God’s sign of the healing of the universe is a baby: and when we understand that, we begin to learn patience, and so to find hope for all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The eve of the Nativity of Our Lord
Text: Luke 2:1-20; also using: James 5:7a; Romans 8:24a, 25

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“Be patient, beloved, until the coming of the Lord,” James urges. (James 5:7a)

But who wants to be patient for this coming anymore? How much longer will this world struggle with injustice and oppression? How much more will God allow before doing something?

“Be patient,” say all those in power, all who are privileged, all who oppress, “things can’t change all at once.” But in those voices, “be patient” is just a way to stop reform, to shut down voices who cry out for justice, to hinder progress.

Tonight we celebrate that the Triune God of all time and space, the creator and lover of all things, has become human, has joined our life here, and is bringing peace, and healing, and restoration. God’s mercy is among us and God’s promises are being fulfilled. But it’s hard to see many signs of “peace on earth, good will to all” in our world. What are we to do? Be patient?

Paul says to his church in Rome: “For in hope we were saved. . . . But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:24a, 25) “All earth is hopeful,” we sing, but all earth doesn’t always see that God is doing anything. Paul’s wisdom is that patience is born from such hope in the unseen. Paul says patience, one of the Spirit’s fruits, is a good thing.

Can “be patient” be words of hope for us as well?

We may not have an option to patience, given how we know God works.

Any talk of God “doing something” falls apart when we actually ask just how that would happen. Do we want God as superhero, powerfully flying in to stop whatever evil or oppression or wickedness needs stopping? We’ve never seen God do that before.

Do we want God as ruler, somehow affecting political systems, maybe even changing elections? It’s doubtful any of us believe God manipulates in that way.

And what of miracles? We pray for them, especially for healing, and sometimes God does them. Many times God doesn’t. And what miraculous fix could God do to make our society and world more at peace? Destroy all weapons from above?

The problem with our impatience is that if we want God to restore things immediately, the only options are forcibly changing this world in some way. And that’s not how we’ve known God to work, it’s not how the Scriptures say God works. Virtually no religion in the world believes that.

But let’s come back to tonight. Shepherds on a Judean hillside were told “good news of great joy”: God had come to save, to bring peace to all. But this was the sign they were given: Go look for a baby. Not a superhero or a politician or a miracle-worker. “Peace to all” starts with a baby.

This baby wasn’t part of the earliest hope of the Church.

The earliest Christian writing and records of early Christian worship focus on Easter, Christ’s humiliation and degradation and death on a cross, and rising from the dead in glory. The proclamation of God’s breaking of death’s power and making a new reality in Christ for the whole universe was central.

But at some point, believers also began to ponder where Jesus of Nazareth came from. He didn’t appear suddenly as a 30-year-old on the banks of the Jordan. And this wonder emerged: this crucified and risen Jesus, this Word of God, this eternal Christ, began his ministry on this earth not as teacher, healer, or even Savior. He began as a baby.

Of course, that’s obvious. He had to have been born. But by the time of Luke’s writing this is called Good News: the sign of God’s peace on earth, the sign of the beginning of God’s salvation and healing for all things, the only thing the shepherds were told to look for, is a baby in a manger.

And that sign can only be known and grasped with patience.

Once a baby begins inside her mother, there are nearly nine months of speculation and wonder and waiting for the arrival. There’s no rushing this. Then when the baby arrives, for weeks and weeks little happens, just small indicators of change. Then there are growing teeth; making sounds, then words; crawling, then walking. The independent mind appears, then the teen years, and the pre-frontal cortex development, and finally a grown human being. Watching and waiting for what a person will become from conception onward requires the deepest of patience.

Because a baby is all about potential. Certainly growing into something that’s new every day. But initially, and for many years, a baby is promised hope, potential energy.

This is your sign of God’s salvation, the angel sang. Look for a baby. Begun, but not yet fully realized, life.

This sign says God’s salvation of this universe is an inside job, not a rescue mission.

The groundwork of God’s coming was patiently laid for centuries before Bethlehem. And when God’s Son finally came, after nine months of gestation, there were thirty years of growing, before ever a word of proclamation was uttered. The Triune God was willing to wait a long time.

