First Sunday of Advent Sermon

I don’t know how many of you will be able to relate to this: But when I was a child, being raised in the evangelical church of the 1970s, there was a movie (or a series of movies, I forget) called “Left Behind.” It was all about the rapture, when God would whisk off to heaven all those who were to be saved. And everyone else, was “left behind.” I remember this one scene: a wife finding an electric razor, vibrating on the bathroom counter. Her husband had been shaving when the rapture came, and she was “left behind.”

It was terrifying. How could you know if you’d really been saved? Don’t even get me started on what kind of theology this was imbedding in my youthful soul about the nature of God. “God is love” was the party line we always had to uphold, while at the same time this god seemed awfully determined to send most people to hell. And it wasn’t exactly clear to me how I was supposed to conjure up the right kind of faith to guarantee I’d be one of the raptured ones when the time came. How was I supposed to “be ready” when Jesus came at that “unexpected hour”?

Now we don’t have time to get into the whole history of “rapture theology” and its rather recent introduction into American Christian culture in the early 20^th century. And I don’t want to give it that much airtime, anyway.

But this rapture theology was an interpretation of a couple passages of scripture from the New Testament, including this one we just heard – Matthew 24: “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.”

Earlier in this same chapter, Jesus describes a day when the nations “will see the Son of Man come on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds” (Matt. 24:30-31).

Jesus is drawing from the language of the Old Testament prophet Daniel. It’s apocalyptic writing – a genre of literature without an equivalence in our culture. Apocalyptic writing was highly symbolic. So, if – in faith – you’re trying to interpret it literally, there are good odds you’re going to miss the actual intent altogether. Faith does not require – or even advise – taking symbols literally.

In a nutshell, apocalyptic writing was always written to a suffering people who were enduring some intense season of persecution or destruction. And the purpose of the writing was to encourage them. It was to say: Yes, things are really, really bad right now. But let me pull back the veil for you and reveal the spiritual reality in which God is on your side with ultimate power and authority – an authority that will ultimately crush your oppressors.

In the time of Daniel, that oppressor was the Babylonian Empire. In the time of Jesus and the early church, that oppressor was the Roman Empire. And for both generations, the message was the same: See and believe (!) that the powers of this world come and go. But the power of God remains forever. It may seem slow, but God will triumph. So hold on. Keep enduring. All will be well.

And, true enough: Babylon rose and fell. Rome rose and fell. And this people of the book, of the Old and New Testaments, we keep carrying on. Not always well. Not always with integrity. Quite often, in fact, we’ve resembled the empires we’re meant to resist far more than the spirit of Christ we’re meant to embody. Certainly, historically, the church has a sordid history of aligning with corrupt governments or using its own authority to manipulate people for its own selfish end. This is to our shame and to the growing despair of the world. Even unto now.

And, throughout history, the light has shone in the darkness. Faith, with integrity, has endured in every generation: through every mercy, through every laying down of life for the good of the other, through every moment of compassion and hope that endures in the darkness, through every prophetic act of justice-wrought for the outcast and the poor.

So, even now, we seek to see such light… and to be such light. Though false prophets and antichrists prevail among us, we persevere in hope that the truer powers remain and it is they that shall endure.

And so we begin another season of Advent – a season developed over the centuries to help us endure with the hope we will need. Advent inaugurates a new church year, a new season of beginning afresh our cycle of faith.

The gift of Advent is its invitation: to name plainly the present reality of our world (be it our lives, our families, our country) and to look to the end with hope – and the confidence of hope – that these trials, too, are but a passing thing. And what shall remain as trustworthy and true is the Kingdom of God, as revealed in Christ.

And, as Christians, our particular hope is not only in the worth and reliability of Christian values (worthy though they may be). Our hope is more than that. What Advent invites us to remember – and to hold with tenacity – is the hope of Christ’s return and the completion of God’s saving work already begun.

But let me be careful with this language of “Christ’s return” or the “second coming.” We have no idea what that will look like, or what – exactly – that will even mean. Any attempt to use the language of scripture as a literal description of what to be looking for – clouds and trumpets and whatnot – can be a real danger… danger because we end up looking for and prioritizing the wrong things. We assign “faith” to things that matter not at all.

Just like with the first coming of Christ, no one knew what they were looking for. No one anticipated a “God made flesh and dwelt among us.” They wanted a Messiah. Absolutely. They were looking for a Messiah to save them. Absolutely. But their expectations were misplaced. They wanted a political leader. They wanted a general. They didn’t want a baby born to an unwed mother.

And, so, the only ones who knew to greet the Messiah at his first Advent were some grungy shepherds and some astrologers from a different religion and nation altogether, because they were the ones to whom God chose to make this announcement. We shouldn’t forget that. It may be a pattern. God advanced the story of salvation by telling outsiders first, and not the religious authorities.

But even without their love or endorsement, that Messiah grew and began a ministry within Israel to which people flocked. They began to wonder and hope, “Could this be the Messiah?” for he taught as one with authority – with wisdom and love and power to heal and forgive – a message so consistent with the values of the Old Testament law, but now enfleshed in such a pure and loving way, that light now did shine in the darkness with brilliance. He showed us as one of us the Kingdom of God. He showed us the nature of God. And when he was killed, by the power of God he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, just as we recite in the Nicene Creed each week.

And, as we repeat in the Creed each week, we believe “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end….We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”

This is our faith. And this is the message and hope of Advent.

And so, for me:

I do expect the return of Christ.

I do expect the Kingdom of God to prevail.

I do expect that Christ’s resurrection from the dead has indeed been the first fruit of a general resurrection of the dead yet to be – that Christ has indeed conquered hell and the power of sin and death.

But … I do not know at all what to expect that return to look like. And more significantly: I do not know at all what it will mean for God in Christ to complete God’s mission of redemption.

What I know, by looking at history and by knowing how small-minded we humans tend to be, is that any particular expectation of Christ’s return is likely to be too small, too legalistic, too focused in its target, too narrow in its love.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, after all, the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches (Matthew 13:31-32).

That (!) is what I’m holding out for. That is my hope, my dream: that when Christ comes again, the kingdom of God he ushers in will be as different from this puny church – with its divisions and rules and fear mongering and dogma and manipulations – as a tree is from the seed that birthed it.

I’m not speaking of St. John’s specifically. (I actually think we’re quite loving) But I am speaking of the whole history and spirit of the church. Yes, we have, in our way, carried the faith; we have shone light in the darkness, but oh, so weakly.

So, yes! Come, Lord Jesus. Grow this tree! Be the seed from which it grows. Be the water that bursts it from its shell. Be the light that pulls it heavenward. And may it grow and grow and grow – strong and mighty – with branches that stretch wider and wider. And do – let the birds come, from every direction, to make their nests in your tree; and there to raise their young. May there be generations yet to be, raised in the fullness of your truth.

St. John’s, faith does not require us to subscribe to the specifics of a future yet to be. It is a future beyond our ken.

But faith invites us to hope for the fulfilment of the kingdom already begun in us, through Christ. We can dream of such a world and work towards such a world, for such a world has begun.

Christ has shown us the heart of God.

Christ has conquered sin and death.

His resurrection is but the beginning of a greater resurrection yet to be.

So come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free.