November 16, 2025
Pentecost 28/ Year C
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex CT
Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19
A week or so ago, I had to stop by my mechanic to have him take a look at something that was hanging off the bottom of my car. I am a firm believer that finding a reliable mechanic who doesn’t overcharge or try to upsell is as important as finding a good doctor, so I am very glad to have found one who, when he was a kid back in the 80s, was a choirboy over at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven where he sang under my friend Walden Moore who was at Trinity for more than 40 years. On this day, a friend had stopped in to chat with my mechanic, and while the car was being looked at, this friend struck up a conversation with me. I was in my clergy collar and had joked with him about his friend being a choirboy as a kid, so he thought he would ask a question or two.
So, I said, “ask away.”
And the first question out if his mouth was this: Is the bible a book of prophecy?
I paused, because that was not what I was expecting, and then I asked him to clarify the question. He pointed to the chaos, the violence, the wars all around us and said that the bible talks about such times as signaling the end times. In hindsight, perhaps I should have pointed out that people through the ages have looked around them and asked the same thing: is this the end?
Instead, I responded that no, I do not believe the bible is a book of prophecy. Yes, there are what we would call prophetic texts, but many of them were written in the midst of the events happening or even after they had already happened. Occasionally, the prophecies come before the events at a time when it was clear that trouble was coming. In general, biblical prophecies are contemporary with the events they describe, and they certainly aren’t talking about the world in the 21st century.
In Isaiah, we read about a vision of a restored Jerusalem, a peaceable kingdom where
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord. (Isaiah 65:25)
This “prophecy” was written when the people of Israel were restored from exile in Babylon, and their longing of rebuilding their holy city and living in peace and prosperity, while still not a reality, was at least a possibility. It is this that Isaiah foretells.
In 2nd Thessalonians, the people expected that Christ is returning any day now, and many have stopped contributing to the good of the community and are just waiting in anticipation of the end. This line about anyone unwilling to work not being allowed to eat has been so abused and misused against people who are unemployed or unable to work, but that isn’t what this means at all. It’s those people who just stopped working because they were looking into the heavens for Christ’s return on clouds of glory. It’s like back in 2011 when a radio evangelist named Harold Camping declared that the end would come on May 11 of that year, and people sold their houses and quit their jobs and sent all their money to this swindler who wound up with over $100-million to enjoy on May 12 and beyond.
And Jesus has predicted that the temple would not be left standing, and maybe Jesus uttered these words, but we know that when the author of Luke was writing these words, the temple had already been destroyed by Rome. Jesus follows the words about the temple with signs of trouble to come and the hardships that believers would face. I am sure he knew that anyone who confessed his name would face persecution from the religious authorities and from the empire, and in fact, when these words were written down, that was exactly what was happening.
Most prophecies in the bible, especially those in the Old Testament, are made within a worldview that says that disobedience to God’s commands leads to punishment. Even now, it does not take a prophet for us to draw a line between war or hunger or disease and our failure to love our neighbor, to feed the hungry, to care for those who need our help. Humans get so absorbed in self-protection that we neglect the teachings of Jesus. Or, as the poet of the resistance Jimi Hendrix said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
Isaiah pointed to a different way, a world where enemies in the animal kingdom dwell in peace and tranquility. Jesus walked that way of love, too.
When I started wearing this chasuble and stole, I believe I promised to tell you the story behind it. Today seems a good day for that.
This past Friday marked the 85th anniversary of the blitz in the Midlands of England by the German Luftwaffe. It was the single most concentrated bombing of Great Britain during World War II and left devastation in its wake, including the destruction of the medieval cathedral in Coventry. Just over a month later, the then-provost of Coventry Cathedral, Dick Howard, speaking from the ruins on Christmas Day, vowed to reach out a hand of friendship to the German people following the war, hoping to build “a kinder, more Christ-like world.”[1] It did not make him the most popular person at the end of 1940, but Provost Howard was true to his word, and the first connections began shortly after the war with the cities of Kiel, Dresden, and Berlin. These partnerships were sealed with the presentation of a Cross of Nails created from the iron nails collected from the ruins that were part of the original construction of the medieval cathedral.
In the days following the bombing, charred roof timbers were found to have fallen in the shape of a cross, and they were set up in the ruined apse of the old cathedral where a replica of them remains to this day (the originals are in the “new” cathedral completed in 1962). Not long after, the words “Father forgive” were inscribed on the wall of the ruined chancel. These were not the words Jesus spoke from the cross – Father, forgive them – but simply Father forgive, because Provost Howard understood that we are all complicit in the violence and destruction in our world. The Litany of Reconciliation that includes the words “Father forgive” is still prayed every Friday in the cathedral ruins and in other faith communities around the world.
The litany begins: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And it is here, in this acknowledgement that God is God and we are not, that Christ is necessary to our salvation, because we cannot, on our own, save ourselves, here that we confess that God is able to heal and repair whatever we have undertaken to corrupt and destroy.
The litany continues:
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
FATHER FORGIVE
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
FATHER FORGIVE
The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
FATHER FORGIVE
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
FATHER FORGIVE
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
FATHER FORGIVE
The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
FATHER FORGIVE
The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
FATHER FORGIVE
Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.[2]
All of these things for which we ask forgiveness are the ways in which we have corrupted our humanity through the effects of sin. And so we turn to the one who can forgive us and plead “Father forgive,’ or if the gendered language causes discomfort, “God forgive.”
Provost Howard of Coventry Cathedral was very clear in where his allegiances rested – forgiveness, reconciliation, and unity in the name of Jesus Christ. When it seemed that the world might be coming to the end, he pointed to a brighter future, where hands of friendship breached the divide between nations and people.
When I was ordained, I used the monetary gifts I received to commission the creation of this chasuble and stole which bear the image of that cross of nails. The color blocks are reflective of the 26-meter-high high baptistry window in the “new” cathedral. It is a reminder to me not only of the significant and life-changing time I spent in Coventry but of the possibilities of the kind of prophetic imagination that is possible as demonstrated by Provost Howard.
Is the bible a book of prophecy? I don’t think so, but we can read the signs of the times in the world around us, in the ways the vision of a peaceable kingdom is not matched by what we see. Jesus does not say when then end will come, but he does tell his followers to be ready. And the way we are ready is not to hunker down in self-protection but to continue to follow the way of love, trusting that God can resurrect whatever worlds have crumbled, stepping out boldly as servants of God, seeking and serving our neighbors so that they, too, know the peace of God where none “shall hurt or destroy on all {God’s} holy mountain.”
[1] http://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/ccn/read-our-story/
[2] http://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/ccn/the-coventry-litany-of-reconciliation/