That’s patience. And then even after the resurrection and Pentecost, it became obvious this was a slow play by God. Twenty years after Pentecost, thirty, forty, Rome still ruled, people did evil, disease plagued, poverty was rampant. Maybe some of the mentions of the second coming of Christ in the New Testament came from people losing patience with the speed of God’s healing salvation. Come a second time, God, but this time as a fully grown Savior who will rule in power and do something.

But God’s sign says, look at the baby and ponder what that means. In God’s patient willingness to arrive as an infant child, we see the whole of God’s plan. All things will be healed from within the creation, one person at a time. The least important part of what Jesus did in his whole ministry was the miracles. Superpowers and miraculous force aren’t part of God’s plan. Teaching and modeling God’s love, calling people one at a time, revealing the depth and strength of God’s love at the cross, rising to bring new life, sending the Holy Spirit to keep this love spreading, that’s the plan.

God’s desire to love the creation back into the Triune life of God can only happen in this glacial, maddeningly slow way. When your heart is transformed and you start beaming out God’s radiant light, a little more each hour, each day. When that light of God’s love spreads from you and lights another, little by little, day by day. It may not look like much at first. And maybe not for a long time. But eventually love’s light will dawn over the whole creation.

You can learn a lot about patience waiting on a baby.

But remember this: in that patience, that long-suffering waiting, that watching for signs of growth and maturing and doing, there is great hope.

Because peace on earth goodwill to all is on the move. God’s healing has begun. We’ve seen signs of it growing and spreading for 2,000 years. Now it is within you, flickering around the outside of your heart, moving its way into your core. As long as it will take God to change you, that’s just a glimpse of how long it will take God to change the world.

But look at the baby. That’s your sign. Ponder, let the Spirit grow patience in you, and be of good cheer. Because there is hope, and this sign is good news of great joy for all the people. Not least of which for you yourself.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

In this multilayered visitation between Mary, Elizabeth, their sons, and the Triune God, we find guides for our lives of waiting and hoping, and promise of how we, too, might delight in God’s promised mercy.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, year C
Text: Luke 1:39-45 (plus 46-47)

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

We don’t hear from the boys today, and that’s a blessing.

Advent is lots of listening to John and Jesus, familiar voices, voices that sometimes disagree with each other about what God’s coming will be like. From apocalyptic warnings to threats to calls to bear fruits of repentance, so far Advent has been ringing with the voices of these two men.

Not today. Today we have the gift of sitting with two pregnant women, basking in their kindness and grace to each other. The boys are here, but they’re voiceless and hidden, in utero; they have no lines in this scene. Elizabeth and Mary radiate hope and joy, and to be in their presence is a delight.

Elizabeth and Mary are also far better companions for our Advent waiting on God. Jesus and John don’t always feel approachable, the fiery Baptist and the Savior of the world. But it’s easy to imagine sitting in a kitchen with Mary and Elizabeth, listening to the voices of these women who in more ways than one carry inside themselves hope for God’s healing of all things.

This visitation of Mary to Elizabeth is richly layered.

Newly-pregnant Mary is visiting her relative, Elizabeth, fresh off meeting Gabriel. She goes far south to Judea to be with someone who can help her sort out what she’s feeling, what she’ll do. She’s clearly not there for pregnancy support or to hide her condition: Mary leaves after three months, just when she’s beginning to show, just as Elizabeth is ready to deliver. What Mary needs is wisdom, comfort, perspective.

Elizabeth, in turn, receives great joy from her delightful cousin. Her son leaps inside her at the arrival of Mary. Mothers know the movements of their babies, and Elizabeth knew this was different than the usual kicks. This baby leapt at the coming of God’s Messiah, and his mother was filled with joy. And now she has someone to share this joy, someone who understands what it is to face such unknowing, someone with whom she can spend three blessed months together.

This is our first sign that we want to be like Elizabeth and Mary. They need each other. They both face realities they weren’t prepared for, they both need to process what God is doing in them and with them. Together, they find support, and love, and wisdom, and joy as they wait and wonder. Together, so do we.

This is also a visitation of the Triune God amongst and within these two.

