A sermon preached by Terry Fach at Trinity Church, First Sunday of Advent 2009

Scriptures:  Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; I Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

“Life was filled with guns and war, and everyone got trampled on the floor...Children died, the nights grew cold, a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold...I wish we’d all been ready.” 

If you recognize the lyrics from that song, chances are you were connected in some way to an evangelical Christian of some kind in the 1970’s! And if you were, then you know that for much of the last half of the 20th century some Christians were obsessed—not too strong a word, sadly—with the so-called “second coming of Jesus.” In the version that Larry Norman’s song describes, Jesus’ coming a second time takes place as a “rapture.” It paints a bleak picture of apocalyptic end-times. It evokes the nightmarish images of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. It has also inspired a million nightmares of being “left behind” when Jesus comes and takes all the “true Christians” back to heaven and away from this godless and forsaken world.

But, alas, this version of Jesus’ reappearance is not based on a careful reading of the Bible. We have to be careful about our songs. Obviously they can be tremendously misleading. Or, like the second verse of the song we sang last week, “Sing to the King,” tremendously encouraging if we understand what we’re singing about. 

This is the first Sunday of the season of Advent. The meaning of the word “advent” is “coming” or “appearing.” It may seem strange but the traditional emphasis on the first Sunday of Advent is not on preparing for the coming of Jesus at Christmas, but rather on a future coming or appearing at a future time in history. In our post-Christian world the idea that Jesus is going to appear again in our time and space comes as a big surprise to many. For others who are familiar with some Christian thinking, it is a teaching that often leaves us puzzled, and perhaps a bit embarrassed. Surely this stretches the rational credibility of the otherwise reasonable teachings of the Jewish rabbi who hailed from Nazareth. 

But there it is. It is clearly one of the historic and central teachings of the Christian religion. Millions of believers repeat the words “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” in their weekly sharing of the eucharist. The ancient statements of Christian belief—the historic Creeds—state clearly: “Jesus will come in glory to judge the living and the dead.” So, if there is going to be a second coming of Jesus, what are we to make of it, and why now, in the season leading up to Christmas? 

We don’t have time to go into the great detail on the Christian belief that Jesus is coming again. But there are some guidelines that can help us consider this teaching with appropriate humility and openness. First, it would be wise to avoid two extremes that often polarize discussions—I call them the “only news is bad news” and the “no news is good news” scenarios. The first extreme believes that the end is near and Jesus’ second coming will signal an apocalyptic and fiery destruction of the world; the second interprets Jesus’ future appearing as just a metaphor for hope, or reduces his “presence” to something here and now (in the bread and wine of the eucharist for example), something less supernatural-sounding and judgemental. Both these extremes need to be avoided. Here are a few more guidelines for thinking clearly and biblically about those words “Christ will come again.” 

1. N.T. Wright says: “The scriptures use a variety of language and imagery to express the truth that Jesus and his people will one day be personally present to each other as full and renewed human beings.” The fact is that everything the scriptures say about this topic must be looked at as a whole. The phrase “the second coming” is very rare in the New Testament, and during his earthly ministry Jesus said nothing about his return.1 

2. The early church, and the apostle Paul in particular, did have much to say about the reappearance of Jesus. However, many scholars agree that Paul’s statements are not to be taken as a literal description of how he thinks Jesus’ reappearance will actually happen. 

3. Our language of “coming” suggests for some that Jesus will descend like a spaceman from the sky. But this was not the understanding of space shared by first century Jews. It might be more helpful to talk of Jesus “appearing” in the sense that he may become known right where he already is. For example, heaven is not “up there” but is simply God’s space, God’s world. It is a “different world from ours (earth) but intersects with it in countless ways, not least in the inner lives of Christians themselves. One day the two worlds will be integrated completely and be fully visible to one another…” (135) 

4. Some readings of scripture can easily lead us astray. Our gospel reading today from Luke gives the impression that the author believed there would be an imminent end or “second coming.” But that is not likely the case. For Luke, the scene he describes had already been fulfilled (he is writing later than 70 CE). The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE is the catastrophic scene he is describing—it took place after Jesus’ death (around 33 CE) but was already history for Luke. The language Luke puts in Jesus’ mouth is the language of finally being rightfully acknowledged as king, not some cosmic event of an endtimes coming. This is about vindication and things being put right again. 

This last point about the context of longing for things to be put right is important. Yesterday my daughter Michaela and I ventured downtown to the Bay for a quick shopping trip. I had to exchange something I had bought last week, but I had forgotten it was Grey Cup parade day. The sidewalks were full of people wearing green jerseys and green hats...even their faces were painted green. They were all over the place...on the men’s wear floor of the Bay, they had swarmed the winter hat and gloves department...you couldn’t turn around without bumping into someone wearing a watermelon on their head and a stupid grin on their face. It was annoying...it was disgusting...it was wrong! This is our city and our team is the Stampeders. Don’t they realize that?  

