Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Interpreting the Signs of the Times"

Text: Luke 12:49-56

about first-century weather forecasting

from Jesus’ own teachings!

A cloud in a particular location

means something specific.

Wind blowing from a certain direction

brings with it a certain weather pattern.

Not too much different from today.

Obviously, less sophisticated . . .

but if you fished for a living,

as several of the disciples did,

your life depended on your learning to

read and interpret the signs of the weather

and stay out of the way if they foretold danger.

Imagine how astounded they would be

at the kinds of long-term interpreting and predicting

we can do today:

We detect a slight rise in temperature

at certain points in the Pacific Ocean,

and we know El Niño is coming.

We don’t know precisely what its effect will be,

but we know enough to issue some warnings

and make preparation

and try at least to mitigate its influence.

We’ve gotten pretty good over time

at interpreting the weather,

though we’re not advanced enough

to have figured out how to manipulate it to our liking!

Which is probably just as well.

There are other kinds of interpreting we do as well,

sometimes without even having to

think very hard about it!

If you’re in the mall

and you see them putting up Christmas decorations,

well, you know it’s almost time for Halloween.

Simple matter of interpretation.

Likewise, if you’re driving along 35E through DeSoto, poor soul,

and a sign informs you that this particular section of construction

is scheduled for completion in December 2004 . . .

you understand that to mean

"you’re toast until at least the year 2006."

If you are a pediatrician, or a veterinarian,

you learn to interpret the signs of illness

in patients who can’t verbalize what they’re feeling.

All of us have certain skills of interpretation

in areas where we have interest,

or training, or experience.

Of course, the examples I just gave

are not exactly the sort of thing Jesus meant

when he talks about "interpret[ing] the present time."

But I mention them because

I think that, sometimes,

when Jesus says things like that,

they sound so strange that

our first reaction is to distance ourselves from it.

"Interpret the present time"?

What does that mean, Jesus?

We wish you would just explain things to us in plain English.

We don’t know how to interpret anything.

Well . . . yes, we do.

We interpret all kinds of things on a daily basis.

But when it comes to matters of faith,

our discomfort level can become pretty intense.

Interpret what about the present time?

And to whom?

And what difference could it possibly make?

Perhaps a certain amount of discomfort

is not a bad thing.

One can certainly find examples of numerous folks

who thought they were

correctly interpreting the present time

and who turned out to be way wrong.

A19th-century group called the Millerites,

who believe their leader had figured

the exact day and hour

when Christ would return and call them home;

so they quit their jobs, sold all their possessions,

left behind family who didn’t see things their way,

gathered on a hillside on The Date,

and waited, and waited . . .

Those poor crazy Heaven’s Gate folks,

believing that a spaceship hiding behind a comet

had come to take them all away . . .

That group that just a few years ago settled in Garland,

because they said the name sounds like "God’s land,"

and waited expectantly for God to appear later that same this year . . .

as far as I know, they are still waiting.

If interpreting the present time

is going to look like any of those,

we would just as soon

run screaming in the opposite direction.

And then of course,

there are those who use the book of Revelation

to "prove" that Israel cannot and must not

cede any land to the Palestinians,

because that will prevent Christ from returning.

And others who find, also in Revelation,

very clear references to nuclear submarines.

There’s a book signing in the Metroplex this weekend

with an author who has written an entire book

about Bible prophecies about America and its future.

And we also don’t want to interpret the present time

if it’s going to sound anything like that.

So most of the time,

we don’t say anything at all,

even if we’d like to.

We keep our faith over here in one box,

and the modern world or the "present time"

over here in a completely separate box.

We’re afraid to bring them together,

because as they bump up against one another,

questions start shooting out

that don’t admit of any easy answers.

Easier to keep them separate, perhaps,

than to deal with the ambiguity that surfaces.

Especially when you’re surrounded by folks

like the Christian Coalition,

who believe that there is a simple answer for everything,

and that they have it.

Nevertheless, Jesus confronts us with the uncomfortable question:

why do you not know

how to interpret the present time?

Why will you not look at the world around you

through the lenses of faith?

It seems to me that he is not requiring

that we have the answers figured out

before we speak . . .

but rather, that it is our responsibility

to raise the faith questions.

We may not be able to persuade everyone around us

that faith should be an important factor

in the decisions we make and the life we live . .

but we need to be clear among ourselves

that it is important.