Elizabeth is the first person in Luke’s Gospel and its sequel about whom we are told, “she was filled with the Holy Spirit,” and she’s not the last. For Luke, the entrance of the Holy Spirit into humanity, just as the Spirit lived and breathed in Jesus, is the promise of God’s empowering of a new creation. Before Elizabeth, in Luke, Gabriel promises to Zechariah that before John was even born, he’d be filled with the Holy Spirit, and promises to Mary that her son’s conception would be by the Holy Spirit.

But Elizabeth is the first of many to come whose moment of being filled with the Holy Spirit is actually told. She also carries her Spirit-filled unborn son within her. And Mary carries the child begun by the Spirit. This little Judean house, on these seats by the hearth, glows with the light of God’s coming, the fire of the Spirit’s breath, as if it were the Day of Pentecost itself.

This is our second sign that Elizabeth and Mary are our guides. Beautiful, ordinary women, they are the first to reveal the joy and blessing of when the Holy Spirit of God comes into us. They show us what God’s Spirit looks like in us.

Here’s another layer to this visitation: together they see God better.

Both have questions about their own suitability. Mary asks Gabriel, “how can this be, that I would carry God’s Son?” Elizabeth says, “why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord has come?” Apart, they aren’t sure they’re worthy of this.

But together they witness to each other, confirm that God has come, that the other is honored. Elizabeth sees Mary, feels John leap, and declares Mary blessed among all women, the mother of God. How reassuring that must have been for Mary, full of questions, to hear!

And Mary’s coming also confirms Elizabeth’s place in God’s blessing. As her own child leapt, Elizabeth is filled with confidence that God indeed is working in her.

This is our third sign that we want to walk with Mary and Elizabeth: alone, we can’t always see God moving in us, we can’t often believe we’re worth something to God, or useful. But together, as the Spirit fills us, we witness to the presence of God we see in each other, we declare each other’s worth in God’s eyes, we leap for joy at the blessings we see God doing in each other.

Hear the voices of these women God has visited, and know God’s visitation yourself.

Elizabeth says: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Listen to her, listen to Mary, their wisdom is for you, to help you believe. Watch, and do what they do: visit each other, love each other, find delight in what God is doing in each other. Elizabeth and Mary stand before you as signs of what God has done, and what God is doing. The world will be turned upside down, they sing[1], those who are hungry will be filled with good things, those who are poor will find all they need, those who are lowly will be lifted up and honored. Power will be turned on its head. God’s promise of mercy for this broken world will come to pass.

This is the song these women sing as witness. And they sing this song for you. So you also might share their delight and joy, their comfort and hope in God’s healing coming to all things. Blessed are you to believe that God will fulfill what God has promised to do in you, in the body of Christ, in the world.

In the name of Jesus. Amen

[1] Some ancient Latin versions of Luke give the Magnificat to Elizabeth instead of Mary. Perhaps they sang this grace together!

 

Turning our lives toward the warmth and light of God’s gut-level love is joy and hope and in this turning the Spirit creates fruits in us that spread this dawning love.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday of Advent, year C
Texts: Luke 3:7-18; Philippians 4:4-7; Zephaniah 3:14-20

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

What do you think these people expected as they came down to the river?

Were they looking for spectacle, a wild prophet from the desert? Did they hope to hear from God, as with prophets of old? Did they think they would be changed?

John’s baptism was for repentance. It was repeatable, it symbolized cleansing, and it showed a desire to return to God’s path, to repent.

John’s preaching about this leaves something to be desired, though. These people willingly come to hear him, to be baptized, even confess, and he calls them a family of snakes. If you really want to turn someone around, insults don’t usually do it. They either raise defenses or crush with shame.

But his point is valid: if you’ve come to the Jordan to be baptized, washed ritually clean, as a sign of your turning toward God and away from your sin, there should be something different in you.

You’re going to be dry in a couple hours, John basically says. After that, will there be any other signs of what happened to you in the river today that people can see? Any visible fruits of this turning around?

What’s lovely about Luke’s telling is here the people ask for help with this.

Three times someone asks, “What should we do?” They’re willing to be changed. They want to live in God’s ways.

