Divine Intrusion

Rev. Charles Lewis Psalm 24:7-10

December 3, 2006 Luke 21:20-34

Snohomish P.C. Mt. 24:42-44

Introduction

Every first Sunday of Advent, the Scripture reading that begins our journey toward Christmas comes from what is called “the little apocalypse.” You and I are still eating left-over Thanksgiving Turkey when Matthew, Mark, and Luke all show up at the dinner table with a dish that’s been a tough thing for most Christians to figure out how to swallow, talk of the end times. How do we chew on and try to digest this “end of the world” stuff when we’re still stuffed full of Thanksgiving trimmings? But every year, this passage is part of our lectionary menu, and every year I keep hoping we can make more sense of it and find a way to savor its message. Despite the eerie images of the sun being darkened and stars falling and great floods, of great armies marching and foreboding and fear on the earth – like a remake of the Egyptian plagues, without the frogs – this passage has been for years part of the church’s staple diet in the season of Advent.

What I hope feeds us today is the idea that Christ’s coming is not a doomsday prophecy, but a promise of what is continually happening as God’s kingdom breaks into our troubled world, turning it around and restoring it to its original goodness. (Read Luke 21:20-34 and Matthew 24:42-44).

SERMON

Many of you know by now that I spent a year in prison. Well, I wasn’t exactly “in” prison, but I visited inmates twice a week during my required field work at Princeton Seminary. I was prompted to do this field experience thinking I’d been sheltered long enough and what better way for a farm kid from the country to get exposure to folks from a far different walk of life than to throw myself into a maximum security prison. So for a couple days a week I got a taste of life for people who’d grown up on “the other side of the tracks,” assigned to one of the wings that housed 200 inmates at the State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey, (the same prison, oddly enough that my great grandfather on my mother’s side served as warden).

If you think the waiting we do in shopping lines before Christmas is long, or the wait on I-5 during rush hour takes forever (or even the seven hours it took the McDaniel’s to drive last Monday night on icy roads from Seattle to home), try to imagine what the waiting is like for an inmate serving a 20 or 30 year sentence or life (as was the case with most of those incarcerated at Trenton State). That’s a lot of time to sit and wait and watch for the days and weeks and months and years to trickle by.

“I’ve been in this 6’x8’ cell for almost twenty years,” one of the inmates said to me. “Time takes on a whole new meaning when you’ve got nothing on your hands but time.” The inmate went on to tell me how he’d watched and waited for some kind of break for nearly two decades to prove his innocence. He was black and had been charged and convicted with murdering several white people in a bar in the racially tense 1960’s. “Someday,” he said convincingly, “I’ll be reunited with my family again because I didn’t do it. “It’s only a matter of time before I’ll be able to prove my innocence and be set free. It’s only a matter of time.”

Well, a number of inmates assert their innocence, and sometimes DNA or other evidence not previously allowed is admitted in court and people who are innocent of the crime they’re convicted of are set free. A seminary classmate who worked at Trenton State now has a full time ministry working to free the wrongly incarcerated. Was this guy innocent? I didn’t know. But what I do know is that in the year I graduated from seminary, Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, a world renowned golden glove boxer was exonerated and released from his incarceration. At the time of my visits, three Canadians had been working on his case to prove his innocence, convinced that racial prejudice and corruption had led to his conviction. And they were successful, as the Hollywood movie about Carter’s life tells the more complete story. After 20 years of waiting and maintaining his innocence, he walked out of prison a free man.

Twenty years is a long time to wait and watch and hope for your redemption, a long time to look for justice to prevail and everything finally to be set right. “It’s only a matter of time,” he’d said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

The belief that justice would one day prevail and everything finally be set right was the foundational hope of the early church. It was only a matter of time, they believed, before Jesus would come again, bringing to completion the ministry he’d begun years ago. It was only a matter of time that, as Luke would put it, good news would come to all the poor, release to all those held captive, sight given to all who are blind, freedom to all oppressed, setting right all that had gone wrong, and proclaiming the Day of the Lord.

The early Christians were convinced they stood on the precipice of the culmination of history, that in only a matter of a short time the Day of the Lord would come upon them.

The problem was, it didn’t, at least not as they expected. Instead by 70 AD Jerusalem had been destroyed, the temple lay in ruins, the promised land still lay under the power of the Empire and the chosen people must have thought that what they’d been chosen for was mostly to suffer. All this meant that the gospel writers like Matthew had some explaining to do. “Was this delay in Christ’s return part of the master plan or was Jesus just missing in action? Was he really coming back to pull them from the edge of the abyss or were they just going to hang there until their fingers gave out and they fell onto the mounting pile of bodies at the bottom?”¹

Matthew’s twenty-fourth chapter is his answer to them: “About that day and hour no one knows, not even the Son, but only the Father.” That answer has never kept people from guessing, of course.

Apocalyptic prophets trying to profit have turned this idea of Christ’s second coming into a billion dollar a year industry, selling tens of millions of books and appealing to sensationalist appetites ready to gobble up end of the world literature like hot selling tabloids at the supermarket. Never mind that these self-proclaimed prophecy buffs with their computer charts and predictions have been making wrong guesses for hundreds of years, people are still buying.

