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"HOW TO GET READY FOR THE END OF TIME" Mark 13:24-37
The text: "But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven…" From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake---for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake." This sermon was delivered by the Reverend Gene R. Preston on Sunday, November 28 - the first Advent Sunday of the last Advent season of our millennium - at Community Church Hong Kong. The speaker is attempting to examine useful and healthy attitudes for Advent, the season of waiting for Jesus, and in the broader context of the end of our millennium and the dawning of what too many fear and dread. Mark's collection of Jesus' prophetic comments about the end of time make up in Mark, chapter 3 what is known as the "Little Apocalypse." It's called "little" as contrast to the "big" apocalyptic Book of Revelation. In Mark l3, Jesus uses a variety of illustrations to evidence how God would consummate his purpose in history. The variety of these illustrations suggests to me that Jesus was more intuitive than categorical in his understanding of how divine will would disclose itself in our future. Jesus' illustration of the fig tree is a happy example with its images of flowering and maturing fruit and also suggests that the end of days would be imminent. A little later Jesus confides that he doesn't know God's timing so his advice is just to remain alert. Some signs are natural but horrendous like earthquakes and heavenly disasters to signal the end of time. One instance is historical: The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which had in fact occurred by the time Mark put together this collection. And some of Jesus examples seem to me purely spiritual like the defeat and collapse of the devil and evil. II A great many seasons of fig tree flowering and fruiting have passed since Jesus came upon that fig tree on the outskirts of Jerusalem and no dramatic closure of history has taken place. The human race has gone through numerous earthquakes and other natural disasters and we are still very much alive. We have experienced truly apocalyptic historical events like wars, persecutions, and plagues, but they have not brought the end days. Jesus and his generation were highly end days oriented. We, by contrast, have grown indifferent to the original sobriety and passion, which Jesus evidenced regarding the end of times. Not all Christians, even now, are indifferent because I read that the millennium nearly upon us has caused some Christians to build bunkers and stock them with bottled water and food. But most of us, even though we are about to experience that which no Christians have known for a thousand years, are content to just slip into the millennium. Although millennial fervor is unscriptural, the advent of rounded numbers like the year 1000, and 1500 and now 2000, have generated Christian fears and hopes, most of them within cultic movements. Some of these cults like the Heaven's Gate group have proven deadly to their adherents; most of them like the Millerite movement of the last century have simply proven disappointing to those who were confident they knew the divine timetable for the end of history and the Second Coming of Jesus. III And yet we should not pass glibly over the scriptural texts, which show Jesus had a heightened sense of our human destiny coming to conclusion under God's judgement and within his purpose. This is the beginning of the Advent season of the four Sundays before Christmas, and I have often used the theme of the baby Jesus for this beginning of the church year. But our leccionary confronts us with these rock-em and sock-em texts about the Last Judgement and Second Coming, instead of the baby in the manger images. Why? I believe it is to reawaken our eyes and wills to the transcendent power of God, which our submersion in temporal and secular time, has clouded. I think we need this Little Apocalypse word from Mark. The world will not always be business as usual, for God has promised to intervene once more to complete the work of redemption God began in his first intervention in our history with Jesus Christ's earthly life, death and Resurrection. The sun will grow dark and the moon will fail to shed its light. The stars will be shaken from the heavens. In terms of natural physics, we know these very phenomena are likely to happen. But we project the collapse of the universe billions of years ahead, just as we project our own physical demise into the unexamined future, and do both for the same reason that we prefer to deny God's authority over our lives. The apocalyptic vision reminds us that the Lord who flung the heavens into being will tumble them down; but the catalyst for this implosion will not be the natural collapse of all matter but the complete revelation of the Son of God. Christians are not just waiting around for something interesting, or awful, to happen. We are expecting Jesus' return and we are working for His Kingdom in the meanwhile. Like a farmer who plants and tills and waters and runs the farm while also waiting patiently for the crops to grow, we actively work for God's new world while we await Jesus' promised return. Advent hope is about impatient waiting. In this Advent season Christians are called to work well for that for which we must wait. The Kingdom is coming in fulfilment and thus it is not clearly with us; yet the Kingdom has begun and we are Kingdom workers. Harvard University Chaplain Peter Gomes points out that there is no great market demand to trade in Advent impatience. Everyone is interested in impatience. Why not when one can get a return of 30 or 300% in current internet investing. But waiting? No one wants to wait for their return on their investments or their desires or their careers. Most folks want to buy only into a market which seems definite, clear and materially promising to them. How do we explain a Second Coming to folks who know nothing of Jesus' First Coming. How do we alert others that God will act decisively in history when they have no knowledge that God has ever acted in history. IV Well, let me suggest three stances appropriate for those who wait on God to complete what God has begun and those who wait for the Return of the One who in one real sense has never left us. First, let us look inward! During the long wait