Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA

By Gregory S. Kaurin, pastor

11/16/03

 

Text: Mark 13:1-8

Do Not Be Alarmed

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

 

In the last three years we’ve had earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars.  Can you remember all the canceled travel plans about this time two years ago?  People stayed home throughout the holidays.  Maybe that’s settled down a bit, but many of us are still on edge about air travel.

And then there was the mail, the scares of anthrax.  For the most part, we’ve gone back to opening our letters without latex gloves, but it still feels like we’re just waiting for the next big scare.

We are pretty well over the earthquake, but I still get an uncomfortable feeling anytime I drive around the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and every once in awhile we hear a new study that the fault lines around here are bigger and worse than thought before.

All we had were gray skies and a light dusting around my house in Montana after Mount St. Helen’s eruption in 1980, but I know that all of us, as much as we dearly love our Mountain when she’s out, all of us look at her a little differently, knowing that one day she, too, will have something to say.

Famines.  Always somewhere in the world, people are dying in numbers that would equal the population of whole towns and cities every day.  And just this past Friday, I learned that—in the United States—the largest per capita concentration of malnutrition and hungry children is not where I would have thought.  I figured most of our hungry people and kids were in the South or maybe the slum districts of the East.

The largest per capita rate of malnutrition in our country is right here on the west side of the Cascade corridor from Oregon and north through Washington.  And, as always, they live alongside many of our nation’s billionaires and multi-millionaires.

And we have had and will have plenty of would-be Messiah’s, even ones who come in Jesus’ Name.  David Koresh, Jim Jones are two that come to mind first, but if we just took five minutes, we could probably think of 20 more cult leaders from the last two decades.

 

Wars, rumors of possible wars, famines and hunger, fake Messiahs, earthquakes… and I have been asked since before my ordination if this is it.  Are we near the end, now?  Or, is this a result of the immediacy of media and 24-hour news channels?

I’m going to use all my Biblical learnin’, all my theological acumen, and prophetic powers together to tell you that I simply do not know.  I don’t think so.  I think things could still get a lot worse before the birthpangs that Jesus described in our gospel lesson.  But I don’t know.

 

I was reading a Bible study by Pastor Karen Bates-Olson who is pastor at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Spokane, Washington, and I think she is right on in finding the center of Jesus’ message whenever he answered thoughts and worries about the end of the world.[i]

This morning it’s right in the middle of verse 7.  Jesus said, “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.”  You have got to do a double take when you read that: wars and rumors of wars, but don’t be alarmed?

This past Wednesday evening we had a prayer service for two of our members who will soon be going with the 81^st to Iraq.  Of course wars and earthquakes and famines alarm us, even if we’re not expecting the end of the world.  These things grab our attention, and need our response.

 

But “war will happen…famines will occur, people will…[claim] to be the Crucified One.” And still we must have an assurance that rises above it all.  We must keep our hold on our vision of God, given to us by Jesus Christ.  The vision given to us is that these things do not get the last say.  The world can do the absolute worst thing.  It killed Jesus who was the very power of God’s Word of life at creation, and yet that wasn’t even the last Word.  The world should have ended then, that day when Life died on the cross.  But it didn’t and never will.  Life will always be stronger than death.

 

If there is something that concerns me more, it’s that I think that in many areas of our Christian church, we have backpedaled all the way to pre-Reformation days in the way that some of the biggest ministries try to scare people into a purer or better faith.  Many people say that the biggest fault in the church in pre-Reformation times was that it was over-ritualized and corrupt.

The real problem was the way that many pastors, priests and religious leaders were using the threats of hell and purgatory, using Jesus as a harsh, vengeful prosecutor of God’s justice, in order to scare people with their very souls and eternal condemnation into financial or personal sacrifices.  They would frighten them out of their minds, and then smile, and assure that, all you have to do is make this sacrifice, send in your money and receive this certificate of indulgence as proof and a reminder of your gift and God’s blessings.

I hear echoes of that today.  I’ve heard preachers literally tell their listeners to “Send in your $1,000 right now, as seed money for your future prosperity, and as a free gift in return, I will send you a copy of my new book, Banking on the Promises of God.” Or something like that.

There are a lot of preachers are banking on all our selfishness and self-worries in order to fund their ministries, and they’re doing it as representatives of Christ. 

Add to it all the signs and portends of our day, wars and rumors of wars, famines and the viciousness of the Mid-east,

Any preacher could convince you that the end is coming at any moment, and then that only they have the real message, or the correct prayer, or the right interpretation of scripture that will save your soul.

 

That message is devastating to the gospel.  The problem is that the whole point of the gospel message is to get us out of our own fears and selfish focus in order to start thinking about others, telling them how God loves them, forgives them and claims them to tell others the GOOD news of our salvation. 

The whole point of assuring you of God’s love, his forgiveness and your salvation is to put to death on Jesus cross all the old self-worried, self-concerned, greediness in us, so that we can truly love God and each other, not for what we can get out of it, but truly love him for all he’s already done.

 

Many people do good and right things in this world for various reasons.  But we will only really be able to obey God completely, with our heart and soul, when we obey him—not out of fear or obligation, not out of selfish desires or worries about our salvation, or the end of the world. 

We can fully and truly obey God when we trust him,

When we trust that he already loves us and has made a room for us.

I am starting to wonder if we are close to needing a new Reformation.

But I’m not talking about digging into our orthodox rules and definitions and doctrine.

I’m talking about winning back the peace and assurance that Jesus Christ won for us.

 

Do not be alarmed, Jesus said, do not be alarmed at any of these things, for he, the Crucified and Risen One, loves and claims you, not to worry and fuss about all this, but definitely to respond to them, with all faith, with all assurance, because his love and forgiveness—not the random actions of nature, or evil and wickedness—will have the last word.

 

I sometimes worry about us, about the church, what we might look like, or if we will finally lose sight of this gospel message altogether.

But we won’t.

Things can even get worse.  But so long as we cling to the promises of God through Jesus Christ, we will stay on this muddy slippery path, and we can even dare to whistle a tune or two as we walk.

We do not need to be alarmed.  We do need to be active.  But not alarmed, Christ is our Captain.

 

May the peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, keep your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.  Amen.