All Saints' Episcopal Church, Thomasville

Trinity 22, 2003

"But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end." Daniel 12: 4a

"When you see the abomination of desolation…"

The composer Guiseppi Verdi was eighty years old when his good friend presented him a libretto based on Shakespeare's comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor." He had spent his entire life writing some o28 tragedies, some of which are the greatest the world will ever know. At 80, he thought he had probably written himself out, but he was so intrigued with the idea of writing an opera on that marvelous character Falstaff, that he came out of retirement the second time, and wrote the greatest comic opera the world will ever know.

And this poet, scholar, philosopher, farmer devoted Christian, and composer of tragedy decided to end his career with an elaborate nine part fugue on one of Shakespeare’s most elusive and profound lines: "All the world is a joke." To emphasize the message, Verdi directed that the entire cast and chorus come right to the footlights, stand in front of an enclosed curtain, and then sing this musical miracle right into the audience’s face: "All the world’s a joke."

Often at times I think nothing could be farther from the truth. This week, you’d think that Scott Peterson, Kobe Bryant, Rosie O’Donnell, Private Jessica Lynch, and Victoria's Secret were all more important than our continued struggle to get on grip on the situation in Iraq, or the devastating fires in California, or the Korean problem, not to mention the break-up of the Anglican Communion.

Both our lessons this morning sound about as far from a joke as we might ever imagine. Both make mention of the "abomination of desolation being set up where it ought not to be. The cynic in me says I've been looking at the abomination of desolation every time I turn on the television, having to listen to the never ending sagas of Scott Peterson, Kobe Bryant, the parents of Denise Smart, and Private Jessica Lynch, and Rosie. But Daniel was referring to the statue of the despotic emperor Antiochus Epiphanus III being set up in the Jewish Temple. Several hundred years later when Jesus refers to Daniel's abomination of desolation, He means Caesar’s statue being place on that same spot.

And when you thing about it, for over two hundred years, some citizens (different ones at different times depending on who’s in office) have believed that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been held hostage by an abomination of desolation. In my lifetime, the opposing political party has always felt their current president to be so bad that if they could not get rid of him at the next election, then they might as well watch the country slide down the tubes to oblivion and extinction.

But life is a joke, and somehow, despite how inept some presidents have managed to be, we always manage to pull through - which says something about what a profound job our founding fathers actually accomplished. But it also says neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are the ones who are in charge. God is.

Toward the end of his life, the poet Robert Frost paraphrased Verdi: "In three words I can sum up everything I have ever learned about life: 'Life goes on.’" That image of Antiochus Epiphanus III in the Temple really wasn't' the end of the world for Daniel and his friends - although many of them died to insure that the reign of this 3rd century BC Saddam Hussein would not last forever. In our time, Mr. Clinton's election was not the end for the Republicans, and Mr. Bush's subsequent victory will not spell eternal doom for the Democrats. Life does go on, that is, until God decides when The End will come. But then it won’t be the end for our world in the sense of termination, but consummation.

What that means for us now is that we must try to accept with grace the suffering and evil which comes our way. Further, as we wind up next week this latest installment of the Church Year, we do well to remember that our true home is not of this world. "Here is no home; here is but wilderness."

If these lessons this morning tell us anything, apart from the fact that we will always be dealing in one way or another with the abomination of desolation, or the terror that walks by night, or the sickness that destroyeth in the noon day - or however one cares to describe any senseless or indiscriminate suffering which comes our way, the lessons remind us that suffering does not lie on the fringe of our experience of God, but the very core of our experience with God. And this brings up the subject of Providence.

Far too many of us interpret the providence of God as the good and the bad things He sends us to deal with from day to day or year to year. But the doctrine of providence does not claim that every misfortune or every illness, or even every natural disaster id divinely inspired.

There is a great difference here. We have no right to claim that any misfortune, disaster, or suffering is God’s will, or simply Him fulfilling His purpose. Rather, the doctrine of providence says that suffering (like the Crucifixion), can be made into an instrument for the expression of God’s will.

For the Christian, this means that he must accept, or try to accept with grace the suffering that comes his way. To resist that suffering denies God the chance to work His will of redemption in our life. I don't mean that we roll over and play dead with regard to the evil which comes our way. We must meet it head-on. On the other hand, to be racked and tormented to the point that we fail to confront evil shows that we are more concerned about our lot in this world now than with our place in the world to come. Because life really does go on.

I read an essay recently where the writer suggested how illusion and frustration arise from our failure to live in the moment, and how instead we strive to live for the moment. Our continued anger, even over things like a lingering illness, the death of a loved one, or the ravages of a natural disaster, can show too strong a predilection for the moment: a moment in a world which we must believe - if we believe Jesus Himself - He will one day make new. In that regard, our entire present world really is a joke.

The older I get the more I appreciate the description on the statue of Percy Shelley’s own abomination of desolation:

"My Name is Ozymandius, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

And then the devastating comment upon Ozymandius, his kingdom, and all which his evil represented:

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

One day, all oppression and suffering will end and be as nothing. Those lines in a reverse sort of way, speak a tremendous comfort, but we must realize that that comfort extends only to the point that we are willing to resist identifying ourselves with those worldly things. Ozymandius' subjects had to resist him, just as Judas Maccabeus and his army had to resist Antiochus Epiphanus III, and just as the first century Christians had to resist the horrors of Nero and Caligula.

Such resistance cannot help but produce suffering - as our Lord found out on the Cross. And yet, not to resist evil and therefore not to endure the consequent suffering, is to refuse God the opportunity to enter our lives to redeem that suffering. Despite our Lord's injunction to resist not evil (which requires another entire sermon) for us to fail to give God a chanced to help us in our struggle shows us to be nothing more than part of the decay of that colossal wreck: half sunk in the desert, and alone forever in the wilderness.

We must never forget that the mightiest of despots, the most horrifying plagues, the worst sufferings imaginable, even the greatest and finest politicians and political parties will one day be as nothing. "Nothing beside remains. Around the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare - the lone and level sands stretch far away."

If Shakespeare and Verdi are correct that all the world is a joke, then the only real thing is God. God chose, and continues to choose the act of suffering to make known His power. And because this cannot ever fit our worldly logic, there will always be those rebellious voices in our world and within our souls - voices which continue to protest with cries that this business of suffering cannot really be God's way, because our God is a God of love and would never allow anything like that.

It is then that the Church and her members, if they are truly faithful, must say to those rebellious voices in our world and in our souls: "You fail to understand the nature of love. Love is our Lord actively meeting this evil and the sin of the world, and allowing that sin to lift Him up on the Cross." Jesus met evil head on. And He suffered the consequences. But in meeting that evil and suffering the consequences, God brought Him to a state which far exceeded anything we might ever have expected. In Jesus, the suffering and agony of the Crucifixion became the opportunity for God to express His will for Jesus and all mankind, with the Resurrection.

The Church shows tremendous wisdom and compassion reminding us at the end of the Church Year, that suffering lies not at the fringe of our experience of God, but at the core. If all the world is a joke, then apart from God, suffering may be one of the few truly real things we will ever know - a reality which He will (as God did with the Crucifixion), forever make new.