Scripture - Luke 21:25-36
When I travel I like to take my own alarm clock with me. I know where all the buttons are so I don't have to fumble around in the dark when the alarm goes off.
Most importantly, I know where the snooze button is located. That way, I can hit the button quickly and then roll over again for a few more ZZZ's.
My alarm clock has two settings: wake-up to music or wake-up to obnoxious buzzer. I choose to wake up to obnoxious buzzer every time.
When I am traveling and I attempt to tune into a local radio station, the inevitable happens. The station I tune into in the evening sounds nice and clear. I adjust the volume so as not to be so soft I will be unable to hear it yet not so loud that it will blow me out of bed.
Lo and behold, when morning arrives the station which came in so clear the night before sounds more like someone talking into a pillow from a mile away. I wake up to discover that I have overslept for a half hour or more. The day is off to a wonderful start.
The buzzer, on the other hand, although it is obnoxious, it is reliably obnoxious. It is sure to get me up, and to get up everybody else sleeping on the same floor in the motel. My good ol' obnoxious alarm clock. You've got to love it. Nothing like getting the day started with a jolt. But at least it gets the day started.
Getting jolted is the description I generally feel at this time of the year. I think to myself, how is it possible that we are into Advent already? Didn't we just celebrate New Year's last week?
I get to this time of the year and feel the pressure is on. There are extra services to prepare. Cards to get out. Shopping to be done.
So I try to look beyond the hustle and bustle and get to the heart of the season. Let's see, I better preach something cheery just to help get people in the mood for Christmas.
Something cheery. Something cheery. Hmmmm.... I read over the lectionary passage for the first week in Advent:
(Luke 21:25-26 NRSV) "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.
Now, that's not what I would call cheery. That's similar to setting the alarm to wake-up music and getting an obnoxious buzzer instead.
When it comes to Advent, we want to start gearing up for Christmas with carols, the story of the babe in the manger, and angels harking.
We're not quite ready to be jolted with the reminder that the end of the world is soon coming, and that people will faint from fear and foreboding when they think of what this world is coming to.
We would rather ease into Christmas. Four weeks in advance we want glad tidings of great joy. Instead we get some pretty grim news about the death throes of this world as we know it.
We are reminded yet again that we are entering the beginning of winter's death, the ending of another year.
But once we think about it, talk about endings is only right. For time and time again Jesus reminded us that before new life occurs, first must come death. Before the new year begins, the old must die. Before new growth can occur, last year's old growth must die. Before we have a new life in Christ, the old self must die.
We are reminded that we may just be in the winter years of this old world's life. Maybe. Maybe not. No one knows for sure, only our Father in heaven.
Not Jesus himself, not the angels in heaven, and definitely not any human can claim to know when earth's final hours will be.
Scripture warns us of the signs. Jesus will come in a manner in which all will be able to see him. All will see "'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory."
These words and these signs yet to come are to serve as a warning to us. We are to get ready. We are to get ready because our redemption is drawing near.
We are warned to be on guard because the day may come unexpectedly, and may catch us unawares, "like a trap." (21:35)
I know. I know. You've heard it all before. You heard it last year around this time. You've probably heard it every year if the preacher preaches from the lectionary. And God willing, you will hear it again next year around this time.
Perhaps we have heard this doom and gloom stuff so much that we have become so accustomed to it that we are numb to it. Yes, we heard that Jesus was coming again. But when? When?
You have probably heard the fable of the boy who cried, "Wolf." The shepherd boy would run to the villagers crying out that the wolf was eating the sheep. The villagers would rise to the cry, only to be laughed at by the boy when they found out there was no wolf after all.
The boy tried this again and again, tricking the villagers into believing and then laughing at their gullibility. Until one day the wolf really did come. When the shepherd boy needed the villagers' help, nobody believed him.
The moral of the story: even when liars do tell the truth they will not be believed.
