O Come, All Ye Faithful: And Be on Guard

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-33

I had a conversation once with an older man.  He was approaching 90, and his health was in active decline.  He died early in the pandemic.  He recalled something Harold Shirley, our church’s first pastor, used to say.  “My home is in heaven,” Dr. Shirley would say.  “I’m just not ready to go home yet.”

The man looked at me and with a quiver in his voice said, “Pastor, I’m ready to go home.”

  I can appreciate both of those statements.  The young and strong are not ready to go home yet.  They are full of vim and vigor.  Life stretches before them.  They have challenges to conquer and contributions to make.  A home in heaven can wait.

  Some of us, like that older man, will reach a place where we are no longer young and strong.  The vim and vigor will be gone.  The challenges of daily life will seem overwhelming.  And we will begin to look forward, to a world beyond, to the realm we call heaven.  We will begin to see it as our ultimate home.  We will long for it. With hope.  With peace.

There is painful blessedness in that. Painful because it marks an end to this home we have known for decades.  Blessed because we know it is where we ultimately belong.

The first Sunday of Advent catches me a little off guard every year.  It too looks forward.  To the end.  To the culmination of human history.  And it uses what we call apocalyptic language to describe it.  It can sound foreboding.

  There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars…great distress…confusion, people fainting from fear and foreboding, and the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  Heaven and earth, we are told today, will pass away.  So be on guard.  Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape.

The Advent season looks both backward and forward.  We look back to those lovely stories of Joseph, Mary, and the birth of their baby boy, a boy who would grow to be the most challenging man to ever walk the earth.  But this first Sunday of Advent looks forward.  This Sunday anticipates the end, whatever that will look like.  I’ve abandoned trying to understand or explain what the end will be like.  Too many people get tied up in knots with this and miss the point of the text.  I simply tell people now that’s beyond my pay grade.  Now I try to practice simple belief, childlike hope.  Not childish, but childlike.  And at this place in my journey, that’s enough for me.  I think it was for the man who told me he was ready to go home.

Our text from Luke 21 has caused undue distress for many people.  It’s Luke’s version of that strange chapter in Mark 13 called the Little Apocalypse.  Scholars think Luke actually had a copy of Mark 13 as he wrote Luke 21.  Luke used parts of Mark exactly, changed a few parts, and left some out entirely.  Jesus was telling his listeners about the end.  Using apocalyptic language, he talked about the sun, moon, and stars, distress among the nations, and people fainting from fear and foreboding.  That’s the distressing part.

I don’t know if you know this, but NASA has an Ask an Astrobiologist web page. People can send in their questions and receive a scientific response.  They have received thousands of questions about the end of time, many of them from people who are terribly frightened.  One man wrote that his two teenage sons were talking about killing themselves because they don’t want to be here when the world ends.  Two women admitted that they were thinking about killing their children, so they wouldn’t have to endure the calamities that will accompany the end of the world.

Let me be very clear about this.  What Jesus describes in Luke 21 is not something to fear.  Just as seasons come and go, human lives come and go, nature comes and goes, so at some point on the horizon an end will come.  That’s how God has designed life, and we can trust that God’s design is good.

  Unfortunately, many people miss the most important part of Luke 21.  It’s the story Jesus told about a fig tree.  This is where our focus should be.  When a fig tree begins to leaf out, Jesus said, we know that summer is not far.   The fresh, bright green growth is evidence that summer is near.  Likewise, we will begin to see telltale signs of our own end.  We will begin to look forward, to a world beyond, to that realm we call heaven.  We will begin to see it as our ultimate home and long for it. 

I had a week off recently to install the next phase of my landscape.  As you know we are out in the country now, and my new backyard, which is very large, is virtually a blank slate.  So, I’ve begun installing my landscape, which is going to feature a Japanese garden and a pond.  I planted 84 trees and shrubs.  I told someone I had to come back to work to let my back rest.

Do you know why fall is the best time of the year to plant new trees and shrubs?  Most people think it is spring, but it is really fall.  While trees go dormant above ground, they are still growing below the soil.  Their roots are becoming established in their new home, reaching out, finding moisture and nutrients.  When hot weather arrives, the plants are established because the roots were able to grow through the winter.

I enjoy going out to visit my plants.  Yes, I talk to them sometimes.  It makes them happy and me too.  And here’s what will happen.  When the weather warms, the buds on those happy trees and shrubs will begin to swell.  That is a sign to me that flowers and fruit are not far away.

That’s not something to fear, is it?  No, that’s something to look forward to.  Long for.  With hope.  With peace.

So be on guard, Jesus said.  It was his way of saying, ‘Live now.  Talk to your plants.  Talk to your children.  Your spouse.  Love now.  Love your neighbors.  Your co-workers.  Count.  Matter.  Be an agent of love and grace in the world.  Add value to the people around you.  Because the day is coming when you will no longer be able to do it.”

I was privileged to study with one of this country’s finest New Testament scholars, Dr. Allan Culpepper.  He spoke here several years ago.  He was working on a commentary on the Gospel of Mark at the time he was my professor.  He came into class one day, stood before the class, and quoted the entire Gospel of Mark.  That’s how immersed he was in it.  He also wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Luke, and I want to share with you part of what he wrote:

The Gospel teaches that beyond the end of time stands the Lord, who has come among us in the person of Jesus….  The end of time holds no terror for those who know God’s love because they know the one who determines the reality that lies beyond what we can know here and now.  (They) can approach the end with heads raised high, knowing that their redemption is near.

(New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IX, p. 411)

Here’s another way of saying that: “Pastor, I’m ready to go home.”

So be on guard.  That’s the message of Advent Sunday.  Be on guard.  Live.  Love.  Count.  Matter.  O come, all ye faithful.  Let us be on guard.

Closing Prayer

 For this gift we call life, Lord, this chance to live and love, we give you thanks.  Help us to use it well.  Amen.