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Trinity Episcopal Church Hattiesburg, Mississippi Advent 1 December 3, 2006 Go To Trinity's Home Page

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. “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. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”(Luke 21:25-36)

The Timely Coming of the Kingdom
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

     Signs are important things.[1] We use them everyday. They tell us the speed limit, the direction of traffic, where to find restrooms – and which one is which, and when our favorite shops and restaurants are open. Without signs we’d be more confused than we already are and we’d probably spend a good deal of time lost.

     But sometimes we experience signs that are confusing or which make no sense at all. I was in New Orleans last weekend and drove down many streets trying to make sense of the parking restrictions. “NO PARKING TOW AWAY ZONE” it says at the top in big threatening letters. “Residential Permit Parking 10 pm - 7 am” it says in the middle. “2 hour Parking” it says at the bottom.

     Some signs are just plain confusing – especially if they are translated from another language into English. Doug Lansky has compiled a book of photos of such signs. One from China reads, “Painful Treatment of cancer Center.” One in Los Angeles warns, “Caution: Blind Drivers Backing Out.” On a shop in LA another one proclaims, “Antique Tables Made Daily!” A scary one from Racine Wisconsin reads, “Happy Easter / We Rent Handguns.” And my favorite comes from San Diego: “Cruise Ships / Use Airport Exit.”

     Sometimes events seem to also be signs pointing to something. It was June the week before my high school girl friend and I had our birthdays. I had just spent the afternoon window shopping with her. I kept an attentive eye and receptive ear to her to see if there was something I could get for her. Problem was, I had just come home from college, and my summer job hadn’t started yet. I didn’t have any money. That afternoon, she had seen a picture she really liked, and as I walked home I was wishing I had the money to buy it for her. When I got to the mail box at the end of the driveway, I absently looked through the letters and bills and found a birthday card from my Godparents whom I hadn’t heard from for many years. “Why,” I wondered, “did they send me a card this year?” To my shock, inside was a check for the exact amount of the picture. I turned around and walked back into town to buy that picture.

     Was that coincidence or a sign?

     The Episcopal priest and writer Barbara Crafton recently wrote, “People in AA say there are no coincidences. They say it all the time. Had not this happened, and this, and this, in just this way, I would have missed a great gift; not have met a lovely new friend; wouldn't have gotten this job; wouldn't have been there to take a friend to a meeting when he was in danger of slipping back into the living death of his drinking. People in recovery learn to think this way because they each have a story of something or someone without which they would never have gotten free from the deadly demon of their addiction. Something happened in my life, and if it hadn't happened, I might not be here. Some even say they thank God for the very fact of their being alcoholics – on their own, they never would have discovered the peace and gratitude that living according to the twelve steps has brought them.

     That leaves us with a very large and important question. Does God make plans like that, flow charts of this and this and then this, things that must occur in a particular order for a certain good to be happen in the world? Do we get cancer that we might learn to be grateful for our families? Does your house burn to the ground in order that you might learn that material goods aren't everything in life? Is it really true that everything that happens is predestined and that there are no coincidences?”[2]

     There are many people who believe that. In the gospel lesson today, Jesus speaks to his disciples about the signs that will precede the return of the Son of Man to the world. He says there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and distress among the nations. The very powers of the heavens will be shaken.

     Some have argued that we are in those end times now. The Sun tabloid had an article recently stating that Jesus’ second coming will be at Christmas this year (at right). All joking aside, though, we have had cosmic changes like the 2004 tsunami, Katrina and Rita in 2005, flooding in New England earlier this year, and disastrous storms and flooding in the pacific northwest quite recently. Global warming seems to be a reality. And it takes nothing to find “distress” among nations right now. Listening to the morning news gives me distress because I am afraid of what happened overnight in the geopolitical tar baby known as the Middle East.

     But, we’ve heard this stuff before. My grandfather used to tell me that we are living in the end of times. My father said the same thing. But the troubles we had in the twentieth century weren’t the signs of the end after all. And the same thing could be send of the e previous century and the one before that. Millennialists have been talking about the reign of Christ for a very long time. Some Christians believe that between the millennium and the final end of the world there will be a brief period to allow a final battle with Satan, or a time of the Anti-Christ, followed by the final judgment. The millennial concept probably had its origin in Zoastrianism, the first monotheistic religion that heavily influenced Judaism and which predated Jesus by some 700 years.

     We have been over reading the signs of the times – and the symbols in the Bible – for a very long time. And here we are in the season of Advent with its dual proclamations of the incarnational birth and the end of times – both events heralded by signs on earth and in heaven. “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival” and it symbolizes when Jesus came the first time, and again at some later time. And neither the people who lived then or those of us who live now are very adept at reading the signs or determining whether an event is merely a coincidence or points to something providential.