Last week Zechariah promised that God’s dawn will break on the world, a dawn of the gut-level mercy and love of the Triune God. John would prepare people for that. So, the people said, “John, give us some ideas. How can we walk in this new way, prepared for the dawn of God’s love? What will we look like?”

What would happen if every morning you awoke and asked yourself the same question? “What can I do today as a visible sign that God walks with me, that I’m seeking God’s path?” How would your life change if that was your morning routine along with bathing?

Here’s another lovely thing: John’s answer isn’t fiery or harsh.

It’s beautifully simple. To the crowds, John says, “Look, if you’ve got two coats, can you wear both? No? Give one to someone who doesn’t have one. And if you’re storing up food, please stop. Share what you can’t eat with those who are hungry.”

To the tax collectors, hated collaborators with the Romans, John doesn’t tell them to quit. He says, “If you want to show fruits of repentance, how about you stop cheating people when you collect the emperor’s taxes? Just collect what’s due.”

To the soldiers, ever-present signs of oppression, John doesn’t offer rebuke or tell them to leave Israel. He says, “How about you stop knocking people over the head to get money? If you want to show fruits of repentance, stop extorting. Maybe stop making up charges against innocent people. Oh, and quit whining about your pay.”

These aren’t earth-shattering acts. He’s just saying, “could you be kind, share what you have, be gracious to people? Be decent people.” Jesus would later say, “Love God and love neighbor.” Simple. Easy to remember.

And even though such fruits seem simple, they will change the world. God is counting on it.

But there are two questions you and I still need to answer.

First, do you want to change?

Can you even consider asking every morning, “What can I do to visibly walk in God’s way today?”

We long for God’s grace and love, and last week we heard that repentance is turning into the warmth and light of God’s gut-level love for us and the cosmos. But John reminds, such a turning away from sin into God’s way means changes.

Some are general changes, that apply to most of us. This fall, we heard much from Jesus about letting go of everything. John’s call to the whole crowd to give one of your two coats away and share your food is more general wisdom like that. It’s for all of us, we who hoard so much, who cling to our wealth and possessions, this exhortation to let go of things we don’t need.

But some of these changes will be concrete and specific, different for you perhaps than for me. Like these two specific professions John speaks to, we each will have our own specific fruits to show, actions that reveal we are turning toward God.

But the question is, do you want to change?

And second, if you are willing to be changed, how on earth can you do this?

That’s the grace John’s preaching reaches in the end. He says One is coming after him – the One we know as Christ Jesus – with a different baptism, of water and the Holy Spirit, and fire.

Fire, because there is chaff and waste on the kernel of goodness God has made in us. As you turn, there are things in your life and heart that aren’t compatible with bearing God’s gut-level love in the world. God will gladly burn those away. It will sting; but it will clean.

The Holy Spirit is the other gift. The premise of Luke’s Gospel is simple. Jesus, as God’s Son, is obviously filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit moves in the Son even as he lives as a human being. Luke claims this empowers Jesus to bring good news to those who are poor, healing to those in pain, freedom to those captive.

But in Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke promises the same gift of the Holy Spirit to you and me. What the Spirit empowers in Jesus, the Spirit we received in baptism empowers in us. Your fruits, the writers of the New Testament also joyfully proclaim, flow out of the life of the Spirit in you. Luke also takes the time to remind us that with the Spirit it’s not all about axes on fruitless trees. Jesus told a parable about this, Luke says in chapter 13. The owner wants to cut down a fruitless tree, just as John said would happen, and the gardener says, no, let me dig around it and manure it for a few years and see what I can nurture. That’s the Spirit’s work: digging in your heart, putting in the manure that will feed your soul and bring out visible fruits that show you’re turned toward God. If you want to turn to God, the Spirit will gladly make the changes happen in you.

And that’s the source of all the joy this Third Sunday of Advent always sings about.

Luke concludes today with, “So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.” That’s what these fruits are, this life of the Spirit in you. Good news. They aren’t complicated: be kind, be generous, be gracious, share, love. But Luke’s right: this dawning of God’s love in you is Good News. Gospel. Salvation itself, for you and the world.

