I love Advent and Christmas. The music and celebration of
this time of year stir my soul deeply. Preaching at Advent and Christmas is a
bit harder. You have heard whatever I might say more than once already. You may
be sitting there waiting just long enough to recognize which familiar Advent
sermon I’m going to preach, before drifting off to your happy place for the
rest of the morning. Still, I have the sermon to give, and I am listening with
you to see what I will say.
The conference resources give us some direction. Here is the
overall statement in The Leader for
Advent through Epiphany: “Advent is a time for
us to remember where Jesus enters God’s story/our story, to remember what it
means to live righteously, and to look to the future as we seek God’s plan for
us as faithful individuals and faithful communities.” The next six Sundays are each
given a theme: 1) Watching and Waiting, 2) Proclaiming, 3) Rejoicing in
God’s Justice, 4) Blessing and Restoration, and the Sunday after Christmas and
Epiphany 5) Love Revealed, and 6) Light.
Today: Watching and Waiting. We have two passages of
Scripture: Jeremiah 33, and Luke 21. We reflect on these Scriptures and ask
what they tell us this morning – without worrying too much about whether it is
old news or not. It is good news. It is gospel! And that is enough.
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
The action in the book of Jeremiah takes place between 640
BC and 580 BC. Jeremiah’s life begins with Judah as an independent nation and
ends with its exile in Babylon. At various points in his life, Jeremiah warned
the Jews of coming catastrophe and called them to repent of their idolatry. The
people’s response was to sink deeper into their rebellion and to try to shut
him up.
Our passage describes a period when Judah was no longer
politically independent. Babylon had deposed King Jehoiachin and established
Zedekiah in his place. Zedekiah wanted to reaffirm Judah’s independence, and
Jeremiah tells him to submit to the Babylonians, as a sign of his repentance
for rebelling against God. Instead, Zedekiah fights against the Babylonians and
puts Jeremiah in prison, confined to the palace and compelled to wait for the
king to act.
Try to imagine Jeremiah’s state of mind: He is imprisoned.
He knows that the Jews’ rebellion will end badly. He calls people to repent,
and they refuse. No wonder he is often called “the weeping prophet”; his life
was filled with tears. Then in the middle of all of this, he says this:
14 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I
will fulfil the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah. 15 “In those days and at
that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do
what is just and right in the land. 16
In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is
the name by which it will be called: The Lord
Our Righteous Saviour.”
He speaks of hope and salvation and righteousness – that is,
justice and peace and all that is good. The repetition of “in those days”
points to the End – not “Now” but “Coming”, not only at the End of all things,
but in moments prefiguring the End itself. You know that I love Zimbabwe. I
grew up there and I lived there for many years. Over the past 20 years, I have
watched Zimbabweans suffer under political and economic corruption. Ten years
ago, they went through a period of economic hyper-inflation almost beyond
description. Shop-keepers would go around the store in the morning and mark the
price on their goods. Then they would go around late morning and repeat the
process with new prices, and again in the afternoon. Prices normally doubled
from one day to the next. At its height, economists estimated the rate of inflation
at something like seven million percent!
Today, Zimbabwe has re-entered a period of economic
uncertainty, with goods disappearing from the shop shelves and fuel for their
vehicles unavailable. I have seen videos of queues for petrol (gasoline), a
line of cars stretching out more than kilometre long. The politicians who run
the country make sure that they are provided for, and the people suffer. I can
imagine Jeremiah in Zimbabwe saying, “A day is coming when all that is good
will rule here in Zimbabwe. You will have enough cooking oil and flour and
enough fuel for your cars, and everyone will have a job. The Lord, our
righteous Saviour, will do it!” People would just laugh at him!
I know people in Steinbach who struggle as much with life as
people back in Zimbabwe do. A marriage gone wrong – a spouse dying – a job lost
– a future that seems bleak and hopeless. We all know people who can’t see any
light ahead. Jeremiah speaks to them and to us: I have promised you life and
all good things, and I will give them to you. You are crying now, but you will
laugh and celebrate then! Again, not always at this moment, but certainly coming.
How can this happen? Turn to the gospel reading with me.
Luke 21: 25-36
In response to a comment on the beauty of Herod’s Temple,
Jesus described its coming destruction (which took place in 70 AD). Herod’s
Temple was 40 or 50 years in the building, on the spot where Solomon’s Temple
had stood. Made of green and white marble stones, one contemporary writer said
that it shone on the top of the hill where it stood, so that the hill looked
like it was covered with dazzling snow. And then the Roman Emperor Titus
destroyed the city of Jerusalem, including the Temple, to punish the Jews for
rebelling against the Roman Empire. The Temple had been completed for less than
a decade when Titus destroyed it. You can see that human endeavours are
fleeting and bound to die. The fate of the Temple is the fate of all human
efforts. We build and celebrate our achievements, and then we die.
Jesus continues, describing the troubles that the disciples
will face, scattered after the Romans’ attack on Jerusalem. Then come the
verses we heard earlier:
25 There
will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in
anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from
terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies
will be shaken. 27 At
that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great
glory. 28 When these
things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.
The real meaning of their distress, then, is that God is
coming to save them! What seems to be for their destruction is actually for
their salvation.
Jesus continues:
29 Look at the fig-tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves,
you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you
know that the kingdom of God is near. 32
Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these
things have happened. 33
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. 34 Be careful, or your
hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of
life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of
the whole earth. 36 Be
always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about
to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.