     The kind of writing we have in Luke’s twenty-first chapter is called “apocalyptic.” The word “apocalyptic” comes from “apocalypse” which means “revelation,” probably most familiar to us through the Apocalypse or Revelation to John, the last book of the New Testament. As a literary form, apocalypsis deals with a revelation about the supernatural world beyond the world of historical events. The focus is on the end of the world as we now experience it, and the beginning of a new age.

     Major historical crises always seem to trigger apocalyptic thinking in one form or another. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E. is the historical event around which the speech of Jesus in the twenty-first chapter of Luke is placed. It is at such times of painful and prolonged suffering when no relief from disaster seems possible, that faith turns its face toward a vision of heaven for a revelation of God’s will and for a vision of the end of the present misery and the beginning of a new age.”[3]

     But it is a huge mistake to try to match up the symbolic language of the apocalyptic – particularly the apocalyptic books of the Bible – with actual people and events of the present or of the past. Beware of anyone who thinks they can tell you exactly how the end times will be or when they will come. As Jesus said, no one knows this – not the angels, not even Jesus himself. Jesus seemed to know that as a species we would confuse ourselves as we tried to see coincidence as predestination and predictable events as divine intervention.

     We are thousands of generations removed from Luke’s time, and unless we fall subject to the bad theology of evangelical doomsayers, we know exactly what Luke’s people knew: that God is active in this world all the time and that the Kingdom is in our midst. We, like Luke’s people, are incarnational. After all, that is the whole point of the story of Jesus’ birth narrated in Luke’s Gospel. The birth narratives speak directly to the incarnational presence of God in the world. Luke’s people experienced God’s presence with such intensity that it gave them strength to endure Roman persecution. God’s living presence strengthened their faith. Luke’s people – like you and me – understood that God does not act in the world only from the outside as an avenger for the righteous, but rather acts in the world primarily from inside out; from within each of us; by what we say and by what we do.

     What that meant for Luke’s people is the same that it means for us. It means that the Kingdom of God is already here and that it lies in our hands. It is not something about to come, but it is something tangible now. We know this because when Jesus was asked about when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God is already in your midst” (Lk 17:21). The power to usher in a kingdom is given to us by the incarnational presence of God acting within us and through us. As seen by Luke, the Kingdom had broad meaning, and it applied equally to Gentiles and Jews. For Luke, the kingdom meant that the people of low social standing would be elevated, and the high would be brought low. Everyone would be equal and loved in this new kingdom. For Luke that was penultimate salvation.

     Luke’s gospel does not speak about the consummation of God’s purposes. Luke’s story, like our own, is open-ended. The far reaching vision of salvation envisioned by Luke is not written by Luke, because it didn’t happen in Luke’s time. But, Luke is absolutely convinced that the salvation of all things will occur someday.

     So, on the one hand, the promised end is yet to come, but on the other, Jesus said the Kingdom is already in our midst. How can both things be true?

     Both are true because the kingdom is indeed all around us. It is sitting next to you. It is beating in your own chest. It is an inherent understanding of Jesus’ people – that is you and me – of the values Jesus propagated throughout his ministry. Values like justice, freedom, and love of neighbor. And to usher in the kingdom all we have to do is to remember that the present – the here and now – is the arena in which we must follow Jesus’ mission on behalf of the poor, the disadvantaged, the sick, the lost. In other words, “the end” is nothing less than the completion of the work that Jesus began: the consummation of God’s redemptive purpose. And so with the first Sunday in Advent we begin the story again: The story of God’s redemption of this world. Only this time, let us renew ourselves to God’s purpose. Let us hear, feel, and act as if the salvation of the world is in our hands. Because it is…

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Jeremiah 33:14-16

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

Psalm 25:1-10

1 To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

2 O my God, in you I trust;
do not let me be put to shame;
do not let my enemies exult over me.

3 Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame;
let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

4 Make me to know your ways, O LORD;
teach me your paths.

5 Lead me in your truth, and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all day long.

6 Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your
steadfast love, for they have been from of old.

7 Do not remember the sins of my youth or my
transgressions; according to your steadfast
love remember me,
for your goodness’ sake, O LORD!

8 Good and upright is the LORD;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

9 He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.

10 All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and
faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant
and his decrees.

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith. Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Luke 21:25-36

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. “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. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Collect of the Day

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[1] The section of this sermon on signage was adapted from Timothy F. Merrill. “Mixed Signals.” Homiletics18(6):31-35, 2006.
[2] Barbara Crafton. “No Coincidences.” The Almost Daily eMo from http://www.geraniumfarm.org. Received by email from bccrafton@geraniumfarm.org on 30 November 2006.
[3] Fred B. Craddock. “Luke.” In Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 245.

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Copyright © 2006, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
22 November 2006

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