Category: News

For our children this week.

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Hespeler, 12 December 2021 © Scott McAndless – Advent 3
Zephaniah 3:14-20, Isaiah 12:2-6, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18 (Click to read)

Can I make a confession to you? Every time I read out the story of the preaching of John the Baptist from the Gospel of Luke, I do a double take. Something doesn’t seem quite right. The thing that trips me up is the little summary of the preaching of John that Luke tags on the end of it: “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

This is, pretty clearly, the gospel writer’s take on what John was doing. It isn’t found anywhere else in the gospel record and doesn’t appear to be an oral tradition. This is basically Luke looking at the whole message of the Baptist and saying, yes, this sounds like a whole lot of good news. But I have to ask, what about what John has just said sounds like good news to you?

Seems Like Pretty Bad News

He has just spent his time calling the people who, in good faith, have come out to listen to him a “brood of vipers!” He’s been talking about the “wrath to come” and warning that it’s going to be hard to escape. He says, “the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Ouch!

He’s been talking about how the people will be sorted from one another like the wheat is separated from the chaff by a winnowing fork and he is saying that a good number of people are about to be burned up in the fire! You know, not really your average good news report. So I do kind of wince every time I read that. It makes me wonder if Luke is trying to be ironic.

Advent is Also Like that

But, as I think about it, maybe my problem with Luke’s summary of the message of John is the same problem that I have with the season of Advent. In many ways, Advent seems to be a very ironic season in the life of the church. These are the uplifting themes that we run through every Advent: hope, love, peace and joy. Because, in our society, it is considered to be part of the Christmas season we also tend to focus on heartwarming stories and hopeful ideals. What’s more, because we simply cannot wait, we usually go ahead and start singing Christmas carols with all the nostalgia and good feelings that come with them. Advent feels like a good news season.

But have you read the passages of scripture we usually read in the church during this season? It is all full of disaster, destruction and all of the elements of John the Baptist’s speech. It is a season of apocalyptic fire and floods, pestilence and persecution. That is because Advent is not supposed to be about preparing for Christmas. As far as the church is concerned, we do not spend this season anticipating the coming of the Son of God born in a manger but rather the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds with glory at the end of all things.

Puff Pieces

But there are two kinds of good news. There is the kind of good news that is basically just puff pieces. These are stories that are meant to distract and divert. They focus on the positive aspect of some person or event without even acknowledging that they might have a negative side. There is a lot of that kind of news around Christmas time as the media pitches in to get everyone in the right mood so that they will go out and do a lot of shopping. And that’s all well and good, we do sometimes need a break from being serious. But I would argue that good news is supposed to be something more than just looking at the bright side of everything. Because, if that’s all it is, it is really just a practice of denialism.

Truly Good News

I would suggest that truly good news has to be able to grapple with the dark side of life, not just the bright side. And that’s what I do see John the Baptist struggling with in this passage. It is also what I see the church struggling with during this season of the year and that is a good thing.

When the people come out to John, he doesn’t sugar-coat the situation to them. He demands that they come to terms with what is really going on in the world. If he were preaching today, for example, he would demand that we face problems like the homelessness crisis, the opioid epidemic and the climate crisis. In fact, I have no doubt that John would be, let’s just say, very forceful in his presentation of these problems and threats. But, as inflammatory as John’s language might be, and I do mean literally inflammatory, there is one thing that makes it good news.

John has an Answer

The people who’ve come out to see him ask him, “What then should we do?” And the good news is that he has an answer. You see, when you have a crisis or a problem that you can’t do anything about, that’s nothing but bad news. But, if you can do something, that changes your perspective about everything. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to have the ability to totally resolve or fix what is wrong. That is a mistake that people often make and it leads to despair and often to nothing being done at all.

For example, people look at a huge problem like global climate change and they say, “Anything that I do personally is going to be such a small drop in the bucket, I might as well not even try.” That’s the kind of attitude that leads to a lot of disillusionment. But I think it is important to remember that, even if you do not have the means or the influence to actually fix what is wrong, if you do take the right action, you can be part of the solution and that makes all the difference in your attitude. It allows you to hold onto hope.

So, John does give to the people examples of the right kind of actions that they can take. And, interestingly enough, he’s able to recognize that different people are in different positions and that might require different kinds of actions in order to be effective. So, let’s take a look at the specific actions that John does encourage people to take.

To the Soldiers

He speaks to the soldiers. Now, it is not entirely clear who these soldiers are. They might be Roman legionary troops, though it would seem rather strange for members of a foreign occupying force to come out to see a figure like John. It is maybe more likely that they are members of a local militia force. But whoever they are, it is pretty clear what they represent.

