First Sunday of Advent, 11/29/2015

Sermon on Luke 21:25-36, by Hubert Beck

“And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And 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, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

And he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. As soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that they come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version,

WILL THERE BE A TOMORROW?

YES, THERE WILL BE A TOMORROW!

There is nothing like starting a new year with good news, is there? This is the beginning of a new church year, you know, and this is the first of four Sundays before Christmas. So the Gospel text appointed for reading on this day is just filled with good news, is it not? You just heard it read, so surely you heard the Good News!

The fact is, however, that I am pretty sure you think it is actually a horrible hodgepodge of bad news, do you not? The heavens in an uproar and the earth in absolute turmoil, fear and foreboding rampant – how can anybody think of this as “Good News”?

The Situation Within Which These Words Were Spoken

Well, Jesus seems to think it is “good news,” and he doesn’t hesitate to say so! He was not trying to frighten those around him, to scare them into some kind of anxious foreboding. He was simply responding to a question the disciples had asked as it was reported a number of verses prior to the ones we just heard.

The situation was this: He and his disciples were noting some recent augmentations made by Herod to the temple, making it an even more majestic sight, when he said – perhaps even in more of an offhand way than with any intention of furthering a discussion – “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” There is no sign that those with him were suddenly filled with apprehension when he said that, for they, in turn, asked in what seems to be a rather quietly inquisitive way, “When will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?” They apparently did not feel any immediate threat to themselves or even to the time within which they lived, but were, rather, wondering just what Jesus had in mind when he said that and what he foresaw as happening, under what circumstances, etc. They probably did not, at any rate, feel nearly so endangered as they felt inquisitive.

Little did they expect, one would imagine, the extended response that followed their question. It was such a significant reply that it was also recorded by Matthew and Mark in one way or another. His answer to their question became a surprising mixture of images and pictures and anticipations concerning the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem itself, the passage of distressing times yet to come and what would happen to those who called themselves by his name during those times, and, ultimately, the end of all creation itself. That was quite a mouthful, was it not? The text to which our attention is called this morning is the conclusion of that long reply and it involves the end to which all creation is moving.

All of that gathered together was the Good News to which Jesus was directing the attention of the disciples.

Bad News is Good News for Some People!

Good News? You still question how all that is Good News?

Yes, Good News.

Jesus was making it clear that inasmuch as the world of God’s creation had run amuck – totally amuck – affecting the entire fabric of the creation first declared to be “good, very good,” something had to be done about it. He was unsparing in his assessment of what had gone wrong with this originally good creation.

He spoke of what we still see in our daily newspapers, view on our television sets every day, even feel in the daily disruption of human relationships personally, nationally, and internationally. “Nations will rise against nation,” he had said earlier – and “nations” begin with the disorder taking place regularly between us and our neighbors – even within families, in fact. “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends,” he had said. The very cosmos had become disturbed in this disordering of God’s creation. He pointed to “great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilence. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.” All these things are part and parcel of a broken and shattered world hardly reflecting what was meant to be even though shadows of its original purpose still remain visible, breaking through the darkness here and there and from time to time.

But would any of us want this fractured and ruined world to be the only and last word, superceding everything that it was originally meant to be? Would we – or God – be content to leave the world to such a miserable symbol of that which God had intended? If the destruction and virtual eradication of the tattered remnant of God’s broken down creation could take place in order to make way for something far better in its place, would we not be thankful for the destruction of the old in order that room could be made for God’s renewing action to be brought into being in its place?

The Good News is that God has had such a re-making in mind ever since his original creation had been disrupted by sin and death – and the breaking apart of this old creation is taking place all around us, strange though it may seem and hidden though that which is being newly assembled may be from our eyes as it all takes place. We see this “disassemblage” as bad news because it is so ordinary to our eyes. We have come to be relatively content in the world as it is, not wanting anything to change for fear that what follows its disassembly will be still worse! People of this age, to use the words of today’s Gospel reading, are “fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” Even we, who call ourselves the “new creation of God in Christ Jesus,” find these “signs” so frightening that we join the world in “fear and foreboding.”

