[Propertalk] End Times - Luke 21:25-36, ! Advent (C)

[TL]

I had this thought to expand on what Brian says about blue elephants. This
is how I worked it into my sermon:

 

 

Pr. Brian Stoffregen suggests telling people to not worry about something is
like saying "don't think about blue elephants." Or their scarcity and
impending extinction. But what are you thinking about right now. Of course
it now has something to do with blue elephants, even though they do not
exist. The solution is to never mention blue elephants in the first place or
at least to be sure we know they never have existed.

But the reasons to be fearful of the future do exist. Denying the truth of
our situation as a human species is a large part of what gets us,
continually, into such terrible trouble.

The Gospel for today calls us, not to deny that the end of the world is
impending. NO. In fact it calls attention to the signs that are all around
us. But then it directs us not to panic. Not to follow false leaders who
think they can name the date and time, or for that matter any leader who
leads us away from following Jesus the Christ, whom we know from our
forbearers of faith from their record of Christ handed on to us in
Scriptures.

In the Gospel for today, and in many places throughout each of the Gospels,
the Word of God calls us to keep our wits about us, to trust most firmly in
the Word of God, and to face the future with assurance of God's redemption
of us. This Redemption is both freedom from bondage to sin now until forever
and it is freedom from the destruction of the coming end of the world.

 

 

 

The idea is not about blue elephants, but that not speaking about them or
about real reasons to fear the future is not what the Gospel leads us to.

Rather we discern which threats are real, speak clearly about them AND speak
clearly about God's promise for us in the midst of such threats.

 

To throw it back into old language with a wide berth, true faith is not to
be an opiate of the people. That would be losing ourselves to dissipation.
True faith is simply the clearest perspective on reality, God's reality.
Threats will still lead to the end of time, but we know this is our
redemption. For this we have waited since our baptisms!

 

So there you have my thought(s). If they help someone, good. If they hurt .
Vezeihung im voraus.

 

Rev. Tim Lofstrom

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