Sermon at Centenary UMC on July 11, 2010
Jisun Kwak

Don’t let them look up!

Luke 21:25-28

A story for today, before the sermon.
It seems a minister was saying goodbye, and having delivered his final sermon he was bidding his flock farewell at the church doors. There was much sad talk of how he would be missed, but all that was nothing compared to the outright tears and sobbing of one of the older members, who seemed possessed by grief. “Don’t be so upset,” the pastor murmured modestly, “I’m sure in his own good time the Lord will bring you a new minister every bit as good as I am.”
“Ah but that’s it,” sobbed the lady, “I’ve been a member here for almost 50 years and about a dozen ministers, and they just get worse and worse and worse!”
**************

In Luke’s Gospel, the twenty first chapter,
The twenty eighth verse:
Now when these things begin to take place,
look up and raise your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.

I was having late dinner with my mother and Lydia, my daughter, at the parsonage, having many unopened boxes around in the evening of the hottest day, opening all the windows and doors for air conditioner of the parsonage had some problem. It reminded me of the time when I had just moved in to the parsonage at Thiells, New York, three years ago.
In a very hot summer evening, I was having a late dinner in the kitchen with still unopened boxes around leaving the back door and the front door opened. It was pretty dark. Suddenly a bird flew in through the front door and flew out through the back door which made me freeze for a while. It happened just like that, I did not even get a chance to see what kind of bird it was. It was a dark colored small creature. I would like to think it as a sparrow, certainly not a bat. Do you have sparrows around here? Have you had such an experience?
Life, seems to me, like the swift flight of a bird flying in at one door and immediately out at another, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark from which he had emerged…

Life like the traverse of a bird, out of darkness, across a lighted room, and back into the darkness again.
This new church year into which we are entering is a questioning time; a time much given to thoughts, questions, images like these. It can be, for many, an unsettled difficult time, a time when we feel caught between the ordered the rigid but familiar routines and the easy, more relaxed and sunny days but perhaps do not know what to do with the kids being out of school and demanding all the attention. I love school…

There can be a haunting sense of in-between-ness;
a yearning for the recent past
a reluctance to face up to the demanding present
an uneasy change ahead.

Perhaps we cling to the past, going through the motions of work but snatching every opportunity to return: “What were we doing this time last week, last month, last year?”- picturing, cherishing in the mind scenes, celebrations which were so recently illuminating our days.

We can look back.
A second option is to look around, to survey the manifold diversions offered within this present moment, scanning the catalogues for some new toy, the concert, TV movie listings to ease the pain, distract us into numbness.
Or again we can look forward, take a mental giant stride ahead into the vacation or next time off, some future holiday and survive by counting days, making rosy colored plans.

The trouble with all this is that those questions still remain, the questions we began with, of meaning, purpose destiny.
“Are we, this race of humankind, beings of infinite spiritual worth; or merely the latest in a series of biological experiments, a rather messy way for DNA to perpetuate itself?
These can be personal questions of self value, self judgment.

What am I here for? Where am I going?
What happened to all those shining promises I made, goals I set not that long ago?
What hope is there left for me to know love, achievement, peace?”

Is our world, like this great country America, with all its culture, museums, hospitals, cathedrals doomed to decay and extinction because of the warfare in our streets our perverse inability to learn to live together? Is there honestly any hope, any purpose, any promise for the future?
Questions… questions…
And no matter how we twist, attempting to avoid them, how we try to push them out of sight and therefore out of mind, they remain, and will haunt us until the day we answer them, or the day we die.
“There comes a midnight hour…” wrote Soren Kierkegaard:
There comes a midnight hour when all men must unmask.
And so, from all our frantic looking: looking back, looking around, looking forward, we return to this old book and to our text which bids us to look up:
Now when these things begin to take place,
look up and raise your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.

That’s what we come to church for, don’t we?
Oh I know, I’ve heard a thousand times, the reasons cynics give for church attendance:
that we come here only to see and be seen,
that we seek within these walls an escape, a cozy little womb with soft and easy answers, to protect us from the hard, real world.
I’ve heard the accusations; and in part, at times, they may be almost true.
But at a deeper level, at a level of which you and I may often be unaware, we come here to look up.
I to the hills will lift mine eyes (sang the psalmist)
From whence shall come mine aid?My safety cometh from the Lord
Who heaven and earth hath made.
I stand at the front door of the parsonage and look in.
If I look around me, there is much that I can see. There is the ceiling that needs repairing. There is the walls need to be painted. There still are lots of boxes need to be opened, a host of chores that cry out for completion before the day is done.

But if I look out, lift my eyes beyond, if I look up, above the trees into distance; there are bright blue skies with birds and fresh air,and I pause, remember who I am, why I came here, and I know peace.

We come here to look up to that radiant, blue sky, to spend at least one hour in focusing beyond the immediate and the urgent, to the eternal, the sublime.
And we do this, not as an escape, but rather as a necessary corrective, as the only way to gain perspective, to set all the daily hassles and hustles into their proper place, within the vision and the purpose of our God.
Now when these things begin to take place,
look up and raise your heads, because your
redemption draws near.
What do we see when we look up?
When we look up through the eyes of worship and faith we see the God of ages past and ages yet to be.
Again, when we look up we see a table, a table spread with simple bread and wine, a table at which grace is said, and then broken, poured and shared, all in the name of One who loved enough to die for us and rose from death to live for us forever;
a table around which all classes, clans, kindreds, all parties and persuasions are as one, made whole within the family of God;
a table at which you and I will find the strength, the power, the purpose to take up again the tasks we have been set to.
In C. S. Lewis’ miraculous little book,
The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape – a veteran in the legions of Satan – writes to his nephew Wormwood – a very junior devil – on techniques for trapping Christians and luring them to Hell.
“The church…” he counsels:
The church is a fertile field, if you just keep them bickering over details, structure, organization, money, property, personal hurts and misunderstandings…

One thing you must prevent. Don’t ever let them look up and see the banners flying, for if they ever see the banners flying you have lost them forever.

“Don’t ever let them look up…
and see the banners flying.”

The banner of a God of love and mercy.
The banner of a Church which, despite human faults and failings, is still the mightiest force for good in all this vast creation,
The banner of a Christ whose body and whose blood have given us new life, true life in love for Him and for each other.

Look up today with me, as we begin this new journey together,
look up beyond all the petty inconveniences and disagreements that irritate our life together, look up and see the banners flying.

Look up and see the message of God’s love for this charming city, Metuchen, the gospel of Christ’s cross for all who share his sufferings on our streets, in our hospitals and prisons, the promise of the kingdom for all who live in darkness and despair.

And in that promise, beneath those banners and grasped in God’s almighty hand let us go forth to live the destiny we were created for, let us go forth in joy to serve a weary waiting world.

In Christ we pray, and let us say, AMEN.