Unfortunately, some people may think that every year when we say, "Christ is coming! Christ is coming again!" that all we are really doing is crying, "Wolf! Wolf!" and nothing will really happen.
Or, if we say that the coming of Christ again is not a hoax, then why do we not act as though we believe it? We act as though there is no need to hurry, no need to get ready, no need to prepare the way for the Lord because the day of his return is a long way off, if ever, in coming.
Some of us live a life of Christian ease, when what we really need is to be jolted into the kingdom. There was a time when I thought I could be eased into the kingdom. My parents went to church, so I went to church. Going to church was something I did not something I lived.
There wasn't all that much meaning in it for me to go to church. I was active enough, being president of our youth group for two years.
I went to college and kept a Bible on my shelf. By all appearances I was a nice guy, but I would not want my college roommates to think I was too radical.
One of my roommates was a Messianic Jew (a Jew who believes Jesus is her or his Savior). He often tried to engage me in theological discussions but, hey, I had my Bible on the shelf and a place I could call my church. Wasn't that good enough to qualify me as a Christian?
My roommate, the Messianic Jew, had a lot to do with jolting me out of my comfort zone (Barry Gardner, wherever you are...I want to say thank you). I was jolted out of my works/righteousness frame of mind, and began being astonished by God's grace. Every now and then, God gives me another jolt.
During a very difficult time in my life, I had learned to memorize a Bible verse which would give a jolt to my self-mindedness again and again: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight" (Prov. 3:5, RSV)
When we "stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36), it is not by our works that we are able to stand. It is because Jesus Christ enabled us to stand DESPITE what we have or have not done.
Coming into that realization may come as a jolt for many. It means dying to one's old self, our old ways of doing things, and being born again into a new life, a new creation in Christ.
I read the following story about one person who was jolted into the kingdom, and it gave me pause for thought (from William Willimon's sermon):
There was this man who lived with his family almost next door to the church. His yard was always a mess. The children were poorly cared for. Rumors were he got drunk on Saturdays, abused his wife, cursed his children.
The church decided to help him. The pastor visited the home. Some of the youth stopped by and invited his kids to go with them on their trip to the mountains.
The women's group invited the wife to their annual Day of Prayer. The man and his family came for a few Sundays, then quit coming.
That was the last the pastor had heard from them for a few months. When he later saw the man on the street, the pastor hardly recognized him. He looked different.
"Joe, is that you?" the pastor asked. "Yea, it's me," he said with a smile. "At least it's mostly me. I've changed."
He looked great. Come to think of it, his whole yard looked great. What had happened?
He told the pastor a few weeks before, a group came to visit him. A church group. But not from the pastor's nice middle-class Methodist church.
They were from a fundamentalist church. The one over across the tracks. The premillenial, fire-baptized, Bible believing, washed-in-the-blood Baptist church.
The told him that if he didn't stop drinking and beating his wife he was going to die, burn forever in hell. They told him God was coming to get him and that God was mad.
They got his attention. Got him to their church where they prayed for him by name and asked God to let him live a little bit longer until they could get him saved. He got saved, turned inside out, upside down. Redeemed.
The pastor said he was sorry that his church had been unable to meet his needs but was happy that the other church had.
"Preacher," the man said, "Don't feel bad. Your church gave me aspirin. I needed massive chemotherapy" (Pulpit Resource, 10-12/94, p. 37)
I have to admit that such hellfire and brimstone preaching doesn't fit my style. In fact, some of the theology makes shivers go down my spine. Yet, I have to concede that some people may need to be jolted into the kingdom in different ways than would work for me. Some may need a little more voltage in their jolts than others.
What is crucial is that all of us need to be on guard, to be ready, as though our Lord could return at any moment.
Do you have that sense of anticipation? Do you feel there is no time to waste in bringing others into the kingdom? Do you have that sense of urgency? The Lord is coming. Now is the time to be prepared.
Lightstreet United Methodist Church
(near Bloomsburg, PA, USA)
(Comments to: ltstumc@csrlink.net.)
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