All of these troubles are signs of God’s coming, Jesus says.
He tells his disciples that they themselves will see God’s reign coming in
power – as they did in the resurrection and in the wonderful “acts of the Holy
Spirit” in the book of Acts. We can respond in two different ways to the
troubles we face, Jesus says: We can give into the cares of life and drink
ourselves to death, or we can “watch and pray” and commit ourselves to God.
Living It Out
As we bring these passages together, we observe that life
can be hard, very hard. We do not face the threat of invasion like the Jews of
Jeremiah’s time and of Jesus’ time. They were under a kind of pressure that we
do not experience in our lives. Nevertheless, we do face dangers that can lead
us to take refuge in carousing and drinking (Lk 21: 34). Something as wonderful
as the birth of a baby can lead to postpartum depression. Then a family that
everyone thinks should be happy struggles to make sense of life. A new job
brings wonderful opportunities, but it also can overwhelm the worker, so that
she struggles to make sense of life. Our lives seem to be a series of one step
forward and two steps back. We wonder if we will ever get anywhere.
Then the words of Jesus sound in our ears: “When these
things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.” Jesus is talking about his return at the end of
time, of course. Remember that Advent celebrates not only the first coming of
Jesus as a baby, but also the second coming of Jesus in power and glory. The
very problems that make us wonder if anything will ever go right turn out to be
the signs that Jesus is about to break into our lives with God’s salvation, not
just at the End of all things, but Now as well. This Advent season is the reminder
of God’s great story of redemption, illuminating our own little stories of
despair and God’s saving action.
How Can This Be?
When Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed a second birth,
Nicodemus asked: “How can these things be?” It’s a good question. How can the
problems we face bring in the righteousness and peace of God? How can these
things be the sign of our salvation, our redemption?
In Jeremiah, the people of Judah had followed the gods of
Canaan. Under Josiah’s rule, when Jeremiah was a young man, they repented and
turned back to God, but it was a shallow repentance, and they soon worshipped
the gods of Canaan again. Jeremiah prophesied judgment on their rebellion. God
is not satisfied with a shallow turning that leaves our hearts untouched. In a
similar way, Jesus calls the disciples to “watch and pray”, to depend
completely and only on him. In short, Jesus wants the disciples also to repent
of any other allegiance in their lives.
The description of conversion as a new birth is important.
When a baby is born, we want to see the baby grow. If Lee and Rachel’s little
girl stopped growing, they would be worried. Very worried. If Toni and Kayla’s
girl also stopped growing, we would be worried along with them that some
terrible epidemic was threatening all our families. Often, our conversion comes
as a crisis in which the seeker “prays through”, as we used to say when I was
young. Sometimes people think that this crisis is the whole of conversion, but
of course it isn’t. Just as birth leads to growth, so the crisis of new birth
leads to a daily giving up, a daily dying to self, a daily choice – as Jesus
put it – to take up your cross and follow him.
To put it another way, conversion is not only a crisis
experience; it is also a life time process of growing into the new life that
God has placed within us. It happens that times of trouble are often the times that
we grow. I think of my own experience. Ten years ago, I went through a time of
darkness, which I did not expect or anticipate. Even now, I am not sure what
triggered an episode that felt a lot like deep depression. [I have described
this experience elsewhere (here and here and here) so I won’t explore more deeply in this sermon what
was going on. I observe simply its basic shape.]
I remember having trouble sleeping at night. I would wake up
and it felt like a heavy weight was on top of me. I had bad dreams – in the one
I remember best I was slogging through a hot and terrible jungle, and I came
out to a cliff and saw a valley below me from which it seemed the heat was
coming. It was like a vision of hell.
The effect of this experience was to drive me deeper into my
relationship with God and to reaffirm my relationship with Lois. With Lois, I
felt safe, no matter what dreams I had. With God, I realised that I wanted
nothing to come between us. In the time after the dreams and troubles, I knew
that I wanted to walk with God more than anything else in my life. As so many
people have discovered, I have found that the crisis of 10 years ago became my
path into a closer walk with God. “When these things begin to take place, stand
up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
An Important Twist
Sometimes Christians think that this closer walk with God is
all that our Christian lives are about. These passages show us something else.
The salvation that the disciples wanted was the righteousness and justice and
peace of God to fill their world. The salvation that Jeremiah anticipated was
more than a closer walk with God; it included making the whole world right.
This truth reminds us of what we are waiting and watching
for. Do you want the peace and justice of God to fill our world? Then the peace
and justice of God must fill your heart and mind. Do you want to see God’s ways
grow in our community and country? Then God’s ways must take possession of your
very soul.
I am reminded of a sermon that Ron Sider preached 40 years
ago at the 200th celebration of Mennonites in Canada, held (I think
it was) in Waterloo, Ontario. His outline was simple: For world peace >>
You need peace between countries >> Peace within your country >>
Peace between communities within the country >> Peace within your
community >> Peace between the churches of your community >> Peace
within your congregation >> Peace between the families of your church
>> Peace within your family >> Peace between family members
>> Peace with God within yourself. We are waiting and watching for God’s
peace and justice in our world – which begins with you, being right with God
and at peace with God. When you are in trouble, lift up your heads! Your
redemption draws near.
Steinbach Mennonite
Church
2 December 2018,
First Sunday in Advent
Texts:
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Luke 21: 25-36
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