The lectionary that several denominations use—the order of Scripture readings for the year—is organized in such a way that, around this time of year each year, we hear Jesus speaking of what will happen to his followers after his Ascension, as well as signs of his imminent return: talk of the end.  Now, Jesus is always arriving, whenever one more person newly receives him as Savior and Lord.  And his Second Coming is still in the future.  Oh, there are always those convinced it won’t be long, now.  Both Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists got their start, that way.  The late Harold Camping got some people to take note in 1994 and again in 2011.  An acquaintance mentioned how, just recently, her pastor had energetically reminded people to cool it with prognostications of the Rapture.  There are also those in the church who argue that the Second Coming is not an actual event but a metaphor: these are usually the same ones who find the ethical teachings of Jesus far more stimulating than any talk of salvation, sin, redemption, or second coming.

It’s easy to stop expecting Christ’s actual, glorious, physical return.  This is another of the temptations to which the faithful are always being exposed.  I’m not convinced that Christ will return in the clouds with hosts of angels anytime in the immediate future, but that doesn’t mean much.  The point for me, and the point I’d like to encourage you to consider, is to keep working on living in a mindful way each day that God gives us: a conscientious, grateful, faithful way.  That’s just what Jesus is asking us to do in what we hear him tell his followers today.

“You must be on your guard” (13:9).  Disciples keep God’s Word close, close to hand, ready, treasured in their hearts, meditating upon His Word.  God’s Word is our guard, our guardian.  Beloved, I’ve been in churches where there has been sad failure: adultery, fornication, cooled zeal, lukewarm faith, slavish pursuit of the world’s allurements, the habitual absenteeism of the unmotivated.  Some came to their senses and returned; others, so far as I know, are still astray.  How has this happened?  Most let their guard down.  They progressively, corrosively, allowed other things to matter more to them than their faithful walk with the Lord.  It dejects me to think that maybe that walk was never really so very important to them in the first place.

What had a faithful walk ever done for them?  What had it brought them?  Freedom from fear, fatigue, and failure?  Freedom from conflict?  Had a faithful walk brought them wealth?  Prestige?  Fabulous vacations to exotic places?  Pleasures that made the skin tingle?  A faithful walk guards our salvation; a faithful walk keeps God at the center of our living; that is, a faithful walk keeps God in the place of our god.  Everybody serves some god.  Let the god we serve be God revealed to us in God’s Word, through Christ in the power of the Spirit.  God does and will do staggering, heart-breaking, exhilarating, holy things for us.  But we won’t notice if we aren’t looking, watching; we won’t much care if we don’t much value what God is doing.  Then our guard goes down and other things fill our heart—whatever seems to make the trouble go away, for a while anyway, so that at least we don’t feel quite so unhappy.

Disciples must learn to look around and look within.  Faithful followers must learn to discern the times—are the times more or less favorable to God’s Word?  The result of such discernment will be perspective, wisdom, patience, and courage.  And how does each time, each season, fit into God’s eternal plan?  The more time we spend with Scripture, permitting the Word to break through to us, to saturate us, the more able we will be both to consider these questions and begin to hear God’s answer.

Oh, we know we’ve got to walk the walk.  We need the Spirit to do that; we need each other to do that: this fellowship of faith.  In this era of loose association, meaningless membership, and atomized consumerism, there’s no longer much value attached to being part of a church, actively involved.  It’s those dear saints who have gone before us who remind us of this beautiful necessity of our fellowship.  We also learn the faith, we also are drawn to go deeper into the faith, both through the blessed lives of those who struggled for the faith before us and those who are striving for Christ around us now.

There are times when it is easier to be a Christian, when external circumstances seem to make the journey smoother.  There are seasons when the way can be more than usually rough and the going particularly difficult, personally as well as socially, culturally.  I don’t say we are in the worst times the church has ever faced, but I do think we are in a difficult time for those striving to be disciples faithful to the fullness of God’s Word.  God’s Word is Jesus Christ, and Christ is salvation.  Salvation is to be rescued out of sin, out of a world enthralled, enchanted, hexed by sin.  The world will have us celebrate and enjoy these sins; the world will have us call sin good, truth, discovery, fulfilment.  Beloved, putting a Coca-Cola label on a bottle of deadly poison doesn’t change what’s inside the bottle.

Those who refuse to celebrate sin as the world requires are going to be in trouble.  This is nothing new.  Jesus tells the apostles and those listening together with them, “You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues” (13:9).  See the Book of Acts.  Having Jesus does not mean and never has meant that believers will never be in any trouble.  Having Jesus means that, when trouble comes, as it must in this life, we will not be without help, we will not be abandoned.  See Romans 8.  Rather, we will have a most powerful friend with us.  Our faith is always on trial: witness, testify, and pray.

