December 3rd, 2006
Every Advent starts this way. Every year, the first Sunday of Advent – no matter the lectionary cycle, A, B, or C; no matter the gospel, Matthew, Mark, or Luke, this is the way Advent starts: with a pronouncement about the end, and being ready for it when it comes. Though I have to say, apocalyptic pronouncements aren’t my thing. I hear something like the words of today’s gospel: "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.” And I think – eh. But I understand why this season starts this way. This is the beginning of the church year. And we start not by rushing full speed ahead, but by waiting and preparing. We are supposed to be engaged in dual preparation, in fact. We are to be waiting and preparing for the birth of Jesus, and that’s the easy part. That’s the Advent wreath part, lighting a candle each Sunday as the birth date gets closer, waiting until we can finally light that white candle in the middle, the one that signifies that Jesus has at last been born, and the joy of that celebration that the incarnation – Christ come in human form – is happening again.
But then, there’s the other waiting and preparing. What we are also waiting for, though we may not think about it much; what we are also preparing for, though we may not ever do it consciously, is the coming again of Christ. Not the coming again of the baby Jesus, but the Second Coming. What we talk about each Sunday in the creed: Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. And I understand why our season of Advent starts with a reminder of this bigger picture. It’s easy to get caught up in the waiting for Christmas part of things, because we know that anticipation will be fulfilled in a few short weeks. But it’s harder to do that other waiting and preparing, for the coming again. We don’t really know how to do that part, I don’t think. We aren’t sure what’s required from us. And we don’t necessarily want to think about the end, capital E. But our season and our year start this way because we are meant to put this all into a context, a big picture. And that big picture is a reminder that there is much more that we don’t see. There is much more that we don’t always pay attention to. There is God’s time, not just our time. There is God’s vision, not just our vision. And there is, always, God’s promise that will be fulfilled, maybe not completely in our knowing. But this promise that in the end all will be made well is always there, and that is the other part of what we should be anticipating this Advent season.
I think it’s worth looking at this whole thing about the end time, because there’s so much misunderstanding about it. Eschatology is the word that means the theology of the end time. But that has gotten mixed up over the years with a lot of other stuff that we sometimes hear about in our culture – things like ‘the rapture,’ or ‘millenialism’: ideas that when the end comes, the righteous will be taken up – literally whisked away in the middle of what they were doing, and then there will be a thousand years of war, ending in the violent defeat of evil, including all who were left when this ‘rapture’ happened. To some of you this may all sound very odd. To others of you, it might sound like something you were taught, or what people you know believe. There is a very popular series of books called “Left Behind” which are about all of this stuff; you or others you know may have read them. But I want to be clear: when we, in our church, talk about the end time, this rapture and millennial thing are not what we are talking about. These are not in fact biblical concepts.
Bible scholar Barbara Rossing tells us that this particular understanding was invented by an evangelical preacher in the 1830’s, a man by the name of John Nelson Darby. He took the traditional understanding of Jesus’ second coming and split it into two parts. First is Jesus coming to draw the faithful to himself, where they will watch the coming catastrophe from heaven. Seven years later, Darby believed, Jesus will return and will violently destroy evildoers and the earth itself. From his writing and teaching he developed a following, and over the past hundred and seventy years or so his teachings have taken root in some Christian communities. But it isn’t strictly biblical. It takes images from the Revelation to John and twists them around, expanding them and contracting pieces and bits to fit this theology. But John himself calls his revelation a prophecy – and the tradition of Hebrew prophecy which Jesus became a part of had one consistent message. As theologian Jurgen Moltmann concisely states this message: “God is coming, change your heart.” That’s the ultimate message of biblical prophecy, and that’s what John of Patmos, who recorded his revelation that we read in the final book of the Bible, called his message: a prophecy. Prophecy is an anticipation of the coming of God, and a calling to change the present. So if the ultimate message is God is coming, change your heart, that gives a different emphasis. And this seems to me a much more important and meaningful message for us in this Advent season than to get caught up in popular misunderstandings of the end of the world, what that would be like, and who would be saved and who will be destroyed.
But let’s postulate for a moment that the world will end in violent destruction when Jesus comes again. Now this presents some problems. If the world is just going to be completely destroyed, what impetus do we then have to actually care for the earth that we have been given by God to be good stewards of? If it’s all going to go for a violent end, why should we then care for the least of our brothers and sisters, as Jesus commanded? What would be the point of that? Why bother to change our lives now, and try to make the world we live in a better place for ourselves, for our communities, for our children? Why bother to work hard to help bring the reign of God, if it’s all going to end in a blast of destruction by Christ himself?
But if instead we think about eschatology – the theology of the end time – as “the strange name for the life-power of hope,” as one theologian puts it, that actually gives us something that we can use. If when Jesus told us that the reign of God was coming near, he meant God is coming, change your hearts, that actually makes sense for us this Advent season. If Advent is usually described as a season of waiting, for the Christ child to be born, and for the Second Coming of Christ we should ask, what do we know of Jesus that would give us some hint of what that second coming might be like? Certainly the Jesus of ‘rapture theology’ is a warrior, coming to destroy and slay those who didn’t make the cut. Is this the Jesus you know? Because it’s not the Jesus I know. The Jesus I know said he didn’t come to judge the world, but to save the world. The Jesus I know told us that when we care for the least of his brothers and sisters, we care for him. The Jesus I know invited all sorts and conditions of people into deeper and closer relationship with God, getting rid of the requirements of the religion and culture. The Jesus I know gave his life to destroy the power of death.
Jurgen Moltmann tells us that the final judgment is a joy and not a terror. Why? He says, “God’s righteousness is not a statement – ‘this is good and this is bad’ – but is always a creative righteousness. He brings justice to those who suffer violence. He brings justice to the widows and the orphans. And he will bring justification to the sinners by transforming sinners into righteous people.”
Now righteousness is the theme of the lesson we hear today from the prophet Jeremiah. “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. And that One will be called, ‘the Lord is our righteousness.’ But here’s the thing: righteousness doesn’t mean being right, or being self-righteous, or being the best or the chosen. In the way that the prophets used this word and concept, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah, righteousness meant being vindicated. It meant God’s saving actions. It meant God as our savior, as our salvation. So if God is our hope, our vindication, our salvation, then our responsibility in light of God’s showing up on our door – as the baby Jesus, and as the one coming again – is to change our hearts, to be worthy of that promise of vindication, of salvation. Not to be frightened by what might happen at ‘the end,’ but rather to change how we live here and now. To become better followers of Jesus. To open our hearts more fully to God and to each other.
Writher Kathleen Norris says, “Maybe we’re meant us use apocalyptic literature not as an allowance to indulge in an otherworldly fixation, but as an injunction to pay closer attention to the world around us.” She says, “The apocalyptic vision is meant to give us the hope that, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, in the end it is good that will prevail.”
So how about this: what if the end were to come next week. Or next month. Or even next year. What is it that you would do differently, if you knew the end were coming soon? I’m asking this as a real question, and during these weeks of Advent I hope you may give some real thought to it. Because then the question we need to ask ourselves is, why not start living that way now? Have you ever seen that bumper sticker that says, ‘be the change you want to see in the world?’ Maybe that’s our calling this Advent season, as we bathe in the dual light of the coming of the baby Jesus, and the coming again of the Christ: to start now, today, to be the change we want to see in our world.
Amen.