A Sermon for When It Feels Like the World Is Ending
The Second Sunday of Advent
November 16, 2025
The Rev. Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY
In biblical studies,
when approaching any passage of scripture,
we can speak of the three “worlds” of the text.
There is the world of the text –
the story on the page,
what is happening,
who is involved,
what is being said and done.
It must have been jarring
when the disciples heard Jesus say
that their beloved temple
with all its “beautiful stones”
would be destroyed,
reduced to a pile of rubble,
not one stone left upon another.
It had to feel like the world was about to end.
There is also the world behind the text —
the historical context from which the story emerges,
the person or persons who wrote it,
the audience they’re writing to,
the realities each of them is experiencing
as the story is being written
and as that story is being read or heard.
For Luke’s original hearers,
the temple was already gone.
How different that must have felt,
to be reminded of the painful reality
that their temple,
the epicenter of their religious identity and practice,
had been reduced to a pile of rubble,
wiped out by a powerful occupying foreign empire,
not one stone left upon another.
It had to feel like the world had ended.
The world of the text
and the world behind the text
collide
in what Jesus says next:
Do not be terrified.
Yes, you will be (or have been) betrayed by relatives and friends.
Yes, people might even hate you.
But: not a hair of your head will perish.
To the disciples living in fearful anticipation
of what’s to come,
and to the Lukan audience weighed down by heavy grief
of what has already come to pass,
Jesus speaks a word of promise:
You will endure.
Amid wars and insurrections,
earthquakes and famines and plagues,
betrayal and persecution,
destruction and devastation all around –
amid all these things –
you will endure.
In the world of the text,
Jesus’ words begin his final teaching to his disciples
just before the Last Supper
and his impending arrest, trial, and execution.
Death is closing in –
and in this way,
Jesus’ words take on a pastoral, encouraging tone –
Take heart! This is not the end. We will not perish.
We who know the fuller story
of the world behind the text
and what comes next,
what comes after,
hear Jesus’ words ring true,
alongside the women
at the tomb that cannot contain Jesus:
Take heart! This is not the end. He is not here but has risen.
In the midst of the fearful anticipation
of what’s to come,
in the aftermath of the heavy grief
of what has already come to pass,
God’s word of life speaks into the midst of death,
seemingly out of the blue.
***
Meanwhile,
in the world in front of the text –
just as important as the first two worlds –
in the contemporary context in which we live,
receiving and making sense of these ancient words here and now,
we live in our own uncertain times,
heavy with fearful anticipation and grief.
We have seen wars and insurrection.
We have seen the rubble in Palestine, in the land of Jesus’ birth,
not one stone left upon another.
We have seen famines of our own making
unfolding in real time,
as SNAP benefits run dry
and healthcare costs skyrocket –
basic human needs out of reach for so many.
In many ways, it feels like the world is ending –
like everything we know and take for granted is falling apart.
“Yesterday, I was arrested,”
a colleague of mine,
a pastor in the near north suburbs of Chicago,
reflects in a recent post on Facebook,
“for trying to pray with God’s beloved children
who are held in one of the most inhumane torture facilities.”
When Pastor Luke traveled this past Friday
to the ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois,
along with several of their colleagues,
to pray and worship and peacefully assemble and protest,
seeking to offer pastoral care to the detainees inside,
quickly, but not surprisingly,
they were denied entry,
met with violence, threats, and arrest –
“they will arrest you and persecute you” –
all for responding to Christ’s call
to love their neighbor.
We who live in the world in front of the text
have seen the horrors of our own time
unfolding before us,
and to us who live in the world in front of text,
Jesus speaks a word of promise still:
Do not be terrified.
Take heart!
You will endure.
In the midst of the fearful anticipation
of what’s to come,
in the aftermath of the heavy grief
of what has already come to pass,
into our present reality here and now,
whatever we are facing,
even when it feels like the world is ending,
God’s word of life speaks into the midst of death,
seemingly out of the blue.
It’s as if Jesus says,
as one commentary puts it:
“No matter what adversity you face,
no matter how many formidable obstacles,
no matter how hopeless things may seem,
God will make a way out of no way –
not merely ‘winning’ the game
but changing the game entirely,
remaking heaven and earth,
turning the world upside down,
or rather, right-side up!
Take heart!”
This is our prayer and cry,
as one Advent hymn text says:
“Lost in the night do the people yet languish,
longing for morning the darkness to vanquish,
plaintively sighing with hearts full of anguish.
Will not day come soon? Will not day come soon?”
(ELW 243)
This is our hope and trust,
that same hymn goes on:
“Sorrowing wand’rers, in darkness yet dwelling,
dawned has the day of a radiance excelling,
death’s deepest shadows forever dispelling.
Christ is coming soon! Christ is coming soon!”
This is our Advent hope and promise:
That in deepest, darkest night,
when it feels like the world is ending,
out of the blue,
God is in our midst,
weeping alongside us,
working among us still,
making a way out of no way,
making all things new.
Take heart!
Christ is coming soon.
Come and save us soon.
