powerful hold the end time had on the popular imagination. Once you start looking for it, it's everywhere. It's not only at the bookstore and the music store and on television and at the movies, but also predictably, I suppose, given all those other venues in American politics, where millions of voters are watching the Middle East for signs that the end time alarm clock is about to go off. What's more, a significant number of those same people are willing to do whatever they can to help move the digits on that clock forward, even if they have to fiddle with him a little bit.

22:38 Unlike Jesus' disciples who prompted his doomsday speech when they asked him for signs of the end time, these people are pretty sure on the whole that they know what the signs are. They've studied the scriptures. They've kept up with the headlines. They've done the math. And while different groups have reached different conclusions, what they have in common is a dedication to being awake when the end time comes. They have no intention of being left behind, and they seem to know exactly what is required for anyone who wants to go with them to meet their Lord in the air. This is in Scripture.

23:20 This doesn't make them bad people, though their certainty, certainty about who is evil and who is good makes them pretty scary people sometimes. but in light of today's gospel reading, I think they may have essentially misunderstood what Jesus was saying. Along the way, they may also have missed something essential about the nature of faith. I don't think that's hard to do. When you're listening to him talk about the signs of the end time, I think it's easy to believe he's offering you some clues to a puzzle you should be able to solve. Good shepherd of the sheep. Just figure out what the desolating sacrilege is and where it has been set up. Then figure out which mountains you're going to flee to. My husband Ed had a rough time lately when somebody who came to our house for an at-home physical said, what's your disaster plan?

24:15 And I called everybody we knew and they said, well, it's to come to your house. Then figure out how to tell the real Messiah from the false ones and real prophets from imposters. Then dedicate yourself to staying awake until the alarm goes off, not a bad idea, without getting distracted by all the mundane needs and griefs of everyday life.

24:44 That way, maybe you can be excused when things fall apart. Or at the very least, maybe you can keep your grip when the blood-dimmed tide is loosed upon the world. Because you've paid attention. Because you have done your homework. Because you have stayed awake, trimming your wick, while more fragile people have fallen asleep all around you. So you can avoid getting sucked down the drain with them when the time comes. Because you've read the signs rightly. Maybe you can hang on. God knows I understand that wish. I even understand how it's possible to hear Jesus commending that very course of action. But when I listen again, I hear him saying something closer to the exact opposite. This is pure speculation, okay?

25:42 But something like this. Give it up, everyone. I know you're scared and when you get scared, the first thing you want to do is run back to once where you felt safe again. Go back to the church the way it was. Go back to the world the way it was.

26:04 But there's no going back because when God's time comes, Scripture says you won't even have time to grab a coat. All those cans of beans you stored in the basement are going to rust right where they are. All that cash you stashed away is going to mildew. God may shorten the suffering, you heard that part, but the rest, out of your hands. So don't be led astray by people who pretend they know a secret way out. out. God's future is not a puzzle you can solve. Any more than life's a game you can win by making all the right choices. But be alert, Jesus says at the end of that passage today. I have already told you everything.

26:56 He may mean he's told us all about the desolating sacrilege and the false prophets and messiahs, but that's hardly what you would call everything. Even he doesn't seem to know when all these things will come to pass. He says, pray that it may not be in winter. Doesn't he know? This leaves us with all the other things he's told us, like the part about loving God with our whole hearts and souls and minds and our neighbors as ourselves, or the part about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, or the part about giving to everyone who asks of us, or the part about trusting God, though the waves of the storm threaten to swamp our faults. Small boat.

27:52 That's just a fraction of the everything that he's already told us, and it's more than enough. It's plenty for now, and it's plenty for any future of God's imagining, which in any case is entirely out of our hands. There will always be people who believe faith requires certainty about everything God has in store and to gain every advantage they can by figuring it all out ahead of time. Yet, it seems entirely possible that faith is closer to the opposite. That is, continuing to live the way we have been taught to live. Though we can't be certain of anything, save our willingness on and off, but back on to trust God with what comes next.

28:50 If you think about it, the world has been ending for someone, somewhere, for as long as anyone can remember. The Caesar, the Tsar, the Ottoman Empire, the passenger pigeon, the world trade towers, TSA at the airport, pre. They've all gone down to the dust, taking whole eras with them And still, ten days from now, it will be Easter again, and even the headlines will soften just a bit at what is coming upon the world. Meanwhile, look at you. Here you still are, shoulder to shoulder, still passing buckets of living water from hand to hand down the generations with plenty more to do, plenty more to love.

29:48 While we stay alert to all the ways, God is always coming into the world. For his son has told us everything. I want to close with a very old prayer and a PS. Let us pray. eternal God who commits to us the swift and solemn trust of life since we do not know what a day may bring forth but only that the hour for serving you is always present may we wake to the instant claims of your holy will not waiting for tomorrow but yielding today Amen.

30:40 The note, this sermon was on short notice. So I want you to know this is the second time it has been preached. And the first time was at St. John's Lafayette Square Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., right across from the White House, on November 19, 2006, 20 years ago, this sermon. 12 days into the second term of George W. Bush's second term. The end is always near.