“I find your lack of faith disturbing.” — Darth Vader (and Jesus....probably)

A version with footnotes can be located here.

One of the neat things about seminary is that in addition to the normal classes, like Hebrew Bible, New Testament studies and Lutheran Confessional Theology, you also get to take some pretty weird classes. One of these odd classes I had the opportunity to take was titled Sci-Fi and Religion. It’s exactly what it sounds like. We spent time reading science fiction, watching popular sci-fi movies and discussing how it relates or reflects our relationship to religion. And it was pretty awesome too. In addition to writers, we explored popular series like Star Wars and Star Trek, and movies like The Hunger Games and Divergent, and more recent shows like Black Mirror and Stranger Things. Perhaps it sounds sort of funny at first, but it ended up being one of my favorite courses, not only because it was fun and a nice break from the other heavy readings of seminary, but also because it taught me to imagine our world in a different way.

And this is precisely the job of the genre of science fiction. Sci-fi writers push us into a different world or universe with entirely different rules and norms and in doing so ask us to question our own realities.

One of my favorite writers, Ursula Le Guin, is particularly good at this. She often presents a world that is similar enough to our own that we can relate, but different enough to challenge our own assumptions. After her death last year, a journalist described her writing by saying that, “Le Guin’s stories forced readers to examine how societies—future and present—treat people. It was science fiction that prioritized humanity over technological innovations. It was fiction as a mirror that gazed back into our darker selves.” For example, in one of her more popular books, The Left Hand of Darkness, she presents a post-apocalyptic society that is void of gender. She uses this world to ask her readers to think more critically about gender roles and gendered societal expectations in our own world. She is a master at using an apocalyptic setting to communicate with her audience in a way that brings in those who may be on the margins of society into the conversation.

I’m sure that after reading our Gospel text from Luke today, it's no surprise that my mind turned to apocalyptic thinking and science fiction. Luke’s writing is dripping with similar language as he retells this story of Jesus interacting with his followers.

In this scene, we are first reminded of the world that Jesus is living in. At this point, Jesus is traveling and preaching and when he comes to to this temple, he is reminded of the wealth and power of the Heriodian Kingdom. The thriving nature of the kingdom makes his suggestion of these apocalyptic signs all that more shocking to his audience. But before the earthquakes and wars and famines, we are introduced to the text just as Jesus declares a prophecy, or a prediction to his followers, that the temple will be destroyed.

Now, this prophecy was particularly important, because while Jesus is telling his believers this, to his audience, this seems unbelievable. If you take a look at the front cover of your worship booklets, you’ll see an artist’s rendering of this same temple. Its magnificent and impressive. It’s huge, took decades to build, and was still being built during Jesus’ life. In fact, at this point in our story, King Herod is expanding the temple, adding to it courtyards and landscaping, adorning it with even more beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God. So, Jesus telling his believers that this beautiful and seeming indestructible building could be destroyed was so countercultural to what they had been experiencing that it seemed shocking, unbelievable even. For them, his suggestion alone would have felt as though the world was ending.

This temple had grown to be the center of their lives. It was more than a building; it represented the power and wealth of the Herodian Kingdom. It was a symbol of the Empire. In a way, it was this fulfillment of what we now call the prosperity Gospel- this idea that if you are good enough, if you are one of the chosen ones, then God will bless you with wealth and power. Jesus here is being anti-prosperity Gospel. With his prophecy, he is destroying the status quo of the empire.

And so in the second part of this story, his believers are reacting to this statement. A temple being destroyed, this temple being destroyed changes everything for them. And so they respond to this prediction from Jesus by essentially asking him, if this one terrible thing is going to happen, then will you at least tell us when it is going to happen. It’s a question we all want to know; how much longer do I have to live, how much longer do I get to be comfortable?

And of course, Jesus is not happy with this question, so he responds with this list of awful things that will be a sign of the end for them. He says that there will be false preachers, war and insurrection, earthquakes, famines and plagues when the end is near. Then he makes it personal, saying “you will be persecuted and arrested...brought before kings and governors because of my name.” Your very identity will be questioned, challenged. These signs are truly frightful to those that posed that initial question.

While I think its fair that Jesus’ followers would have felt fear, I think we are reading Luke in the wrong lens if we treat Jesus’ words as if fear was their purpose. They are apocalyptic words, but they should not be frightful words. Instead, I offer them as hopeful and believe Luke is offering this too.

Jesus is disappointed in the reply of his followers, their disbelief and shock that they experience when they learn the temple will be destroyed demonstrates that they have put their faith in worldly things. Jesus’ response is an attempt to restore his followers faith by reminding them where they should place their hope.