There is a similar underlying frustration in the words of Jeremiah and Luke’s Jesus. The people of Israel in Jeremiah’s day were victims of an imperial invasion by Babylon in the 6th century. There is a call to the people to return to a way of life rooted in God so that Israel will be restored. In Jesus’ time Israel was overrun by outsiders in their own country! There was a longing for God’s justice and peace to restore Israel once again. But when? 

In these weeks of Advent there are some questions we can ask that connect with the hope we have in the present reality of God’s kingdom come and the future appearance of Jesus. And I think these are necessarily hard questions, because, like the experience of Israel, they have to do with unfulfilled expectation and disappointment. Our honest answers will be important here. 

The first question concerns our world. Is it all that we hoped it could be? Is it anywhere close to Jeremiah’s vision of a restoration and healing? Is ours a world of security and safety for all? Is there prosperity and joy and forgiveness for all people? Is there fairness and justice for all? Do all people enjoy basic access to clean water, food, and healthcare? As we put it last week: does our world currently look like the world we’d expect to see if instead of Harper and Obama, Medvedev and Sarkozy, Amadinejad and Kim Jong-Il, Jesus was the Ruler of the Kings of the Earth? 

The early signs are that we’re not there yet. A report released on October 12, 2009 in conjunction with World Food Day says that, for the first time ever, the number of undernourished people in the world has passed one billion people. This is 100 million more hungry people than one year ago! 

This week I listened to a couple of news stories about the bankrupt Canadian hi-tech company Nortel Networks. Even though it was perfectly legal, they denied long-time employees severance and pension benefits while at the same time awarding executives bonuses amounting to five times their already generous salaries. It was hard to listen to the interview of a single mother explain her predicament after 20 years of service to the company but now with young children to clothe and feed; or to the woman who needed the pension’s health benefits to buy her life-saving medications. 

The end-time “is not about some mass immigration from a doomed world to a blessed heaven. Rather it is about the end of this era of war and violence, injustice and oppression...It is about a world of justice and peace.” And it is about a much longed-for judgement against the oppressive kingdoms of this world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible God’s coming judgement is a good thing. It is good news, something to be celebrated. There is rejoicing and cheering at the thought of vindication soon at hand for the poor and the marginalized. In a world of systematic inequity and unfairness, of bullying and violence, of torture and preventable starvation, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the weak and hungry are given their due is the best news there can be. It is good news because this judge is no wrathful, vengeful tyrant, but rather the Man of Sorrows, who was acquainted with disappointment and grief, who loved the strugglers and died for them on a cross. And so that is why we join with Christians in every century so far in crying “Our Lord, Come!” 

And then there is our own disappointment and frustration. I think that on a more personal scale our hope and prayers during the Advent season can be opportunities for true repentance. Repentance is one of themes of Advent. By repentance I mean not just confession and feeling badly for our sins. I mean by repentance a change in the way we see. A way of seeing that is hopeful and draws us towards a better future and a life of contentment and peace. 

Our question here is: has my life been all that it ought to have been? Were my hopes that it would be turning out differently than it has? Maybe we expected more. We hoped for a lot better than we’ve gotten. We thought we would be in a better position by now. We cry: “How long O Lord? How long until things get put right? I’m trying my best...I’m trying to be faithful here, but why am I so disappointed? When will my hopes and expectations be fulfilled?” 

Do you have that kind of disappointment and frustration about life? I know that I do. There are some things that are tremendously disappointing to me, some expectations that have been unfulfilled. Sometimes it is really painful to sit with those dashed hopes and dreams. It is at just this stage of a sermon that I often come to the “preacher’s temptation.” That’s when you want to bring all the doubt and pain of unrealized hopes to some kind of happy resolution in three tidy, concluding points (and try to form an acrostic saying “Yes, you can!”). 

But I am not going to do that today. Doing that might prevent us from being in touch with the kind of waiting and expectation that only Jesus can heal. It wouldn’t be true to the experiences of unfulfilled dreams and unrealized hopes in the Bible. It wouldn’t really help us connect our own hopes and dreams for our world and for ourselves with the meaning and spiritual potential of the Advent season. Today, let me invite you to offer those disappointments and unfulfilled expectations to Jesus in prayer. Light a candle here at the front after you’ve received the bread and cup. Let this simple physical action be our sign that we will live into the hope and expectation of the one who came and is coming. Let it be the punctuation of your prayer: Come, Lord Jesus. Let it begin in this season a time to be renewed and changed. 

In closing, these lines from Kate Light’s poem speak of Advent’s promise of waiting, discovery, and the mystery of Christ’s coming. 

There comes the strangest moment in your life, 

When everything you thought before breaks free— 

What you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite 

Looks upside down from how it used to be... 

How many people thought you’d never change? 

But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange. 

(“There Comes the Strangest Moment”) 

1 N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope (p.125)