If Jesus himself didn’t assume to know, that’s good enough for me. He just told his followers to wait, watch, keep vigilant. Vigilant disciples don’t waste time speculating when the Lord will walk through the door; they just keep plugging away doing the Lord’s business – working for justice, praying for peace, preaching the gospel and way of Christ – no matter the month, no matter the time of day.

Our job then is to watch, not to “watch out,” as if all hell were going to break lose in some final battle of Armageddon when the end came. No, he simply says “watch,” “pay attention,” “stay alert.” It’s not about looking downcast with dour faces, like those famous two end-of-the-world characters, doom and doomer. It’s all about looking up in hope at sings of Christ’s kingdom breaking in here and there. When signs of discouragement appear, says Jesus, - like nations in distress, people overcome with fear, sun and moon darkened and stars falling from the sky, and there’s dark foreboding all around - Don’t freeze up! Stand up! Lift up your heads! Raise your eyes to see that, all the bad news not withstanding, your redemption is nevertheless drawing near.” God is coming in Christ in great power and glory, making all things new, setting everything right. This is the good news. This is hopeful news. This is the promise our fingers still cling to day in and day out.

Ursula Gallagher told Ann and I an inspiring story related to the meaning of today’s passage and gave me permission to share it this morning. Ursula told us that when the allied troops crossed into Germany toward the end of WWII, she was a six year old girl who’d escaped the fire bombings at Dresden. And while having made her way to Bavaria several months later, she found herself in a town that was being overtaken by American troops. Now as a German and fearful of what the unknown American soldiers might do, she was rushed with others to a cellar where she hid, leery of what may happen to them if discovered. Would they be shot as Germans or ill treated? They didn’t know, so they hid. When an American soldier lifted up the lid to their cellar and peered inside to see them huddled together, he didn’t grab his gun or shout harsh words at them. Instead, the soldier leaned into the cellar and asked, “Where’s the beer?” The soldier and others later handed out tangerines and chocolate bars to the townspeople.

Some people make Christ’s return into an end-of-the-world doomsday to fear. But according to Scripture, it’s like an allied advancement into enemy territory that liberates those who have suffered life’s pains long enough and are now set free. Unless you’re part of the evil being overthrown, it’s not a cause for fear and trembling, but a cause for grabbing a beer (or better yet some sparkling cider), breaking open boxes of tangerines and chocolate bars and rejoicing.

“Watch!” says Jesus. Keep alert.” Jesus says this not because his return is going to be an apocalyptic fireworks display, but because it is the coming of the kingdom of God, the coming of good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, setting right all that has gone wrong, the Day of the Lord.

Jesus’ words are an antidote to lethargy, to cynicism, and even to our scorn of prophecy buffs. It is his trumpet blast to introduce his second Advent, a call to rouse us up from our pews, to stand us up, and send us out the church doors or office door or the front door of home in order to and work for and live for the God who began a good work at creation and is bringing it to a completion in Christ. They are words meant to lift our heads and raise our hopes, to believe that in the words during the annunciation to Mary, “with God anything is possible,” that indeed one day his kingdom will come and his will be not just in heaven but on earth.

The one who comes to do this will come not in any predictable fashion, Matthew reminds us, but “like a thief in the night.” He won’t be using a day timer. What thief, after all, calls you up or sends you a text message to see when might be a good time to break into your house. “Does Monday at 2 AM sound good to you?” “Then how about Friday at 4 AM?² No, this stealth intruder in our lives and in our world comes in a way we won’t even know he’s there until he’s upon us. Thankfully this thief is not to be feared as some vengeful judge, nor as someone who’s after our jewelry or big screen TV or brand new ipod. What he wants is you and me. Not the you and me that has its defenses up during the daytime, but you and me when our guard is down, when he can disarm our security system and slip past the outer defenses we’ve erected to keep him out.

Like any other thief, this thief is after our valuables, but not our silver or our star bucks coffee but what’s immeasurably more valuable than any thing. He’s after our heart. And this thief doesn’t want to take it, he wants to give it, to fill it as full as it was intended to be filled with his grace and peace.

He could, of course, call ahead of time and say, “the kingdom is coming next Sunday and everything is going to be made right with the world. But he doesn’t. He waits for the right moment, and that could be at any moment.

Keep awake, then, Jesus says. Stay alert, not to keep the intruder out but to let him in, this One who comes not to take our lives but to give life in abundance, and in giving to set us free.

Watch! Watch!

Prayer: "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," we sing to you, O Lord. Come into our longing hearts this Advent as we pray for and look for and live for the Day of the Lord, your day, a day when you come with love and power and justice and mercy, a day when we stand up and raise up our heads and lift up our eyes and become all you have created us to be. So, come Emmanuel into our longing hearts this Advent as we prepare ourselves for your coming even now. Come Lord Jesus, we pray! Come! Amen.