Sermon on Luke 21:25-36 (Advent 1C)

Pick up your head and look around!

Welcome to the New Year! Well a new church year at least. Here’s your nerdy church fact for the day: We are now in the season of Advent which marks the beginning of the new lectionary year for the church. We’ll now be focusing in the gospel of Luke primarily for the whole next year. There you go! You learned something today! Though don’t tune out the rest of this because you might learn something else; sermons are surprising like that. Advent is a beautiful season of waiting and preparation for Christmas. It’s like what Lent is for Easter. We prepare ourselves for the birth of the Christ child by hearing again the promises of God fulfilled in a coming Messiah. It is also a time where we reflect on the second coming of Christ.

Hence, the apocalyptic “End of the world” text from Luke this morning. This text talks about the second coming and what a crazy thing it will be. Signs in the sun, moon and stars. Roaring seas. People fainting all over the place. Not to mention heaven and earth will get a good shaking. These texts are written in a style that seems excessively descriptive and far out, well, because they are. They are meant to startle, to capture the imagination, to create mystery and more importantly to bring hope. If you get stuck on the first couple of verses you might miss the hope and good news in the text.

As I was reflecting on this passage and the season of Advent a conversation Lauren and I had while driving home from Bell Choir practice on Sunday night really stuck with me. On the drive home you could tell it was the weekend after Thanksgiving! Many of the houses on our drive down Lamar are already decked out in all their Christmas glory. I was commenting to Lauren how with the weather lately and Thanksgiving being early this year it just didn’t feel like Christmas yet. She replied, jokingly, “Well, sometimes you just gotta force it!” We laughed about it for a bit and then I mentioned a comment like that will get her written into a sermon. Low and behold look what happened! She may have said that as a joke, but I think her statement really has more to it.

Did anyone else notice in stores that there were some Santa Clauses’ and snowmen near the witches and ghosts of Halloween this year? I bet that turkeys would have rejoiced if they walked through a Target or Wal-mart around Thanksgiving because they would have thought we moved right on to Christmas. We have this uncanny knack as humans for forcing things, don’t we? Even if it doesn’t feel like it is time for Christmas yet it doesn’t matter, we can make it happen. It’s like the outdated idea in youth ministry: If you’re tired, if you’re anything less than happy, then you just fake it until you make it. Terrible idea, by the way. It never works, like forcing Christmas to come any faster than it’s going to come.

We live in a world where many of us can have anything almost instantaneously. Want to know what your friends are doing? Hop on Facebook. Want to talk to someone? Text them. Need something? Go to the store and buy it. Meals? As close as your car window or microwave. Sometimes even my microwave popcorn isn’t fast enough. If you want it chances are good you can get it without question. Until we get to the promises of God. That is one thing that we cannot force to come any earlier or faster than what it will. This causes a problem though because guess what we are going to do? Yep, we’re gonna try and force it.

We try to play God and take all things on ourselves. Trying so hard to make the perfect Christmas. Trying to fix other’s problems. Trying to say who is wrong and who is right, deciding on who is in and who is out. Trying to control other people and their actions. When you add this onto the daily pressures of caring for family and friends, stuff breaking down, serving others in the work you do, accidents that happen, and general craziness it gets to be too much! We get weighed down with all these different things because we keep trying to force stuff and it continues to not work out well for us.

This need to force stuff doesn’t keep God’s promises from coming to us daily. God’s promises come to us daily! We get glimpses of God’s kingdom all around us, though we may not always see them.  Jesus tells us today “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” I was a clumsy kid growing up. It didn’t take much for me to trip over my own feet. I got really good at “falling with style”. When we would go for hikes during Boy Scout campouts we all got great entertainment for assigning point values like Olympic ice skating for my falls. To compensate for this I have for a long time now looked down at the ground as my sort of “default setting.” I noticed this not too long ago and so I have begun the process of trying to lift my head up more. It’s amazing the things you might otherwise miss when you don’t pick your head up and look around! For instance, this past Friday Lauren’s brother David’s rehearsal dinner was held in this beautiful theater in Seguin. Most people didn’t notice that the ceiling was dotted with stars to make it look like the night sky. I actually got to point it out to people who might have missed it otherwise! If I hadn’t taken a moment to look up I might have missed it!

Jesus tells us all a parable and has some words to pull us out of our need to force things this morning “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Now we don’t tend fig trees anymore, unless one of you has a hobby we don’t know about, but what we can do is the work of ministry. We also don’t know what “all things” means or what it will look like but we can hold our head up and see our redemption that draws near day by day. We can lift up our heads and see the kingdom of God that is ever present. Like when I saw the stars in the theater, when we see reminders of God’s love, grace and mercy for us we want to continue to look up and point out those to others. When you see the lost welcomed, the lonely find a place, the broken find peace you know the kingdom of God is near. Or let me say it another way. When you see kids playing turkey bingo, when you see meals delivered to those who can’t leave their house, when you see those who are struggling receive a word of peace you know the Kingdom of God is near. It’s not something you have to force, but rather something you just keep your head up and look for. Hopefully, it will also inspire you to respond to it when you do see it. As we enter this time of waiting expectantly may you pick up your head and look around, may you remember that when you see hope, grace and love the Kingdom is near and may you respond joyfully knowing that the promises of God through Jesus Christ will never pass away. Amen