"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.” [1]
One day in 1982 Larry Walters decided he wanted to see his neighborhood from a new perspective. He went down to the local army surplus store one morning and bought forty-five used weather balloons. That afternoon he strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which several of his friends tied the helium-filled balloons. He took along a six-pack of beer, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and a BB gun, figuring he could shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to land.
Walters figured the balloons would lift him about 100 feet in the air; he was wrong! The chair soared more than 11,000 feet into the sky – in the middle of the air traffic pattern at Los Angeles International Airport. Too frightened to shoot any of the balloons, he stayed airborne for more than two hours. The airport was forced to shut down its runways for much of the afternoon, causing long delays in flights from across the country.
Soon after he was safely grounded and cited by the police, reporters asked him three questions:
"Were you scared?" "Yes."
"Would you do it again?" "No."
"Why did you do it?" "Because," he said, "sometimes you can’t just sit there, sometimes you gotta do something." [2]
How different is Larry Walters from the German Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who during the Second World War opposed Hitler’s Nazis. He was arrested for his opposition to crimes against humanity being conducted by the leaders of his homeland. Shortly before he was executed by hanging at Christmas 1945, Bonhoeffer wrote to his family and friends :
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes ... and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent. [3]
Advent is no prison cell, but it is a time of waiting, reflection and anticipation. In the Christian calendar it is the beginning of a new year. Advent is advenire, Latin for “draw near”. We reflect on our closeness to Christ, and anticipate His closeness in coming to us…we reflect on history, and his first coming, we wait in the present day, and we anticipate his coming in the future.
If our faith, our religion is to be more than just fulfillment of duties and obligations, we need to ask the hard questions of Advent. We need to ask the What, Who, When, Why, Where and How questions of this season. Let me try to answer most of that with a single sentence:
We (Christian believers) are to be continually alert, reflecting on the first incarnation of Jesus Christ, and anticipating the second; we do this because Jesus himself told us to keep looking up as our redemption will come in the clouds.
Now, that may handle most of the Advent questions, but, by my count still leaves the “how” unanswered. How shall we keep “looking-up”? How shall we anticipate His coming? The good Doctor Luke wrote down what Jesus said about it in the end of our passage. He tells us to pay particular attention to the culture in which we live, and to be responsive to that which we observe. He told us to read the culture and react wisely to the culture.
READ THE CULTURE
“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.”
To be on-guard, or alert means we have to be aware of what kind of world we live in. It means we must figure out our environment so we can confront this culture with faith.
To many people, even faithful Christian believers, the horizon of our culture is too bleak to look at, much less confront. It is a scary world in which we live. One look at the newspaper or a dose of early morning TV or radio will tell you that!
• Mention the Indian Ocean and pictures of a wall of water causing 275,000 deaths flow over the screen.
• Mention California and there are earthquakes.
• Mention the nation of Turkey this week. and see the change of a once-Christian stronghold turn on Pope Benedict.
• Mention Denmark and scenes of the debate on legalizing euthanasia jump to the foreground.
• Mention Sudan and the pictures of suffering and trampled hope won’t stop scrolling.
• Palestine and the West Bank carry a world of images of war, threat and terrorism.
• The unborn holocaust in America alone divides more people than the Civil War.
In our culture there is conflict upon conflict. The news is hardly ever encouraging. The choices are simple –
we can ignore the pain in the lives of others because it is too great for us to bear…
we can attempt to deaden the noise and pain with activities, or drugs and alcohol, or desensitizing exercises; we can bury our heads in the sands of materialism and vacations…
or…we can do what Jesus commanded…read the culture, understand what the signs of our times are, and then…
REACT WISELY TO THE CULTURE
“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.”
Reacting wisely to the culture takes understanding; it takes reading the culture in the light of eternity and faith. Here, on the first Sunday in Advent we commit to waiting, anticipating. Silence is commanded, listening is warranted…and neither is generally practiced.
Note the two ways Jesus said that our alertness can be put into practice as we confront our culture in this new millennium:
The first is prayer. Jesus commanded us to pray. Now, the Lord was not talking about our blessing before the fried chicken this afternoon. The word “pray” in the verse comes from a root verb which means “to bind”. When we truly pray, we come to the Lord in faith, willing to open our hearts to what He wants (not the Christmas shopping list), and to be bound by His will.
The second is to “plod”. By plodding I don’t mean to imply just “sledging-through” in life, dragging oneself as if you are wading through a hip-deep bog. Rather, to plod is more a matter of staying with the stuff every day, keeping our eyes fixed on the goal.
It means doing what Jesus told the Pharisee about being obedient to God’s ways;[4] it means getting-up every day and using the strength provided in this binding of ourselves to the Lord.
It means applying all of our heart, mind, soul and strength as we go throughout each day in a purposeful attempt to love God with all we’ve got, and our neighbors as ourselves.
It means that each of we, who are believers in Jesus Christ, and willing to follow him with a cross slung-over our back, chooses a purpose for our life that is not driven by the circumstances reported on CNN, but rather directed by a sense of quest in the life of Christ.
Prayer and Plodding – this is how we react to the culture wisely. This is a balancing act certainly. It is not for the faint of heart. It is for those willing to surrender their hearts to a purpose which is eternal.
Look at the insert in your bulletin…full of opportunities to plug-into places where God needs your hands and heart. There is a whole team of people just waiting for your willingness to be a person of prayer and plodding.
Prayer and Plodding doesn’t seem very grand or noticeable in a culture where sizzle and sensation abound. It means you probably won’t get your 15 minutes of fame on the local TV channels. But it does mean that when you think of what Jesus said about lifting up your head to look over the trouble of this world – you really have something drawing-nigh – you really have redemption coming in the clouds with great power and glory. [5]
Is that what you’re anticipating this morning? Are you being quiet this morning of Advent? Are you reading the culture in which you live so you can react with Kingdom-wisdom; are you planning to bind yourself to God’s will and plod every day in the work?
If so, there is strength running in your spiritual veins; there is strength to work-through all the difficulty of circumstances and the frightening experiences of life. And there is strength to stand before the King of Glory in judgment. There is still power in that blood!
If you are praying (binding yourself to God’s will at the foot of a blood-stained cross), and you are plodding (loving God and your neighbor every day with all you’ve got, no matter what CNN reports) there is a redemption – a saving grace that is drawing nigh. It will come on clouds of glory with great might…His name is Jesus! Lift up your head, saint of God – your redemption draweth nigh.
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ENDNOTES
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1] NRSV
2] http://www.markbarry.com/lawnchairman.html
3] Ben Domenech, Bonhoeffer’s Sacrificial Love, (http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001213.cfm)
4] Matthew 22:36
5] Mark 13:26
