Luke 21:25-36
November 28, 2021
In the very silly movie, Talladega
Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Will Ferrell plays Ricky Bobby, a
successful NASCAR driver. Ricky has longed to drive fast since he was born, and
he speeds his way to the top of his career, then plummets to the bottom, then finally,
slowly works his way back.
It is a very silly movie, but there
is one scene that is both funny and telling – although probably not in the way
that Ferrell intended when he co-wrote the screenplay. This is a scene from
when Ricky is at the top of his game. He, his gorgeous wife, his father-in-law,
his two obnoxious sons, and his best friend and driving partner, Cal, are
gathered around the dinner table in their beautiful home.
In a meal that includes Dominoes
Pizza, KFC, and Taco Bell, Ricky has everyone bow their heads for the grace.
And he proceeds to pray to “Dear Lord Baby Jesus.” He thanks “Dear Lord Baby
Jesus” for his family, for the food, for his friends. He prays to the Dear Lord
Baby Jesus that his father-in-law’s leg will be healed. He continues to pray to
the Baby Jesus until his wife interrupts him at one point and tells him that
it’s off-putting and odd to pray to a baby. His father-in-law joins in and
exclaims that Jesus was a grown man.
“He had a beard!”
But Ricky’s response to this was
that he liked the baby Jesus best, and since he was the one praying, he was
going to pray to the Jesus he liked. And he liked the Christmas Jesus best.
Ricky Bobby liked the Christmas
Jesus best. And sometimes I wonder if that isn’t the Jesus that we prefer too.
I don’t think that’s a conscience preference. I certainly don’t believe that any
of us would voice it in the way that Ricky Bobby did – and thank goodness for
that – but when we come to this time of year it’s hard not to get caught up in
the excitement about the coming of a baby, the arrival of the Christ child.
And it is the holiday season after
all. I mean I’ve been seeing Christmas displays in stores since Halloween. This
is the time of year when everything in our world encourages us to shop till we
drop, decorate, wrap presents, cook, bake, eat, party, etc. But according to the
church year, this cyclical turning of time and season, we are now in the season
of Advent. This is a time of preparation, of waiting, of watching. This is the
season when we prepare for the coming of the Christ child and for the
second coming of the Savior.
So, even though it’s beginning to
look a lot like Christmas everywhere we go, in the church, it is Advent, the
first Sunday of Advent, and on the first Sunday of Advent we read not about
babies being born or silent nights, holy nights, but about the end times. We
are warned by the prophets and by Jesus that the days are surely coming.
The days are surely coming when
there will be signs. There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars.
There will be distress in the nations caused by the roaring of the sea. People
will faint from fear and foreboding from what is coming upon the world. Because
even the powers of heaven will be shaken.
These are the signs, and you already
know how to read signs. You can look at the fig tree and all the other trees,
and when you see them sprout leaves you know that summer is on the way. When
you see these signs, you will know that the Kingdom of God is on its way as
well.
So, Jesus tells them, don’t let your
hearts be weighed down by drunkenness and the worries of this life and the dissipation
that comes from dissolute living, so that you are not paying attention. This day
will come upon you unexpectedly, like a trap. Be alert.
Watch. Wait. Prepare. Read the
signs. Be ready. Be alert.
All this talk about the end, about
the Kingdom of God coming unexpectedly, about the frightening signs in nature
and in the world all around us, causes knots of anxiety to start forming in my
stomach. So much for not letting my heart be weighed down by the worries of
this world. It will be weighed down by my worries about this passage and every
passage like it instead. It makes me wonder if Ricky Bobby had it a little bit right
about liking the baby Jesus the best. Especially when we consider that the
theme for this first Sunday of Advent is hope. On first reading none of this
feels very hopeful. It’s more like doom and gloom. It’s the Biblical version of
the guy standing on a busy street corner, dressed in a sandwich sign that
proclaims: Beware! The end of the world is near!
But is it?
