It's Not the End

 Luke 21:5-19

November 16, 2025

 

The Beginning is Near
Imaginary Foundation

As a kid in the 70’s and 80’s

I used to love watching shows on 

TV about Nostradamus.

They stick out in my mind because

I would watch them with both interest and dread.

 

Remember Nostradamus?

They have some current shows about him,

But he was all the rage in the 70’s and 80’s/

He was a  man who lived in the 16^th century France

He was a healer, who wrote several books of

short poems that were called Prophecies

that some people felt had come true in history.

 

The predictions were vague, like “three fires in the east”,

but some people believed they predicted world events.

The shows said that he predicted

like the rise of Napoleon and Hitler.

And the assassination of JFK.

It was pretty convincing stuff.

 

And then my favorite part of the show

was when they would try and interpret

some of his poetry and apply it to future events.

Does the “Great war with the eagle and bear” mean 

that there will be a war between Russia and the US? Ominous music.

Does “the celestial fire” mean that a meteor

will hit the earth? Picture of a meteor hitting the earth.

Wars, earthquakes, famines, plagues.

 

I would watch these as a child  with a combination of

dread and delight wondering what the future would hold for our world. 

I envisioned the end of everything.

Everything familiar and beloved.

Even if you don’t remember these Nostradamus

shows, you have seen a lot of  preachers try and do this

on television. They talk about the future in

horrifying terms, leaving people with a sense of dread.

 

Of course, we have experienced terrible events

There was AIDS, 9-11, terrible earthquakes,

hurricanes, and tsunamis, the pandemic,

nuclear disasters, ongoing fires, rising tides and floods,

terrorism, Endless wars in Syria, and the Middle East,

the Congo, Yemin, now Ukraine, and the list goes on.

And sometimes it has seemed like the world is ending.

 

And through all these events, the world has changed.

and natural and human disasters

are just one part of those changes.

Technology, attitudes, the way we behave,

sexuality, racial relations, economic situations,

things that Nostradamus didn’t even touch on

have changed the world.

The world is not same place that it was in the 80’s

Some changes are actually good, and some are actually bad.

 

And yet, when you think about it,

there is still so much that has remained the same.

Even though things seem bleak at times,

the Mad Max/post apocalyptic future hat I feared –

the end of everything—

still hasn’t really materialized.

 

Now Jesus seems to be doing a little Nostradamus

in today’s gospel.

He’s talking about the future in frightening terms.

Earthquakes, wars, famine, disease, and persecution.

It’s a hard message to hear from Jesus,

one that has thrown many people into a sleepless frenzy, I know.

 

But I don’t think Jesus is saying these things to make people frightened. 

Believe it or not,  I actually think he’s saying these things to try and comfort people.

 

Jesus is saying: Terrible things will happen,

these things happen all the time. Which history has proven.

We will see plenty of pain and destruction, violence,

and death, maybe even your own death.

But them point is, when you see and hear these things:

don’t be afraid. Don’t lose hope. Because the bad things,

 the trials and tribulations, that is not the end.

In the midst of them, remember:

God has not lost, hope has not lost, love has not lost.

 

Jesus wants us to put things like this in perspective.

Things may seem disastrous, unrecoverable, hopeless.

But don’t believe what you see. It is not the end.

 

This temple that they were sitting by

when Jesus said this was amazing.

Many of the stones that were used to build it weighed 28 tons.

Some were bigger than that.

The outer court was like a city almost, it could hold up to

four hundred thousand people at Passover time,

it was a marvel of architecture and ingenuity

It was beautiful and impressive,

It still would be today if it were still standing.

  

So when Jesus to talked about the destruction of this place

The disciples’ imagination must have been racing:

what kind of force would make that happen?

What kind of violence and destruction would our people see?

And this was God’s house, where God’s people came to worship.

If the temple was destroyed, would all our people be destroyed?

And what would become of God?

Would the world lose trust in God

if God’s house and God’s people were gone?

 

And at the same time, even though it was God’s temple

and where the people of God worshipped,

the disciples and other Jewish people knew how

King Herod had built it:

He levied brutal taxes on the people.

He worked in collusion with the Romans

who oppressed Jewish citizens.

He built it abusing thousands of slaves and low paid workers.

 

And they also knew why King Herod built it to be

so big and so impressive.

He built it so he could out-do the pagan temples

built by pagan rulers.

It was a statement by Herod to show off his choice of gods

and to show his own power and glory off before others.

 

In a world of many gods, the ruler with the biggest temple wins.

and Herod believed he won.

And Herod’s glory was solidified in those 28 ton stones.

Herod’s faith in God rested on his achievement,

it rested on the grandeur of the building,

it’s strength, it’s ability to stand, it’s beauty.

