It Ends With God

Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-51

What a relief – it’s finally December!  Not that December isn’t a crazy time of year - getting ready for special church services, holiday performances and pageants, and, of course, Christmas itself.  But at least we’re finally in the right month to enjoy Christmas decorations, Christmas carols, and Christmas shopping.  I had to roll my eyes when I saw Christmas decorations start to go up at Costco last August.  I had to grit my teeth when I actually heard Christmas music on the radio before I had an opportunity to enjoy Halloween, let alone Thanksgiving.  But now, finally, I can turn my full attention to Christmas. 

Or can I?

Actually, the Christian calendar asks us to put the brakes on for just a while longer.  Just as we shouldn’t get to Easter before going through Good Friday, we shouldn’t get to Christmas before going through Advent.  To do this is challenging, because, as Walter Breuggemann says, “Advent, more than any other season in the church year, is most powerfully contradicted by the socioeconomic practices in our society.”[1] 

Theodore J. Wardlaw states that “Advent…is played out against the backdrop of conspicuous consumerism.”[2]  Our culture isn’t interested in preparing the way for God – it’s way more interested in self-indulgently satisfying our inner shopper.  That’s why Wardlaw thinks that “Rarely is the church called upon to be more countercultural than during Advent.”

Genesis states that everything begins with God.  Advent reminds us that everything will also end with God.  The One who we’re preparing for during Advent is not only the baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger, but also the Son of Man who will come on the clouds of heaven at the end of time.  Hence, in our text from Matthew for this First Sunday of Advent, “the scale of things is appropriately cosmic and the tone is apocalyptic.” (Wardlaw)

But we’re not yet at the end of time.  Douglas Hare says there are two fundamental concerns early Christians faced which are relevant for all Christians even today: When will Jesus come in glory, and what are we to do in the meantime?

In answer to the first question, Jesus says no one but God the Father knows the day and hour when Jesus will return, so don’t waste time trying to figure it out.  However, he instructs his followers to wait expectantly, to be constantly on watch, like an owner of a house waiting for a thief to break in. 

In answer to the second question, Jesus teaches that we are to be like the good slave whom the master will find at work when he arrives.  Tom Long states, “What vigilance and readiness means is that the church must always be about the mission of Jesus in the world, preaching and teaching the gospel, showing mercy, working for justice, laboring for righteousness, never relaxing its intent to work toward God’s coming victory. [3] 

Now the work of discipleship and mission is not an easy thing to do.  It’s difficult under any circumstances, but it’s especially hard when day after day passes and nothing seems to happen.  There’s a bumper sticker that reads, “Jesus is coming soon.  Look busy!”  It’s one thing to be busy about God’s work if Jesus is indeed coming soon.  But it’s different when there seems to be no end in sight.  That’s why it’s so important and vital that the life of discipleship is lived together with other Christians, so that we can provide encouragement and hope to one another and help everyone keep watch for the sudden appearance of God.

In the meantime, knowing that the Son of Man is coming some day reminds us that our lives have purpose and direction, and it helps us to remember what is really important in life and what is truly secondary.  As Tom Long put it, “If the dam twenty minutes upstream breaks, then the Rembrandt on the wall is less valuable than the rubber raft in the attic.”  Knowing what lies ahead clarifies what to value, and not value, in the here and now.

Theodore Wardlaw tells the story of a prominent African-American pastor who served a large and powerful church in Harlem, above 125^th Street in New York City.  From its gothic spire, one could see just about anything one would want to see.  Or, to put it more accurately, one could see just about everything one would not want to see: blocks of burned-out buildings, shabby little pawn shops and boarded-up storefronts and roach-infested grocery stores, in the shadows of which prostitutes and crack dealers plied their trades. 

Many churches had given up and moved elsewhere, but that church just continued to hang in there – keeping watch, staying alert, as if every moment mattered!  They organized a locally-owned bank (so the neighborhood could have a bank), they set up latch-key programs for children, they put together neighborhood redevelopment agencies, they set up Bible studies in high-rises, they conducted successful boycotts against price-gouging corporations.  But still, it was Harlem.

A newspaper reporter once interviewed this pastor.  “Sure,” he said as he framed one question, “you’re doing great stuff.  But it’s hard to see what difference any of that is making.  What enables you and your folks to keep going?”  The pastor said, “We’ve read the Bible, and we know how it ends.  We aren’t at the end yet,” he went on, “but we know how it ends, and that’s what makes the difference.”[4]

We, too, know how it ends.  It ends with God!  And so, on this first Sunday of Advent, we worship the God who helps us see the world not only as it is, but as it might be.  We worship the God who helps us wait expectantly for his return by feeding us the bread and the cup of the table, foreshadowing the heavenly banquet which awaits us.  We worship the God who is at both the beginning and the end of time. 

Remember how it ends and you’ll know what’s important now. 

In other words, keep awake, for you know how it ends.  Amen.