Dunbar United Church of Christ - November 15, 2009

I. Anyone who took English 101 in college probably remembers the poem by Percy Shelly called Ozymandias. It’s about a traveler from an ancient land who tells about a statue he saw half-burried in the desert. He said, “Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies.” And on the pedestal of the statue was printed the words: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Yes, despair, because I am greater than you, Ozymandias told the other kings. He was like the pharaohs of Egypt at the height of their power. Ozymandias was the superpower of his age, like the United States and Russia and China today.

II. But that was thousands of years ago, and now the only thing left of Ozymandias were pieces of broken statue, a head here, an arm sticking out of the sand there -- over there a leg cut off at the knee, sticking out like a tree stump. And in another hundred or thousand years, even these will be turned back to sand and there won’t be any evidence that Ozymandias existed. Once the greatest man on earth, now, just sand.

III. Which is, physically, how we’ll end up -- just dust and sand. That’s what Jesus told the disciples when they saw the Temple of Jerusalem, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Jesus said, “Yes, an amazing building. And soon it’ll be a pile of stones. So don’t be too impressed. These bodies of ours, and the buildings we make, don’t last long.”

IV. The disciples wondered: “When will the end come?” Jesus said only God knows, so don’t worry about it. Instead, worry about seeking the kingdom of heaven right now. Worry about how much you love others, and how much you don’t.

The wars and earthquakes we should be worrying about are the ones going on inside us -- the fights we have each day with good and evil -- the crises that happen as we change -- our hair, the wrinkles on our faces, our voice.

Everything changes, even in our souls. God wants to remake us in the image of Jesus Christ. Our pain and suffering are the birth pangs of the new soul God is creating within us.