Feeling Like Humpty Dumpty?

In Patience You Possess Your Soul

Luke 21:5-18

Isaiah 12:2

A Sermon Prepared for the Hollywood Presbyterian Church

November 14, 2010

Imagine that you have a cart full of apples, all neatly stacked one upon another.  Your apples are stacked in hopes you can sell them by the side of the road.  Everything works just fine until someone moves an apple from the bottom row.  Then what happens?  The apple cart gets upset and they all come rolling down and rolling away.  It is difficult to face, but often this is exactly the way we order our lives.  The apples are shiny and nice and the price is good and we hope to have a nice day.  Everything is just fine until someone says something.  Then we say something back.  Something happens.  Before we know it we are running down the street trying to pick up our apples from the side of the road.  From my own experience I could use any number of other examples.  Many days my life feels just like a cliché.  My eggs were all so fine and I kept them in one basket.  That was great until I dropped the basket.  Splat!  Once, my ducks were all in a nice, neat little row.  Now it is every duck for himself.  Then there was one about something hitting a fan… Oh never mind that one.    

You understand what I am talking about.  Troubles invade our lives such that the plans we once had for the way we would like to be living do not seem to be working out as we expected.  Something got in the way, and now we are facing a disaster caused by a disaster caused by another disaster.  In the words of Sophocles; “Trouble brings to trouble yet more trouble.”  (Ajax)  Like dominoes things fall one after another.  We are trying to put things back together again, but our efforts only seem to be making things worse.  Our nice apple cart is well on its way to being apple sauce in the gutter. 

John Prine sang it like this: 

“Dear Abbey Dear Abbey, my fountain pen leaks.

My wife hollers at me, my kids are all freaks. 

Every side I get up on is the wrong side of bed

If it weren’t so expensive I’d wish I was dead. 

Signed Unhappy.” 

One day, Jesus and his disciples were in Jerusalem looking at all the fine stones and beautiful buildings.  The disciples commented to Jesus how fine it all looked.  Jesus said; “As for these things which you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be cast down.” 

This is what we see in our lives every day.  The stones we thought we had set up so well are tumbling down.  The problem when your personal stones are coming apart is that your personal misfortune looks and sounds and feels exactly like the end of the world.  If you talk to people who are obsessed with the end of the world, you will often find that it is not the whole world they are talking about.  It is their personal world that is ending.  The whole world is a metaphor for their personal world.  We all face worry and anxiety and uncertainty.  Often, we share those with each other and we develop an idea that the whole world is ending.  As we look for our fears to become reality, we also believe that all the bad people who have caused us so much pain will be destroyed while we will be rescued from the destruction.  In “Rapture Thinking” people believe that they will be taken away from all the tribulation and the bad people will be left behind.  There will be a golden age, a thousand years of utopia, or heaven on earth.  That is all very romantic and attractive to people who are having a hard time, but the fact is we are all still here.  Usually believing that it will all soon end is not the best way to solve the problems you have in the here and now.  Problems have a way of just not going away that easily. 

When our lives fall into a crisis there is a sense in which we look upon the destruction of our personal, earthly Jerusalem.  The city which would be our pride and joy, the very symbol of our faith, the symbol of God working things out in history, the way things are supposed to be, that Jerusalem comes tumbling down.  Eventually, not one stone remains upon another.  We look at the dust and the pieces and we wonder what is next.  It looks like we are facing the end of the age. 

When Jesus said this about the earthly temple, his disciples asked him about the end of the age.  When would it come?  What would the signs be? 

The first teaching Jesus offers about the end of times is found in Matthew 24:4, Mark 13:5, and Luke 21:8.  All three verses say the same thing.  “See that you are not led astray.”  

With respect to earth shaking trouble, crises, disasters, wars and rumors of wars, Jesus says; “These things must take place.” 

In the introduction to the whole Book of Revelation, John repeats the language of “must take place” by saying; “The Revelation of Jesus Christ God gave to him to show his servants what must soon take place.”  

When all hell breaks loose upon the earth, and bad goes to worse, and everything falls to pieces Jesus says; “This will be a time for you to testify” (Luke 21:13) These words have been translated in various ways.  The KJV reads, “It shall turn to you as a testimony.” The best translation I can offer is; “This shall all work out for you as testimony.” 

Finally, in Luke 21:19 Jesus sums it all up by saying; “In your patience you will possess your souls.”  Other translations say; “By your endurance you will gain your lives.”  These words echo the words of revelation 14:12, right in the middle of the worst of the worst we read; “Here is a call for the patience of the saints.” 

