All Saints Lutheran Church
December 1, 2002
Pastor Raita Neely
Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

Advent is both a time of remembering and a time of preparation. The color blue represents hope - our hope in God's future. We remember what God has done in the past, in Moses, in the prophets, in Jesus, and in our own lives. And we try to prepare ourselves for what God will do in the future. We never know how or when God will break into our lives. The message of the Gospel is: Be ready at all times! Be ready for anything! We live in an in-between world - God is alive and active in our lives right now. But at the same time, what we see is not all that we will get. God has something in mind for the future that we can in no way control or know.

Jesus spoke about it in his very first words at the beginning of his ministry: "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand (N&1:15a). God's rule is close by. It is what we are to pray for every day: "Your kingdom come, your will be done" (Mt6: I Oa). God's rule is both here and yet to come. It is a mystery, but at the same time a reality we live in. It is a promise fulfilled in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and at the same time a promise we wait to be ultimately fulfilled when Jesus comes again. Jesus says to you and me today, "Beware, keep awake; for you do not know when the master will come."(Mk 13:33)

The earliest Christians lived in this same kind of expectancy. They were convinced they stood on the edge of history, and that Jesus would return any day. For the rest of the world,, time lumbered on, day after day, moving toward who knows what, but the early Christian community thought something was about to happen that would change things forever.

But what was it that was about to happen? Their attempts to write about it strained the boundaries of their language just as surely as they strain our, contemporary imagination. They expressed it this way: "The kingdom of God is at hand The stars will fall from heaven The night is far gone They will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory ... This age is passing away.... Come, Lord, Jesus." The church lived on tiptoe, like a young child at a window waiting for a beloved expected guest. The church was ready to shout out "He's here, he's here!" Every word they uttered, every deed they did, every prayer they prayed was shaped by their belief in the imminent return of Jesus.

We all know the energy an eagerly anticipated future can give our actions in the present. The expectant parents who find joy in what would otherwise be rather ordinary tasks: assembling the crib, painting the nursery, practicing the pushing and the breathing. A student about to graduate has a new energy to work hard to pass all the exams, write all the papers, finish all the projects in order to graduate and be ready for that first big job.

Christmas has this kind of power. I'm sure some of you braved the crowds at the malls in the past few days. You stood in long lines at checkouts. You picked out the perfect gifts. Some of you have already trimmed your trees and brought out the nativity sets and lovingly put them on the mantle or under the tree. This time of the year we all have more of a heart for those who are in need and we strive to do something that demonstrates our care for them. Every action has meaning, because of our expectation of being surprised once again that God comes to us with such great love in such an unexpected way, a baby in a manger. And somehow we want to pass on that love.

While sometimes we know the energy of something delightful coming, at other times every one of us has also known the loss, grief and disappointment over a hoped-for future which does not come. The husband and wife who want to have children and can't. The student who fails an important class and has to delay graduation. The job that we are denied. An addiction that even with our best efforts we are unable to overcome. A death that changes our future plans forever. Even Christmas may be a disappointment - you did not get the gift you expected, the day is over too soon - and somehow your expectations were too great and you feel disappointment and a great letdown.

In a far more profound way, the early Christians struggled with their pain over a future which failed to come. They prayed, "Come, Lord Jesus, " but it was Roman soldiers who came. "This world is passing away," they sang, but the world remained, the evil remained, the oppression remained. Questions started to arise "Is there a God shaped future?" or is this just another day to be endured in an endless string of days. They were overwhelmed with the bottomless pit of human need, and a ceaseless line of the sick and the poor. The question for us today is the same. Are we the church just whistling our liturgy and our good news in the dark, collecting pledge cards, and keeping the copy machine humming for no good reason? Do we really have some good news that the world and every one of us needs to hear over and over again. What is the future we are hoping for?

The writer of Mark knew how hard it can be not to give up hope for God's future. That is why when he wrote his gospel not only did he write "take heed and watch" he gave us two other words of Jesus that give us comfort and keep us going.

The first is simply this: "Of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." This means that God's future will not arrive when we want it, plan it, or even think we need it - Like Tevje in the "Fiddler on the Roof' who wished for the Messiah to come when his own life and the life of his community was in chaos. All we can say is: Jesus will come in God's good time. The coming kingdom is a promise, it cannot be turned into a set of predictions, which we can then manipulate. Many have tried, from the first century on. In our day Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and I'm sure there will be others will give their perspective on the things to come. But the only thing we can say about it truthfully is that the coming kingdom is a promise from God, and it is good news, news that cannot be domesticated into a political agenda or reduced to the doctrine of progress. God does not provide happy endings for the futures we are engineering. God provides a future beyond our knowledge and control, and not even the angels in heaven know the hour of its coming.

We want to know. We have a hard time waiting. We want to have a peek into the future, but God does not work that way. Instead, Jesus gives us a second word - a parable that gives us hope. A man went on a trip and left his servants to manage the house while he was gone. That, of course, is a description of the situation of the church and each believer,, left in charge of the house while the Master is absent. What Jesus said about the servants is true also of the church: we need to constantly be on the lookout. The house must never be in disarray, because, as Jesus stated it,, "You do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning-lest he come suddenly and find you asleep."

Could it be Jesus is simply saying in a different way, "Of that day or hour no one knows" 9 1 think the author of Mark hears something different, something more, in this word. In the very next verses in Mark -comes the passion story. Mark says: The master could come "in the evening," and, in the very next chapter he tells us that "when it was evening" Jesus ate his last meal with the disciples, and said to them, "One of you will betray me."

Or the master could come "at midnight," and Mark tells us that, later that night, the disciples went with Jesus to Gethsemane. While Jesus prayed his cry of anguish, the disciples, no doubt weary of waiting, slept. "Could you not watch one hour?" he said to them. Perhaps the master will come "at cockcrow," and Peter turned to the accusing maid with a curse and a denial, "I do not know this man." The cock crowed. Maybe the coming of the master will be "in the morning," and the gospel says: "as soon as it was morning," Jesus was bound and led away to his trial and to his death.

What the author of Mark has heard in Jesus' story, and has woven into the tapestry of his gospel, is that every moment of the passing day is already alive with the promise of God's future. As the Church strains its sight toward the horizon of the coming kingdom, it also hears the ticking of the clock on the wall, and knows that each passing minute is filled with the potential for faith or denial, decision or tragedy, hope or despair. Those who trust in the promise of God's coming kingdom are also able to see advance signs of its coming all around them. Those who believe that, in God's good time, something is about to happen, also know that, even now, something is happening. The passing minutes of every day are, like iron filings drawn and aligned toward an unseen magnet, already shaped by God's future and filled with its force.

Every time we Christians recite the old phrase from the Apostle's Creed, "He will come to judge the quick and the dead" we disclose our hope that frail human justice, the kind one can get with a good lawyer and a fat wallet, is not the only justice life holds. Come, Lord, Jesus. Every time you contribute clothing, food, or furniture to Families in Need, every time you bring food for ICA, every time you help someone needy it's not because we are naive enough to think that what we give will take care of all the world's needs, but because we live in the light of God's tomorrow, when all will be clothed in God's light and all will be welcome to God's feast.

Every time you speak words of forgiveness in circumstances of bitterness, every time you speak words of love in situations of hatred, every time you have the courage to proclaim words of peace in a violent situation, you are speaking in the future present tense. This is language all of us will learn to speak in God's tomorrow. This morning we sing, "Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus, Born to Set Thy People Free," we are praying for, expecting, that Jesus will come again in glory. Come Lord Jesus Come!