of human history most members of our race have turned their attention away from the skies, and away from their own spirits, in pursuit of other goals: The pursuit of wealth and things and power and the hedonistic enjoyment of every day. Even the church universal has grown passive about Jesus' coming and engaged in divisive quarrels over questions of leadership and worship styles and the "correct" interpretation of scriptures and many other quite secondary issues which, if the Church really believed Jesus was returning, would be seen for what they are: merely rearranging church chairs. We need to look inward to cultivate that confessional honesty essential for any one who waits upon God. This last week in the lovely northern Chinese city of Suchow, I enjoyed visiting several of the classical Chinese gardens. In the Humble Administrator's Garden, I was struck with this insight about "Five Kinds of Moon Watchers." …The banqueters in the garden, dressed in their finery, enjoy their music, food and drink. They say they are watching the moon, but they do not watch it. They watch each other. …The Courtesans and their customers stroll along, looking for an engagement. They say they are watching the moon, but they do not watch it. They are looking for business. …The Monks and Scholars ostentatiously watch the moon. They say they are watching the moon, but they want to be seen watching it. …The Poor People watch, not the moon, but the people who say they are watching the moon and are not watching it. …The Lone Moon Watcher, perhaps in a small boat, might invite the moon to join in a cup of tea - these truly watch the moon, but no one sees them watching it. We must not be like the hypocritical moon watchers when we are watching for the return of the Son of God. In anticipation of the first millennium Europe saw the launching of a great monastic movement. Monasticism was not so much a call for Christians to withdraw fearfully from the world as it was a regrouping of believers to share in a renewed emphasis upon meditation, prayer, worship and generally letting the spiritual life shape their lifestyles instead of being dominated by he temptations of society. It is unlikely the modern church will succeed in relaunching monasticism but we certainly are reimaging it in our development of Christian groups so essential in the life of every congregation. It is in fellowship groups that we can arrive at the confessional honesty necessary to get ready for Jesus' return. I believe Jesus would want us to cultivate inner peace as the appropriate way to wait for His Coming. And in doing that we discover we are not entirely bereft of Jesus now. We are simply waiting for a fuller or more radical revelation of a Jesus who is always with us and especially when we seek his presence in our inner hearts and share his presence with others. Secondly, let us look up! God is in control of the universe as of history. God has always been active since the first creation. God keeps doing new things and reviving old things. If God is directing his handiwork, and as we are his highest creation, we are called to look up for the challenge of acting upon our stewardship over the earth and the skies and ourselves. There is much work to be done. Is that not why Jesus' own sense of destiny is filled with calls to remain awake, keep alert, work hard. Jesus knew how much remained to be done. Anywhere we look we see fields ripe for tending. Nations are groping toward reconciliation and need help; bombs and bullets target innocent victims with regularity; they need banning and stilling; children are shooting their classmates; our schools need reordering and our children need loving and caring for. Homes are broken by deceit and lives are shattered by selfishness. They need truth. Prejudice blinds us to the goodness and gifts within others; we need liberty in the Holy Spirit. A continent on our doorstep struggles toward greater opportunity and economic equality and yearns for greater light. Let us pray for China and believe and work for its future. And then let us look out! On the horizon of the millennium are new phenomena with which our faithful expectation will come to terms. …There, stretching before us, is cyberspace: The Church will be in new ways an electronic church and must join the new technology for recommunicating our truths to a world which though it knows nothing of the end days feels mightily the emptiness of modern living. … Also stretching before us is a new era of religious truths and insights competing and existing at close quarters. I was disappointed that the Christian leaders of Israel closed down all churches this past week for two days as a protest against the Israeli government's permission for the building of a mosque in Nazareth near the church, which honors the home of Jesus. This parochial protest comes from a Christian community which itself is scandalously divided and competitive. If we are going to work with God in the new millennium, we are going to need to adjust to a bigger God, a God who encompasses cyberspace and multi-faith tolerance and nearly uncountable other new occasions happening now before us. Too often has the Church tried to straitjacket God into a moral absolutism, which ended up producing intolerance, group hatred, political and religious imperialism co-operating hand in hand, and theological wars. Perhaps through sharing cyberspace and by sharing dwindling holy real estate, we will come to see the human race as resident on the same earth with all of us subject to the same standards of decency and respect and mutual care which can only arise from and be respected because God has given us His will and way. Those who wait for the Lord, impatiently, hopefully, faithfully, will receive power to act in His name. As we enter another Advent season, the last one at the dawn of a new millennium, we announce not only that Christ has come into our world of darkness but that he will come again bringing a greater light than humanity has ever known. And so we wait: looking inward, looking upward, looking out, and acting because we are waiting impatiently.
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston10/F Kai Kwong Commercial Building 332-334 Lockhart Road Wanchai, Hong Kong Tel : 2551 6161 Fax: 2892 2466E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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