To many people the temple itself had become an idol.

  

And Jesus said it would come down.

So the end of the temple would also

mean the end of Jewish dominance in the area.

It would be the end of the Jewish place and rule in Jerusalem.

It would be an end to the life they knew.

 

Jesus says, you will see many frightening things,

but don’t lose hope– it won’t be the end.

The end of the temple is not the end of God.

It is not the end of Christ, it’s not the end of

God’s relationship with God’s people.

 

Of course we know now,

the temple would be destroyed less than 50

years after Jesus lived.

The people who read or heard the gospel of Luke for the first time

would have remembered it first-hand.

Many people died, many things were destroyed

and life would never be exactly the same for any of them.

 

But like we have seen happen in so many other places,

the remnants stood up in the midst of the devastation

and doctored their wounds and helped one another and

bravely went on to the next day

adjusting their lives around the calamities,

with renewed faith and stronger dependence on God

because of what they’ve been through.

 

There will be wars and rumors of wars,

Nation will rise against nation kingdom against kingdom,

there will be earthquakes, plagues,

and dreadful signs everywhere.

But do not lose hope.

  

God does not stand or fall with buildings or

governments, or economies, or stock markets,

or cities, or churches, or leaders.

God does not depend on things being the same.

And God’s relationship with God’s people does not depend

on the outward signs of peace or prosperity or beauty

so we shouldn’t look to them for our security.

 

This world is flawed and fragile and volatile

there is pain and suffering in it.

But our trust is not in the world or what it holds.

Jesus is telling his friends and us:

Don’t anchor your faith in the strength of a temple,

Or in success, or comfort, or in beauty,

or in your good fortune.

 

Rest your faith in God and God alone.

Then you will be able to see strength

and beauty and joy in spite of and

in the midst of turmoil.

Every painful end is the gateway to a new beginning.

Every struggle is a opportunity

to feel the presence of God.

Whose Wife Would She Be?

Luke 20:27-38

November 9, 2025

 So Jesus is doing something 

that he doesn’t usually do.

He’s arguing with the Sadducees.

I mean in Luke, Jesus argues all the time,

He’s been doing it since he was 10 or so

and went off by himself to 

the synagogue in Jerusalem.

But he usually he does it with the Pharisees.

But this is the first time he’s arguing with Sadducees,

they are just defined here by what they don’t believe in,

and that is the resurrection or life after death.

 

The Sadducees were the elite class of Judaism.

They only believed in the Torah.

The first five books of the bible

while others accepted the psalms and the prophets.

The Sadducees just believe that God kept covenants

in the here and now, just in this earthly realm,

only in the boundaries of this world.

 

Jesus has been talking about resurrection and

new life God quite a lot lately.

He’s telling them about the forgiveness of God

and the wonder and grace of God’s kingdom.

This is going against the Sadducees understanding

and they’d like to prove Jesus wrong,

so they’re trying to trick Jesus and show him  

how silly and unworkable the idea is.

 

The hypothetical situation they use is actually a law in Leviticus.

If a woman’s husband dies and they didn’t have any children,

then she is supposed to marry the man’s brother,

in another effort to have offspring in the original husband’s lineage.

 

So they present this hypothetical woman who couldn’t have

children and she gets passed on to the next brother

and he dies and then the next and the next seven times.

Really a terrible situation for the woman if you think of it.

The grief the sadness the failure to produce an heir.

It seems like all the men in that family are the infertile ones,

but she’s bearing the blame and the consequences.

 

And the Sadducees question to Jesus was,

“If this resurrection was real, then whose wife would she be?

All the husbands would be there.”

To put it crassly, they’re asking “Who would she belong to?

Who will she keep house for? Whose floor would she sweep?

She can’t keep the house of seven men.”

Because in the resurrection, to them, obviously,

all the rules here still apply. They’re trying to say to Jesus,

“See how silly resurrection and eternal life is?

Eternal life would be an eternal mess.”

 

But Jesus doesn’t get trapped in their petty arguments.

When Jesus talks about the resurrection, Jesus is not talking

about spending eternity in a place

where all our laws and constraints

and prejudices and shortcomings and status are still in place.

Where one person still keeps house for another.

Jesus is talking about something completely new.

Jesus is talking about new life.

Jesus is talking about heaven.

 

In my Reformation sermon, I said I think that we do

need to spend more time focusing on God’s Kingdom on Earth 

rather than heaven only focusing on or God’s eternal Kingdom.

And I do think it would do us a lot of good in many ways,

But this week gives us a warning that we could 

end up like the Sadducees. We still believe in eternal life, and

Jesus believed in eternal life,

and he told other people about it.