Is Jesus’s warnings about the end
times a prophecy of doom or is it a reminder that time is not what we think it
is. We want to see time as strictly linear – a beginning, a middle, and an end.
But Jesus’ words about the fig tree remind us that time is cyclical. It is a
circle not just a straight line. A commentator on this passage noted that the
end times are really the beginning of times – of God’s new time and that we are
living in the meantime – at a point somewhere between the beginning, the end,
and the beginning again.
And I realize that it is very easy
to look around the world that we are inhabiting right now and believe that
there are plenty of signs about the end times. There is constant unrest,
nations rise up against nations, people shoot one another in shopping malls and
Walmart. There is a new variant of the Corona virus, and who knows what that
will mean for this ongoing pandemic?
We live in uncertain and frightening
times. It is a scary world out there and sometimes in here. And scripture seems
to be confirming that, but we also read from Jeremiah, and the prophet tells us
“That
the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I
made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”
And
there’s that word – promise. And it is in that word that we remember
where our hope truly lives. It is in God’s promise. There’s an old hymn that
declares that we are standing on the promises of God. And we are. It is the promise
that is the essence of our faith. It is God’s promise that brings us here and
sends us out week after week, month after month, year after year. We are living
in the meantime trusting in God’s promise, trusting that the past, the future,
and the present are in God’s good and trustworthy hands. We trust in God’s promise
and in that we find our hope.
To
be honest, the world has already experienced an earth shattering, foundation
shaking, cataclysmic event, and it wasn’t a pandemic. It was not wars or
earthquakes or famines or any of the other events that cause suffering – and
they do cause great suffering. But the greatest event, the most earth-shaking
event, was the incarnation. God being born into our world, into our lives, into
our mortal frames, that shook the world. That rocked
this world’s foundations. That turned everything upside down. That
threatened the powers and principalities. The incarnation changed
everything, and we are still feeling its repercussions centuries later.
Everything
was changed when a baby was born, so it only goes to figure that when Christ
comes again, everything will be changed as well. God has done, is doing, and
will continue to do something new – but all of God’s something new is born out
of love.
I
read a story just recently that another pastor posted it to a clergy page that
I follow on social media. It came from a New England historical journal, and it
was about the New England Dark Day on May 19, 1780. It was a day so dark that
candles were needed to see, and noon looked more like midnight. The sun rose
that day, but then the skies darkened. The darkness covered the land as far
north as Portland, Maine and as far south as New Jersey where George Washington
was fighting in the revolutionary war. He noted the dark day in his personal
diary.
On
that day dark clouds filled the sky. They blotted out the sun. The darkness
terrified people and confused animals. The article said that hens went into
roost, cattle returned home from the fields, night birds sang, and frogs peeped
as though it was the middle of the night. Children were sent home from school.
People left their work and flooded into taverns. People went to churches, and
preachers pounded their pulpits, proclaiming that the sins of the people had brought
this upon them. People thought that at last the Day of Judgment had arrived, and
this was the end. Everywhere there was panic and fear and fainting with
foreboding.
In
Connecticut the state legislature was in session. Frightened representatives wanted
to adjourn and flee home. But one man, Abraham Davenport, did not want to
adjourn.
He
said,
“I
am against adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is
not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to
be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.”
By
midnight, the winds changed, the clouds dissipated, and the moon could be seen
again. The next day, the sun rose as usual. Scientists believe that there was a
raging wildfire in the Canadian forests to the north that sent clouds of thick
ash. When the wind changed, it all blew away. Life went on. Abraham Davenport
and the rest of legislature did not give into panic, but stayed and did their
duty.
Will
we stay and do our duty? Will we remain faithful even in the midst of what
seems like the end times? We don’t know when the end is coming. But we trust in
the promise of God that the end is really the beginning. We trust in God’s
promise and in these promises we find our hope. On this first Sunday of Advent,
we proclaim our hope, even though current events may make hope seem foolish and
unrealistic. Still, we hope. And we give thanks for God’s new thing – then,
now, and always.
Let
all of God’s hopeful children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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