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The Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in thy well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 29)
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The Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 21:5-19
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Luke 21:5-19
✛
Not One Hair
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This happened right after he commented upon the widow in poverty, the one who put two mites into the temple treasury, the one who, he said, cast in more than all the others, for what she gave was all her living. This happened, I say, that he turned to the Temple itself, its great stones, its glorious stained glass, its jewels, its sparkle, its magnificence: of this, he said, the days are coming, in which there shall not be left one stone upon another. And he spoke to them of what was coming, of wars, and commotions, of nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom; he spoke of earthquake, famine, epidemics of disease. And he said, be not afraid. Because, before all this happens, you will be arrested, and persecuted, and brought before the authorities. What will you say, when they ask you to account for yourself? Will you say, I gave the great stones for the Temple; those were my jewels that adorned its walls? No, that will be in the past tense, and it will not count; realize there is nothing you can plan to say. So he taught them, and he encouraged them, he said that when the time came he would give them a mouth and a wisdom to speak with. And then he said that parents would betray them, and brothers, and kinsfolk, even friends. And he told them that some of them would be put to death on his account. Still he encouraged them, saying even that not a hair of their head would perish.
What strange dialectics is this speech, coming just days before the climax of his own life? On the one hand, fear not, I will be with you, I will give you what you need in the hour of trial, not one hair of your head will perish; on the other, a Temple turned to rubble, war, earthquake, disease, arrest, persecution, betrayal by one’s closest, even execution. It is a picture of terror, of civilization’s end, of humanity reduced to atoms, buckled girders and asphalt dust, bits and pieces of bone and flesh; yet over against it, the summons to faithful testimony, the gift of wise speech, and the promise, not one hair. Let me focus the strangeness: how can he say, in verse 16, that some of you shall they cause to be put to death, and then say, in verse 18, there shall not a hair of your head perish?
And yet, and yet . . . do we not know that it is true? Is there not some place deep in our souls, deeper than we can put into words, which knows that the terror—here realistically described—is never encountered without also finding that “on the other hand,” that unexpected encouraging presence? It seems to me that in every century, when the terror has been experienced, people have thought that what was happening to them was what he had talked about, so long ago, as he came to the climax of his life. The Plague, the Black Death, the Great War, to name a few from a list which numbers scores upon scores and which of course includes our own 9/11 world: people in all these times have looked to what he said and found him describing their own world. And making that identification, people in all these times have made a further identification, that the terror of their experience is not meaningless, that there is a promise of wisdom to testify well to the truth, that despite whatever happens it is still true that not one hair will be harmed.
Those hairs, we might remember, are all numbered. Not by us—at best we might be aware that there are fewer of them than there used to be, but there is one who knows, who numbers hair. He knows its number because it is he who calls it into being. And if he cares so much about each strand of hair, if he cares about the loss of even a tiny bird (are not two sparrows sold for two mites?)—will he not care about us?
The dignity of the human being is found in something more fundamental than material or psychological circumstance. Tall or short, dark-skinned or pale-face, New Yorker or Californian; lose an arm, lose your job, lose your mind—you still have the dignity that is deeper than circumstance. Whatever the environment or genetics have given you, the essentially human is still yours. Even if you lose all your hair, you still have it, because there is one who counts your hair. He counts them, for he holds every strand in being, and shall not willingly bruise even a bent reed, for his is an infinitely tender care that nothing be lost.
It is his Son who has spoken of the terror, the disintegration, the conflict, and has said that we will always have what we need—words of truth, and an unharmed head. Yet within days of speaking these words that very Son’s flesh was lacerated, and over his numbered hairs was smashed a braided circle of thorns. Did he receive the words he needed to speak? Or was he silent, like a lamb to the shearers? The community around him disintegrated, and his closest betrayed him. And he lost his life.
But then we saw the true dignity of the human being. His Father, who held him always in being, now held him in love, love stronger than death, love to the very core. We saw that what is really human is held in being by a love that is more than human. Every human life, if it is really human, is also a divine life, because it is the Father’s love that makes the human human.
The irony of our life is that so much of what we settle for from day to day is a pathetic thin simulacrum of real humanity. We, in our present state, can grasp the human only when we see it ungrasped, given away. It’s as if we need the wars, the temples that collapse, the plagues, the conflicts, the disintegrations. But when someone gives it all away—the widow at the treasury, our friend on the tree—then we see it: the dignity of the human is that we can live by love. It may kill us, and yet, not one hair—well, by now you know the rest.
