Sermons

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Ready People
December 1, 2002
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
1st Sunday of Advent

Matthew 24:36-44

So, it’s December 1, the first Sunday of Advent. So where’s the baby Jesus? Where is the manger? Why aren’t we singing “Silent Night?” After all, promptly on November 15, Starbucks down the street had its store decorated, its baristas in red and green (with Santa hats), and Christmas carols blaring in the store. Why is the church so far behind?

For the church, it isn’t Christmas. It’s Advent. That word “Advent” actually means “arrival,” and on this first Sunday of Advent we wait for the arrival of Jesus…particularly that arrival that still lies ahead of us. We look ahead to the time when Jesus will return again…to the “second coming.” Oh, we’ll spend plenty of time in these next weeks thinking about the “first coming,” about God decisively breaking into human history in the birth of Jesus Christ. But we begin not with a baby, but with the teaching of Jesus, not long before his death.

All of the stories that I have told you about our trip to China in these last weeks had to do with the “underground church,” the one the Chinese government does not approve. There is also a government-sanctioned Christian church in China called the “three-self” church. Within that church, there are a number of things which the government has said are “off limits” to teach or talk about. One of the biggest of these is this idea of “the second coming,” the belief that Jesus Christ will come again and close life on earth as we know it.

Why? Why is this such a dangerous topic? Who is it dangerous for? I want to give you a few pictures to think about. The first one could come from any number of historical time periods in America.

A small band of Christian believers quit their jobs, sell all of their possessions and move to the rural hillsides of Tennessee. They huddle together, just a couple of dozen folks, waiting. They know they won’t have to wait too long, because they know Jesus is coming…soon.

The end of time WILL come…but we don’t know when. That much is clear from Jesus’ teaching here. Just in these few verses, Jesus says it three times:

“About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Again he says

“for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,”

and still again

“The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

This by itself should put to rest the idea that we can somehow unlock the hidden Biblical secrets to the timing of this event, or easily put world events into a sequence that tells us how close or far away Jesus is. It should put it to rest, but it doesn’t. People keep coming out of the woodwork to get us sidetracked with their predictions of exactly when the end arrives, and what it looks like. One author says (sarcastically), that we get easily bogged down trying to figure out the precise placement of the “furniture of heaven and the exact temperature of hell.” Jesus says, “I don’t even know the day or the hour!”

A second picture:

A man who has studied the Bible throws up his hands and says “I just can’t figure it all out. The world is a mess. Evil triumphs everywhere. Jesus says he’s coming back, but he sure hasn’t shown up lately. And if he’s not in charge of the here and now, I have no idea what’s going to happen later. I’m just going to enjoy my life and see what happens, and deal with whatever comes.”

That’s the same thing they said in Noah’s day, actually. Before Noah started building his ark, the people had quit looking for God in their world. They had kids, they ate, they had parties, they celebrated marriages, they drank, they lived.

After Noah started building his ark, they still didn’t look for God. In between their snide comments about “Crazy Noah,” they had kids, they ate, they had parties, they celebrated marriages, they drank, they lived. When Noah was almost finished with his boat, and warned the people around him…they just kept having kids and eating and hosting parties and celebrating marriages and drinking and living. They weren’t looking for God. They weren’t waiting for anything but the next event. And they weren’t ready. When the flood came, it came like a blinding torrent… there was no time to do anything at all…not even to get right with God. They were swept away.

The third picture could come from any of your workplaces, at least the first part:

A woman shows up at work every single day for forty-two years. She is a good worker, a good employee. She showed up, worked hard, took home her paycheck, stocked up the IRA, thought about retirement. She’d worked for what she wanted, and for the most part, achieved it. She invested in work, was cordial in relationships and kept a bit to herself. She had never looked for God in her life, and had in fact religiously opposed the attempts of a few workmates to share their faith with her. The day the lightening struck and it became clear that the End was at hand…she couldn’t turn to those few for spiritual support…they weren’t there anymore. She wasn’t ready to be alone.

“One will be taken, and one will be left,” Jesus says.

And the final picture:

The owner of the big house on the corner couldn’t believe his bad luck. Burglars were beginning to run rampant in his neighborhood. Night after night he waited in the dark backyard, with his two dogs, his flashlight and his cell phone with 9-1-1 already dialed in. “How nice it would be,” he thought, if I just knew which night. Then I wouldn’t have to stay so alert.”

At the end of time, Jesus will come again. Jesus will come again, and it will BE the end of time. It’s going to happen. Yet it seems that everything that Jesus says about it discourages us from wasting our time trying to figure out the details. And in typical Jesus-fashion, He seems to ask us uncomfortable questions: “Will YOU wait for me? Will you be ready?” It will be unexpected, but not unanticipated. We won’t know WHEN He is coming, but only THAT He IS coming. And so we wait. What’s so dangerous about that?