But even though we believe in it,

and Jesus talked about it,

there’s not a robust vision of what it actually looks like,

or when it starts, or what’s involved.

There’s mostly metaphors and vague images

and feelings about it.

 

We hear about a kingdom where fears and doubts and pain

and sadness will be a no more.

A place where God’s will is always done.

Where we experience the constant love and presence of God.

There’s other images of trees by rivers,

and streets paved in gold.

But other than that, it’s not really clear.

And the theology is not fully cleared up with this debate.

 

But here’s the thing that Jesus words today do clear up:

Heaven is not just a duplicate of this world.

The rules and the traditions and the constraints

that people live by in this world don’t automatically

transfer over to eternal life.

No one is sweeping the floor for anyone else!

 

Could you imagine that with this woman,

like the Sadducees were thinking?

She had a miserable life being shuffled from brother

to brother due to some rules based on her duty to

provide offspring. A widow seven times without security,

without harmony and happiness, with repeated

disappointment, and then she would

have to relive that life in the hereafter?

That wouldn’t be a gift, but an eternal curse.

 

And we’ve come a long way since then,

but still, women are still often valued by some people

only for their spouses, and only for our ability to bear children.

In the US, we’re only about 50 years away from women being

allowed to have their own credit cards

without husbands or parents signing on for them.

Jesus is saying here that these rules and standards

and judgements aren’t duplicated in God’s kingdom.

 

Our rules and standards and judgements exist for our reasons.

They reflect our problems, solutions and our fears.

 

But God is doing something completely

new and different up there, out there

over there, in there, wherever God’s kingdom is.

For everyone, all genders, all people.

 

The problem with the Sadducees

is that they were thinking too small.

God was too small for them.

They underestimated God.

Jesus is talking about heaven, eternal life, paradise,

and they are worried about which man’s floor

this poor woman would be sweeping every day.

Jesus tells them, don’t be small -don’t think so small.

 

In God’s kingdom, this woman is not

given in marriage again and again,

Jesus actually says there is no marriage.

Which may make some of us happily

married people uncomfortable.

 

But whatever God has in store for us is

even better than we can even fathom right now.

Where people are free from the constraints

we make for ourselves and we hold other people to.

Constraints that we might not even know are constraints.

 

In Jesus understanding of God’s kingdom

This woman is no longer stigmatized by her barrenness,

she is no longer defined by her ability

or lack of ability to have children,

she is no longer identified by her series of

fruitless weddings, she is no longer second class to others.

 

In God’s kingdom, this hypothetical woman does

what no one, except maybe Jesus, expects her to do:

She steps out into eternal life, on her own,

a full and complete child of God.

 

And this is vision of God’s kingdom is what should

drive us to act in our life here and now.

 

Our desire is to make the kingdom on earth

to be the like the one in heaven.

 

Where people are not constrained by the notions of this world,

but where everyone can exist and know that

they are a full and complete child of God.

 

God Comes Down To Us

 All Saints Day

Luke 6:20-31

November 2, 2025

 

One truth that the Lutheran church holds dear –

the primary doctrine of the Reformation –

and what Luther said he would not give up on,

even on the threat of death and exile.

Is that God comes down to us.

 

For centuries, the Church told people

that if you just prayed enough,

went to church enough,

of course gave enough money,

you could work your way up to God.

 

One of my seminary professors used to illustrate it

with a ladder with God at the top.

The church taught, in essence,

that we could climb our way up that ladder to God.

Just try harder, do more, be better, and then God will love you,

and call you righteous, and get you into heaven, and all that stuff.

 

But Luther said, No. The Scriptures don’t say that,

and that’s not how God works.
We don’t climb our way up to God

God comes down to us.

In Jesus Christ, God descended the ladder

to meet us where we are.

 

Now, originally, All Saints’ Day was a day to commemorate

the people who were thought to have made it up the ladder—

the saints who had attained spiritual prestige

mostly priests, monks, and nuns,

and martyrs and other spiritual superstars,

who were believed to be just a few rungs below Jesus himself.

  

For those of us who grew up Catholic,

we might remember hearing about these saints

in glowing terms on All Saints Day—

stories of extraordinary holiness, courage, and self-sacrifice.

 

I remember as a girl hearing about Elizabeth Seton,

the first American saint. She was canonized in 1975.

so I was seven and they really talked about her a lot.

They talked about her incredible devotion,

the children she cared for, the home she founded,

even the miracle she was credited with.

(cause every saint has to have a miracle)

She sounded perfect.

The stories of the saints were supposed to inspire us,

they told us often we could work towards being like them.

Be like Elizabeth Seaton.

 

But I wasn’t inspired.

As I listened, I thought: I could never be that good.

