Sunday, December 2, 2007
Advent 1A
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:32-44
THE LORD IS NEAR
One day many years ago, when my son Isaac and I were playing basketball in the driveway of our home in Franklin Grove, Illinois, all of a sudden two young men walked up in the middle of our game and asked me, “If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?” They did not bother to say “Hi” or to introduce themselves. They obviously were not concerned about interrupting our game, nor did they consider how my grade school son might be affected by someone asking his dad about dying that night. They were two men on a mission, and nothing was going to stop them.
I do not recall exactly how I responded. It was something to the effect that I believe in Jesus and I am not worried about where I am going to be if I die tonight. I may have added that I was the pastor of the church two doors down the street. I am sure my body language made clear that we wanted to get back to playing basketball. I was glad they figured out it was time to move on.
These two young men used a common evangelism technique. The strategy is to use the fear of death to hook people into wanting to hear about Jesus.
Rapture theology also tends to use fear as a primary motivation to get people to believe in God. Lutherans have tended to keep their distance from rapture theology. But clearly there is a significant market for rapture theology in our society. Well over 40,000,000 copies of books in the Left Behind series have been sold. I read the first volume of this series in the late 1990’s in preparation for teaching an adult forum on the book of Revelation at Trinity in McMinnville. This forum was well-attended. The approach of the year 2000 helped heighten interest in the book of Revelation and the end times. I did not say anything explicit about the Left Behind series, until one person asked me about it. The first thing I mentioned was that the author was a good story teller. He painted an interesting picture of what the rapture would be like in our contemporary world. I summarized the basis message of the book as: you better clean up your act now, or you are going to get left behind when the Lord comes again. The primary motivation for changing our lives is the fear of being left behind.
I shared that I did not think the Lord was in the business of leaving people behind. I quoted from Revelation 21:3, where it says that “the home of God is among mortals.” God will come and make a home with human beings in a new heaven and a new earth. We will not be whisked away from the earth to a special rendezvous with God in heaven. I suppose I could try to write a novel entitled “God’s Home Is among Mortals.” But I doubt it would become a best seller.
Proponents of rapture theology appeal to passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 to support their claims: “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air.” They also appeal to Matthew 24:40-41: “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.”
My primary purpose this morning is not to refute rapture theology, but to challenge the strategy of using fear or terror to motivate belief in God. Over and over again, the people of God are exhorted: “Fear not” or “Do not be afraid.” We are not talking here about a healthy fear of the Lord—that is, awe and reverence before the Lord. We are talking about fear or terror that debilitates or paralyzes us.
When the angel Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her she will bear God’s Son, Gabriel says to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary.” On Christmas Eve we will hear once again Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus. The first words the angel of the Lord says to the shepherds are: “Do not be afraid.”
In the Biblical testimony the primary motivation appealed to is God’s gracious activity in our lives. The point of a text such as our gospel reading from Matthew 24 is not to instill fear in us; it is to alert us that the Lord is near, that the Lord is about to act. Jesus does not want his followers to miss out on what God is doing. Jesus is dedicated to attuning people to the nearness of God in their lives.
The classic Advent
hymn is “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,”
which we will sing following the sermon. Emmanuel
means “God with us.” The Advent
proclamation of Emmanuel is not intended to instill
fear in us; it is intended to fill us with joy. That is why we sing in the refrain: “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O
As the year 2000 approached, many predictions were made concerning the time and place of the coming of the Lord. Such predictions were also prevalent as the year 1000 neared. Matthew 24:36 calls such predictions into question: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Even though it is best to ignore these predictions, a sense of urgency concerning the coming of the Lord is appropriate. We may not know the day or the hour, but this much we do know: the Lord is coming, and the Lord is near. If one extreme is to be too sure of the end, the other extreme is to act as if the end will never come.
Paul writes in Romans 13:11-12: “Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” Paul’s point is that we need to wake up to the imminent coming of the Lord.
At our team ministry meeting on Wednesday, we discussed what we would do if we knew we only had three weeks to live. We decided we would probably do what we need to do all the time:
attend to relationships;
seek reconciliation;
express appreciation;
cherish special times;
offer words of blessing.
It is no accident that doing such things prepares us well for the coming of the Lord.
All three Bible readings make clear that the coming of the Lord includes a moment of judgment. We need to wake up to the ways we have helped break down our relationships to God, our fellow human beings, and the creation.
In Matthew 24 Jesus uses the analogy of the fig tree to alert his followers to the nearness of the Lord. Perhaps he would use melting glaciers as an analogy in our time. Such analogies can be useful as long as we do not get too precise in specifying the day or the hour. With the coming of the Lord comes judgment. But judgment is not an end in itself; the purpose of judgment is to lead us toward reconciliation.
Consider Isaiah 2:4: “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Notice that the Lord judges in order to establish peace.
Making peace prepares us for the coming of the Lord. Peace in the Biblical understanding is not simply an absence of conflict or war. It entails reconciliation in all our broken relationships. A full understanding of peace embraces our relationships with God, with other human beings, and with the whole creation. We welcome any wake up call that alerts us to our need for reconciliation and prepares us for the coming of the Lord.
Our worship every Sunday is a wake up call that God is at work in Jesus Christ to reconcile us unto himself. Our St. Andrew Green Team has the special task of waking us up to our broken relationships with the created world and proposing ways we can seek peace with the creation. Perhaps we need a Reconciliation Team to help wake us up to our broken relationships with our fellow human beings and to help us discover practical ways to make peace with them.
Isaiah 2:4 speaks of learning war no more. But as Mother Teresa taught us, peace begins in the home. Unless we wake up to the need to make peace closer to home—in our family, our neighborhood, our congregation, our school, our workplace, and our community—how will we ever be able to make peace among the nations?
Much that happens in our world makes it seem like God is far away, and we do not know the day or the hour when the Lord will come again. Nonetheless, Advent assures us that the Lord will come again, that he is very, very near, and that he is gracious. That much we do know. Surely it is enough to inspire us to be ready for him when he comes.
In Jesus’ name, AMEN.