Sermon on Luke 21:25–36 and Jeremiah 33:14–16. Proclaimed at Zion Spies Lutheran Church, Oley, PA.
When I was in high school, I was pretty scatter-brained. My friend Tamineh called me the “absent-minded professor.” Well, honestly, she still calls me that. She likes to tell about a chemistry experiment that turned the wrong color because I put the chemicals in in the wrong order. Always forgetful, that was me. But my biggest problem in high school was homework.
One day in seventh grade English I found myself in a panic. We were to read a book and present it with visual aids. Evidently. I honestly don’t remember it being assigned. So we were going around the class, and people were presenting their work, and I didn’t even know what book I was supposed to have read. Another time when I sat with my mother in a parent-teacher conference, and the instructor said in exasperation, “He hasn’t even turned in last week’s homework assignment.” I said, “Oh! It’s it’s in my locker. I’ll go get it.” It took me fifteen minutes to find it in the mess, but it was there.
But the worst was my third quarter of Physics II. It was getting close to report card time, and Mr. Weiss asked us to go into our notebooks, add up our grades, and bring them up to him to check his math. He gave us a list of our assignments, and I started searching. I couldn’t find the majority of them, and as I thought about it, I realized that I hadn’t turned most of them in. I had simply forgotten. So as I filled in the zeroes for each missing lab report and worksheet, terror set in. A D minus in my school was 70%. My total was 62.
We aren’t used to hearing words of terror come from our Bible and faith. We think Christianity should be a comfort, something to help us feel better about the difficulties of our lives. But the last few weeks, we’ve been hearing a lot of worrisome things from Jesus. The apocalyptic language (as Bill told us last week) is distressing and confusing, not least because it seems so out of place. And as we begin the walk toward Christmas, the arrival of the infant savior, it seems very odd.
The second coming of Jesus is not something we talk about often in churches like ours, and frankly, I wish my first sermon with you this month was about almost anything else. But I don’t decide what Jesus says, and I’ve learned that he likes to surprise me and try to trip me up. So today, on the first Sunday of Advent, Jesus tells us that his return will be a cosmic event, something much bigger than just ourselves: There will be signs in in the sun, moon, and stars; the earth and the sea will be shaken. And people will be filled with fear and foreboding, enough to faint.
When we hear him tell us that “the Son of Man [will be seen] coming in a cloud,” we’re not quite meant to take it literally. Jesus isn’t giving details; he’s quoting the prophet Ezekiel, who writes to weave a tapestry that shows the power and great glory that will reveal God’s plan for the end. And as we anticipate this coming infant, a tiny thing laid in an cattle’s food trough in a forgotten stable, remember that the weakness and utter dependence of this child is also the power and glory that will shake the nations and the powers of heaven.
Of course, the nations and the powers right now might make us think we should fear. I heard Friday night that President George Bush, the senior, passed away. And whatever your politics, he is a symbol of an era ending. When he was president, we saw the end of the Cold War and our new involvement in the Middle East. Today we have new difficulties in our relationships with Russia, China, North Korea—our socialist and former socialist competitors from the Cold War. And the todays fundamentalist Islamic States are creating havoc in the Middle East and beyond. Patriotism is being confused with nationalism in every corner of the world—the same thing we saw a hundred years ago at the start of the World Wars—and calling today’s political rhetoric “disgusting” would be generous. Why is our global community creating such evil, such division, such hatred, such fear?
And consider our individual ways of life, too. I don’t know yet how things look in this congregation, but in every other gathering around Word and Sacrament I know, people lament the loss of decades past. Where are the people that used to be here? But the Church is not alone; religious communities of every kind are shrinking. So are civic organizations, clubs, fraternal groups, neighborhood associations, even bowling leagues and golf teams. (Well, maybe not golf teams.) We have become a society of individuals—hardly a society anymore. I lived in Massachusetts for seven
years, and never met any of my neighbors! People have stopped joining things, not because the things aren’t worth joining, but because people don’t see the value in being part of a community at all. The divisions we see in the news and our personal arguments are still smaller than the divisions we see at the edge of our backyards.
This is not the life God wants for us. This is not the salvation Jesus came to bring us. This is not the righteousness that the Holy Spirit stirs up in us. And, in fact, righteousness is the right word; a word that we tend to think means doing the right thing, but really means simply being faithful in our relationships—to ourselves, to God, and to one another. Thank God Jesus is the great reconciler, because we keep giving him reasons to reconcile us. No wonder Jesus needs to come again.
The reconciler. If you look closely at the Gospel reading today, there are certainly words that are fearful. But there are a lot more words of hope. “When these things begin to take place,” Jesus says, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” And then he tells a parable about a fig tree—not one that is about to be cut down, but one that sprouts leaves and is about to burst forth in good fruit! The Kingdom of God is already near—the goodness of the Kingdom! This is a hopeful promise from God. All this apocalyptic imagery—we think it is about the end of the world, but it isn’t. It’s about the beginning of the world, a better world, a world where our faith doesn’t just comfort us: God gives us real hope.
I was pretty sullen, looking at that physics grade on my paper, when Mr. Weiss called my name. I walked up, fearful, to his desk where he handed me a slip of paper with my grade on it. 98. I stammered out to him, “But– but I did the math. I have a 62.” He said simply, “Which do you want? The 62 or the 98?” Well, I wanted the 98, but… My teacher said, “I saw you do the labs. You did the work, you just didn’t turn it in. You know what you’re doing, and you’re good at it. Just start turning in your assignments, okay?” And to be fair, I liked physics, a lot. I’d done a lot of extra things to help other students and my teacher, even outside of class. Rather than being faithful to the math, Mr. Weiss chose to be faithful to his teaching relationship with me. He knew me, and in that moment, he freely and graciously lent me his righteousness.
This is what Jesus does. It’s the old promise that God made through Jeremiah. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when…I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land…And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.'” God does not say that we will behave in new and righteous ways. God says that he will behave righteously toward us. Since we cannot be righteous ourselves, God will be righteous in our place. God remains faithful to us always, and this is both the promise of the second coming of Christ, and that of the first. In a world where it is sometimes hard to see a hopeful future, God is our hope. And God is always faithful to his promises.