And I really didn’t want to do any of those things she did.

I’m never going to be that holy or serious or selfless.

And when they got to the miracle part,

I tapped out completely.

That was out of my league.

I knew was never going to be able to

work up to that rung of the ladder.

So instead of being inspired, I just felt left out.

And I don’t think I was alone in that.

 

Luther wasn’t crazy about that idea of saints either.

He didn’t think some people achieved

special powers or higher spiritual status.

He didn’t believe they had climbed up to God.

He didn’t believe that anyone could climb up to God.

Instead, he said we are ALL

both saint and sinner at the same time

not because we’ve earned it, but because

God has come down to us in Christ.

 

That’s what makes a saint: not perfection, but grace.

Not personal achievement,

but being touched by the love of God.

So the day turned into a day to remember all the saints

all loved by God, and whose love touched us.

 

Look at Jesus sermon on the plain that we hear today:

“Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry.

Blessed are those who weep.

Blessed are you when people hate you,”

 

The people listening must have been confused.

Even the poor people listening must have wondered.

The poor were seen as unclean, cursed, hated,

even deserving of their lot in life by some current or past misdeed.

They didn’t look “blessed by God”.

Blessing was supposed to look different:

wealth, warmth, full bellies, security, popularity,

respect from the community at large.

 

But Jesus says blessed are the poor.

Blessed are the hungry.

 

And these words of Jesus 2000 years ago,

And this selection of the readings by the lectionary committee

60 or so years ago, are still so relevant to us today. Of course.

(I’d sometimes like a break from acute relevancy,

but I guess I don’t get a choice.)

Right now, millions of people across

our country are facing the suspension of SNAP benefits -

the federal program that helps

the poorest among us put food on the table.

So people who are already choosing between

rent and medication are potentially now

having one of their precious lifelines taken away.

And yet, instead of sympathy, many people, 

including media and politicians are responding with hatred and scorn:

“Why don’t they just get a job?”

 “How about they work for their food like I do?”

“They’re all just scamming the system”

 

It’s like the theology of the ladder:

It’s as if we believe people can just climb their way

out of poverty by sheer willpower.

 

If it’s any consolation, most cultures

and times have had a hatred for their own poor.

 

The poor are stark reminders of our nations’ failure,

It’s easier to blame them for their situation than to look at

our own shortcomings and privilege and greed, and bad policies

that all work against their mere survival.

 

Unless something is in the news,

most people try to pretend poor people don’t exist.

We shut them out of gated communities,

we try to remain outside of their circles.

We shrug our shoulders at vagrancy laws, fees, fines,

and other rules that stack the deck against them

and prevent them from getting ahead,

and to let them know in no uncertain terms

that they’re not welcome in our world.

 

And we insinuate that if they just worked harder,

they could climb that ladder.

(But, by the way, we’ve greased the rungs and cut

most of them in the middle)

But if you keep trying, you could be like

us up here with our many blessings.

 

But Jesus says otherwise.

Jesus says, “Blessed are the hungry.”

Not because poverty is holy—

but because God is present with them.

Because God comes down to where the need is greatest.

Jesus is turning the ladder upside down.

Blessed are the poor.

 

And “woe to the rich”.

“Woe to you who are full now”

It’s not a condemnation, it’s a warning:

Don’t believe the lie that financial success

and earthly blessings and security

means you’ve climbed closer to God.

Don’t think blessing is something you can earn or hoard.

Don’t look for God on the top of that ladder.

 

Because God is already here—on the ground,

with the poor and the grieving and the broken and the hungry.

God has come down to us and calls us to do the same.

If you want to work your way to God, come down the ladder.

That’s where you’ll find God.

 

The good news is that along with all the cruelty and the

callousness erupting against the poor,

there is also an eruption of compassion and caring.

An outpouring of concern, love, food and gifts

from people to help people that they don’t even know.

Our pantry shelves are fuller this week

because of that compassion.

 

And that’s what All Saints’ Day is really about.

Not about a few people who managed to be perfect.

But about all the ordinary people—past and present—

through whom God’s grace has shone.

 

The ones who prayed for you,

who taught you faith and cared for you,

who forgave you when you didn’t deserve it.

The ones who sat next to you in church,

who made casseroles for funerals,

who gave food to those who were hungry,

who showed up for others quietly and faithfully.

The ones who didn’t try to climb the ladder,

but simply let God’s love come down to them

and work through them.

All the saints.

 

There is no ladder to God. 

There’s only Christ—God with us and God for us.

All of us.

The blessed and the woeful,

the accomplished and the struggling.

The sinners in heaven,

and the saints still stumbling here on earth.

 

We are not loved because we are saints.

We are saints because we are loved.