Sermon for Sunday, November 16, 2025

November 16, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Luke 21: 5-19


In today’s Gospel, we hear an echo of Advent and Christmas. Did you hear it?

It’s hard to hear it, because it’s surrounded by so many sentences that tell us that hard times are coming: wars and insurrections, natural disasters of all sorts, false accusations and persecutions and death. Where, exactly, is the Advent and Christmas?

We get all of these details straight out of a dystopian story, and Jesus says in verse 9, “Do not be terrified.” The writer of the Gospel of Luke uses this idea like a refrain that winds through the book. In the first chapter of the book, an angel appears to Zecheriah and says, “Do not be afraid.” Later in the chapter, Mary gets the same message: “Do not be afraid.” In chapter 2, angels appear to the shepherds with good news of the coming of the savior, and they, too, begin with the same words: “Do not be afraid.”

I’ve always assumed that angels say this because they terrify the humans who see them. Are angels that scary looking or is it just that humans don’t expect them and so they inspire terror?

Maybe it’s something even more existential. I think of hearing news of a savior, and my first response is “Finally!” But maybe the angels instruct us not to be afraid because of what comes when deliverance is at hand.

We know from the first time Jesus came to earth that redemption is not a peaceful process. People don’t say, “Yes, we’ve been running the world all wrong—here, you do it.” And even if people did say that, we know from the history of how God deals with humans that God doesn’t want us to do that. God did not create us to be puppets, with God’s hands pulling the strings, making us move in ways that God wants. God wants to persuade us that a different way is possible—and Jesus is one of the ways God does this.

“Be not afraid” is a phrase not only spoken by angels in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus, too, says it over and over again. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he says it here.

But still, it’s terrifying stuff that Jesus presents, a sort of end times greatest hits. If we read the whole chapter, Jesus goes on and on, telling his terrifying tale. But at the end of the chapter, we find out that people are still coming to hear him at the Temple. And in Luke 22, the Holy Week narratives begin: the people in charge plotting against Jesus, Jesus arrested and charged with exciting the people, and the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Jesus teaches at the Temple, and the Gospel begins by everyone admiring the Temple. Jesus knows that humans are easily distracted by bright, shiny object, the big buildings, the decorations. There’s so much that pulls our attention away from the work of saving our souls. Even in the non-dystopian times, even when there’s not war and plague stalking the human race, we can be seduced by the beauty of our buildings. Jesus reminds us that it’s all temporary, even these buildings which seem so solid and worthy of admiration.

The first generation of readers of the Gospel of Luke would hear Jesus’ words about the destruction of the Temple in a very different way. Many of them might have a memory of the literal destruction of the Temple. They would hear these words in this Gospel and say, “Yup. Jesus predicted this very thing that came true.”

And the rest of it has come true, too, hasn’t it? We’ve had wars and kingdoms rising against kingdom. We’ve had natural disasters, like the earthquakes and plagues Jesus mentions, and other natural disasters too, like fires, floods, and ever more destructive hurricanes. We’ve had every variety of human-made disasters along the way. Every generation gives us a false prophet or two or three—people who want us to believe that they alone can fix what is wrong with or without God’s assistance.


I would guess that even the last part of the picture Jesus paints is true for those of us in this congregation, although perhaps a softer version. If we’re sincere in our faith, it’s likely that we’ve lost some friends and family members along the way. It’s likely that we’ve had to defend ourselves against false accusations of what all Christians are like. In today’s Gospel, Jesus assures us that he will give us the words and wisdom when we face this particular test, and I hope we’ve felt that presence.


We will hear these words of coming dystopia again in two weeks, when we begin our Advent texts, and those texts can leave us puzzled. Why this apocalyptic tone in our Advent?

But Advent should be apocalyptic, in the dystopian sense of the word. The coming of a savior is something that generations of people long for—ancient people and people in our own times. But we often forget how that coming will change everything we thought we knew. The making of something new so often requires the destruction of the old.

Let’s remind ourselves that along with the scene of destruction that Jesus paints for us are the seeds for a new life, a new way of being. We have seen this evidence with our own eyes. Imagine if we could go back to a particular year during the cold war. Let’s say 1984, with all of its dystopian echoes from books we might not have read since high school.

If we could travel back to 1984, you might meet college students who were convinced that we might be called upon to invade Central America. You might meet cold war shaped adults who worried about the intentions of the USSR. You might meet people who worried about possible Civil War in South Africa and how that might spread across the vast continent.


Those people that we would meet would be amazed to learn that Archbishop Oscar Romero has now been made a saint for his efforts to stop the killing in El Salvador. People in 1984 would not believe us when we told them that the wall between East and West Germany would come down before the end of the decade. And people who had their eye on South Africa would be expecting Nelson Mandela to die in prison, not to become the first president elected after the fall of apartheid.


I do realize that you could reverse this story and mourn all of the opportunities to have a better society that we’ve lost since 1984. But hear again the refrain of the book of Luke: “Do not be afraid.” Let’s make that refrain our own. Every time we feel the tingle of fear, let us remind ourselves that new life begins with birth pangs. Let us remember the words of the angels, the words of Jesus, the words of Easter morning: “Do not be terrified.” Let us offer our songs of praise to the God who is making all things new, to our redeemer who knows that earthly power might dazzle or terrify, but it is God’s power who can defeat death to bring new life to us all.