And Zephaniah today, with Paul, urges you to rejoice and exult in this healing and salvation. But did you hear? The prophet says that God, too, rejoices and exults in you! When you turn from sin into God’s love, and the Spirit bears fruit in you of that gut-level love, flowing that love into the world, it not only heals the world. It brings God joy and delight!

So rejoice. God is with you. What love of God does the Spirit empower you to show in your life today to bring you joy? And what kind of joy will you give the Triune God by doing that?

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Repentance is not frightening, not for Jesus or Zechariah; it is turning into the warmth and light of God’s gut-level love, which transforms you and continues to dawn over the universe.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Advent, year C
Texts: Luke 3:1-6; Luke 1:68-79 (today’s appointed psalmody, the Benedictus – translation used here is the ELLC text [1990] as sung at liturgy today); Philippians 1:3-11

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Zechariah’s foretelling of what his son John’s mission will be is breathtaking.

“You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way, to give God’s people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Zechariah envisions his son preparing for the coming of God’s light into a dark world, letting God’s people know their sins are forgiven. John would point to the coming dawn of God’s tender compassion, his father sang.

Somehow John’s actual ministry feels very different.

John is one of the people in the Bible one doesn’t actually dream of meeting.

John’s message is strident, harsh. He calls for repentance, a turning into God’s ways, with a fiery rhetoric that alternately threatens and calls out insulting names. We don’t think of the dawn of God’s light, the hope of salvation and forgiveness of sins, when we think of John the Baptist.

So, repentance as we’re used to hearing it from John is frightening. “Turn back to God, you sinful people, or it will be bad for you.” As we’ll hear next week, John warns of God’s coming wrath, of God’s ax at the foot of every fruitless tree.

John’s preaching carries none of the aching hope of Zechariah, the longing for God’s dawn of salvation that John was supposed to bring.

John’s context may have sharpened his focus, and driven his passion.

Luke anchors the coming of John in historic time. We can date his start of preaching to the year 28 or 29, the fifteenth year of Emperor Tiberius’ reign. Luke insists on reminding us that God’s coming in Jesus happened for real, in datable, recordable time.

But his list in chapter 3 says a little more than that. Luke places John’s preaching in the heart of a number of leaders, people in power, who were feared by the people, some of whom did great wickedness. Pontius Pilate, the oppressive governor of Judea; Herod Antipas, Herod Philip, brothers, and wicked, corrupt rulers both; Annas and Caiaphas, leaders of those who arrested and condemned Jesus. The emperor himself, Tiberius. This is the political landscape when John appears at the river Jordan.

So, Luke says, in an age of tyrants and despots who cannot be trusted, God’s Word came to John, and told him to declare a new reality. Prepare the way, because God is coming into this world that is ruled by such people. Maybe the evil of John’s times fueled his urgency, his fire, his threats. Zechariah’s beautiful vision would have to wait, because a lot of unfruitful, unfaithful people were going to need to change, or be cut down, if the way was to be ready for God’s coming.

But what Zechariah saw happened. Not in his son John, but in the one John pointed to, in Jesus.

The ministry and preaching of Jesus reflect Zechariah’s hope. Jesus showed people God’s salvation, proclaimed the forgiveness of sins. Jesus embodied God’s “tender compassion” as Zechariah sang it. Jesus acted so differently, John began to worry that Jesus wasn’t the One John was sent to prepare the people for.

We don’t want to disregard John’s urgency. The world always lives in an age of corrupt tyrants, and avoiding facing the evil of our day, or participating in it, is not a faithful path for us, any more than it was for our forebears. But we do follow Jesus, not John. We are saved by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and Jesus is the face of the Triune God for us.

So as we hear John’s call to repentance this Advent, what if we listened to it through the song of Zechariah? Through the promise that old man sang that did come to pass in the Son of God, God’s Word-made-flesh?

Zechariah promises that out of God’s tender compassion, the “dawn from on high shall break upon us.”

Zechariah is mixing a metaphor here. He speaks of dawn, the breaking of light into the darkness of night, the gradual lightening of the sky before the glorious sun breaks over the world.

