Scripture: Mark 13:24-37
"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the
moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in
the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with
great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the
four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven."
- Mark 13: 24-27
Stars falling from the sky, the sun and moon casting no light, the gathering of the
elect, the coming of the Lord. This text for the first Sunday of Advent is apocalyptic, an
attempt through wildly imaginative, poetic speech to render to believers a new world, a
radically different world than what we know, a radically different world of God's
architecture.
These images of falling stars and darkened sun and moon may seem bizarre to us, like a
terrifying scene of heavens turning dark akin to nuclear winter, but to those with ears to
hear and eyes to see, these ominous portents of the coming of the Son of Man, are signs
that a light has dawned and a savior is near.
It is always a challenge to preach these apocalyptic texts that make their rounds every
first Sunday of Advent. On this Sunday after Thanksgiving, it is far easier to preach the
evils of gluttony. "Will you have another round of turkey and the fixings? How about
a little more whipped cream with that pumpkin pie?" Gluttony will preach. But the
heavens falling and the elect snatched away in the night? That won't preach here.
It's not only that we are so modern and sophisticated, but it's that we are pretty
content, accommodated and complacent. A good number of us are pretty well fixed up with
the current arrangements of this world. Apocalyptic speech is for the desperate, those who
need heaven to intervene, and those who have tried everything else and failed.
"O Come, O Come Emmanuel, ransom captive Israel." Captives. That is who this
outrageous, imaginative speech is for, these visions of the coming of the Lord is for:
captives. We're not captives. We're content, accommodated, complacent. We're not captive,
are we?
A few weeks ago, as many of you know, I went up to Idaho to officiate at the memorial
service for my paternal grandmother, Grandma Smutny. She died at 93 a long life, a good
life, but she also lived a very hard life.
Pastors, as we prepare for a funeral or memorial service, like to gather close family
of the deceased for a meeting a day or two before the service. Ostensibly the purpose is
to pick hymns and select scripture, but the real purpose is to facilitate the sharing of
stories, the recalling of memories. Our purpose is to grant permission to grieve, to pray
for those who have lost and to help the wounds heal. That's what we do.
So picture Uncle Stan and Aunt Neola on one side of the family kitchen table, and Aunt
Irene and my Dad, along with Mom and Jeff, my brother, on the other side. There they were,
gathered around the family dining room table in the house in which I grew up. Oh, and
there's me, the grandson and pastor, at the same table, the very same table where only a
few years before I had played many games of rummy and pinochle with Grandma.
What I do, what Barbara and Steve do, what every decent pastor does is facilitate the
telling of stories, the recollection of memories, the healing of heartache, the invoking
of God, the invoking of a new reality where tears are wiped away, where pain and suffering
are no more. That is what we, your pastors do.
Grandma had a long life. It was a hard life. Everyone knew it. I knew it. But I didn't
know all the details. I didn't know that when my Dad was a young teen, and his siblings
were just little children, my Grandmother would hide in the cellar or under the front
porch holding her babies in her arms protecting them from the alcoholic, abusive rages of
my grandfather. I didn't know that. I do now.
I know now that when Grandma was shaking with fear and clutching her children under
that farmhouse porch, she must have prayed for a new reality, a new world where stars fall
from the heavens and the sun darkens and the moon has no light, where Jesus would come
into her captivity, her babies captivity, and rescue them and rescue her. She was
desperate. She needed a new world.
"After that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its
light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be
shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory.
Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends
of the earth to the ends of heaven."
She needed a new world. Her prayers were answered. She divorced the man, my
grandfather. Her children recovered mostly. Later in life she became a nurse whereby she
cared for the broken and brought healing from her hands. From her captivity, she was
delivered. She discovered new heavens and a new earth.
Apocalyptic speech, wildly imaginative, poetic speech. The Gospel of Mark in Chapter 13
pictures a new reality for those who are desperate. Mark 13 pictures a new world for those
ill at ease with the present arrangements, who are not accommodated, who are not content.
Apocalyptic speech is for those who are despairing, those who know they are captive,
those who know they need God because they have tried everything else and it hasn't worked.
Nothing else has worked.
This wildly imaginative poetry is for refugees, for those damaged by failed
relationships, for the abused, the lost, the terrified.
It is for those who are empty.
It is for those who are empty because they have a sneaking suspicion that the rat race
may have gotten them richer, but they are poorer.
This Word of God is for all of them.
This Word of God is also for those who love these broken ones, who empathize with the
desperate, the lost,the empty.
It is for those who embrace the desperate, the lost and the empty, whose hearts break
for them. And because they empathize, they become larger and wiser and both more broken
and more complete.
Apocalyptic speech is for them. Apocalyptic speech is for you. New heavens and a new
earth.
Such speech is outrageous, discomforting, wild. For those of you annoyed with such
speech, you've got a problem.
The greatest threat to Christianity, is not atheists or secularists but those of us who
say we follow Christ, but try to tame him. The greatest danger to Christianity is not
Islam or materialism or skepticism or the profit motive rung amok or government or kids
that just don't understand, but those among us who try turn our Lord and his Gospel into a
thin gruel of pablum, a pale soup for the soul with no meat, no courage, and no guts. The
greatest threat to Christianity is that we take away its sense of urgency, of immediacy,
of expectation.
If you are content with the present arrangements of this world:
If you are satisfied that there are more poor children in this country then in anytime
since the Great Depression,
If you are satisfied that one out of every six persons in Africa has HIV/AIDS,
If you are satisfied with a world that is flat drunk with the poisonous cocktail of
religious intolerance and weapons of mass destruction,
If you are satisfied with this world, then go ahead and turn Jesus into thin soup for
your petty soul. Drink it. Debauch in it. Drink at the trough of comfortable Christianity
and bow down and worship yourselves.
But if you are desperate, if you are worried, if your heart aches, if you are captive
to the gods of ease, the gods of materialism, the gods of addiction, the gods of violence,
the hundreds of gods that tempt us, and you know that you need deliverance, then you've
come to the right place. You've come to the right Gospel.
If you are here because you long for a world where the stars fall and the moon and the
sun are darkened, where the hungry are fed, swords are turned into plowshares, the
wandering and lost are welcomed home, where Jesus, himself, comes down - way down - to you
and lifts you up, then you've come to the right place, the right Gospel, the right Lord.
You've come to the right church.
Here the hungry are fed, the captives freed, the poor have good news preached to them.
You've come to a church that is worthy to bear his name, to bear his cross, to carry and
spread his Good News.
Let us be careful. We are not there yet. We see the day of the coming of the Lord, but
we are not there yet. We see that day, standing on tiptoe, straining to see that day on
the other side of the horizon, but we are not there yet. We need to be careful and humble.
However, we do see enough of the dawn's early light to know that we must wait until the
bright sun of his kingdom fully comes. We must wait.
But this waiting it is an active waiting, a restless waiting. We wait by getting up off
our seats. The good Lord knows we got a lot of work to do. We are ill at ease with the
present arrangements. We will not accommodate. A big nasty, cocklebur of discontent
irritates our tendency to sit down and settle in. So we get off our seats and work for the
kingdom.
Because we see new heavens and a new earth where there is no crying, or suffering or
pain, we not only wait, but we work. We work for that day when all God's children will
know him; when all will welcome him into their hearts and deeds, when he will be birthed
in you and me and the whole creation. We wait and we work, for that day when the Prince of
Peace, born in a stable in Bethlehem will be fully born into this world. Until that day,
we wait, work and pray: "O Come, O Come Immanuel, ransom captive Israel." For we
are captive and yet free. Pray Lord Jesus come. Amen.