Let me give you some "for instances"

of the kind of thing I’m talking about.

We’re in the middle of an election year,

which you would have to be both blind and deaf not to know about.

And we have legitimate differences amongst ourselves

over whose economic ideas and policies represent

the greatest good for the greatest number,

and whose notions of foreign policy

will both help keep us safe and make us a better citizen of the world.

Those are important questions, and we need to be asking them.

But we are less and less willing to ask big-picture, structural questions:

Why do you have to be wealthy enough

to attend Eastern prep schools and Yale

in order to be a viable candidate and survive the process?

How many people could we feed, clothe, and shelter –

in this country and around the world –

with the hundreds of millions of dollars we spend

trying to influence how people vote?

To say nothing of the hundreds of millions that are also spent

trying to influence elected officials to vote in favor of special interests

rather than representing their own constituents or their own conscience.

Are we moving toward a system

where it’s less a matter of "one person, one vote"

than "one dollar, one vote"?

These are not simply questions of politics;

they are also questions of faith.

And there is no easy answer to be found in the Bible,

which knows nothing of democracy.

How do we interpret the present time?

Another hot-button issue these days is private property,

land use, rights of landowners.

I’ve actually heard phrases sometimes like

"our sacred right to property ownership"

or a landowner’s "God-given rights."

Well, I’ve read the Bible,

and it’s not in there!

The New Testament ideal seems to be that

believers, anyway, hold all things in common

and no one owns their own stuff.

When the Old Testament discusses land ownership,

it does so in the context of the year of Jubilee,

every 50^th year,

in which all debts are forgiven,

and all land reverts back to its original owner

or his descendants.

In addition, every seventh year

owners were to provide a Sabbath for the land,

to let it rest, to lie fallow.

The Bible envisions a relationship of responsibility

between people and the earth,

and among the people who use what the earth gives.

We don’t hear much about that in our public debate.

How do we interpret the present time?

How do we confront the idolatry of private property?

How do we balance the rights of individuals

with the needs of the community, and the earth itself?

Those aren’t just economic or ecological questions.

They are faith questions.

And speaking of economics . . .

Is a company’s CEO really worth

200 times what its lowest-paid employee is worth?

Is Alex Rodriguez – whether he’s a Ranger or a Yankee –

really worth 100 times more than a public school teacher?

Why has the city of Dallas willing to talk about spending up to $400 million

to house and shelter a wealthy football team and its multimillionaire owner,

but can’t gather the political will to spend a lousy $4 million

in providing shelter and services for our city’s homeless?

(Oh no, she’s attacked baseball and football,

see what happens when you let women in the pulpit?)

What does our faith have to say

about the growing gap between the rich and the poor?

Not just rich and poor individuals, but nations as well?

How do we interpret the present time?

What do we have to say about

a world that seems to become increasingly violent?

Where fear has started to dictate

how we respond to other human beings?

Where we have become more interested in revenge

than in repentance and restoration?

Where we will spend 20 times as much

to imprison a drug addict, as to cure him?

What does our faith have to say about fear,

and about what happens

when we allow fear to rule us?

How do we interpret the present time?

Jesus was right, wasn’t he;

if we raise questions like these

we are likely to create division!

Not only within families,

but within the household of faith.

And that makes us profoundly uncomfortable.

Oftentimes, if a sermon makes mention of

political, or social, or economic issues,

we tell the preacher that she has

"quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’"!

For many of us,

church is where we come to be strengthened and comforted.

And there is value in that.

But sometimes, church also has to be the place

where we come and get a swift kick in the pants,

or it isn’t church.

Sometimes when Jesus speaks,

he doesn’t leave us with peace;

he leaves us stirred up.

We tend to see that as a curse.

Perhaps we should see it as a gift.

What signs of our present time are waiting

for us to interpret them in the light of faith?

What clouds on the horizon do we need to attend to?

What winds are blowing things our way,

and where will they blow us?

The present that we live in is confused and broken,

and desperately needs people with wisdom and courage

to interpret what is happening all around us.

To ask the right questions,

even when we aren’t yet sure of the answers.

And guess what?

It’s up to us.

May God grant us whatever we need

to do the work Jesus calls us to do.

Amen.

© 2004 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)