Flee to the Mountains

You want to live as a Christian? Pay attention to the words of Jesus. You want to follow Christ as Lord and Savior? Learn the words of Jesus. You want to be a truly spiritual person? Take your cues from the stories and parables of Jesus. You want to be a genuine human person, reach your potential, and make a different in somebody’s life? Read the words of Jesus and pray this prayer: “Dear Lord, make me like what these words say.” That is the first and finest way to live as a Christian. Others will push you in different directions. Millions of people find direction elsewhere in the Bible and emphasize things like speaking in tongues, or the virgin Mary, or words like justification and predestination. These can be good, but Jesus is better. Some will hand you a rosary but not Jesus. Some will demand you attend religious services several times a week or even every day but not Jesus. Christians in Louisiana are posting in every school room a portion of Scripture, but it is not the words of Jesus. It would have more impact if what they were reading, quoting, and memorizing were the Beatitudes of Jesus. That is the true road to the Shalom of God, the Salvation of God, the Community of God. Here we are today giving our attention to the words of Jesus. This collection of words is found in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. They all thought it was important and so do we. Jesus thought it was important and so do we. The early writers of the gospel, those who sorted through all the sermons and sayings of Jesus, settled in these words in Mark 13, Mathew 24, and Luke 21. We are paying attention to these words of Jesus because we know that reading them, understanding them, and incorporating them into our minds and souls will make us better people, better Christians, better humans. Let focus today on this command of Jesus, “Flee to the Mountains.” I. Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem. “Not one stone in the magnificent building will be left upon another,” he said in the first three verses of this prophetic sermon.  Jesus foresaw the judgment of God upon the Jews and their city and their temple. Many of the Hebrew prophets centuries before Jesus warned their people of the judgment of God upon them. The king went to Jeremiah looking for assurance. Jeremiah gave him none. God is judging Israel, Jeremiah said, and will take you into captivity. Jesus said the same thing. Judgment is coming. Here is what I mean: Jesus called the Jewish people to heed his call to live into the kingdom of God: to welcome the stranger, to share with the needy, the forgive the wayward, and to create a community of peacemaking. But they turned to politics. As Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time, Luke records these words, “As Jesus neared the city, he saw it all and wept. He said, “If only you my people had known and understood the things which make for shalom. But now they are hidden from you. Because of that, your enemies will surround you. They will kill you and your children. They will tear down every stone. You did not understand the day when God came near.” The judgment of God was upon Israel because they rejected the way of peace, the way of love, the way of gospel, the way of Jesus, the way of Shalom, and chose instead the way of law, the way of religion, the way of the world, the way of war. That is, judgment upon Israel was not inevitable. It did not have to happen. It was not predestined. In 1955, Doris Day sang the song Que Sara Sara. It is fractured Spanish for a fatalist view of life: whatever will be will be. Theologians might spruce it up with scripture and call it predestination. It means this: the future is determined and what is planned will happen. Jesus did not understand his ministry in that way. He came to call Israel to repentance. Had they chosen the hear and heed the call of God, their future would have been different. It would have been the kingdom of God. It would have been the beatitudes. It would have been Shalom. Their future could have been the triumph of “Hosana, Hosana, Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.” It could have been beloved community and the rule of faith, hope, and love. Some followed Jesus and walked in his way; but most did not. The pious and the pure did not. The Pharisees and the Sadducees did not. Some did, but most did not. They choose another way, a way which led to violence and division and war. They choose another way, a way which led to armed rebellion and the crushing advance of the Roman Army. In 66 AD, the Jews revolted. They expelled all Romans from Jerusalem. They installed a revolutionary government. But the Romans sent five legions of soldiers under the command of Vespasian. They defeated the Jewish armies, surrounded Jerusalem, and killed more than one million people. Jesus was right. They should have paid attention to his words. Jesus put it this way: when you see “the abomination of desolations” flee to the mountains. That is the way Mark remembered and recorded it.  Luke states it like this: when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, flee to the mountains. Or we might put it like this: when you have the choice between armed rebellion or fleeing to safety, run!  Run to the mountains. It was an early version of John Meir’s famous saying, “The Mountains are calling, and I must go.” It will be a terrible time, Jesus predicted. “Woe to them that are pregnant, because it will be doubly hard. Pray now that it will not happen during bad weather.” It was a terrible time, one of the 38 times that Jerusalem has been conquered. It will be a consequential time, Jesus said, but it will not be the end of the world. If anybody says in those days, ‘Look, there is the Messiah of God. He will save us.’ or ‘Here is the coming of the Promised One. Our redemption is at hand,’ do not believe them! The destruction of Jerusalem is not a sign of the end of the age! Today, this week, people are speculating about WWIII. Things are not good in the Middle East. It is a dangerous situation. A second aircraft carrier group has been dispatched from the United States. There is provocation all around. And some would be Christian Prophets are all up in arms. It is war. It is Armageddon. It is the coming of Jesus. Don’t you believe it. It might be the judgment of God on somebody or upon all of us; but it is not the end of the world, it is not the second coming of Jesus, and it is not the Rapture, whatever that is. Believe them not, Jesus said, and I repeat, believe them not. Devout prophesy has been a thing in recent decades among some Christians. This is the result of three events. In 1829, a young Scottish woman—a teenager—had a vision with a revelation, predicting what we now call the Rapture. Until then, nobody had ever heard of it. A man named Darby bought it and brought it to the United States where it has had great influence. Second, in 1906, a street preacher in Los Angeles began preaching healing and miracles. That Azusa Steet church launched the Pentecostal Movement, with all of its attention to the supernatural. It became the most powerful Christian a movement of the 20th century. Then in 1948, Israel was created as a modern state and preachers fell all over themselves in prophetic interpretations of scripture and history. These three things have shaped our experience and understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. I wish I could stop and talk about each one of them. They conspired to create the Christian culture that gave rise to the book, The Late Great Planet Earth and The Terminal Generation, followed by Left Behind. Suddenly, prophesy and the end of the age was everywhere. Lord, help us all. Many of us lived through that craze of prophesy. Here we are, back at the feet of Jesus, reading his words and asking, what do these things mean and what about the future? III. I have three more sermons in this series. I will talk more specifically about the end of the age and such. But today, I read the words of Jesus to the people of his day, “When you see the armies of Rome, flee to the mountains.” Get out of town, Jesus said to his people. And they did. Th first followers of Jesus, all of them Jews,ns did not join the rebellion of 66 AD. They stood down, based on the words of Jesus. They did not join the militias, because of the words of Jesus. They got out of town, because of the words of Jesus. I wish we had that much confidence in the words of Jesus. I wish we had that much focus on the words of Jesus. If so, we would be peacemakers in a broken world, we would be generous to those in need, and we would receive those who others avoid. If we read and believed the words of Jesus like they did, we would forgive our enemies, trust God for our food, and surrender our lives to Jesus. If we read and believed the words of Jesus as much as they did, we would look across the racial and political divides in our country and join hands. If we read and believed the words of Jesus as much as they did, we would stop demonizing people because they live different, think different, love different, and dream different than we do. We would embrace them as people, created by the one true God, redeemed by the crucified Jesus, and surrounded by the holy spirit of God. Flee to the mountains, Jesus said. Get out of town, they did. Jesus said it, and they believed it, and they did it. It changed the course of Christian history. I call us all today to listen to the voice of Jesus the Risen Lord. I challenge myself and yourself to pay attention to the words of Jesus. In older Bibles, the words of Jesus were often printed in red. Some people today call themselves Red Letter Christians. I like that. In all the confusion about what it means to be Christian, and in all the options about what it means to live as a Christian, I like the title: Red Letter Christian. What about you?