Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 33], rcl yr c, 2022
ISAIAH 65:17-25; ISAIAH 12; 2 THESSALONIANS 3:6-13; LUKE 21:5-19
by your endurance you will gain your souls
“Jesus Christ” has been on Twitter since 2011. Of course, we never knew it was actually Jesus until this week, when someone at Twitter—the social media platform—finally verified Jesus Christ as Jesus Christ. Now, in case you know very little about Twitter, count yourself lucky; but what might be helpful to know is that Twitter has a program that verifies people. It comes with a blue checkmark so that you can know that Twitter has made absolutely sure that it’s really, say, Hilary Clinton or really Justin Trudeau that are responsible for the posts in their name, rather than someone pretending to be Hilary Clinton or Justin Trudeau.
And as of this week, the account that’s been tweeting as Jesus Christ since 2011 now has the blue checkmark. Apparently, Jesus Christ is not only alive and well, but he’s on social media! What a time to be alive.
(Whether this has anything to do with billionaire Elon Musk buying out Twitter and installing himself as CEO, boasting that he could fix the platform in a weekend, well, I’ll leave you to figure that one out.)
What a wonderful week for someone pretending to be Jesus Christ to be falsely proclaimed as really being Jesus Christ, especially as we turn to the gospel, where we would hear Jesus say, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’” Though I do doubt Jesus had in mind a prankster behind keyboard when he spoke about people coming in his name, and pretending to be him.
It might be helpful to say a bit more about this passage from Luke, because this kind of writing and story-telling in the Bible can be a bit disorienting if we aren’t used to it.
Jesus is talking about two different times here. On the one hand, he is speaking of his near future, and into the experience of some parts of the early church: “they will arrest you and persecute you,” says Jesus; “they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.” Jesus is speaking here to those experiencing persecution for confessing his name in the decades after his death; and, importantly, that though there will be arrests and incarcerations, torment and torture, that “not a hair of your head will perish,” that is, that he would keep safe the souls of his own. And so on the one hand Jesus is saying to the early church that there will be hardship and persecution, but that he would have their back.
But Jesus speaks too, in this passage, of a more distant future, when “many will come in [his] name”; when there will be “wars and insurrections,”when “[n]ation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;” when “there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and … dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” All these things will take place on the last days, announcing the imminent return of Jesus.
And so we, now, find ourselves in a kind of time between. We aren’t in the time of the persecutions experienced by some in the early church (although there are certainly Christians in the world now who do suffer from persecution); and despite the fact that Jesus Christ has indeed been verified on Twitter, we aren’t in the last days when false prophets will arise, a time of war, earthquake, famine, a time of dread portents in the skies.
But nevertheless, as Jesus speaks to Christians being persecuted on account of “his name,” on account of faith in him—he would speak to us of the person in whom we would best put our faith, and that is he; and to read of the last days is to be reminded where our hope lies, not in false prophets, nor in the rulers of the world that would will clash and kill—our hope is rather in the him who speaks truly, the King above all kings. To speak of either times of persecution or of the last days is to be clear to whom our fullest allegiance is given: Jesus of Nazareth.
And so this does bring us back around to Twitter, or more accurately, figures like Elon Musk, a man who inspires great levels of loyalty. If you’re a journalist, for example, don’t get caught criticizing him, lest his army of adherents lash out against you. And, in some of the court proceedings around Musk’s buyout of Twitter, a good number of texts and emails between him and his monied camp-followers were shared in public. If you had any misconceptions about the intelligence of the billionaire class, let me tell you—you won’t after reading that correspondence. It’s a wonder any of them could save on groceries, let alone save the world, or even Twitter. We are in the age of Donald Trumps and Jordan Petersons, men who, for whatever their gifts, inspire distressing depths of blind and fanatical devotion where nearly all things are seen in terms of primary fealty to them and their programs, despite the clear evidence that they are but fallen men.
But those are easy targets. There are many ideologies at work that make huge demands upon us, and are nearly impossible to escape: the primacy of shareholder return on investment; neoliberal austerity strategies that divert public funds into private hands; and so many other things to which we offer our consent and passive fealty, but whose effects aren’t only disastrous, they are practically apocalyptic.
And so a gospel like this makes things both dead simple and extraordinarily difficult. It couldn’t be simpler, could it, than to say that there is no other Lord than our Lord Jesus, and that we have faith in him, and that we set our hope in him. But then this simple focus of faith and hope is set in a world of larger-than-life billionaires, of self-help gurus, of charismatic people we so desperately want to believe have all the answers; this simple focus of faith and hope is set in a world in which we are in the thrall of political principles and economic ideologies that we can barely make sense of, let alone change.
I’m hardly one to offer simple answers, or to pretend that what I’m about to suggest will quickly solve our desperate desire to find them. But let me say the following. Faith in Christ is expressed in worship—worship is where we place him above all others as the only one worthy of our devotion and praise. So, you are in the right place.
From this worship does come certain ways of life, including loving your neighbour, not only as you love yourself, but also in the name of the Christ who also suffered, and who is suffering with the suffering.
And that even as we struggle and groan together under the load of competing ways of being in the world, to say our hope is in Christ is to live as though all things that thrash and flail in rebellion against Jesus, all things that would divide us, all things that bring death, all of these petty insurrections are indeed passing away; that all these things, and all other things besides, are being subjected to him and placed under his feet: the king of Kings and the Prince of Peace.
The Revd Dr Preston Parsons
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.