Signs, Signs, Everywhere Are Signs
December 3, 2006
Luke 21:25-36
A couple of weeks ago, Toni and I felt the need to get away over night to try to relax after the really rushed Charge Conference season. We left on Thursday afternoon and didn’t get home until early evening on Friday. We had thirty wonderful hours by ourselves when we talked about church for a total of maybe 30 seconds.
We didn’t know exactly where we wanted to go and I suggested that we go up to Frankenmuth, Michigan. Toni thought that was a great idea, so she got on the internet and made reservations. Then we looked on a map. Frankenmuth is farther away that we thought. I thought that it wasn’t too far north of the Michigan state line, but discovered that it is about a three and a half hour trip. Actually longer for us because we like to drink a lot of soft drinks while we drive which means we have to stop frequently.
Anyway, we got up to the place where I69 joins I75. There was a lot of construction going on and the traffic was horrendous. I was concentrating on the highway and counting on Toni to read the signs. Signs were pointing everywhere: to Flint, to Detroit, to Ann Arbor, to Saginaw, to Pontiac. Toni followed the signs, I drove, and we got to our destination without any trouble at all.
Do you remember that song from a long time ago? “Signs, signs everywhere is signs, blocking up the scenery, breaking my mind. Do this, don’t do that can’t you read the signs?”
We live in a nation of signs. Some of them are helpful and some are not. For example, here are some actual signs seen around our great country.
• From a small town in California…”Fishing for children Only/Limit 3”
• From Maui, Hawaii…”Bottomless Pit/65 feet deep
• From Austin, Texas, a sign on a balcony read…”Please be aware that the balcony is not on ground level”
• In Mitchell, South Dakota is a sign that reads…”Safe Haven Small Animal Hospital/ Hunters Welcome”
• From Los Angeles…”Caution: Blind Drivers Backing Out”
• Also from Los Angeles…”Antique tables made daily”
• A sign in Racine, Wisconsin read…”Happy Easter! We Rent Handguns”
Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is a season that looks in two directions at the same time. We look backwards to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but we also look forward to the time when he will return to earth to set up his kingdom. The first Sunday is always the day that we look forward to the end of history and his final return.
We believe that it was God who created the world and is on the way to bringing it to an end. God is on the move, always active, always going forward toward the goal of establishing his rule over every living creature.
And along the way, there are signs. Everywhere are signs. In Isaiah, King Ahaz received a sign of the Lord’s presence: a young woman bearing a child named Immanuel (Is. 7:14). At the birth of Jesus there were signs in the heavens and the earth. The star shown in the heavens and the choirs of angels sang. The shepherds received the word from the angel, “This shall be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” At the end of his life, darkness covered the whole earth and the curtain in the Temple was torn in two as signs of his death.
Just the same, there will be signs that will herald the end of times. Isaiah says, “The glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people shall see it together (40:5). If you go back to the beginning of Luke 21, you discover that among the signs of the end times are that Jerusalem will be destroyed, that there will be wars, earthquakes, famines, and false Messiahs. There will be persecution of Christians because of their faith. This is the time when Christians are urged to be faithful and continue their witnessing until the Good News has been preached to the ends of the earth. In the lesson for this morning we learn that the signs include uproar in the cosmos and chaos over all the earth.
If we are honest with ourselves, we will recognize that this stuff has been going on for centuries. Jerusalem was indeed destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Wars have not ceased. Natural disasters continue to haunt us: floods on the Gulf Coast, Tsunamis in the Far East, and earthquakes in Iran.
If you turn to just about any religious radio station, you will no doubt hear preacher after preacher saying that the end times are just around the corner because the signs are everywhere. The problem is that people have been saying this stuff since the resurrection…and we’re still waiting. The disciples had trouble understanding and reading the signs. And we too still struggle with their comprehension.
But notice what Jesus says about the fig tree. He tells the disciples that they are able to tell the changing of the seasons by looking at the leaves of the trees. When the trees regain their leaves, it is a sure sign that summer is just around the corner. The same thing is true of the end time signs. When the time is right, the disciples will be able to interpret those signs as easily as they can interpret the changing of the seasons. They will then understand that there is no reason to fear.
Humanity has a tendency to misread, misunderstand, or just ignore signs. Let me offer one example. We all know - those of us who lived through those times and those of us who have read about it in the history books – that World War II began on September 1, 1939 when German armies invaded Poland. Hitler’s original plan however, was for the invasion to begin a week before that on August 26. Because of some last minute change of plans, the war was put off for a week.
Orders went out to all of the front line units to stand down. Everybody got the message except one unit, which rolled into Poland at midnight August 26th and soon captured a very important mountain pass and a number of prisoners. When the unit commander phoned his headquarters to tell them of his success, they told him of the change of plans. So the battlefield commander released his prisoners, turned around, and led his soldiers back into Germany.
Now, I fully realize that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I think that if I were one of the leaders of Poland at that time, I might have come to a conclusion that something was in the air. But the Polish government let the incident pass, and was caught completely unaware and unprepared when the Nazis finally did invade on September 1st. They weren’t ready. They didn’t read the signs.
This would be the place to get into a discussion of apocalyptic imagery and eschatological theology, but that sort of scholarship really doesn’t preach very well. So let me offer this. Let me tell you where I have always come down on this “signs of the end of time” stuff.
I am not a detail oriented person. I have never been all that concerned with the details of the end-time signs. Other people are different. Other people need different answers. Other people ask different questions. Maybe you are one of those, but for me, this is how I see it.
We are all waiting for the Second Advent of Christ, when Jesus will return to set up the new heaven and the new earth. We are all wondering when that will be, but we know that it will happen on God’s timetable and not ours. It seems to me that if we are more concerned about the first Advent of Jesus and do our best to live the faith we profess, then we won’t have to worry about the Second Advent because it will take care of itself. If we live as Christ calls us to live now, then whenever the Second Advent occurs, we will be ready.
We may all want to know the “when” of the end times. When will it occur? Should I be ready tonight or do I have a decade or more? I am pretty comfortable with the mystery of the whole thing. I think a more useful question would be: “Am I ready for the Second Advent whenever it gets here?” If Jesus came to your house today, would you be ready?
When I was in seminary, I used to have a particular way to talk to Jesus. I forgot about this until just this past week when I began working on this sermon. One of Denver’s city parks was actually not in the city, but was up in the foothills overlooking the prairie. We could get there in about an hour from our student apartment, and would often pack a lunch and go up there to spend an afternoon. There was one particular place I loved. It was a meadow in the midst of the forest, probably about an acre or an acre and a half in size. In the summer, it would be filled with yellow and blue wildflowers. I remember it as one of the prettiest places I had ever seen.
In my devotional life, I would sometimes need to ask Jesus some questions. So, in my mind, I would go back up to that meadow in the mountains, and imagine that we were together. It would be just me and Jesus, both of us dressed in blue jeans, flannel shirts, and hiking boots, talking about the stuff I really needed to talk about.
I remember that I have always wondered if I would be ready if Jesus really did come back. Would I be prepared? Would my life be in order? What would he have to say to me if we really did have some face-to-face time in the mountains? I think that if I concentrate on living my life so that I am not ashamed of meeting him when he does return, then I don’t have anything to worry about.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said that it is so much easier to become a Christian when you aren’t one than to become one when you assume you already are.” Those of us who are already Christian have a real tendency to assume that we have it made and that there really isn’t that much more that we have to learn. In other words, we tend to get lazy in our discipleship.
As we wait in the time between the Advents, my hope and prayer is that we can focus on the first so that we may be ready for the second. The signs are there. He is coming. He is coming again. May we be ready.