If we take all this and we put it together we get the following list of observations.

1. End times teachings can easily lead us astray.  By our focus on what may or may not be happening in the tumults, disasters, and disturbances of the world, we can easily misunderstand and be deceived.  Our task is not to interpret these times with political or geographic accuracy so as to say what it all means or what it is all leading up to.  Our task is to remain faithful in the face of it all.  We can’t always understand exactly what is going on.  What we can do is to be faithful throughout every moment. 

2. All of this mess must happen.  It all must take place.  It is a necessary part of our lives here on this earth.  As long as we are here, these disruptive events and other problems will be a part of our lives. 

3. If we are faithful, these hardships will provide us with an opportunity to testify.  This is where I see the center of the whole situation.  The terrible troubles we go through offer us the opportunity to testify, to bear witness to our faith.  It is all happening to us so that we can one day tell others how God was working in our lives.  One of the greatest blessings we can offer each other is the encouragement we have learned by the tough times we have already gone through.  We are survivors and we can testify as to how it is that God has brought us through safe thus far.   

4. The solution for us when times are hard is to hold on to our faith and to be patient.  Our patience lets us possess our own souls.  We can be tossed about by the tides of misfortune, thrown this way and that by the stormy seas of circumstance, but through it all we will possess our soul.  That part of us that holds the reflected essence of God will be unchanged through it all.  Our soul will survive it all.  We must never allow the evil we experience to possess our souls.  We must never allow our fear, our worry, or our uncertainty to possess our souls.  By your patience YOU will possess your souls.  Your soul is the gift of God within you.  It belongs to you and it belongs to God and it will endure as long as you are patient in tribulation. 

To do this we should remember the words of Isaiah 12:2

“Behold, God is my salvation.  I will trust and will not be afraid.  The LORD is my strength and song, and he has become my salvation.” 

God is my Salvation.  The Hebrew word for salvation is Y’eshuah.  This is the same as the name Jesus.  We will go through danger of all sorts.  We will feel threatened.  We will feel the pinch of tribulation.  Hardships, pain, and calamities are the way we know we are still alive.  Through it all though, we have a Savior.  We have a savior who has been tempted as we have, yet without sinning.  (See Hebrews 4:15)  He has been through what we are going through.  He knows the pain of body, mind, and spirit that we are suffering.  He knows our low points.  He has taken it all into himself on the cross.  He has redeemed it all, brought it all back from death and loss.  He is our God. 

I will trust.  Few things in life are as difficult as those situations which make it difficult for us to trust again.  Friends betray friends, and trust is broken.  Spouses betray each other, and trust is broken.  The worst of all losses is often the loss of trust.  The challenge we face though is that we must get a hold of ourselves and make ourselves trust again.  The secret to trusting again is that we must first trust in the God who created us, who called us into life.  Our trust needs to be trust in God first and foremost.  After we trust firmly in our Creator, we can then trust in all the various other people who fill these lives we are living.  Trust in God comes first.  Trust in God guides and shapes and directs our trust in each other. 

I will not be afraid.  The only way I can not be afraid is by believing that whatever I must go through will be part of a larger journey toward fellowship with the God who loves me.  I may go through pain and sorrow and loss and grief, but it is all taking me somewhere.  There is a destination.  There is a larger purpose to this whole journey.  Therefore I will not fear.  God is with me to deliver me and I will get where I am going. 

The LORD is my strength.  I am weak, but He is strong.  I am weak in nearly every respect, but the God who loves me is with me and He will strengthen me through all forms of tribulation.  My weakness is excused.  It is forgiven, and it is not relevant to the situation.  There is one here who is strong, who is invincible, and that one is our Lord and Savior.  If the LORD is our strength, we will never grow tired of the battle. 

The LORD is my song.  There is music within our hearts.  There is a song inside each of us.  It may start out as a sad song, but it will quicken into a love song, then into a song of grace and praise.  That song is the Lord living within us.  The LORD is our song, so let us sing that song with all the breath we have. 

He has become my salvation.  Our message in this scripture ends where it began.  God has become Jesus and Jesus has become God.  Within our hearts, Jesus has become Lord, and our Lord is our salvation.  Be of good cheer.  Be of good hope.  Be faithful no matter what this day may bring, for God is in the midst of this city and we need never be afraid.  Amen.