Sermon: The Days Are Surely Coming

Luke 21:25-36 (Jeremiah 33:14-16)

The Days Are Surely Coming

James Sledge                                                               December 2, 2012

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.  And indeed they are.  The day will come when school and college are over and you have to find a job.  The day will come when children grow up and move away.  The day will come when someone you trusted abandons you. The day will come when you retire or the job ends and the focus of much of your life disappears.  The day will come when the doctor calls with a terrible diagnosis, and if you avoid that day, the day will still come when your body simply fails you.

And very often, when those days come, people find themselves in crisis.  “Why didn’t I work harder in school and spend a little less time partying?”  “Why didn’t I spend more time with my children when they were young?”  “How do I fix this relationship I’ve neglected all those years?”  “What do I do now without a career?”  “Why didn’t I take better care of myself? “What are life and hope about now that I have cancer?”

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.  And when they do, we often have to reassess our lives and take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re headed.  When the days that come are really big things or really scary things, we sometimes discover that our lives are way out of kilter.  We’ve been focused on things that don’t matter so much, and we neglected the things that really do.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord.  We know those days come, but we are not all that attentive to the passage of time. We are too busy being busy, and we’re too much in a hurry.  People seem to have a perverse pride about that here in the DC area, but the situation is much the same everywhere. You can hear the “We’re too busy” refrain in every corner of this country, and very often, it takes the arrival of one of those days that are coming to free us from it.

Today we enter the season of Advent, a time of preparation, expectation, and waiting for a day that is surely coming.  And the first Sunday of Advent is always a stark reminder that this day, much like those other days that come and throw our lives into crisis, will reveal the ways that our lives have gotten out of kilter, how they’ve become overly focused on what doesn’t matter and neglectful of what does. 

Another Advent begins, reminding us that God will not simply abandon the world, that the conflict in the Middle East will not simply go on forever, that hate will not ultimately triumph over love, that the poor will be lifted up, the captives released, and the oppressed set free.  It all sounds so wonderful, but it also seems so far away and so hard to pay much attention to. 

Another Advent begins, and we’ll busy ourselves with shopping and decorating and cooking and wrapping and preparing special music and special services.  And then it will end in a frenzy of travel and family gatherings and warm feelings and nostalgia, and then it will get put away, packed up in the basement or drug to the curb with the dried out remains of the Christmas tree.

But sometimes, when one of those days that are surely coming arrives, one of those moments of crisis, a different sort of Advent happens.  It can happen any time of year.  And in those moments, people sometimes shift their priorities.  Their focus changes.

In our gospel today, Jesus speaks of a day when the very foundations of the world are shaken, when people will faint as the things they counted on crash down around them.  It is a terrifying scene, but a scene with some commonality with those crisis days when our worlds fall apart and the things we counted on fail us.

But Jesus suggests a rather remarkable response to our world falling apart. “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  It is a moment of crisis because it will reveal all those ways that our lives and our world are out of kilter and mis-oriented, but it is about redemption, healing, setting things right.

And Jesus invites us into this redeemed, set-right world ahead of time. We can be ready now.  Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.  I don’t know that drunkenness is my big problem, and I had to look up “dissipation.”  But “the worries of this life” I know all about.  

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One of the wonders of worship is that it can transport us briefly out of this life.  When worship works, we find ourselves elsewhere, and spiritually we participate in God’s coming realm, that day that is surely coming.  Of course worship often doesn’t work.  We get caught up in mechanics, in issues of style, in what we like or dislike.  We drag the world into worship with us, checking our watches because we have somewhere we need to go later, checking messages on our iPhone because we’re expecting something important, or simply out of habit.  But now and then, the world fades away. We sense a Presence, and we become fully present to God. 

John Calvin, our tradition’s founder, said that in the Lord’s Supper we are spiritually transported into the presence of the risen Christ, and there we are truly nourished and strengthened for a life focused on what really matters, a life of following Jesus.  Well, maybe… sometimes.  But other times, the world is simply too much in the way.

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Today we enter Advent.  Advent is about hoping and expecting and preparing.  But even more, it is about waiting, and we are terrible at waiting.  Waiting requires stopping. Waiting feels like losing control.  We aren’t in charge when we are waiting. When we are waiting the outcome isn’t up to us, and we want to feel capable and competent and productive.  But Advent insists that to receive something truly new and healing, we must learn to wait and hope and trust.

Most of us know someone whose life was interrupted by one of those days that surely come and who was transformed by the experience of losing control and having all the important things suddenly become unimportant.  I’ve known some who found redemption, peace, a new sense of being alive, even when there was no cure, no physical healing to be had.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord…  “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

The table is ready.  God’s love is offered for you. God’s grace is poured out for you.  And the risen Christ, who loves you so much that he would do anything for you, is our gracious host.

Thanks be to God!