But this dawn, Zechariah sings, rises out of God’s tender compassion. And “tender compassion” isn’t strong enough to convey Zechariah’s words. He literally sings of the “merciful heart of God.” Even “heart” isn’t enough. The word is literally “guts, insides, bowels.” The ancients located the center of love in our guts, so true love is gut-level love, love you feel in your deepest insides. God’s dawn, Zechariah sings, is a dawn of the deepest mercy of God for the world.

So, Jesus had John’s urgency to preach repentance, but he did this by declaring this gut-level love and mercy of God, saying, “turn from your sin, to this.”

When you’re in the dark, lost, afraid, and you see a glimpse of light, the relief and joy to turn into the new path of hope is overwhelming. When you’re freezing to your bones, and your blood is ice, and you sense a beckoning fire, leaning toward the warmth is delight. This is repentance.

God’s dawn is the advent of the merciful love of God rising out of the guts of the life of the Triune God, aching to restore the creation, to embrace all God’s children, to heal all things. A love so powerful it will face death to bring the universe back into the inner life of the Triune God. A love that offers forgiveness of sins, restoration into relationship with God, true salvation and healing for all. Repent into that, my friends. That’s where you want to turn.

And this is a true dawn, this gut-level love of God, for it deepens and grows until it is known everywhere.

The love and longing Paul has for these beloved Philippians in today’s reading is overwhelmingly beautiful, pouring out of nearly every verse.

And at its center is this astonishing declaration: “For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.” It’s the same word Zechariah uses for God’s merciful insides. The same love that is in the guts of Christ Jesus for the universe now is in Paul’s guts, the deepest parts of his being.

That means this gut-level love of the Triune God can spread to others. God’s deepest, internal love gradually dawns over the whole universe by transplanting itself into heart after heart, transforming each into divine love.

You are the dawn from on high coming from the merciful guts of God. You are. Because you have known this deep, abiding love of God in Christ Jesus, you have treasured your forgiveness, your acceptance, your peace of mind that God’s love has given you. And like Paul, that has changed your own insides, so now that love fires your love for others. It overflows, Paul says, because you share the same heart. And the dawn increases in intensity.

The Talmud tells of such a dawn.

“How do we know,” the rabbi asks, “when the night is over and the day has arrived?”

One student replies, “Night is over and day arrives when you can see a house in the distance and determine if that’s your house or the house of your neighbor.” Another responds, “Night is over and day arrives when you can see an animal in the field and determine if it belongs to you or to your neighbor.” A third says, “Night is over and day has arrived when you can see a flower in the garden and distinguish its color.”

“No,” says the rabbi. “No. Night is over and day arrives when you can look into the face of the person beside you and you can see that he is your brother, she is your sister, when you can see that you belong to each other. Night has ended and day has arrived when you can see God in the face of the other.” [1]

That’s when tyranny and corruption and wickedness fall before the dawn of God’s love. When you and I repent, turn from our sin, into the light and warmth of God’s gut-level love and radiate it from our center, our insides. When we love all God’s children with the same love we know from God, and can see all creation as sisters, brothers, can see God’s face in all.

And so the dawn grows, shining over all who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, guiding all feet into the way of peace that comes with the rising of God’s light over a new creation.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Adapted from Rabbi’s Blog, Temple Sharey Tefilo, https://www.tsti.org/blog-rabbi/?p=49 (original halakhic passage is in the Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Berakhot, 9b)

 

Jesus gives us warnings and strength for our journey of faith, exactly what we need to survive and thrive as Christ in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Advent, year C
Texts: Luke 21:25-36; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“On the earth [there will be] distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.”

Ever increasing numbers of hurricanes, with ever deepening intensity, with ever greater destruction. Tsunamis and earthquakes seemingly all the time. More than nations are distressed and confused, Jesus. Elsewhere Jesus warns of rising evil, of humanity doing wickedness, of persecution and wars at the end of things, and we see this now. We look at the “signs,” as Jesus calls them, and think the end must be close.

But here’s what’s really confusing. Virtually every generation of Christians since Jesus uttered these words has seen the same things, faced the same anxiety, come to the same conclusions. In 30 years of preaching on these texts, I’ve often spoken of how these frightening times seem upon us, and yet, we’re still here. Virtually every generation has been sick at heart over the state of the world, and wondered about Jesus’ words.

