The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
November 18, 2007
Thanksgiving & Consecration Sunday
A Sunday in Dialogue with Islam
Scripture Readings:

Hebrew Scriptures – Isaiah 65: 17-25

¹⁷ …I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. ¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. ¹⁹ I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. ²⁰ No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. ²¹ They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

²² They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. ²³ They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—and their descendants as well.

²⁴ Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. ²⁵ The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

Gospel – Luke 21: 5-19

⁵When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, [Jesus] said, ⁶“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

⁷They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” ⁸And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.

⁹“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” ¹⁰Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; ¹¹there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

¹²“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. ¹³This will give you an opportunity to testify. ¹⁴So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; ¹⁵for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. ¹⁶You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. ¹⁷You will be hated by all because of my name. ¹⁸But not a hair of your head will perish. ¹⁹By your endurance you will gain your souls.

“What Are the Signs?”

At a time of considerable stress and hardship, some of those who surrounded Jesus asked worriedly for some “signs” about whether or not the world as they knew it was coming to an end. His response was to say that our lives as God’s people will take place in a world full of upheaval and violence. Hard times are always coming, and Jesus only needed to know history to be an accurate prophet. And so he says to us today, as he did to his followers then:

So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; …I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. …. You will be hated by all because of my name…[and yet] by your endurance you will gain your souls.¹

As if natural aging and decay weren’t enough, situations in the world take their toll on us as well. So the question becomes how to understand our place in all of this.

As witness after witness in the Bible tells us, the way out is always through, never around. Wars and rumors of wars, perpetrators of violence and victims of violence, all become opportunities for us to become witnesses of God’s enduring acts of creation and love.

Some may object that wolves are just made to eat lambs, that the image of the kingdom of God in Isaiah is naïve because the image fails to take into account the wonderful balance of nature and the complexities of the food chain with us, of course, at the top – what are a few dead birds drowned in oil anyway?² But did Isaiah mean animals or people? The “wolves” are always eating the “lambs” of this world – rich and powerful nations gorge themselves while the poor nations starve. Is this the natural order of things? This is not the “holy mountain” of Isaiah’s vision where none are to be hurt or destroyed.³

And neither is the “new Jerusalem” being planned for and implemented currently by the Israeli military a vision of God’s – where ancestral olive groves and Palestinian homes are being bulldozed to the ground so that only Jewish settlements may be planted. Janet Lahr Lewis, a missionary with the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church serving as liaison between ecumenical groups and Israel and Palestine, has said this:

“After taking a typical Holy Land tour and seeing the devastating consequences of the ongoing illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, I experienced not only a ‘call,’ but rather an undeniable ‘push’ to go back to that not-so-holy land and do whatever I could to help bring about ‘freedom for the oppressed.’” She sold her house in the U.S. and volunteered for several years, first in the Galilee, then Bethlehem where, as she said, she “lived with my neighbors under the heavy hand of injustice and military occupation.” She also observed,

“Christ calls us all to be ministers of justice. Through my work with the Palestinian Christian community, I will be able to answer this call by working for a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis, so that reconciliation and healing can occur.”⁴

One religion will never rule over all of humanity. With people of good will like Janet – Christian, Jew or Muslim – a “new Jerusalem” will look very different from the one that we are seeing being destroyed today. Nation rising against nation⁵ is not the way of the people of God – whether it be in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the “holy land.” As the poet, William Butler Yeats, so poignantly penned it:

Had I but heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light.
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half light.
I would spread the cloths under your feet;
But I being poor have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
tread softly because you tread on my dreams.⁶

We speak of an exodus and of revolution, but always it is the innocent who suffer, families and whole cultures that are destroyed. It does call for poetry, and in keeping with our theme in worship today, another writer has proposed an approach to our collective future that we might consider adopting – he writes:

The door of hope is still open:
Things are not what they might be –
Even when what they might be
Isn’t totally different from what they are. ….
We still believe,
Or many of us do, what the exodus first taught,
Or what it has commonly been taken to teach,
About the meaning and possibility of reality
And about its proper form:
First, wherever you live, it is probably Egypt.
Second, there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land.
Third, “the way to the land is through the wilderness.”
There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.⁷

There are some who want a singular truth and no questions asked, and yet we live in a world of great uncertainties – even chaos. But to join with God in the ongoing act of creation we must face the challenge in the chaos and reform it – to make of it an order in which all people can live. This is what must be meant to live with creative imagination – which may sometimes be passion and sometimes simply curiosity – and to put things into a new form. It's what Einstein did when he proclaimed that matter and energy are related in one formula, E = mc2. Humanity is continuously being called upon to do that, even if on a lesser scale.⁸

The physical city of Jerusalem holds a revered place in the theology of Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. The “new Jerusalem,” however, has always been a symbol of God's presence in our midst. From our collective history as the children of Abraham, Jerusalem has become a symbol of our inner destiny – a state of spiritual peace which may yet still feel like a long-lost home.⁹ It is, in the final analysis, a place of peace and happiness that will come, not as a literal “end of the world,” but as a new presence of God in the hearts and minds and lives of all people – people like you and me. For Jews, Muslims and Christians, then, it ought to be the goal both of human history and of our individual human lives. It will be brought about, though, not through some kind of spectacular apocalyptic intervention from God, but through our own free choices and rational thinking.

In the words of yet another artist:

We're coming to the edge,
Running on the water,
Coming through the fog,
Your sons and daughters.

We the great and small
Stand on a star
And blaze a trail of desire
Through the dark'ning dawn.

Let the river run,
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem.¹⁰

* * *