They are the official defenders of the system according to which the entire world works. They are the ones who ensure that the wealthy keep their wealth while the poor stay in their place. They are the ones who wield the violence that exploits the people for the benefit of the powerful. And, of course, they really don’t have much choice in that matter. Wherever their sympathies may lie, they have to follow orders.

So, what does the Baptist say to them? “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” Think about what this means. These are people who are totally caught up in a system of exploitation. They are the defenders of the system itself. And yet, John is challenging them to take a stand and not personally take part in that systemic exploitation – at least not to use it for their own purposes. He is encouraging them, in whatever small ways they can, to undermine the system from within.

To the Tax Collectors

He gives the same advice to the tax-collectors who came to him. Now nothing, in the ancient Roman Empire was more riddled with corruption and exploitation than the tax system. This was because it was designed to work that way. Tax collectors were not government employees but rather independent contractors who bid to get the gig. They weren’t actually paid and the only way they could earn their living was by squeezing extra money out of the people. So, from top to bottom, the entire system was riddled with individuals who were all squeezing the people under them for whatever they could get. The people at the bottom – the actual taxpayers – were often squeezed far beyond what they could bear.

So, when John says to them that they should, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you,” he is actually asking a great deal. He is basically asking them to forgo the only source of income or profit that they have. The message seems to be that, when you are caught in a corrupt and exploitative system, anything you do to personally step out of that system can be a powerful and transformative statement.

To the People

So John speaks to the soldiers and the tax collectors. He has one more answer that seems to be directed to the people in general. To them he says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” This is perhaps the hardest one to hear, especially as it is directed at everyone so that nobody can say it doesn’t apply to them. This answer attacks the basic, underlying system that undergirds the very structure of society and that makes it possible for some people to have a superabundance of things while others don’t have enough to get by.

And the point of this is not to villainize or guilt the people of this world who have done well for themselves. If you have been successful in this life as a result of your talent and hard work, good for you. John is not attacking you. What he is targeting is the system that allows such wild inequity between those who have and those who have not. And the reason why that happens has much more to do with how everything has been structured in our society than it does with the acts of individuals.

The Individual Versus the System

John understands that an individual cannot change the system. But he does say that, if you have the means to and you want to be part of the solution instead of the problem, well then, you need to start to look at the possessions you have in a very different way. You need to start to see how they can be of service to those who are in the greatest need instead of just asking what they can do to make your life more comfortable.

This, then, is where I see the genius of John the Baptist’s good news message. He recognizes the corrupt and problematic systems that are at work in this world and that create misery and evil. He sees the corrupt political systems, financial systems and economic systems. And he recognizes that all of us, depending on the position we play in life, are part of these corrupt systems. We can’t help that. And we certainly can’t change them on our own. But he begins to put out there a dream of groups of people who decide to do things differently, who opt out of these systems in the ways that they can, and he suggests that they are the ones who will actually change the world.

The good news is that we are not powerless in the face of the evil and dysfunction of this world. We have a part to play in God’s work for its redemption. The good news is that as individuals we have little power to change anything. But if we all do it together, we can radically remake the systems of this world.

A Challenge

Which brings us, finally, to our challenge for this third Sunday of Advent. I think all of us, maybe especially in the chaos of recent months, have been in the place of those people who came out to John the Baptist in the wilderness. We don’t need him to tell us that the world is in a bit of a mess. We have all seen it. No, we come looking for some good news. And the good news he gives us is there something that we can do. We can choose together not to live according to the corrupt and evil systems of this world. And that is something that will have impact when we do it all together.

And that’s actually what the purpose of the church is. It is this thing that allows us to do it all together. My challenge for you this week is to take some action to be a part of what this congregation is doing to challenge the dysfunctional systems of this world. We are doing our best to address the inequality in our city by providing food through the food bank on a week by week basis. Can you do something to support or encourage that?

We are doing what we can to reach out to families who are finding that they don’t have enough tunics or cloaks or other pieces of clothing. And we are enabling a way to get that clothing from those who have enough to spare to those who don’t have enough. That is what Hope Clothing is. What can you do this week to support that endeavour?

Share What we Can Do

Above all, we are trying to model in this church a way of living out what John was asking those people who came to him to do. Do we do that perfectly? No. But the closer we stay to what John was asking for and what Jesus was calling for from his disciples, the more we are part of the solution instead of the problem.