Luke is writing to us after Jesus’ prophecy has come true. The hope for Luke comes in his retelling of this story. He offers to us a story of Jesus making this prediction of the destruction of the temple because Luke has already seen the destruction of this temple. In other words, he saw the proof of Jesus’ prophecy. He believes this is a hopeful story because Jesus was right; the temple was destroyed by the Romans just a few years later.

Luke, he is offering us a word of hope, reminding us that the temporal, worldly things and everything they may represent are temporary, but the words of Jesus are timeless and indestructible. He is simply mirroring the words that Jesus offers to his believers in this story. The message seems clear- don’t place your worry, or even all of your hope and faith on the temporal, but instead turn towards Jesus and follow his gaze to focus on the things he focuses on. Worry about what Jesus worries about. Place your hope where Jesus places his hope. Love in a way that Jesus would love.

Scholar and feminst theologian, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, a professor at Harvard, coined the phrase “reading from the underbelly of the text,” as a part of her hermeneutical approach to scripture. This theory simply means that we approach Bible stories from the least powerful position in that society. In many stories, this may mean reading it from the point of view of a woman or an enslaved person. This operates under the belief that Jesus was always working for those on the margins.

Preacher, theologian, and civil rights activist Howard Thurman, also interprets the teachings of Jesus through the experience of the oppressed, noting that this is the best way to interpret the words of Jesus. Both the approaches of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Howard Thurman, help us to better understand the words of Jesus in this story in Luke.

The problem with that initial reading of this text, in which I believe the destruction of the temple to be a bad thing, and the problem that Jesus has with the reaction of his followers, is that such a reaction comes from a place of privilege.

You might be wondering how could such destruction possibly be good? For his followers, they too were wondering, if the temple is destroyed, this means everything I know is also destroyed, how could this be a good thing? The temple, which we noted a few minutes ago, also represents the power of the Kingdom; how could such power possibly be destroyed?

But Fiorenza and Thurman, invite us to read this event from the perspective of someone who is on the margins of this society. Perhaps we read it from the point of view of a widow or an enslaved person. Then, the destruction of the temple no longer seems so bad. Actually, for this group of people, the temple’s destruction may mean freedom from the oppression of this powerful kingdom. Its destruction may mean liberation. It means that finally, maybe they can see hope for a better world.

Professor Emerson Powery reminds us that “in the ancient world, apocalyptic language generally appealed to those on the margins of society.” Jesus’ language is comforting to the marginalized because his words and ideas suggest that the Empire might not last forever. And Jesus says this is Good News. This is Good News, because the systems of the empire, whatever that may have been for this audience and what that may mean for you- capitalism, white supremacy, materialism, fear, war- will no longer be in control of us, but Jesus will. As the worldly Empire pushes us out, we will fall into the just, forgiving, graceful, loving, peaceful, arms of God. Jesus is offering us hope and comfort masked in this apocalyptic language.

If we return to where we started this morning, in my Sci-fi and Religion class, hopefully we can begin to see the power of apocalyptic language. Though, I must make a confession. My love for science fiction didn't begin in seminary, but instead when I was a kid, trying to figure out just how I fit into this world. That class was so impactful for me, not because I was introduced to these fantastic worlds for the first time, but instead because it helped me understand why I felt so comforted and drawn to science-fiction in the first place. It was for the same two reasons that I am drawn to Jesus. The worlds of sci-fi and the stories of Jesus, both comfort and challenge me to see the world in a different way.

These are the same two things I believe Jesus is offering us in our Gospel reading today.

First, Jesus is offering us this word of hope, by reminding those of us that are hurting, that are in pain, or suffering, that are marginalized or maybe just don't quite fit in, that there is healing coming. That our hope lies in knowing that the pain of Jesus’ death eventually leads to the healing power of his resurrection. That our pain and those things that cause us pain are only temporary. That even if we do not belong here, we do belong with Jesus.

And secondly, he is challenging us to think about what the destruction of our own temples may look like. And I should be clear here that I am in no way advocating for the destruction of churches and cathedrals, instead symbolically, what or who do we treat as the temple in our lives.

I believe Jesus is challenging us to wonder what it would look like if the things we cherish, the systems we love and benefit from, were to be destroyed. In a symbolic way, he asks, what needs to be destroyed in order for a more just society to be resurrected in its place? What do we need to shed in order to create a society, a community, a church, or family, that looks more like the one Jesus envisioned?

With our Gospel story in mind, I invite you to join me in wondering where Jesus’ focus is today. As Jesus is challenging us to look beyond the systems and the world that we know and to imagine a better one with him, I wonder how I may go about challenging the status quo this week? What words or actions I will speak or do this week to bring hope to others and maybe more importantly, I begin by asking what temples may be obstructing my view?

Amen.