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Sermon 373 St. Martin’s 129 (The Church) 12/1/24
Jesus said, "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. 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, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
Then he told them a parable: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
"Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man." Luke 21:25-36
Advent Has Landed Did you notice what we were just singing? “The evening is advancing, and darker night is near. The Bridegroom is arising, and soon he will draw nigh; Up, watch in expectation! At midnight, comes to cry.”[i]
This is your Public Safety Announcement: Advent has arrived. If you were hoping for Christmas on December 1st, I believe there are some other churches pretty close to us that have already decked the halls.
As for us, in this portion of God’s vineyard, we need to reside for a while in the awfully strange season of Advent before we celebrate the Lord’s Incarnation.
This is not merely a time of preparation for Christmas, but a jolting reminder that our attention should be fixed on the horizon of history where the Sun of Righteousness will arise and from whence Christ will come again to judge “the quick and the dead.”
Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Advent is the season we are reminded, more than any other, that Christ will come again.
The prayers, the hymns, and readings over the next few weeks will be our guardrails as we navigate through this season, and one thing is for sure: they will not make us feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Sentimentality will not do; Advent is too important to be taken lightly. It is dark and ominous and wonderful. And I say ‘wonderful’ because I think we really need to reckon with the good, the bad, and the ugly in life, and to accept that it’s all muddled together. The good, the bad: Jesus has come to redeem it all…nothing is outside of God’s purview.
Advent has come just days after a fragile ceasefire began on the Lebanese border, and while North Korean soldiers gather in the Kursk region to fight alongside the Russians.
Advent comes simultaneously for the families who run for safety from the gang violence in Port-a-Prince, Haiti, as well as for you and me as we scramble to get our Christmas shopping done. It comes to those who have just received a cancer diagnosis as well as to those who are holding a newborn child.
Advent has something to say to all of us: the world Jesus has redeemed, a world of sorrow and joy, is one that he has laid claim to, and he will come again with power and great glory.
Luke 21 Believe it or not, Jesus spends an uncomfortable amount of time talking about the eschaton (a theological word for the age to come). He, like his cousin John, can be seen as an End Time preacher—the only catch is Jesus is the one who will actually bring about the End Times!
There will be signs in the sky, Jesus says in our reading today, the sun, moon, and stars will foreshadow what is to come. There will be fear and foreboding, but don’t cower in trepidation, stand up with your head held high because all of this shows that the world’s redemption is drawing near.
These are unsettling words from Jesus. In no uncertain terms, he looks us in the eye and says, “Be alert at all times…pray that you can escape what will take place…[so that you can] stand before the Son of Man.”
Jesus’ words for vigilance can be interpreted on multiple levels. He is speaking to his future followers who will experience major social and political upheavals like the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem or the fall of Rome; let alone the rise and fall of empires throughout history.
Jesus was saying things were going to get worse before they got better. The world would not instantly revert back to the Garden of Eden. More was still to come, so it was best to be alert.
It’s no surprise that throughout history, Christians have not always known how to interpret these warnings from our Lord. Some went to the extreme, trying to work out when and how he would return. Was this particular war, plague, or famine a sign that Jesus was coming soon?
Though Jesus also told us that no one would know the day or hour of his second advent, people looked for signs so that they would not be caught off guard. One such person who dedicated his life to finding the exact day was the 19th-century preacher William Miller.
Millerites For years William Miller scoured the Bible looking for clues, and over time he created an elaborate calculation based on certain prophecies in Scripture. After careful examination, he was confident that Jesus would arrive in 1843 but then changed it to October 22nd, 1844.[ii]
He wrote to a friend a few days before, “Now, blessed be the name of the Lord, I see a beauty, a harmony, and an agreement in the Scriptures, for which I have long prayed, but did not see until today…I am almost home. Glory! Glory!!”[iii]
To which his friend wrote back, “Praise God. May we all be ready & meet in the skies.”[iv]
Thousands of people, convinced by Miller’s years of preaching in New England, had sold their possessions, stopped working, and paid off debts. Truly “The Bridegroom [was] arising, and soon he [would] draw nigh.” Miller was convinced he was the midnight-voice waking up lethargic believers to the coming Day of Judgment.
On October 22nd, family and friends gathered at the Miller’s home in Low Hampton, New York. Unlike the caricature of them, they did not gather on rooftops with white robes looking to the sky. More likely, they munched on some finger food in the parlor, looking out the front window for the fire to start raining down from heaven. The fire never came.
People not long after began to call that day, “The Great Disappointment.” Miller had incorrectly predicted the Lord’s return multiple times in his lifetime. He was either a perpetual optimist or was simply cruising for a bruising.