Our waiting is different. It’s what I call an “active waiting.” [I thought I had coined that as an original phrase, and maybe it would be my first book…until I heard Henri Nouwen use it in Kimberlee’s reading! Very disappointing.] But the phrase is good: active waiting. We’re not fleeing to the hills of Tennessee to wait. There are things to do. Jesus didn’t say “run for cover.” But he DOES say, in fact, in the very next chapter…that when He comes, the people he will welcome and call by name are the ones who have been busy… waiting: waiting by feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and visiting those in prison. That’s a different kind of waiting.

Active waiting requires choices, and choices that will need to be made….NOW. The end will come quickly when it comes. There won’t be time to set things right at the end. No time to get right with God, no time to repair a damaged relationship which has remained untouched for years. Those are decisions we need to make NOW. We have choices to make. If we don’t, we take a gamble. Will we gamble by working at jobs we don’t believe in, by remaining unreconciled with family or friends, by postponing a deeper look at our faith or the claims of Christ…in the hopes of doing it manana? It’s a huge gamble.

I thought this week several times: What would I want to be doing when Jesus came again? Watching a football game in the basement? Huddling in the hills of Tennessee? Remodeling my house? Re- arranging my stuff down at the self-storage unit? I hope, that when Jesus comes, I’m not sheepish, realizing in a flash that I’ve been wasting much of my time on things that don’t matter. I hope I’m a little regretful, actually. Not that Jesus has come, but regretful because I was right in the middle of something. Something important. Enjoying a conversation. Praying. Feeding the hungry…caring for the sick. Waiting. Actively waiting.

Our waiting will also call for endurance. We don’t focus on this too often. We think about our spiritual growth, we talk about motives, about God transforming things, about grace…all good things. But “waiting” also will mean enduring. We don’t know if Jesus will come in our lifetime, or after our death. Only that he will come. History will have an end. But in the meantime? Hotels are bombed, heat-seeking missals are shot at passenger jets, kids are gunned down in homes, the environment is ruined to protect a high standard of living, friends die of cancer.

Myron Young and I visited Dave Scott, a longtime Bethany friend who is now in his sixties. Dave has advanced multiple-sclerosis. His mind is sharp, but he has almost no motor or communication abilities left. He’s a delightful person. But it’s hard to visit him. Even harder to imagine ever being in that place. I don’t think it’s God’s desire for him. And someday, the second coming says…it will be different. The second coming says that one day Christ will bring an end to all ways that are contrary to God. But there’s a lot to endure now.

So, why is this doctrine so dangerous? The Chinese government has its reasons for not allowing teaching on the second coming of Christ. Anything that would place God higher than the government is off limits. Anything that is purported to be supernatural, like miracles, also must be avoided. The second coming of Christ would obviously be supernatural, and the government fears that if people believe in this they will be “irresponsible in their current every day lives,” looking forward to this event. I’ve paraphrased that to mean, “If people believed Christ was coming again, it would change how they lived.” And I think they are right, actually. When I looked at the lives of the Chinese Christians under persecution, their lives ARE different. They are banking everything on the fact that God not only came, not only is here in the Holy Spirit, but that Jesus will come again. And when I look at my life…I wonder. Have I believed it?

The Sunday we returned from China, and some of our group shared here in worship about the sheer enthusiasm for Jesus that the persecuted Christians in China had…someone in the congregation prayed and said, “Lord, don’t let us get sedated.” It was a powerful prayer, for me. Sedated means to “keep calm or quiet…to induce a relaxed, easy state.” Sedated by our culture, by our materialism, even by our religion. It’s the easiest thing in the world. It makes me want to pray, “Lord, don’t let us get so numb, or so docile that we live only within the narrow confines of an easy life.” An easy life doesn’t require endurance, an easy life doesn’t wait actively. Don’t let us be sedated.

Every generation since Jesus has thought that THEIRS was the generation that Christ would appear in to draw history to a close. That’s a long time, 2,000 years worth of generations. What right do we have to think that He actually will come? What evidence do we have that could convince us that God could pull that off?

The best evidence we have is to look BACK…to Jesus’ FIRST coming. Jesus born as a human child, living, ministering, dying, being raised from the dead all for one purpose: that WE might be saved, saved from ourselves, saved from living lives that count for nothing and saved from eternal death... saved FOR God, for real life. If Jesus could bring all of that about in his incarnation…then I think He’ll keep His word. He’ll be back.

“Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” So we wait: actively, with endurance, making choices that seek to follow Christ, trying to be people who are ready. We wait for the Jesus whose very last words in scripture (Revelation) are these: “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen.