|
Tonight our Holy Week pilgrimage through Jerusalem takes us to a very special place – the Mount of Olives.
The Hebrews had started off in the Holy Land as hill farmers: they were shepherds who grazed their flocks on the high land. Only after some time did they become strong enough and numerous enough to capture the lower lying towns – Jerusalem itself was only subdued and made safe in the time of King David. So the mountains – which included anything higher than the merest hillock – were places close to their sense of identity, and hence natural places to feel the nearness of God. And vice-versa; not for nothing is it “the valley of the shadow of death” in the 23rd Psalm.
Among the high places the Mount of Olives held a particular significance with regard to the apocalypse – that ushering in by God of the Day of Judgement – as Zechariah 14 tells us that when God comes to defeat evil he will plant his feet upon this particular spot. Because of that tradition burial places on the Mount of Olives remain especially prized to this day, though I’m not very sure what to make of the fact that should the Lord appear there to usher in the rising of the dead, one of the first people to greet him will be the famous newspaper owner and pensions fund plunderer, Robert Maxwell.
Hence the significance of Jesus speaking to his disciples about his own understanding of the apocalypse in this very place. There is an added weight in speaking of something in the place where it will happen – it’s like all those T.V. reporters pictured outside the Palace of Westminster, giving a report about what Parliament is expected to do. They could say the same words from inside a studio in West London or Manchester, but the location gives certain strength to their prognostications.
The action of God in bringing this present age to an end runs deep in the New Testament. But as it does so it undergoes a subtle shift. In the earliest writings – some of St. Paul’s letters - there is an obvious expectation that the final return of Jesus is so imminent that most will live to see it. And the behaviour of the very earliest post Pentecost Christian communities in the Acts of the Apostles bears that out; you might as well sell up and distribute your wealth because any day now the end will come.
What you and I know is that it didn’t. By the time that Matthew is setting pen to paper the Christian community is having to reckon with the likelihood that they will live out their earthly lives before Jesus returns. The same apocalyptic stories are told, but the meaning is not “Jesus will be back shortly” but “Stand firm”.
For us, as we join Jesus and his followers on the Mount of Olives tonight, it has to be the same message. We can expect, as the hymn puts it, “fighting within and fears without”.
Thirty years ago I persuaded a non-Christian friend to attend a series of evangelistic talks with me that were given by the great Anglican preacher John Stott. For the first three he remained impervious. The fourth was entitled “What’s the catch?” It covered the hardships and difficulties of being a Christian. That was the night my friend came to faith. He couldn’t believe in a God who made everything easy, but he could believe in one who called us to take up our cross and follow him.
The sufferings of Christians in this country today are more subtle and invisible than the first disciples met, but they are no less potent for that and Jesus’ words give us two major re-assurances.
The first is simply the knowledge that this is how it has to be. We’re not especially sinful because we are facing these hardships. And the fact that even the church itself suffers divisions and dissensions is no more or less than we are to expect – it’s not a sign that we are particularly evil or faithless. Indeed perhaps the greatest danger for us is to go the other way and assume that because we are enduring hardship we must be right. I do as a bishop get the occasional letter or email that has, as its core arguments; “because you disagree with me and won’t let me do what I want that means you’re persecuting me. And because you’re persecuting me, that means I’m right”. Actually, no it doesn’t.
There’s a second reassurance in Jesus’ words, the reassurance that despite all that oppresses us, God is still in control. We do not live on the front line between two equal powers of good and evil, we live in a world where, through Jesus’ own work, evil has been defeated, what we experience are its death throes. All will be brought to that glorious completion which is the fulfilment of the purposes of God.
One final reflection on the Mount of Olives, is that we must remain firm in resisting the importation into these shores of a particular apocalyptic heresy that has infected some American Christians namely the desire to destroy the world and its resources in order to fulfil the apocalyptic prophesies of the New Testament, and so usher in the return of Jesus. Sometimes it’s expressed as a desire for military conflict in the Middle East – as that would fulfil some passages of Revelation. More insidiously it crops up with the rejection of all environmental and conservation issues on the basis that the sooner we can use up the world’s resources the sooner Jesus will come back. It’s a long way from the central theme of being stewards of creation that God commands us to be in Genesis.
In those days before Good Friday we know that the hopes of the disciples were high. Some, at least, thought that at any moment Jesus might begin the final battle and usher in the Kingdom of God. Up on the Mount of Olives, in the place where it was all prophesised to start, that must have felt particularly likely. But, instead of declaring Holy War, Jesus warns them of the years that lie ahead, and assures them of the God who will be with them all the way. As he does you and me.
Bishop David
Click to return to the list of further sermons.
Go to top
|
