Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | December 1, 2024

Luke 21:25-36 | First Sunday in Advent

We put up the Christmas decorations. Unlike some of the big stores that put Christmas stuff out before Halloween, we waited until after Thanksgiving. And unlike the stores, our decorations bring to mind the idea of Jesus coming into the world. Our Christmas stuff is three things. The tree is one. The Christmas tree is made from quilting pieces and it stands about a foot tall. When Lindsay was a young person learning how to sew, she made it for her grandmother, who has long since passed away. It sits nicely on the coffee table. The second decoration is a Christmas stocking made of felt, with my name on it, from when I was growing up. It hangs on the fireplace. The third bit of decoration is the Christmas cards we receive during the season.

These decorations all reflect the relationships in our lives, past and present. Friends and loved ones who are still with us; and those who live now in memories. Christmas brings to mind our relationship with God – the creator who became part of creation by becoming one of us.

What does that mean that God would become one of us? It’s a big question to ponder. Finding the answer depends on how we think of the question. This first Sunday of Advent reminds us that God has made a promise. The promise is that Christ will come – peace will come – God will gather all of creation into the realm of Christ’s peace.

In a way at this beginning, we start at the end. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us of God’s promise – “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

The days are surely coming… we could say the days seem a long time in coming. Where are they? Our task is to watch for this coming of God’s reign of peace. To watch is to be aware, alert and at the ready. How do we cultivate the kind of awareness that serves like a light to guide us through our days?

Jesus said that when the time comes there will be certain signs pointing to it. How will we know which signs are the real signs? End of the world scenarios have always been with us. At any given time in history people could point to the signs of the times and say, “The end is near!” But how near is it?

When I was eleven years old, I read The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. It was the first science fiction story I ever read. On the surface it was a simple story: Life as we know it ends abruptly when earth gets invaded by aliens with superior technology and firepower. What was fascinating to me about the way H.G. Wells wrote that story is that the main character of the story, the protagonist or hero, was just some guy. He didn’t even have a name.

He could have been anybody, and so as a young reader I could identify with the character. He could have been me. Therein lies the appeal of H.G. Wells as a storyteller. He invites the reader into the story and makes it possible for the reader to participate in the “alternate reality.”

One of the questions raised by a good alternate reality story is, “What would you do?” My friends and I had plenty of discussions over the years about how we would deal with an end of the world scenario, assuming of course we survived the initial event to take up the struggle for survival.

The War of the Worlds was adapted for film in 1953. Like many American science fiction films of that era, the underlying message was: The Russians are Coming!

There was one scene in the film that summarized the “end of the world as we know it.” The Martians had landed and the military of America gathered to meet them. The battle scene is set. There is the army with its standard hardware; there is the scientist wearing his college professor type garb. There has to be a love interest, or what we eleven-year-olds referred to as “the mushy stuff,” so the scientist has a girlfriend. For some reason she too is at the battlefield; moral support maybe. For some odd reason, the girlfriend’s uncle Matthew, who happens to be a Christian minister is also there.

Watching this film as a kid I naturally wondered what Uncle Matthew was doing out on the front lines of a military operation. The scientist you could understand – a civilian advisor sort of role. But Uncle Matthew in his dark suit and clerical collar? He wasn’t even a military chaplain. What could go wrong? Oh just wait and see.

While the army is preparing to let the Martians have it with both barrels, Uncle Matthew decides to take matters into his own hands – which he seems to equate with God’s hands. He will let them know that we are a God fearing, yet peaceful nation.

He begins walking toward the Martians who are inside their flying saucer-like thingies. He holds up his bible and begins quoting the 23^rd Psalm. Naturally any God-fearing beings will recognize this as a sign of peace. About the time Uncle Matthew gets to, “I will fear no evil,” a death ray shoots out of the flying saucer and vaporizes him. These Russians, er Martians have no appreciation for “our way of life.” In the end the Martians were not outsmarted or conquered by force of arms. They were slain by a simple common cold.

An appeal of stories like that, was growing up in an era in which the possibility of the end of the world was part of the backdrop of our lives. As a kid it was easier to think about fictional Martians, than it was to think about actual Russians. We were constantly reminded that their missiles pointed in our direction. Practicing the duck and cover drills at school brought to mind, “So looking at this bubble gum stuck under the desk is what the end of my world will look like.” That reality was more frightening than science fiction.

When I would go to church in those days, part of the message was, “Don’t worry. We’re living in the ‘end times.’ Jesus is coming back soon, as in at any moment and God is going to wrap things up.”

What they meant was, true believers would be taken up in an event called, “the rapture.” The rest of humanity would be left to suffer the dire consequences of God’s wrath. So long as you were certain of your salvation, then you didn’t have to fret about an A-bomb. Jesus would be back before they started going off. Afterwards, who cares?

“Who Cares?” is the definitive argument of a wide swathe of Christianity. The important thing is to save souls so that more people will go to heaven when they die. Who cares about the ills that plague humankind, many of which are of our own making, when Jesus is going to come back and fix things anyway?

There were plenty of people who read the signs of the times and insisted they pointed to the end of the world. The anti-Christ was just over the horizon. Eventually I moved away from that brand of religion. The reality it described did not present a convincing case. When comparing it to the ideals of love and justice, I found it wanting.

When Jesus described the end of the world as we know it, he could have been describing anytime in history. His time on up through our time. “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” he said.

Since the time of Jesus there have been prophets of doom in every age and generation. People have marked doomsdays on the calendar and they came and went. People have named the anti-Christ and those folks have long since left the scene. The signs of the end times have always given way to the dawn of a new day. The seasons have always passed.

When Luke’s gospel was written people could have easily thought they were in the end times. Jerusalem had been destroyed. The Romans didn’t just sack the town and burn a few buildings. They systematically leveled it to the ground. People scattered to the winds. Christians were being persecuted. The world was not a safe and welcoming place for followers of Jesus.

Jesus said, “This generation will not pass away until these things have taken place.” He must have been speaking in a figurative way. There have been many generations since then and each one has seen the end of the world on its horizon.

The horizon of our time has some interesting possibilities. Science fiction no longer has quite the hold on our imaginations as it once did, because science has revealed even more frightening possibilities than mere invasion by Martians. Yet, the coming of Christ into the world reminds us that we don’t need to live under a cloud of fear for what might happen, because what has already happened gives us reason to be hopeful.

What Jesus described could be said of any time in history. Basically, there will be signs, but you can’t mark the date on a calendar. There will be upheaval, but then welcome to history. The message for “the end” is essentially the same as that for the beginning and the middle:

Your redemption is drawing near

The realm of God is near

The words of Jesus will not pass away

Be on your guard

Be alert

Pray for strength to meet the challenge of each day.

The faith for the task of daily living is the same as the faith for times of crisis; be they the real-life calamities that we go through or any real or imagined apocalypse. The message of “God With Us” does not call us to prepare for the end. God With Us is a here and now reality. The action it calls us to is the everyday work of God’s inclusive love and liberating justice. God’s promise is not about fear; God’s promise is about hope. Amen.