His parable of the fig tree doesn’t help much, either. We can tell with trees, that when buds form, leaves are coming, when the leaves turn color, winter is coming. But we can’t read the “signs” Jesus talks about with anything other than confusion and anxiety. We have no idea what to interpret from these events. It’s more than we can do just to deal with the problems themselves, let alone read future truth in them.

So, if every time looks like the end times, maybe we need to change our approach to these words.

If for 2,000 years we’ve proved we can’t make sense of the “signs,” let’s move deeper into Jesus’ words, and find the one piece of clarity Jesus gives: what to do in the midst of them.

Consider this: if you’re going out on a journey into an unknown land, with unknown risks, and unknown problems, would you rather go out knowing nothing, having no supplies, or go out with words of warning and encouragement, equipped to survive?

When a parent sends their child out as a young adult for the first time, whether to college or a new life, or just on their first journey separate from the family, lots of advice is given. Packing lists are checked, warnings about possible dangers are named, support is given. “Don’t pick up hitchhikers; if your car breaks down, call this number; did you pack underwear?”

That’s what Jesus does today. Ignore the predictions, and hear the tremendous gift of what Jesus actually says. “It’s going to be tough out there,” he says. “You’re going to see things, experience things that are going to terrify you. Don’t be surprised or confused by that. And here’s what to do as you travel, how you’ll survive.”

If every time looks like the end times, “Be on guard so your hearts are not weighed down,” Jesus says.

First: guard that your hearts aren’t weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness. Dissipation means staggering, dizziness, and headache caused by drunkenness. As you journey in a fearful world, Jesus says, don’t deaden yourself with wasteful, empty living, dulling your senses with anything that does what drunkenness does. Your heart needs to face reality with all its wits and intelligence and skills. Whatever it is you consume to distract or deaden or dull yourself, chemicals, entertainment, acquisition of things, whatever – consuming these will cost you.

Also: guard that your hearts aren’t weighed down with anxiety over your daily life, he says. Anxiety can lead to the deadening, dulling choice. But Jesus also doesn’t want you to go the opposite direction and let the worries and anxieties of the world overwhelm you.

If your heart is weighed down by what you’re doing to avoid reality or by your obsession with reality, it will draw you deeper and deeper down. Then as things get harder, you’ll sink under the weight. These things – avoiding and obsessing – are like making quicksand for yourself, Jesus says. They make you paralyzed, unable to move or live.

And since every time looks like the end times, “pray for strength to escape all these things,” Jesus says.

This is the second part of Jesus’ gift: there is help on this perilous journey. Rachel recently got a flat tire and asked me to teach her how to change it on her own, so she’d know how if it happened again. That’s what Christ promises here: help and assistance for how we might live as Christ in the world when we’re out there and it feels like we’re alone. And Paul gives shape to this help.

First, Paul says today, Christ will increase your love for one another and for all, make it abundant, overflowing. On your journey, Christ will expand your heart in love for the others in your community, and even in love for all – all! Your heart will gush with love, the opposite of being weighed down, which will make the path of danger also one with joy and blessing.

And then, Paul says, Christ will strengthen your heart in holiness as you await the coming of Christ. Now that it’s filled with love for each other and all, Christ will shape your heart in holiness, that you live as Christ, for Christ, in the world. You’ll receive the skills, gifts, tools necessary to walk Christ’s path, even in the valleys of shadow.

Last, Paul writes to a community. Jesus creates a community. We have each other, and together we watch the sings in the world, practice our skills, and support each other as Christ on the road.

There’s no point in anticipating Christ’s second coming at the end of time if we miss Christ’s coming in us now to live in the world we actually have.

This is Jesus’ third gift today. When we see the world like this, Jesus says, that’s when we know God’s reign is near. Maybe we’re not meant to think of that in terms of time. Rather as God’s reign as Jesus proclaims it, God’s rule and presence in our hearts and lives. At the worst of the world, that’s when we know most that God is with us. Now. Here. On the journey.

Maybe the world will end today. Maybe it won’t end for a thousand years. It doesn’t matter. You know your path, you know what to expect now, and you know Who goes with you and blesses you with all you need.

So go and be Christ’s coming in this world. It desperately needs it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen