Let us pray. Grace is God, we thank you for this privilege. Speak your word. Now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable unto you O God, our rock, strength, and redeemer.

I invite your attention to two passages of scripture: An oracle and a gospel lesson. In the book of Malachi chapter 4: verses 1 through 2a, you’ll find these words, hear the word of the Lord: “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will neither leave them root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings, You shall go out leaping like cows from the stall.

And now a reading from the third gospel, the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 21: beginning at the 5th verse through the 19: When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “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.” They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place? And 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. 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.”

Then Jesus said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” 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. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance, you will gain your souls.

The Day is Coming. The Day is Coming.

This declarative statement is at once my sermon title and prognostication about the future.

I did not get on the Y2K bandwagon when computer systems were supposed to wreak havoc upon society as 1999 became 2000. I did not become engrossed in Tim LaHaye’s Last Days Left Behind novellas like many of my college peers had. Rapture theology was always in earshot, less than a stone’s throw from the cultural spaces, Black or multiracial, I inhabited and could not avoid. Heaven up there, Hell down there, ark of safety theology was normalized in my Black Baptist evangelical orbit. There was no room for foolishness in this cosmological construct. Get with the program or suffer the consequences.

My father, my first pastor, was theologically astute but boasted no formal seminary training. He was one among a few who did not preach apocalyptical sermons that had no feet, gospel feet, in the world. Hard to peg him as an animated optimist, overly concerned with notions of human progress. He did not ponder philosophical notions of gospel kernel extraction from the scriptures. Neither did he eschew the supernatural nor dismiss the validity of transrational experiences that he and those to whom he preached often reported, simply because his or their testimonies were disobliging to the modern mind. Hard to peg him as a defensive fundamentalist who maintained a divine mystery-suffocating view of scripture’s total inerrancy.

What preoccupied him, a severe arthritic, wheelchair-bound pastor, who had endured great physical suffering from his teenage years until his untimely death at the age of fifty, was his commitment to face the facts of life soberly with an unshakable faith. Faith in a hopeful future that God would someday bring about. More than anything, I respected his thoughts and utter refusal to live a defeated and delusional life. His preaching was simple but not simplistic, caustic if it needed to be. Self-evident theology rooted in experience, tradition, and revelation: God gives grace to the humble, he’d say, brings judgment to the wicked, forgives the contrite and repentant, strengthens the powerless, consoles the fainthearted, makes provisions for the needy, reminds all who doubt God’s power to reverse circumstances, that all things are possible with God, and that it does not yet appear what we shall be when we see Jesus as He is. Such self-evident theology, as he preached it, required no nuance. I heard these convictions repeatedly from the pulpit God had entrusted to him; they were formative, and I am the wiser for having heard and believed in his God, especially as I consider the tough and terrible times in which we are living.

Perhaps this is why the theological pessimism of rapture theology felt a bit foreign, fictitious, and foreboding. And on different grounds, why rose-tinted, untested optimism that could never look suffering square in the face felt dubious, dishonest, and deceitful. I simply knew too much from boyhood to take things at face value. I would not be the next victim of groupthink or follow the leader, without first asking, Where are we going?

The Day is Coming. Not one stone will be left upon another!” Jesus warns. Imposters. False messiahs–the Koreshian type–will come to lead you astray, saying, “I am he.” Don’t believe them! How ominous a sermon. A public one. Jesus speaks not only to his disciples but speaks inside the temple, where all present could hear. Imagine how well this sermon landed on the ears of Jesus’ premodern audience. The picture to gather here is a picture of the twin forces of holy terror and holy grace in a full-on scrimmage, competing for the souls of those hearing this messianic prediction. Terror - wars and insurrections, great earthquakes, famines, and plagues. Grace - time for testimony, wisdom to give it, and the promise of salvation.

This is the competition. And given the immediacy and apocalyptic tenor of Jesus’ words, quite frankly, it is hardly evident that any good news is to be found in Luke 21. “What will be the sign?” his followers inquire. In short, Jesus replies: tough times. “They will arrest you and persecute you” for signing up with me…because of my name, and you will seek asylum, be detained, and separated from relatives; even though they too will betray you. But here’s the promise to you as you live through tough times. As you live through a period of mass delusionment, disillusioned by intense social violence, political malfeasance, and environmental catastrophe, but those who pursue righteousness, righteous causes, holding onto faith while enduring suffering, will have the right words when they need them and have their lives preserved.

The Day is coming. Not one stone will be left upon another!, Jesus warns. Now, if Jesus’s depictions of the end are hard to stomach, the prophet Malachi’s doomsday pronouncements are more terrifying. The time of judgment is coming “like a hot fire furnace. All the proud people will be punished. All the evil people will burn like straw”. The first line of Walter Winks’s prescient work, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, begins with a pressing question with which we all should grapple: How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves?[^1] The day has come for us to not only see the signs but to wrestle with this moral question. How can we, who are in pursuit of righteousness, pursuit of peace, and love, oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves? The answer, says Wink, is to understand the Powers that sustain or subvert human life and take your cue from there.

All the proud people will be punished. All the evil people will burn like straw. But the righteous who revere God “shall go out leaping like cows from the stall.” Promises. Holy Terror, Holy Grace. As we see the gross misdeeds of our country’s highest elected official and the religious approbating forces of so-called family-focused advocates, we too must ask of Jesus, “Are these the times spoken of long ago?” Thanks be to God, these signs of which Jesus speaks within the confines of the attended passage do not end here.

In verses 25 through 27 is the pronouncement of Jesus coming in a cloud with power and glory. Scholars of scripture are all over the map about this. Jesus addressed his first-century hearers not with us in mind. Jesus was addressing his immediate hearers with us in mind, knowing that these signs becoming reality would be beyond the era in which they were spoken. And still others argue that whether speaking with us in mind or not, what he spoke is relevant in any age for those who endure suffering while awaiting relief simply because we have the record.

However we arrive at it, we musn’t overlay our 21st century dilemma on these texts, but we who are alive and remain Christ’s followers must in every age ask of a living and speaking God, “What will be the sign of your coming?”

This is not the Roman army destroying Jerusalem, this is America engaged in the illusion of her own exceptionality, stoking international conflict, complicit in genocidal programs, this is what Walter Brueggemann terms “opulence cum barbarism” rooted in an ideology of individualism that views neighbor as an impediment.[^2] This is us. The disillusioned. The victims of social violence and unrest. Onlookers of political misdeeds and environmental catastrophe. Us. The demoralized faithful living a destabilized existence are called to serve this present age. The day is coming for us. For us, too. May we be found pursuing righteousness and supporting righteous causes, holding onto faith while enduring suffering, knowing that we are encircled by generative and revelatory promises that our testimonies of faith in a living Savior will be preserved. That we will be given wisdom that won’t require pen or tablet. That we will experience the joy of salvation because our hearts are open to God and our souls, to use the words of the late Katie Geneva Cannon, have done the work our souls must have.

[^1]: Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992), 3.

[^2]: Walter Bruggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).