1 Advent, Year C
Sunday, December 2, 2012
St. Mark’s, Bay City
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
Today, we heard Jesus talking about
the coming of the Son of Man, what the signs will be, and the fear and
foreboding that will accompany these signs.
There has been an interminable amount of speculation as to what these
signs will be or when Jesus will be returning.
Some really bad movies have been made either about the coming of Jesus
or about the end of the world, books have been written, the History channel has
put out some shows on it, and zealots have convinced their followers that they
knew the exact date when the end would come.
Some have used math, some have used world affairs, and some have just
taken crazy pills all in order to try to determine when Jesus will be
returning.
There seems to be a tremendous
amount of anxiety over the second coming of Jesus. People have shouted for centuries “the end is
near” and “repent, for the end is upon us”.
I was a part of a Bible study in which the participants each discussed
our understanding of the second coming.
I presented the idea of looking forward to Jesus’ second coming and the
final restoration of creation, and there was some surprise at taking a hopeful
view of Jesus’ coming.
There’s some fear and trembling
with the coming of Jesus, no question.
When the God of all creation comes to redeem his creation from sin and
death, one can’t help but tremble. In
our story, however, Jesus’ coming is a good thing. What did Jesus say? “When these things begin to take place, stand
up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21). In our story, Jesus’ coming is a good
thing. The frantic terror and anxiety,
which is often included in talking about Jesus’ coming is not a part of our
story.
This is our story. Jesus’ second coming, the redemption of the
world and restoration of creation, the final victory of God over death, the
banishment of sin and unrighteousness, all of these are our story. Too often, these things have been other
people’s stories, and too often other people have not told these stories very
well.
Thanks to the doomsday predictions
of Harold Camping and others like him, people who believe in and anticipate the
second coming of Jesus are seen as more than a little bit kooky. They’ve been the ones telling our story for
too long. To be fair, they are faithful
followers of Jesus, and it’s their story too.
I just don’t think they tell the story very well. They know the stories. They just don’t tell them very well.
We, on the other hand, could tell
these stories great, if we just knew them.
I bet most of us know the story of the prodigal son which Jesus told,
but are we especially familiar with the Gospel story we heard today about the
Son of Man coming on the clouds?
We know “The Lord is my shepherd…”,
but do we know Daniel 7:13-14,
As I
watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the
clouds of heaven. And he came to the
Ancient One …To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples,
nations, and languages should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and
his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.
We
may think we know about end times prophecy.
From Isaiah 13:9-10,
See,
the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce
anger…For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their
light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its
light.
That’s
the stuff. That’s the kind of end times
terror we’re used to hearing, but are we also familiar with Isaiah
40:1-2, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your
God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and
cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has
received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”
The stories of the prophets, the
stories of judgment and of restoration, the stories of the end and of a new
beginning are all our stories. Maybe
they’re foreign to us. Maybe they’re
well known, but they need to be told and re-told among us, and they need to be
told to others by us. We need to reclaim
our narrative as a message of hope and do some good storytelling.
We do this kind of thing all the
time. When we gather with family and
friends, we tell stories of our lives together.
We tell stories of good times we’ve had together. We tell stories of our loved ones who have
died or moved away. We tell stories of
the good times and the bad times, stories of our life together. That’s what these stories from scripture are,
our stories of our family.
There are good times and there are
bad times. There are stories we love to
remember and stories we’d probably rather forget, but overall, ours is a story
of hope. Stories of the second coming of
Jesus are stories of hope.
There’s judgment to be sure, but
why would that bother us? We tend not to
like it when we see children spoiled by their parents and never
disciplined. Why would we want anything
different from God? There’s plenty of
bad stuff in the world, and if we’re honest, there’s plenty of bad stuff within
each of us. Why would we not want God to
deal with that? Jesus is coming again to
complete his work, to destroy sin, to destroy unrighteousness, to swallow up
death forever. Jesus is coming again to
restore all things, to make all things new.
“…stand up and raise your heads,” Jesus said, “because your redemption
is drawing near.”
That’s our
story. That’s the story we need to tell
to a world hungry for hope. That’s the
story we need to tell to people who are hungry and thirsty for God. That’s the story we need to tell this Advent,
as we prepare for Christmas and as we prepare for Jesus’ return.
Now, we don’t
believe that Jesus is necessarily returning right away or even anytime
soon. Advent is our annual season of
preparation, our annual reminder that we should always be preparing for Jesus’
return, but how do we prepare? Well,
what did Jesus say about preparing for his coming?
“Be on guard so that your hearts
are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this
life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” Ok, so don’t be drunk all the time. Don’t be hopeless, and despondent, and
worried about life. In other words, live
in hope. Live joyfully. Don’t worry.
The end may come in a billion
years. The end may come in a second and
a half. In the mean time, there’s a
whole lot of living to do. We sing “Joy
to the Word” when we remember Jesus’ first coming among us. Wouldn’t we sing the same song when
considering his second coming? The Jesus
who came among us the first time is the same Jesus who will come among us the
second time.
We prepare for Jesus’ second coming
by living our lives. We prepare during
this season of Advent by living joyfully and peacefully, with prayer, hope,
service to others, and hearts full of love, and by telling our story over and
over again, with hope and excitement, and joy.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment