Whatever happened to Country Music? I turn
on the radio to my local country station and I don’t understand what I’m
hearing. It’s lots of Southern Rock with loud guitars and heavy instrumental
mixes. Where are the love ballads I remember? Whatever happened to Johnny Cash?
Or Waylon Jennings? Where’s George Jones and Tammy Wynette?
And will somebody please explain to me why
church attendance has been so crappy lately..?! I remember a time when people
came out regularly and jammed the pews and made church a priority. What the
hell happened?
Things changed.
That’s a pretty nasty pill to gulp
down—change. I think Mr. Trump figured that out when he launched his campaign
for the presidency. He figured out that there’s a whole lot of hurt in America
that’s tied into grief for the way stuff used to be but isn’t anymore. Change
means loss, and loss hurts.
But what about those folks who were
looking for change? What about those Americans who were excited over an
environmentally sound government agenda or the first woman president? Things
seemed to be moving in one direction, but now they’ve changed. And that hurts.
The sad, painful truth about being a
human being living on this planet under God’s sky is that things will always be
changing and we will always be losing something we cherished or something we
hoped for. Customs, tastes, industries, generations, places we’ve known, people
we love—they will all disappear. Even the dreams we have and our expectations
will be thwarted or forced to swim with the current of time.
Jesus delivers this painful news to the
disciples in our Gospel lesson for this Sunday (Luke 21:5-19). The guys are in
Jerusalem where they marvel at the gorgeous carved stones of the temple. They
must have been pretty impressed with this edifice. It was definitely bigger,
grander, and more elaborate than anything they had back home. I guess they
figured that this building would last forever as a symbol of how great their
nation was and how close their people were to the Creator God.
But Jesus reminds them that the glory of
the world is temporary. Even this awesome temple can be reduced to a pile of
crushed rocks. As you can imagine, this intelligence doesn’t sit well with the
boys. If the symbol of their national might and exceptionalism is destroyed,
they think, wouldn’t that mean the end of the world? So they start asking Jesus
for some prophetic advanced warning as to when this cataclysmic event is to
take place. But Jesus isn’t really trying to warn them about the end of time.
He’s trying to get them to focus on things which will endure.
Jesus warns them that whenever some huge
change takes place—whenever there is a shift which causes loss and confusion
and demands a reevaluation of the way we see the world—there’s going to be some
loudmouth false prophet or phony messiah who is going to try to sell us a load
of crap and explain it away as God’s plan or try to blame it on some group or
sell you something which will insure you against all possible doom. Don’t be
taken in. It won’t be the end of the world. There will always be wars and
violence. There will always be natural disasters. There will be famines and
economic reversals at times. But it’s not going to be about what happens. It
will be about how we embrace it.
There are a lot of folks out there, I’ll
bet—good, Christian folks—who see all the change around us and interpret it as
signs that we’re in the End Times. Well, maybe we are. Or maybe we’re not.
Would knowing it really make that much of a difference to how you live your
life?
When it all hits the fan is the time we
have the opportunity to testify. It’s not about the inevitability of loss, but
how we go on in the face of it. Didn’t our Lord lose his earthly father? His
friend Lazarus? Didn’t he face rejection by his own people? Wasn’t he hailed as
a king and then crucified as a criminal? When nailed to the cross, hadn’t he
lost his freedom? His dignity? His friends? His life? And yet from that very
cross he proclaimed pardon and forgiveness. His very suffering was a testimony
to the love of God.
It seems that as human beings we are in an
almost constant state of mourning. Everything changes—politics, culture,
attitudes about religion, even country music (darn it!). But the word of God
endures forever. We are not guaranteed a free pass from hard times. We are guaranteed that the steadfast love
of God will inspire us when we feel lost. When our man-made temples fall we
will be a testimony to the strength of our convictions and truth of our faith.
Things change. God doesn’t. So hang in
there, and thanks again for stopping by!
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