The Berlin Circuit of The United Methodist Church

Human cultures have a vivid shared memory of those events that reveal an absence of safety and security. In our own culture, the assassination of JFK became a central shared memory of the baby boom generation. September 11 has had a similar effect. Both events reminded our culture about how fleeting life is, and about how institutions, whether political or economic, can be damaged.

Ancient Israel's two most vivid cultural memories were the Babylonian captivity, when Israel was conquered by Babylon and carried off to a strange land, and the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem by Rome in the first century. These two cultural memories, like September 11, reminded ancient Israel of the absence of safety and security in their own institutions.

In Jesus' statements to the disciples in this week's gospel lesson, Luke 21.5-19, Jesus reveals to the disciples that their lives will not be safe and secure in the way that the disciples want their lives to be. Safety and security, although promised by Rome and Israel authorities, was an illusion. In fact, Jesus suggests that the disciples' lives would be characterized by an absence of what the world thinks of as safety and security. But only through the absence of such security could the disciples nurture the only thing that mattered--their relationship with God and the safety of their souls.

There is no safety and security in this world in the way that we yearn for, and in the ways that are implicitly promised by our cultural institutions. But there is a deeper security and safety that is real, that can only be found by letting go of the security that we think we need. It is in our relationship with God and in our soul.