So, do you know what you can do this week to help that along? You can share what we are doing in this church with someone else. Tell them, share a link or video on social media, reach out to someone and share with them the difference that the good news has made in your life. Be a part of the solution, not the problem.

For our children this week.

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Hespeler, 5 December 2021 © Scott McAndless – Advent 2
Malachi 3:1-4, Luke 1:68-79, Philippians 1:3-11, Luke 3:1-6 (click to read)

In my line of work, as you can imagine, I will often come into contact with people who are going through rough times – who, to use the phrase that we read together this morning from the Gospel of Luke, “sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Sometimes they tell me their stories or show me what they are going through in other ways. That is actually a great privilege, though it can be a hard one to bear. And often what they share with me is quite private and I honour their trust in me by keeping those things private.

So I won’t give you any examples of this with any identifying details, but I am going to tell you that I have observed something. There has been more of that over the last several months. More people have been sitting in darkness that is deeper and more impenetrable. And the shadow of death, it has grown larger, gloomier and more oppressive. I mean, that just something that we seem to be dealing with these days.

What Some are Struggling with

Every story is different, and the challenges are unique to every individual’s life, but let me tell you some of the things that I have seen in non-identifying ways. The social isolation of recent months has been hard for some to bear. They are just lonely, and everyone has found their own ways to deal with that. Some have quietly slipped into depression, and I know that some have essentially been self medicating. That might mean, for example, that they’ve been drinking more or using other prescription or non-prescription products. Others have managed to cope by developing other habits – indulgent eating, gambling or just about any other activity that might be distracting them from the pain that they feel.

And I want to be clear here, I do not believe that anybody should feel ashamed of doing what they need to do to get by during a difficult time. I’m not here to condemn anyone for the strategies that they may have used to do so. But this crisis has gone on longer than most others that we have faced which has meant that people have been coping for longer. And many have reached the point where their coping mechanisms are becoming destructive either to themselves or to the people that they love. And the problem is, once you enter into that kind of cycle, it can be very hard to escape.

Too Much Grief

Another thing that has been happening is that there has been an enormous amount of loss. People have died and more of them have died than we had become used to. Others have lost things that had deep meaning to them, the kinds of things that told them who they were and gave them a sense of meaning. People have lost jobs and businesses. They have seen people they love move away or they have lost them in other ways.

And, yes, grief and loss are, and always have been, an essential part of life. But something about this season has been particularly hard for some people to bear. The grief and loss have been piling up so quickly that some have not been able to process it. We have also often not been able to grieve our losses in the ways that we would have liked. And I suspect that all of this has meant that many people are carrying around something like a huge backpack filled with grief that they’re not quite sure what to do with. And it is like a great burden that some have been carrying so long that they’ve almost forgotten that it is weighing down their every step and every movement.

Other Issues

These are but some of the ways in which people have been sitting in the darkness. I’ve certainly known others who struggle with illness, either in themselves or in someone they love. And of course, there have also been enormous economic struggles as many families have had a hard time feeding their children and keeping them in clothes. What’s more, I suspect that many of us scarcely even grasp the enormity of the housing problems that have emerged as people have been simply priced out of shelter.

Alongside all that, often making it worse, we are dealing with a pandemic of misinformation. I know this is something that you have all encountered. Do you remember when conspiracy theories were just this amusing thing that some people got into. They would turn it into this little hobby where they liked to talk about the Kennedy assassination or whether or not Paul McCartney was really dead. It was harmless and amusing.

But we now find ourselves living in an age where conspiracy theories are dangerous and destructive. And I know that some of us can get very angry with people who become obsessed with anti-vax or anti-mask or with ridiculous political theories that are based on nothing. I understand this, of course, because a lot of this is having some very dangerous effects.

But I’ve got to say that I’m learning to feel a bit of compassion for the people who get caught up in this kind of thinking. I think they are living in a particular kind of darkness where they cannot trust institutions or political leaders or health officials. And often, when you talk to them, there are actually some good reasons for that mistrust. So, I would actually count the people who are caught up in such things among the victims of the darkness. And, honestly, that kind of makes it all even more frightening.

Zechariah Breaks his Silence

And on this day, the Second Sunday of Advent which is the Sunday of peace, I declare to you that we are being given a challenge that is absolutely tailored to this present moment. This morning we read the song of Zechariah the priest. Ever since the angel first came to him to announce that, against all expectations, he and his wife were going to have a son, he has been struck dumb. This is because he had asked for a sign that it would all come true, given that it was so impossible for him and his wife, Elizabeth, to have a child at such an advanced age. The sign given, or perhaps it was a punishment, was that he was rendered unable to speak.

