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Advent 1
November 30, 2003
"Warning: The End is Near!"
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-10
I Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
God will act. This is the assertion of the church as the curtain goes up on another year of proclamation. God will act. God will act to preserve and protect Jerusalem or the new Jerusalem, the community that looks to God for protection. That protection will be both a restraint of outside forces threatening us and forces within our own hearts and minds threatening to undo us.
The word is not “maybe God will act” or “if God acts”, but “God will act”. So, the issue is not whether God will act in the world this year, but when and how. The issue is not the purpose of God in acting -- God will establish justice, execute mercy and preserve the righteous -- but the method, the method this time.
"And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26) On the seventh day of June 1944, this happened on the beaches of Normandy. During Advent of the preceding December, the church said it would happen without knowing how or when. It said it not because it is the church’s word but because it is God’s word. It is hard for the church to speak God’s word because it has no control over it, to make it happen. It can only proclaim it and tremble, tremble for fear of being labeled a fool, tremble for fear of the word coming true, tremble in anticipation of deliverance. Much easier to talk about things the church can make happen, like Christmas activities and new programs for the coming year. Much easier to talk about the unfolding of the current culture than the unfolding of God’s plan.
I thought it was a trail vehicle to a mobile home in transit, this pick-up truck with a flashing yellow light, but as we got closer, I could see a sign below the light on a billboard of a sheet of plywood fastened to the back of the camper shell, “Warning! The end is near. Repent and pray to Jesus.” I nearly rear-ended him. I mused as I continued west on Interstate 20 between Dallas and Fort Worth, how appropriate and misunderstood this message was. The man driving the late model truck had unleashed the word of God in paraphrase to be thought a fool by most, admired by some and understood in a different way by others.
“Warning! The end is near.” How hard it is for the church to sound this warning, to be thought a fool. But, the end is near, and who will sound the alarm? The end is always near. A local man killed himself this week by strangulation trying to increase his pleasure in sex while the church accommodated itself to a society bent on its own pleasure. The user-friendly church affirms the culture around it and promises that things can go even better with Jesus. Sin goes unchallenged, and the end draws near, the inevitable end of sin, death.
“Hurray! The end is near.” I’ve never seen that sign, but it is just as good a paraphrase of the word of God. Surely, there is an end to smut, to child abuse, to wife beating -- a school teacher showed up at the shelter for battered women with missing teeth; she said her husband would hold her down and pull them out with the pliers when she crossed him -- an end to the perversion of human life the perversion of the earth. All anyone can see is endless degradation, but the church sees the end.
Roland McGregor, Pastor
Asbury United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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