Mark 13:24-37
Advent 1
Have you ever noticed, how the beginning of one thing is often the end
of another? The end of a pregnancy, if all goes well, is often the birth of a healthy
newborn baby. And when that child is about 4 or 5, they will leave their parents’
side, and go to school for the first time. The end of their preschool years
marks the beginning of the school years, a launching out into the world. We
tend to realize the end of one thing is another, when we are in the in-between
stage. For instance, next month my oldest son will graduate from college. He
will mark the end of a season at Emporia State. And something new will happen…
hopefully! He will get a job and find something to do, that he enjoys. Life is
a series of endings and new beginnings, over and over.
It may seem strange to begin Advent season by talking about the end of
the world, here in scripture… UNTIL we remember that the end of one thing signals
the beginning of another. You see, the whole world was awaiting the birth of a
king, when Jesus was born. They had been in this in-between time, waiting
centuries… and finally, he came. Only, it didn’t happen in the way they
imagined. Nor in the role they imagined.
He didn’t come to save them from temporary things, but rather, the
eternal. He didn’t burst on the scene, determined to topple the throne. He
didn’t plan a coup or a war. He came to change the course of history in an
eternal, spiritual way. But oh, how they’d been waiting for something so
different.
When we are stuck in between… when one thing has ended and we’re
waiting on the next thing to begin, how hard is it to sit and wait? It can be extremely
difficult, amen? Especially if the thing we’re leaving is something that was
comfortable… and we can’t imagine what this new reality will be.
When we are in between times, we call this a period of liminality.
Liminality. And here, there can be much dis-ease, discomfort. But the in-between
times can be opportunities for us to truly count on God. Because we often find we
have very little control over what’s happening. We may have done so much to try
to hurry things up and get through this uncomfortable time, and in the end it
amounts to not much more than spinning our wheels. That’s when we finally just throw
up our hands and say, “Okay God, I give up. I can’t seem to make this happen on
my own. I need you to intercede on my behalf. I need something from you to give
me hope, that lets me know I won’t always be in this place.” That’s called surrender!
So after pouring our hearts out to God, we wait and watch. And sometimes,
we will see God move. Advent is a season of stopping, watching, and listening… because
something is about to happen!
We remember that all of creation was waiting for a Savior, and he did
finally come. Advent also reminds that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and
Christ WILL come again! Once more, we are here, waiting for a Savior who will
come and make things right. To bring justice that falls down like rain. For
those of us who are concerned about the end of times, who are fearful of what
is to come, we remember that someone is looking forward to this. In Revelation
chapter 6, we read that the Christian martyrs, at this moment, are under the
altar in heaven, crying out for justice. They are waiting on the Lord to avenge
their unjust deaths.
We know that the end of the world, which is also called Day of the
Lord, will be marked by three things, according to Christ. First, there would
be wars. “And they shall hate one another, and provoke each other to fight.”
That’s from a book called Second Baruch, typically not found in our Protestant
Bibles, but found in something called the Apocrypha. The second thing is that there
will be a darkening of the sun and moon. And the third is that the Jews will
gather back to Palestine, from the four corners of the earth.
There are dozens of evangelists who make it their business to interpret
the prophecies of the Bible, pointing to a time that has yet to come. And
still, we know that some of the things Jesus prophesied, or foretold, happened
shortly after he died—wars, earthquakes, famines. The Temple was destroyed…
people were killed. It looked like the end. But it wasn’t.
Then a thousand years later, in 1343, the bubonic plague happened. Twenty-five
million people in Europe died, as a result. But it still wasn’t the end. Surely
there have been many times since then, when people have wondered, is this the
end? Someone has estimated that about 170 million people have been killed for
political reasons. And yet, it has not been the end, as we know it.
We hear words like “the
rapture,” and that conjures up images of being caught up in the clouds to meet
the Lord in the air. This can be found
in 1 Thessalonians 4:16. And
while movies like the recent one starring Nicholas Cage put forth this idea as
a very real possibility, if we study eschatology, or end times theology, we see
that for many centuries the term rapture simply referred to Christ’s final resurrection in general, That this
belief that a group of people would be “left behind” on earth for an extended period
of time was a school of thought that probably only came about in the last
couple of centuries. The idea about a pretribulation rapture didn’t come about until
somewhere between the 1600s and 1800s. So while the Left Behind series of books
or movies may have given people a sense of urgency and helped draw them to the
Lord, convincing them of their need for salvation, this is only one theory
about how the end of the world will happen. We need to be cautious about
accepting such things as fact. Just because a movie or TV show books itself as
Christian doesn’t mean it’s totally accurate. They may be good guesses. But if
Jesus himself didn’t know the hour or the day he was coming, then how can any
of us say we can know anything for certain, except that it will happen? Amen??
What are other signs of Christ’s second return? We know that people
will be tempted to fall for false messiahs. The books of First and Second John
talk about something called the antichrist. Maybe that word sounds familiar,
but what does scripture actually have to say about this?
1 John 2.18 says: Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now MANY antichrists
have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. (It seemed like Jesus
was coming back, very soon after he ascended to the throne in heaven. And there
was not just one antichrist, but many.)
1 John 2.22 says: Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is
the Christ? THIS is the antichrist, the one who
denies the Father and the Son.
1 John 4.3 says: And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is NOT
from God. And THIS is the spirit of the antichrist,
of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world. (The
antichrists are those who would say that Jesus was not divine. He was merely a
human, a good model for living, perhaps.)
2 John 1.7 says: Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who
do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the
deceiver and the antichrist! (You know, in this
specific case, some of our neighbors could be seen as antichrists. Many people
throughout time could be legitimately called “antichrists,” if they didn’t
believe that Jesus was fully God and fully man.)
Jesus says, "This generation will
not pass away until all these things take place." And if we take that
scripture literally, we know that they did. People in Jesus’ time were looking
for him to come back while they were still alive.. And still, we hear Jesus
saying to us, just “Be ready.” Did he say, I want you to stand around and try to
figure this out, and be all anxious about it? No.
But if we conduct our lives in light of his eventual return, then
perhaps we will live a holier life. Be bolder about sharing our testimonies
with others. And keep a lighter touch on the things of this world, knowing that
someday, all things will pass away.
Maybe it will keep some of us from fighting over a $5 Barbie doll on
Black Friday. Maybe we’ll worry less about how our 401k plans are doing. Maybe
we’ll be less affected by all the hostility in the world, if we remembered that
someday Christ will come again and bring justice to the world.
We can be sure that our master has gone to a far country, and has left
us behind to take care of this world. To take care of his church. And his
people. He’s given us the authority to work on his behalf.
So let us be alert and
eager, and ready, for whenever Christ returns, however he comes. Let us not be
afraid of the time. But let us live each day in such a way that he will be satisfied
with whatever we’ve done. Like the fig tree blossoming, something is about to
burst forth. The end of the world, as we know it, will be the beginning of a
new heaven and a new earth. The end of one thing will be the beginning of
another. And it will be glorious, indeed!
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