That kind of persistence in a scientist, an artist, or an athlete would be admirable, but in his case, it was a sad instance of wanting something you cannot have.
But that being said, there’s a little bit of William Miller in all of us—desiring certainty, wanting to control the narrative—even if it’s God’s timing that we’re trying to squeeze into our own agenda.
But William Miller and his followers were not the first to predict Jesus’ second coming incorrectly. For any number of reasons, people began predicting Jesus would come back not long after he left.
But I think every Christian, deep in their soul, longs for God’s kingdom to reign. We have a faint idea of how life is supposed to go, how the world is to be ordered, how we are to treat one another—and yet, we are aware of just how far we are from that Godly ideal.
Advent wants us to reside in that feeling of “the now and the not yet” for a few weeks because it will inform how we live until Jesus does return. We are to dwell in this unsettling fact; not to scour the Bible for clues of Jesus’ arrival, but rather to foster a longing for God to come again.
Another preacher named William, Will Willimon, puts it this way: “Our lives are eschatologically stretched between the sneak preview of the new world being born among us in the church, and the old world where the principalities and powers are reluctant to give way.”
What he means is that we are an Easter people, the power of the resurrection—and thus the in-breaking of God’s kingdom –is here, and we are aware of it and members of it. We as the church are a beacon of the new humanity.
We know there is more to life than this, but we also see the present pain and sorrow of this world.
Our faith tells us all things have been—and will be—made new in Christ. And yet, how do we reckon with the brokenness that’s in front of us? How can we say the power of the resurrection is here when there is so much evidence that begs to differ?
This is what Advent has to teach us because Willimon says that “in the meantime, which is the only time the church has ever known, we live as those who know something about the fate of the world that the world does not yet know. And that makes us different.”[v]
We live in “the meantime” between the closing of this present evil age, and the life of the world to come. Being stretched during this Time Between can leave us fatigued; at times over-extended like a Stretch Armstrong that has been held at its limits for far too long.
This fatigue may even lead us to question the goodness of God, or his purpose for us, as we (or those we love) deal with the effects of a sinful, broken world.
“How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” the psalmist says, “How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long?”[vi]
It is not hard for a Christian to say those words. It comes naturally to most of us because we know what God has promised is not our present reality…at least not fully.
And yet, amid life’s broken relationships, health trials, natural disasters, political division, and untold violence, Jesus’ followers know something the rest of the world does not.
We know the Lord has not forgotten us, even though his silence can be deafening at times. We know that history is moving to a Day when all wrongs will be made right. We know Sin is still around, yet it is hobbling to its ultimate demise.
Jon Foreman sums it up perfectly in one of his songs, “O how I long for heaven in a place called earth.” Advent is the season we name that innate longing in each of us for heaven while we live here on earth.
This Time Between is a strange place to be, it is filled with uncertainty and a whole lot of stretching. But it’s exactly in this unsettling moment that God does two things:
He first directs the brokenhearted, the hopeless, the fatigued, and the overstretched to have faith that even though he is delayed in his return, he is not delayed indefinitely. He will return to do what he promised; he is faithful to his word. What God has said, he will do. We must cling to that promise…because sometimes it’s all we’ve got.
Secondly, he commands us to point those who are currently living in a land of deep darkness toward the light of Christ. We are to tell them that this heavenly light has entered the world, and the darkness did not overcome it. And if it didn’t overcome the Son of God, it will not overcome his followers either.
Just as our acolytes in this service lead our procession with a cross and candles, you and I are called to be God’s acolytes to the world—lifting high the cross of Christ, shining his light so that others may know that darkness does not reign, and that one day, it will be banished forever.
By doing so, we proclaim that the evils of this world will be reckoned with at the end of the age. Pain and sorrow will not be frivolously cast aside, but will be seen, heard, and accounted for on the Day of Judgement before melting away, never to return.
And the joys of this present moment are but a small token of trust in what is to be experienced fully in the majestic presence of God. We are to wait in hope of the age to come, and live lives informed of what kind of age it will be.
We may feel stretched in this moment, but that’s only because we know how the story ends. We know the world is not how God intended, but when he comes…well, you and I know, it’ll be worth the wait.
In the meantime, “Be on guard,” my dear friends, “so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.”
Wait and watch, for at midnight comes the cry!
[ii] The movement Miller created was called Millerism, and out of it was born the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
[iii] God’s Strange Work: William Miller and The End of the World by David Rowe. Pg. 189.
[iv] God’s Strange Work: William Miller and The End of the World by David Rowe. Pg. 190.
[v] Will Willimon, Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition
[vi] Psalm 13:1a, 2.
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