But now, now that the child has been born and been given a name, Zechariah’s tongue has finally been loosed and he bursts forth in this amazing song. And in this alone there is a message for our time. All this time, Zechariah has silently held onto a word of promise. It is a promise for him and for Elizabeth, the fulfillment of a dream that they have long held close. For their own personal darkness has been their inability to have a child.

But clearly, during all that time of silence, Zechariah has had a chance to think.  And he has come to realize that what is good news for him and his wife, must be good news for more than just them. For what good is it if he and Elizabeth are freed from their darkness but others continue to sit in it? And so, Zechariah begins to speak a promise for all.

Breaking our Silence

And that is exactly where all of us need to be during this Advent season. There is a temptation in the Christian church today to think of the good news only in terms of what is good news to ourselves. People want to embrace the idea that God has saved them, has given them the hope of life beyond death and restored their own personal relationship with God. Christianity has largely become an individualistic religion within our individualistic society. How many Christians only think of it in terms of what is in it for them? But Zechariah has learned the folly of such thinking and the joy that he has found in the promises of God must burst forth from him and be shared with other people as well.

And so, during this difficult Advent season when many are sitting in the darkness, our tongues must be loosed as well. If the good news that we have heard about Jesus is for ourselves alone, then I am afraid that it is not truly good news. And I don’t mean to say by that that we need to go out and impose a gospel message onto others. This is not about pressuring anybody to listen to gospel stories or messages. And I certainly don’t think it means that we need to go out and condemn people for their sin or threaten them with hellfire. That is not what Zechariah does.

But, at the same time, silence is no longer an option in this troubled world. If you have found a reason to hope or even just a reason to hold on in difficult times, you have a responsibility to let others know, especially those who are sitting in darkness. And I believe that that is what Zechariah does.

God’s Commitment

He celebrates God’s commitment to be with the whole people of Israel and to save them during the darkest and most difficult times – a God who “has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” That is the God that we must remember and who can give comfort to these sitting in darkness. For it is a God who never forgets the ones who are lost or alone.

A Child of Hope

And then he finally arrives at his reflection on this child of his that has just been born. Any time a new child is born, it is a sign of hope. Because every new child has unlimited potential. Who knows what this child might go on to do? She might grow up to find a way to defeat a particularly pernicious kind of cancer. He might grow up to be the one to broker a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. She might discover the technology that gives us near limitless green energy.

And so, Zechariah looks at his newly born, newly named child and declares his potential. “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways… By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And of course, that is a prophecy particularly concerning John. He is the one who is to prepare the way for all that Jesus is going to accomplish. But it is also a statement about what has been put into motion by the coming of John and by the coming of Jesus. “The dawn from on high will break upon us,” is not merely a statement about what John is going to do. It is a statement about what God is doing at this moment in time for a world where many sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Following in John’s Path

And so, we also are the ones who are called to give light. That is why my challenge for you this Advent is simply to walk in the footsteps of John the Baptist and of Jesus. Just as they reached out to many who were sitting in darkness, that is your task this season. And, no, I’m not saying that it’s all on you individually. You are not going to drag all of the people out of the darkness and into the light. But my challenge to you is to find a way to do it for somebody this week.

What you can do

Do you know someone who is struggling with their finances? How could you practice generosity to them this week? I think that would cause the dawn to break for them. Do you know someone who is struggling with illness or disease? You don’t have to go to them with some magic word that is going to suddenly make them well. That’s not your job. But, maybe, you can just go to them. You can sit with them for a while in their struggles. You would be amazed at the difference it can make just to have a person with you when you are sitting in the darkness. And that person can be you this week.

Do you know someone who is caught up in destructive life patterns? Don’t think that you could go to them and tell them to straighten up and that’s going to fix them. It usually doesn’t work like that. But maybe you could go and listen to them and try and understand what it is that is causing them to behave in self-destructive ways. A little bit of understanding can go a long way in terms of bringing people light when they are sitting in the darkness.

And I’ll bet you know someone who’s been caught up in some ridiculous conspiracy theory. I know you’ve figured out by now that it really doesn’t help anything to argue with them about it. It never does. In fact, it will probably only make them more committed to their conspiracy. But do you know what they might need? They might need somebody who can help them see what it is they are really afraid of. They might need someone who is still actually willing to sit with them and just talk about other things.

Go to Those Who Sit in Darkness

I’m not saying that bringing light to those who sit in the darkness is easy. It’s one of the hardest things you ever could do. But, by God’s grace, you can do it. Sure, you don’t have it in you to fix everything that’s wrong in another person. Only God has that kind of power. But I think that John and Jesus discovered that when you are willing to go to people who are sitting in the darkness and love them as they are, you might just have the incredible privilege of being present when God does begin to allow the dawn to break for them.

For our children this week.

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Hespeler, 28 November, 2021 © Scott McAndless – Advent 1
Jeremiah 33:14-16, Psalm 25:1-10, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36

Over the past couple of years, a new word has entered into the common vocabulary. But more than that, it has entered into the common experience. That word is doomscrolling. The word is new enough that it doesn’t yet have an entry in the dictionary, but it is generally defined as “the act of spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of negative news.” (Wikipedia) It has become a common term because we seem to be living in times when it is so easy to pull out your phone and open up a news feed and jump from one extremely depressing piece of news to the next.

An Endless Diet of Bad News

You jump from a story on the latest Covid numbers to a story about police killing an indigenous woman. You jump from the latest dire prediction about global warming to a story of devastating flooding on the West Coast. You jump from a story of the latest protest in Wisconsin to pictures of men giving Nazi salutes and shouting “Jews will not replace us.”

It has become all too easy to get locked into an endless loop of bad news and I think that many of us have found ourselves in exactly that loop too often over the last couple of years. And even as we approach the festive season, it doesn’t seem to be letting up as news feeds are dominated by reports of how supply chain issues are going to spoil everyone’s Christmas, that is if we even have Christmas what with all the Covid fears. In fact, that all seems to be ramping up with all the anxiety over a new variant.

Not All the Media’s Fault

I know that some will blame the media for all of this – saying that they should show us more good news than bad. There is something to that, of course. It is true that the media has been privileging the news that stirs the most negative emotions because they know that will get the greatest engagement which means money for them. It is also true that social media companies have been using algorithms that intentionally present us with the news articles that are going to get us all riled up. But I don’t think we can only blame it on the media. The reality is that there are many signs in the world today that things are not well and that they could all be getting a whole lot worse.

Not Good for us

I don’t think that I need to tell you that all of this doomscrolling isn’t particularly good for us. This endless cycle has been like a great weight on the hearts of many people. It is a cause of depression and anxiety. And we have certainly seen how many have attempted to treat their weighed down hearts in destructive ways by resorting to addictive behaviour and substance abuse. Others seek to distract themselves from what they are feeling by living in indulgent ways that only end up hurting themselves and the people they love. Of course, there are also some people who have sought to defend themselves from all of this by completely cutting themselves off from the news so they don’t have to deal with it. They just scroll from one cute cat video to another. But that doesn’t seem to be a particularly healthy response either.

We might well hope for people to not feel so bad, but I hardly want to blame people for their emotions. The truth of the matter is that we are living in disturbing times. And, if that is true, the question is how should we deal with it? In particular, as people of faith, what is a proper response?

A Gospel for Doomscrollers

In many ways, the passage we read this morning from the Gospel of Luke is a Gospel for doomscrollers. Jesus lays out before his disciples a series of signs, and they are signs of doom. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

And, yes, I kind of feel as if I have read all of those things on my news feed in the last couple of months – especially the parts about confusion and distress among the nations and people fainting from fear. Jesus is saying that these things are not just bad news, they are signs. They are signs that indicate something important about the fate of the world.

Jesus Warns Us

And what Jesus is saying in this passage is not that we need to just put away our phones and pretend that all of this stuff isn’t happening, as tempting as that might be. He encourages his disciples and us to be aware of what the signs of our time are. But he does say something that is very important for the kind of times that we find ourselves living in today. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.”

Jesus is literally warning us against the very dangerous effects of doomscrolling. He is recognizing how easy it is to have your heart weighed down by an unrelenting stream of bad news. He even speaks of the ways in which people can respond to the resulting depression and anxiety “with dissipation and drunkenness.” That is to say that people self-medicate with addictive lifestyles and self-destructive behaviour.

But it is one thing to be warned of the dangers of doomscrolling. I think we’re all aware of that on some level. But the question remains, how do we do that? How do we stop our hearts from being weighed down? Well, I would like to share a few pieces of advice for you today that might help you to do that, some directly from this passage in the Gospel of Luke and some from other places.

It is Hard for Us to Avoid

One of the problems we are dealing with is definitely something that was not a feature of the life for people in Jesus’ time. They were living in a world where the average person often did not even have the means to be aware of some of the terrible things that were going on in the world. They didn’t get reports on the latest earthquake in Turkey or atrocity committed by the emperor in Rome. It took some effort for them to get the news, which is why Jesus makes the point of telling them to be aware of the signs that are taking place in the world around them.

But we live in a very different world where obtaining news and information is so easy that it almost happens without us being aware of it. I mean, you just sit down for a few minutes and take out your phone and open some social media app and the news feed on that thing has been specifically designed to present you with a news report that’s going to hook you in and then an algorithm is going to kick in but make sure that you then swipe to the another story and then another until, before you know it, you have wasted maybe hours in a day doomscrolling. It takes almost no effort on our part to be totally aware of all of the bad things that are happening.

Being Careful about Our Consumption

So, for us today, we actually have to put in the effort to make sure that our hearts are not weighed down by all of that. So it helps for us to be very intentional about how and when we consume the news. It helps us to be aware of how Facebook and Twitter and other apps are feeding that news to us.

That doesn’t mean that you have to just turn it off, but maybe you should schedule your own consumption of the news. Maybe don’t do it just before bed, for example, because that may not be conducive to a good night’s sleep. There are also steps that you can take to take control of your newsfeed, by choosing to read stories from what you consider to be reliable sources. And don’t be afraid to engage your critical mind and apply it to whatever you hear or read.

That is part of the answer, but another part is that you also need to work time into your day when you do focus on other things. There is a passage in the letter to the Philippians that I believe every one of us needs to memorize or put it up on our wall where we’re going to see it at the beginning of every day. It is Philippians 4:8: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

I definitely feel that one of the ways in which we can prevent the news of the dire events of our times from weighing down our hearts is by intentionally building into our days opportunities to do exactly what it says in Philippians. Make the time to think on such things. Journal about what is true and honourable. Meditate on what is pure and pleasing. Contemplate things that are commendable, excellent and worthy of praise.

Having the Right Perspective

So that is part of what we must do to make sure our hearts are not weighed down. But there is another part of the answer to the problem in this passage that we read from the Gospel of Luke. It invites us to adopt a certain perspective on the disturbing events that may be taking place in the world around us. Jesus invites us to consider something that everyone would have been familiar with in that world. “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.”

You see, in the Mediterranean climate, the fig tree is one of the last trees to bud and put out leaves in the spring. We actually have a tree like that in our backyard. I’ve been told it’s called a Russian Laurel, but whatever it is, it is very slow to put out leaves in the spring. So much so that every year I get worried. I watch all of the other trees in the neighborhood put out all their leaves and I look at our tree and its branches are still bare and I start to think, well, it’s finally happened, the tree has finally died. And then, finally, only when I am past despair, the buds form and the tree creates this beautiful canopy that shelters our backyard all through the summer.

Leaves as Signs

So Jesus is actually inviting us to consider that emotional roller coaster of waiting for the last tree to bud. He’s saying that, as we look around at the world we are often tempted to despair at all the things that are happening and to think that this is finally it and the tree is going to die because the leaves haven’t come out. I will admit that it has been tempting to feel that way looking at events of late.

But Jesus is actually saying that the leaves are coming and that promise is that summer is coming. The leaves are actually all of these terrible signs that he is talking about – the signs of the times. They are the disasters, the wars and rumours of wars, the apocalyptic fires and floods. But Jesus is actually inviting us to look at them as the late budding leaves, the sign that summer is coming. “So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

Turn your Expectations Upside Down

 And I know that that doesn’t seem to make much sense. It seems like the logical thing to do is to look at these events and see them only as signs that everything is about to get a whole lot worse. But Jesus, as he often did, is inviting us to turn our expectations upside down.

And what is the reason why we can look at all of the things that are happening and still find hope? Only one thing. Only our faith that God has a handle on what is going on in this world and that God has a plan to bring about the fullness of God’s kingdom. That faith and that perspective is the only thing that can make us look at some of the troubling things that are happening in our world and understand that our God is allowing them to happen because they are like those late leaves on a fig tree, they are the sign that we are almost there, and that God will faithfully fulfill the plan.

It is troubling to look around at the events of our times and realize that they are signs about the state of our world. And, of course, when we see these things, they need to stir us to action, prompt us to make changes and renew our commitment to a just and better world. What we must not let them do, however, is weigh our hearts down. We are the followers of the Prince of Peace and the King of Hope and as we cling to that truth, our hearts will be enabled to soar above the trouble of these difficult times.

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