But Jesus tells us that we are not to be of that mind or heart, for we “see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” SO THEN . . . “Straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” In short, all the “signs of the end” are but the “signs of a new beginning that is being seen on the horizon”! When the world asks, given all the horrible miseries and happenings within which the earth flounders, “Will there be a tomorrow?” we not only can, but we must, say, “Yes, there will be a tomorrow.” It will, however, be quite a different tomorrow from that which we experience today.

And that “tomorrow” had appeared and was seen in the person of him who spoke the words we are considering today! In him we “know that the kingdom of God is near.” He, who ended all the terrible yesterdays and even the todays of each and every time thereafter when he died on the cross, broke the darkness shadowing all those yesterdays and that still hover us in our todays when the darkness of the grave was illumined with a Savior raised from the dead, bringing the dawning of all tomorrows into existence. Not only did he signal those tomorrows, but he was, himself, all the tomorrows wrapped up in the one through whom “our redemption has dawn near.” We have seen the Son of Man riding on the clouds to his rightful place – the place from which he willingly descended to become the hope of the world – at “the right hand of the Father, from where he will come to judge the living and the dead.”

Good News has become the headline of all “future reports,” then, for the terrors of this world have been replaced with a marvelous newness that is to be seen in this Jesus who spoke with his disciples in these words that are so foreboding to the world that hears them as only death and destruction and a tearing apart of the fabric of the universe but that are, in actuality, the words of hope and salvation to all who walk with him through the valley of the shadow of death in order to live the life that God meant for us to live from the earliest creation of the world. The “signs” are all around us, much like the budding and leafing out of trees that are rising from the slumber of winter in order to brighten the summer of tomorrow.

Can we be sure of this? Or is this a mere whistling in the graveyard? Are the “signs” available to our mortal eyes not all telling of a terrible “distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world, for the powers of the heavens are being shaken?” Are not our eyes more to be trusted than mere idle words?

Not when the words are the words of him who has “ridden the clouds” with a body risen from the dead! “Heaven and earth will pass away,” he said, but “my words will not pass away.” These are not just anybody’s words. They are the words that were present before the creation of all these passing things – or, better stated, this is “the Word” who had been present even before and through whom the creation had taken place – and they are the words that will remain long after all these created things will have been once again taken back by and for him through whom they first came forth. They are trustworthy, for they are the words of one risen from the dead, who shall be seen “coming in a cloud with power and great glory” in his own time.

Advent – the Coming of All Tomorrows

For many people today is twenty-six days before Santa Claus, twenty-six tomorrows filled with human busy-ness purchasing gifts that will, with the sun and moon and stars pass away. Yes, it is true that eyes – especially the eyes of those aged nine years or younger, perhaps – will be glistening and glowing, eagerly and impatiently waiting for a tomorrow that will fulfill all their dreams – at least all the dreams that shall give way to new dreams only a few days after Santa has come and gone.

God’s people are told to have a different kind of waiting, however. It is not to be an uneasily anxious waiting, for its end is in the hands of one with nail holes identifying them – hands that have come into the world as the tiny unblemished hands of Bethlehem and have left the world scarred but newly healed who has ridden the clouds back to the place from which he came.

He promises to come again, though, and while, on the one hand, Advent is to be spent waiting to join shepherds and Magi in Bethlehem who have come to see the great and mighty wonder of a child whose life, suffering, death and resurrection will radically alter the course of the entire universe, on the other hand, it is to be spent remembering that he who came will come again. Therefore “watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and care of this life (a warning worth hearing in these “overtaxing days of preparation for the Great Day itself!) and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.”

For that day, as all God’s children are quite aware, “will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth.” It will not be a day bringing fear to those who are waiting for him, though, for it will end all the yesterdays with a new tomorrow – a tomorrow of unspeakable wonder and glory, for it will be a tomorrow with the one who tells us in the Gospel for today, to “stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place,” for that day will be the one when we “stand before the Son of Man” with praise on our lips and eternal adoration in our hearts for him who was and is and is to come, Jesus Christ, the Child, the Man, the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Tomorrow Without End.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lutheran Pastor (Retired) Hubert Beck
Austin, TX, USA
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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