On this first Sunday in Advent, we are confronted with a profoundly disturbing text:  “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars; and on the earth distress among the nations.” 

Frankly, I’d rather preach about baby Jesus, Christmas Jesus.  Wise men and shepherds are much easier to preach about than people fainting from “fear and foreboding.”  I’d rather sing Christmas carols than think about “what is coming upon the world” when “the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” 

You see, I mostly believe in progress and progress doesn’t fit The Apocalypse.  Progress is incremental, methodical.   The Apocalypse is all-at-once. It is sudden.  Progress is managed. The Apocalypse is unmanaged.  Progress builds institutions.  The Apocalypse destroys them.  Progress happens during the first six days of creation. The Apocalypse happens on the seventh day. Progress is work. The Apocalypse is rest. 

Progress lives by the clock. It can be counted, measured, weighed. The Apocalypse refuses measurement. In fact, it is the final measure.  The Apocalypse cannot be mapped, scheduled, calendared or otherwise fit into time.  The Apocalypse is beyond time. 

I say I believe in progress.  I mean I’m more at home with progress. I go to meetings. I work for an institution. I plan. I believe in slow incremental change.  But I also believe in the second coming of Christ.  I believe in The Apocalypse. 

We say it often enough—“he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” Every time we baptize, every time we welcome new members, we recite The Apocalypse—“he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”  It seems to fit the guy down in Bienville Square better, but Presbyterians also believe in The Apocalypse—“he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” 

 

Every so often, you hear about a giant asteroid that’s scheduled to collide with the earth; something that will be the end of the human race, perhaps like what may have happened 65 million years ago when a meteor struck the Yucatan.   Alternately, if that doesn’t get us global warming will or, if not global warming, a fast spreading virus or perhaps an all out nuclear exchange will.  Movies are made about these sorts of things.  There’s one out now—2012 or something like that.

Let me say this as plainly as I can: The Apocalypse, the revealing of Jesus Christ, should not be confused with ecological, biological, political, extraterrestrial or other cosmic catastrophe. Yes, the Bible talks about signs in the sun, moon, and stars accompanying Christ’s Second Coming. The Bible speaks of political and social unrest, wars and rumors of war, persecution; but, and this is a very important but, The Apocalypse is not about the end of the world. The Apocalypse is about the completion of redemption.  When we confess our faith in the one who comes to judge the quick and the dead, we confess our hope that God will complete the redemption begun in Christ. 

Referring to the signs accompanying The Apocalypse; that is, the collapse of the world as we know it, Jesus tells his followers: “When you see these things take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”   The Apocalypse invites us to “stand.”

The opposite of standing is sitting. The opposite of standing is lying down. Listen to Jesus: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.”  The opposite of standing is worry, dissipation, drunkenness.

Body postures are very telling.  What is it they say about non-verbal communication—90% of what we communicate is non-verbal?  “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down. . .”  Emotions are hardwired to our bodies. You can’t fake emotions or thought. Oh, you can for a time, but when you’re carrying the weight of the world, your eyes betray you. Your shoulders blink like neon.  We sag.  Whenever I hit a rough patch, I hunker down. I pull up the covers and turn out the lights.  Jesus invites us to stand:  “Stand up.”

“But Jesus, dissipation and drunkenness and worry are so much better.”

“Don’t be weighed down with dissipation.”

Jesus is talking about a hang-over. It’s the only time the word occurs in the New Testament.  “Dissipation . . .” Jesus is not talking about the sickness that follows a drunk.  He may mean that too but he’s primarily talking about the sickness of despair, deep sickness, the nausea we feel when our only resource is the face staring us in the mirror. Jesus is talking about what we feel when we cannot and do not see beyond the closed circle of our humanity.  “Be on guard that your hearts are not weighed down.”  Jesus is talking about what happens when we place our trust, our confidence, our security in the things we can see, in the things we build. We get weighed down. Jesus is talking about gaining the world and losing our soul because we think and act as if we are the measure of all things.  We get weighed down. We are beyond surprise.  Our world is flat.

Christians do not get a pass when it comes to ambiguity, uncertainty, or distress.  We are not exempt from mortality, imperfection, disappointment, or complicity in evil.  The monastic movement thought it could escape these things by moving to the desert.  God cannot be found in this corrupt world, so the church, or at least the part that considered itself holy, moved to the desert.

That’s one way to find God or to avoid the things we think keep us from knowing God. We can retreat, flee.  There are other equally poor substitutes. We can simply check out—stay home, make ourselves numb, amuse ourselves by work or play or both. Getting weighed down by dissipation is not rocket science. All it takes is substituting this worldly hope for God’s eternal love. Likewise, anybody can worry.  It doesn’t take faith to worry.  “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with the worries of this life.”

When do we ever get to the place where we don’t worry?  How much money does that take?  How much health?  How many friends?  How great an institution?  How would you complete this sentence: “I will stop worrying when . . .” What do you worry about? 

Jesus is not talking about being unconcerned.  Jesus is not talking about not caring.  Jesus is talking about knowing the difference between what we control and what we don’t.   Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a famous prayer about this very thing: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” 

Faith is not the absence of concern. Faith is not the absence of action.  Faith is not the absence of care.  But faith does leave to God the things that are God’s.  We are not the masters of destiny. We do not manage history.  These twin idolatries have always plagued humankind, but they are acutely more prevalent in the wake of the Industrial and Information Revolutions.  Humankind has become the measure of all things. Moreover, if not constrained by humility and confession these idolatries will be our undoing.  We do not manage history. We are not the master of destiny.

Modern people know all things, except our limits.  Advent challenges this assumption. “Advent,” as one Presbyterian preacher says, “begins by stating the obvious but mostly repressed reality that one day humankind will reach the end of our rope.” 

Before it is good news, the Gospel is bad news.  The bad news is—we’re not perfect. We’re not limitless.  We’re going to die. We sin.  We meet disappointment. We’re complicit in evil.  The bad news is—life is larger than our will.  History is greater and more complex than we think.  History does not move in nice, neatly packaged sequences. 

The Good News is—God redeems sinners.  The Good News is—God brings order out of chaos, life out of death.  God is the master of our destiny. The Good News is God achieves God’s purposes. God manages history. That is our hope—The Apocalypse—Christ will come to judge the quick and the dead. But in order to hear that Good News we must first hear bad news or rather in hearing the Good News we acknowledge bad news. 

Following Jesus requires that we come to terms with our humanity, our mortality, our sinfulness, our complicity in evil. But in facing and acknowledging that reality, we are not weighed down. We are not undone by “dissipation and drunkenness and worry.”  We are not frozen by cynicism or destroyed by despair. We hold our heads up.  We stand up because redemption draws near.

God wants us to “stand up.” You can’t live lying down.  You can only live standing up.  We stand up when we trust our lives and our future to God.  We stand not when we greet the future as masters but as receivers. We stand when we live not as managers but as witnesses to God’s truth. Life is God’s good gift. There’s only one way to receive that gift and that is with faithful thanksgiving.  And there’s but one way to pass the gift on and that is with deep and abiding humility. Keeping this posture requires vigilance:  “Be on guard,” Jesus says. “Be alert at all times. Pray. Stand up.”

Standing in faith is not for the faint, but for the courageous who are empowered to stand because their redemption draws near.  Amen.