November 30, 2008
(First Sunday of Advent)
Jesus is Coming, and Boy . . .
by The Rev. Bryan
England, Deacon
Isaiah 64:1-9 • Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 • 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 • Mark 13:24-37
(From The Lectionary Page)
Facebook and MySpace aficionados may disagree, but I have come to believe that bumper stickers are the quintessential form of American self-expression. While online social networks reach a lot of people worldwide, they require that you actually go online to be exposed to them, whereas bumper stickers assault casual commuters, vacation travelers, and innocent bystanders alike. They have been known to be the instigators of road rage, righteous indignation, or an occasional chuckle. We use them to express our political preferences, our favorite vacation spots, and our pressing social and environmental concerns. We also use them to proclaim our religious allegiances. One can tell in an instant whether a vehicle is populated with Episcopalians, or Methodists, or Disciples of Christ. There aren’t too many Hindu or Buddhist bumper stickers that I’m aware of, but then, I probably wouldn’t be able to identify one if I saw it.
What I really like are bumper stickers that parody other bumper stickers, especially the religious types. John and Charmaine Fowler have a bumper sticker that alludes to the current tensions within our denomination by proclaiming, “The Episcopal Church welcomes you; the Anglican Communion, not so much.” I actually laughed out loud when I saw a parody of an evangelical bumper sticker that proclaimed, “I found Jesus: he was behind the sofa the whole time.” But I think my all time favorite bumper sticker parody came from the early 1970s, which proclaimed, in bold letters, “Jesus is coming, and boy is he irritated.” Now, once again, our current venue precludes me from quoting the sticker verbatim, but I think you get the general idea.
This bumper sticker leaps fully formed from today’s gospel lesson from Mark. “In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.” This is the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ that Paul wrote about to the Church in Corinth.
Advent is a time of waiting, a time of waiting for the coming of Christ, both as the baby we celebrate in Christmas Season, and as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords at the end of all days. The word “advent,” itself, means “coming.” We look forward to this culminating event during our recitation of the Nicene Creed, when we say, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”
Our catechism doesn’t really expand on this Creedal statement. It adopts that famous middle way, or via media, or Anglican waffle, whatever you want to call it. We don’t get too specific about the details of Christ’s second coming, we just affirm that he is coming again in power, not in weakness, and that we will all be judged.
When he assigned me to preach this Sunday, our dean forgot that while I have been an Episcopalian for a quarter of a century, and a deacon for 14 years, I am a recovering Southern Baptist. While I was growing up in that denomination in the 1960s, we didn’t accept the via media, we got specific. We wanted the details. We poured over the apocalyptic books of the Bible, Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New Testament, trying to figure out what was going to happen, and when. Maybe we were trying to find a loophole, I don’t know. But it was really a formative part of my religious background. I remember my father sitting around discussing world events in relation to the book of Revelation. Trying to figure out who was the dragon, which country was the New Babylon (although we were pretty sure it was the Catholic Church), and who would be the anti-Christ. That fixation on the eschaton, the last days, is still shared by a lot of fundamentalist denominations, and you can still see cars driving around with bumper stickers that say, “In case of the rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned.”
The rapture, the anti-Christ, the great tribulation, the last judgment, this was all pretty scary stuff for a teenager growing up in the already scary 1960s. I especially remember the outbreak of the Six Day War in the Middle East, and my Sunday School teacher looking stony faced and saying, “Unless the Lord decides to tarry, he could come at any minute.” Seriously, he used the word “tarry.”
But when, we ask? When will Jesus come in glory to judge the living and the dead? The disciples asked him that question on the Mount of Olives after he had predicted that the temple they had just visited would be destroyed. “Tell us when this will be and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished,” they asked him.
From most biblical evidence, the earth-bound Jesus thought his return would be soon. In today’s gospel he tells the disciples, “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” Clearly the apostles and the early church believed the return of Jesus would not be long delayed, because in Acts we see them selling their property and living communally in anticipation of Christ’s return. But the Lord continued to tarry. He didn’t return when the temple was destroyed by Roman legions, forty years after he predicted it, or in the lifetime of the apostles. He didn’t return during the period of great tribulation when the church was persecuted under the New Babylon, which was actually the Roman Empire, by any of the anti-Christ emperors.
WWe’re like the disciples. We’re like the fundamentalists, we want the details. We ignore the fact that in today’s gospel Jesus tells us, “About that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Despite that, we believe we can figure it out. Every so often someone comes up with an auspicious date, and a group of people sell their possessions and sit on a mountain to wait to be raptured. Silly? How many here read Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late Great Planet Earth, or any other volume predicting the end of the world? Why? Why would the Father tell Hal Lindsey and not tell Jesus?
Since we have no way of knowing the hour, Jesus warns us to, “Beware, keep alert.” The way it was explained to me so many years ago, was that the key was to live your life in such a way that no matter what moment Jesus came, you would be ready to meet him. Forgive the analogy of your mother reminding you to put on clean underwear when you left the house in case you got into a car wreck. You wouldn’t want medical personnel to find you in dirty or worn underwear. And you surely wouldn’t want Jesus to come while you were parking with your girl friend at Lover’s Lane, or drinking a beer underage, or drinking a beer any time if you were a strict Southern Baptist.
There was the fear, the fear that when Jesus came again, you would be found unworthy; that when Jesus called the redeemed to meet him in the clouds, you would be grounded, and left behind. There was a recent best selling series of novels based on that very scenario. The concept of a second coming before a period of tribulation is known as premillenial dispensationalism, and I even had a police sergeant ask me about it. I advised him not to vote for a president who believed in it.
It’s only been during the last thirteen years or so that I realized that it really doesn’t matter when the rapture occurs, or even if it occurs at all as depicted in the apocalyptic books of the Bible. You know neither the day nor the hour. The people in the World Trade Center on that horrible day in 2001 did not know that they were about to be in the presence of God. The fact is, we are all one heart beat away from the rapture, and worrying about it will not add one moment to our span of life. What does it matter if we meet God at the end of all things, or at the end of our lives? The point is to be prepared, to live our lives in a way that however we meet the Lord, we are ready to meet him, so that we will “be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
What is comforting, what is encouraging about all this is that the Jesus who is coming at the end of all things is the same Jesus who came once before, the same Jesus who emptied himself and became human, the same Jesus who obediently suffered and died on a cross, for us. This same Jesus is coming back, to get us. And whether we meet him all at one time at the rapture, or one at a time at the natural end of our lives, we will be in the presence of the one who loves each one of us.
“Jesus is coming, and he’s coming for us.”
