Stand Up and Raise Your Heads

Part of the gospel lesson assigned for Sunday, November 17, (Luke 21.5-19) has this to say: “…there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” Then a few verses after the assigned reading concludes there is this (21.25-28): “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.”

 

I cannot read that without thinking about our sisters and brothers in the Philippines…signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and confusion caused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.

 

And I cannot read the first part of the lesson (21.5-6) where Jesus talks about the great and seeming permanence of things (in this case the temple in Jerusalem) being revealed as an illusion, without seeing images of the buildings in that island nation lying in ruins: homes and churches and shops destroyed by the confusion of the roaring sea.

 

Then I read this: “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (21.28), and I think of the faces of those I see on the evening news coverage…Faces of people standing up, with heads raised, in the midst of the disaster. And I am left wondering just what it is they are looking at. Or maybe, they are not looking at anything – they are rather (perhaps)  looking for. For what? Signs of life, to be sure…signs which may promise food, help, clothing, water…signs of sanity in a world rocked by confusion and chaos? I imagine them (if by any chance they are familiar with this particular bit of scripture), shaking their fists at God, flailing their arms toward heaven and demanding to know “Where is the promised redemption that is supposedly drawing near?! Because this looks only like hell!”

 

A pastor friend of mine, here in Charlotte, serves a congregation whose membership is made up of quite a number of Montagnard refuges from Vietnam. Two grown men in her congregation, brothers, came to Charlotte just before their father was arrested and imprisoned (about three years ago) for refusing to bow down to an image of the president and instead professing his allegiance to Jesus. No trial, no term of sentence no specified length of imprisonment.

No one had heard from him in quite a while.

Several weeks ago, the brothers were contacted by their sister, still living in Vietnam.

Out of the blue, their father had called her from the prison.

Speaking Vietnamese, he told her that he was “doing fine and will be okay.”

She hung up the phone, thinking it odd that he did not speak the language of his Montagnard tribe.

She concluded that her father must have been forced to call and speak the language that the prison guards could understand.

Just as she came to this conclusion, the phone rang again. This time one of the guards spoke, telling her that her father had just died.

Most likely he was killed for refusing, still, to bow to another’s image.

 

It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the kind of suffering I hear about. “Confusion caused by the roaring seas and waves.”

“Being hated or put to death because of the name of Jesus” (21.16-17).

It is hard for me to fully appreciate how it is that folks keep on standing up, over and over again, despite the complete lack of evidence that any redemption is drawing near.

 

The closest I can come to grasping it, is when I am paying close enough attention to notice that the arms that flail, flail toward heaven…despite all evidence to the contrary, calling out – as if by instinct – to something bigger than this pain, before they slump to the flailer’s side and absent-mindedly clasp the hand of the child beside them, urging them on...helping that smaller one to stand nonetheless.

 

The closest I can come to grasping it, is when I see the eyes of my pastor friend fill with tears of frustration – shaking her head and saying among the safety of other pastor friends – “I swear that I’m going to smack the next person who comes up to me and complains that American Christians are persecuted for their faith!” just as she asks if any of us can serve at the soup kitchen in her congregation’s fellowship hall.

 

These are models of faith, whose model most will never see nor know about…

Those who hold hands and not only continue to stand up – but who reach out to others to help them stand as well…And who, standing, embody the reality of the coming redemption, in their presence that is persistent even in the face of death.