November 27 2016 Sermon
Expectant in the Wilderness
Isaiah 2:1-5
2:1 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2:2 In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.
2:3 Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
2:4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
2:5 O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!
Matthew 24:36-44
24:36 “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
24:37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark,
24:39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.
24:40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.
24:42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
24:43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.
24:44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
I hope the past few days for each of you were filled with joy, deep gratitude, and cherished memories with friends, family, and neighbors. I have a deep gratitude for you and the ministry that you provided last night through Room in the Inn with our brothers who live on the streets of Nashville. This is when the church is at its best caring for the most vulnerable among us. Thank you for being the kind of church that swings its doors wide open as an expression of the reign of God coming into the world.
Today we mark the start of the Christian year, the first Sunday in Advent, the season of becoming expectant that the reign of God comes into the world in the Christ child. Each Sunday in Advent, I will be preaching from the lectionary texts including the prophet Isaiah and Matthew’s gospel, calling the series, ‘Expectant: In the Wilderness.’
Our worship life will culminate in back to back services, a Candlelight Service at 11pm on Christmas Eve and then Sunday morning worship on Christmas Day at 10:30. On Wednesday nights through this season, our Bible study will be based on the writings of Reverend Mike Slaughter and his book called ‘Down To Earth.’ You don’t need to read the book to participate in this Wednesday night gathering-just come as you are.
Each year on the first Sunday of Advent, there is rarely a story told about the birth of Jesus, the Magi or Wise Men coming from afar, or the shepherds in the fields keep watch over their flocks. For lectionary preachers and churches that follow the three year cycle of readings, we have a dose of apocalyptic readings on the first Sunday of Advent every year. And by apocalyptic texts or literature, I mean stories like the Revelation of John, the Book of Daniel, and some teachings of Jesus in which, hearers and readers are given a glimpse of the reign of God and the culmination of God’s judgment of creation. Apocalyptic literature discloses or reveals that which is normally hidden. In the Revelation of St John, it is made clear that the power of good triumphs over sin, death, and evil in the world. For John’s hearers, that revelation was a way to make sense of the cruelty and unjust ways of the Roman empire.
More often than not, when we hear the word ‘apocalypse,’ our minds are drawn toward end time scenarios, reading the writing on the wall from elections, stock market spikes, and natural disasters, posturing when and how our whole existence will come to its conclusion. I remember growing up in a time when the Left Behind series of Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins were flying off the shelves and turning into motion picture films. Each of the novels told a plot line of characters getting raptured or spontaneously taken to heaven, while they were flying planes, driving cars, eating dinner, and how those left behind had to survive for years in dire conditions before world governments imposed the mark of the beast on their hands or foreheads. Then after years of tribulation, Jesus would come back to Earth riding on the clouds to establish a 1000 year kingdom before the Final Judgment. This particular approach of interpreting Christ’s coming into the world is called dispensational premillennialism and was thought up during the 1830’s by John Darby.
Though I don’t put a lot of stock in this version of how the existence of creation will culminate, the sacred texts of scripture give us glimpses and visions of God’s promises and the way that our existence is headed. If we opened up this morning’s gospel text and read the entire twenty fourth chapter of Matthew, you would hear Jesus calling attention to the Jerusalem temple, telling his disciples that every stone of Solomon’s temple would be destroyed. The home of God on Earth for 1st century Jews would be no more. With that sort of foreboding, the disciples ask, what will the final reign and judgment of God look like?
Jesus describes how war, deception, and persecution will mark the present age before the King of Kings appears without warning or notice to redeem and restore God’s children. In the midst of trial, civil unrest, war, and overall despair, the promise of the second coming of Christ into the world, is the purest form of hope, the yearning for deliverance, and encouragement to persevere that could be offered to the early Church. Last year, a friend preached it this way, to help us understand how Matthew and Luke’s communities of faith and belief would have experienced the world around them and the hope promised by Christ’s Second Coming.
“The Temple had been destroyed and the people, especially Christians, were being terrorized by corrupt politicians and enemy forces. Poverty and conflict were rampant – devastating whole families and communities because of divided loyalties. False prophets and messiahs made sly, false promises to desperate, frightened people, taking advantage of the poorest of the poor. Ethnic groups clashed and killed each other; young men of one tribe captured, imprisoned, and often executed young men of another. Women and children were enslaved and used up, as though they were of no value to anyone. Nothing held dear by those who followed Jesus was holding together.” (http://www.belmontumc.org/images/download/sermon11-29-15.pdf)
Sound familiar? When you turn on the morning news, pick up the newspaper, or thumb through your Twitter feed, you see more destruction, fear mongering, terror, and cruelty than hope bearing. Our global neighbors live in fear of their lives because oppressive regimes of terror have no sense of the sacredness of life. Women and children here in middle Tennessee are sold into exploitation and trafficked because sex sells. Terror makes us crouch in fear because we never know when we’ll wake up to another attack and where it will be. Headlines change, governments topple, but after two millennia, we have proven time and time again our collective ability to exploit the weak, oppress the vulnerable, and destroy that which God has pronounced as good and beloved. It is in this condition of wilderness, an often barren and dangerous landscape that we find ourselves. When despair abounds, the yearning for hope and redemption increases all the more. With feet dusty and sore, we walk through the wilderness expectant to encounter the living grace of God.
In some of Jesus’ last words to his disciples, he promised to make himself real again having prepared a place of eternal glory and rest. This is the basis of our expectancy.
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
We are somewhere between the poles of absolute despair and eternal glory in Christ. Just as Jesus’ earliest disciples and the communities of faith planted by Paul waited for the fullness of God’s reign, we wait. We are expectant that the promises of Jesus Christ will be fulfilled just on the other side of the horizon.
At the heart of the matter for the early church and still for us two millennia later is this: When will the reign of Christ come into the world? How will we know when it is breaking in? How can we live in the in between, between the empty Easter grave and the day when God brings all things into God’s self making them new and glorious?
Each week as we pray the Great Thanksgiving prior to breaking bread, we make these affirmations and claims about the love of God at work in the world. Christ has died. Christ has conquered the power of death and the grave. Christ will come again into creation to make all things new. We pray: ‘Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.’
Whether we make those claims boldly or whisper them softly under breath wondering if they are true, they declare the fullness of God’s work in the world to make the wounded whole. This work of healing and renewing is well underway but not yet complete. One day we will know that the reign of Christ has fully come into our presence. We will be led out of the wilderness by the life giving and transformative grace of God to walk and rest under groves of fruit trees that abound at harvest time.
Until that day when God’s reign is made complete in heaven and on Earth, we make preparation in our lives, naming what is not well, sensing where we need healing, seeing dark corners where justice must reign, and serving with new neighbors for Christ beckons. For in preparing our lives for the full reign of God’s grace, glory, and mercy that makes all things new, we sharpen our ability now to see, to hear, and to feel those thin places where God’s grace shows up. And when God’s grace shows up and meets us in the most unexpected places and people, we will know that we have tasted a bit of God’s heavenly banquet.
Expect. Prepare. Look! The Son of Man is coming into creation. Amen.