November 30, 2003

First Sunday of Advent 

Luke 21:25-36

Are You Expecting?

     “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, a verse from “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, the first Advent candle - the season has begun and the next four weeks will take us there - Christmas! 

     So…what’s with this “end of the world”, doomsday stuff from Luke?  “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth distress among nations!  People will faint and they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud!  Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things!”  Whoa…Ho, Ho, Ho and a Merry Christmas… great way to start off Advent!

     This passage from Luke might not sound like much of an Advent theme to us, but it actually is.  The biblical use of the word, “advent”, refers to a time of anticipation, of waiting for the coming of Jesus Christ.  This season that leads up to Christmas is certainly an Advent as we look forward to celebrating the anniversary of Christ’s birth.  But there is another Advent, one that anticipates Christ’s second coming, his return at the end of time.  Just as certainly as one season leads to the next, as the fig tree sprouts leaves and bears fruit, Jesus said he would come again. 

     But when will that be?  None of us can be quite sure.  Even Jesus seemed a little uncertain about this, stating in verse 32, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place”, but then in another place (Matthew 24:36) he also said, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father“.  So, people have been left wondering for the last two thousand years - “Is this generation the one?“

     Without a doubt, many Jews and Christians in the first century felt the end was coming in their time.  There were many indicators that cataclysmic things were about to happen and perhaps Jesus sensed this himself.  Trouble did come in a big way in 70 AD when the legions of Rome descended on the holy city of Jerusalem and leveled the great temple (the Wailing Wall is all that‘s left today).  Rome’s intention was to wipe out insurgents and Jews who had converted to Christianity were on this list.  So thorough was this “cleansing” that most of the Jewish Christian record was lost forever.  This is why the bulk of our New Testament is composed of writings for Christians who lived outside Jerusalem. 

     For the believers in those days it must have seemed that the world was indeed coming to an end, but Jesus’ words of warning may have helped prepare them and his words of encouragement that they stand up and raise their heads “because your redemption is drawing near” must have given them strength and hope.  “Be on guard.  Be alert”, Jesus told them and if they were, his words served them well, for what better way to face the end than aware, prepared, ready, believing, trusting, serving faithfully?

     A lot of years have passed since then and perhaps we’ve all grown a little weary of end-time prophecies.  Someone knocks on our door and it takes every bit of courage we can muster to answer it because we know on the other side there’s some pushy religious person with pamphlets and disturbing questions like, “Do you know we are in the final days?” or, “If the world were to end today, where would you spend eternity - in heaven or in hell?”  We don’t like answering questions like that.  They make us uncomfortable.  Maybe we aren’t sure how we should answer them.

     Well, perhaps I can offer you a handy response, a true-to-the-Bible answer to these sorts of questions.  It is taken from the last verse of today’s lesson from Luke.  What if the world would end today?  Where will we spend eternity?  The answer is that these things are in God’s hands and that as it says in verse 36, we will one day stand before the Son of Man. That is very good news because  he is Christ the Lord, the one who gave his life for the sins of the world.  Trusting him, we do not have to be afraid or even concerned as to when the end might come.  Trusting him, we are always ready.  We will stand before the Son of Man, the sacrificial Lamb and be embraced by the greatest love and forgiveness the world has ever known.  What better place to be?  Amen!  Come, Lord Jesus!

     How can we respond to such amazing grace but to want to be as gracious ourselves?  Love leads to love.  Our thankfulness for God’s great mercy in Jesus Christ takes shape in the daily expressions of our faith.  We are not to act in Christian ways in order to secure ourselves a spot in the hereafter.  We don’t pray and serve and give because we are afraid for our own skin (isn’t that an incredibly selfish thing to do?).  We act in faithful ways out of gratitude for what the Son of Man has accomplished for us.  We love the Lord because he first loves us.  We give of ourselves because he gave all he had for our sake on the cross.  We can stand up and raise our heads because our redemption happened on Easter Day.

     Christmas is all about Easter.  The sacrifice and resurrection of Christ are why we celebrate his birth.  The gift is an Easter gift and we get to unwrap it now.   It is our redemption and the reason we can rejoice even now, even in this war-torn time, even in this sin-filled world.  We can celebrate now because this promise is sure, this hope overwhelms all the hopelessness and pain the world can dish out.  In the end, this love is the one thing that still stands and because we are wrapped up in it, we’ll stand, too.  Come what may, we have this gift.  We can live fully now, unafraid of the future because it is in God’s loving hands.

     Now I’m going to tell you a little story about the peace that living with such an attitude of readiness can bring.  Our son, Jon, flew off for work in Costa Rica this past Tuesday.  His brother Matt headed out a week before him.  I knew Matt had a lengthy lay-over in San Francisco, so I called him on his cell phone.  “How was your flight?”, I asked.  “Interesting”,  he said, “We took off from Philadelphia and it seemed shortly thereafter the plane started to fall and we dropped and dropped until I thought to myself, ‘Well, this is it’.  But then the plane suddenly leveled off and everything around us got incredibly bright!  And I thought, ‘Are we dead?  I’ve heard of walking into the light - I didn’t know you could fly into it!’”

     Matt shared this experience with humor and absolute calm.  At 25 years of age, he’s totally comfortable with the thought of his own mortality.  A few months ago he told me he could die tomorrow and wouldn’t be afraid or disappointed.   

     Believe me, our kids aren’t saints, but one thing Kay and I have tried to instill in them over the years is trust in God, the assurance that come what may, everything will be alright in the end.  There will be smooth flying at last and  bright skies.