It’s bad enough to be flogged in the presence of the local council—the civil authority.  Jesus had physical beatings in view, but this painful punishment is any sort of persecution or penalty for clinging to God’s Word contrary to the dictates of the prevailing social mores and ruling powers.  Note that Jesus also tells his followers they will be flogged in the synagogues, too.  There were no Christian churches, at the time, just those places where those who trusted in Christ gathered: the synagogues.  But the synagogues were not uniformly receptive to Jesus and the Good News.  Beloved, I dislike to say it, and I don’t want to be misunderstood, but not every church is Christ’s church.  I don’t see that as being judgmental.  I’m speaking from experience, observation, listening, and time with God’s Word.  The Reformed spirit knows exactly what I mean.  To cling to God’s Word in such churches is to invite the flogging of disapproval, criticism, complaint, isolation, and rejection.  When you find a congregation—did I say a denomination?  I said congregation.  When you find a congregation clinging to God’s Word, put down roots.  Denominations as we know them are fracturing, buckling; as they currently exist, they are largely done.  Oh, the emptying hulks will lumber along for another decade or three, cruise ships in the breaking yards.  Beloved, our first, and best experience of the Church has always been the local congregation.  The Church is larger than any denomination.

Jesus also reminds his hearers that “[T]he gospel must first be preached to all nations” (13:10).  We’ve all—very much including me!—we’ve all got to develop the habit of offering salvation to others.  It’s a blessed habit and doesn’t have to be pushy or intrusive: evangelism is the love of Christ in action.  Would it be too much to set ourselves the goal of offering Christ to one new person in our circles of acquaintance each season, inviting that person to come and see, to come belong here with us?  Some will decisively decline; others will remain forever noncommittal; still others will receive our offer with hope, appreciation: they’ll say okay.  God means for none to be able to say that no one ever told them, that they didn’t know.  No one will have an excuse; no one will have an alibi.  They either wanted what God offered or they didn’t.

Oh, we know that our proclamation of our faith can’t be by words alone.  Actively, fearlessly, unapologetically living out our faith in this world, however, is not free of risk.  Living this faith is not just a matter of being kind and compassionate—crucial as these virtues will always be.  Living this faith is also, and crucially, a matter of holding on to the truth, God’s truth, the truth of God’s Word, His revealed will for human life, for our flourishing.  That’s where the suffering happens.  No one is going to mind if you’re kind and compassionate—and keep your faith to yourself.  There are those who will very much mind, and make you very much aware of the fact, if you speak up for God’s truth when that is not their truth.  Jesus knows all about it.  Beloved, always bear in mind that whatever criticism, difficulty or even suffering that comes to you because of your biblical faith in Christ is not for nothing.

Jesus tells his followers what they may already have sensed: there would be arrests, trials, hard personal consequences for their devotion above and before all else to God and God’s Word.  Discipleship comes with a cost.  Faith that costs you nothing may just prove in the end not to be worth much.  Besides slothful habit and lack of practice, what keeps us from speaking with others about Jesus is fear.  What overcomes fear?  Practice helps.  Throwing fear to the wind helps, but I know that’s hard, believe me.  Our best help for fear is faith, faith in Christ, faith that what Christ tells us is true: not only true but necessary for our full flourishing, necessary for joy, for purpose.  He tells his little group of followers, his friends, “Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say.  Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit” (13:11).  The Spirit speaks to us and, if we let him, the Spirit will speak through us.  There are times when the Spirit is asking us, even pleading with us, to allow him to speak through us.  Some to whom we speak will never listen.  Others will listen because it is you speaking.  We don’t have to get the words, organization, funny stories, and examples all figured out ahead of time.  We don’t need to anticipate every response, question, or objection.  Just speak.  Care enough to speak.  Have faith enough to speak.  And then to listen, with patience and compassion.

Now, Jesus doesn’t paint the rosiest picture of how things will be for those who have put all their trust in him.  It’s downright terrifying!  He tells them, plainly, “Everyone will hate you because of me” (13:13).  Well, no thanks then!  I don’t doubt there was such a time in the early years of the church, and it isn’t hard to imagine scenarios where that total, systemic rejection and loathing comes along again, but let’s not forget that, for us this side of eternity, the futures we fretfully conjure are fiction.  Don’t let fiction flatten faith.  Sometimes it can feel as if, because we are all for Christ, all will be against us.  The powers of opposition will and must oppose.  We can expect this.  This is no surprise.  Yes, the powers of opposition will have sufficient power to pursue and prosecute their aims: they have before, and they will again.  The only answer we have to such power is the humble courage of faith, not flattened but upright.  Faith assures us that we have an anchor within the veil.  Christ will draw us in.  We are each of us always held, safe in the arms of Jesus.  So he tells those listening, he tells us, reminds us, that “the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (13:13).  We are here to help one another stand firm: this is part of our calling, part of our purpose, part of the power of the Holy Spirit in and among us.  We praise and bless the Spirit with us even in this very moment, for the firmness, the faith, to stand, and withstand.