Advent Lutheran Church

"Living Into The End of The Age"

Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            Early last Friday morning, at 12:01 a.m. to be exact, we were able to experience what Sony Pictures said would be the one event we were breathlessly awaiting: the debut of the movie “2012.”  “2012” depicts the end of the world as predicted by the ancient Mayan civilization, centuries and centuries ago.  (Never mind that the ancient Mayan civilization failed to predict its own demise at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors and the array of weapons and illnesses they brought with them that the Mayans had never imagined.  That’s not supposed to be a part of this story.)

            What caught my eye was the capsule summary of the movie generated by Sony.  Here it is: “Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists and governments.  ‘2012’ is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggles of the survivors.”

            Huh?  The world ends, and there are survivors?

            I doubt that Sony pictures intended even a subtle reference to Christian theology in its promotions, but there it is.  It is, after all, what we believe; that the world as we know it will come to an end at a time that we don’t know; and that that time will usher in the Second Coming of Christ, who will bring with him the fullness of the kingdom of God.  Those who believe in Christ will be raised to new life, and heaven will replace earth.   That’s traditional Christian theology.  There are many disagreements about the details in that vast framework, but that’s essentially it, what we refer to as the “close of the age.”

            In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus is telling his disciples that what signals that the close of the age is beginning, will be what happens to the Temple in Jerusalem.

            That must have been difficult if not impossible for those early followers of Jesus to understand and accept.  To them, the Temple was the definition of “permanent.”  It was indeed an impressive structure: the smallest stone in the Temple’s construction was 2 tons; many were 50 tons.  The largest stone still in existence, now part of the Temple’s Western Wall, measured 44 feet long, 10 feet wide, 9 feet high and weighed approximately 570 tons.  It took massive numbers of people and animals and incredible feats of engineering to put those stones in place.  In some places the walls rose as high as 400 feet; the Temple towered over the city of Jerusalem.

            And Jesus says, “Take a good look, because it won’t be long before one stone won’t be left upon another.”  He was right, of course; his prediction came true about 40 years later when the Roman army invaded, destroyed the city of Jerusalem and leveled the Temple.  Indeed, not one stone was left upon another.

            When Jesus first makes the prediction, the disciples are understandably curious about timing.  "When will all this take place?" they wonder.  They were the first to ask that question, but they certainly weren’t the last.  We might poke fun at the movie “2012” as a fantasy, but the underlying premise of the movie engages our imagination, doesn’t it?  You’d like to know, wouldn’t you, when the end will come?

            When Jesus talks about the signs of the end being wars and rumors of wars, and nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, we have no trouble identifying those signs in our own times, the most obvious and dramatic being 9/11/2001 and the events that have followed.  The War on Terror, which some have wrongly characterized as Christianity’s war against Islam, is unlike any conflict we’ve ever experienced.  Shocking that that war would erupt on our own territory, but that’s what the shootings at Ft. Hood apparently were all about.

            Those are strong signs.  And there are others.  The environment continues to be a deepening concern: at what point will our earth cease to be able to sustain life?  And what about our own culture, in which we sometimes seem to be victimizing ourselves?  I saw some disturbing statistics the other day about our consumer culture, and what caught my attention was the phrase “predatory marketing.”  Listen to this: by the time a child is 2 years old he or she is able to recognize and respond to 40 brand logos; we’re exposed to 5,000 advertising impressions daily, from overt signs like the Golden Arches to designer labels; the average 35-year-old in this country has an annual savings rate of -16 percent.  And we have to wonder: Are we consuming ourselves to death?

            Like the early disciples, we too have concerns and anxieties.  But notice that when they ask Jesus about when the end will come, he doesn’t even give them a clue about dates but instead tells them how they are to live in the meantime.  Don’t be led astray, he says; don’t be knocked off your foundation of faith, because the truth is that nothing in this life is permanent except the saving purposes of God, and once God has taken over your future, you’re free to live this day, each day, as God’s own hands in the world.

            The movie “2012” debuted just after midnight last Friday.  At exactly that moment, in Minneapolis, a man named Allan Law was loading sandwiches in his red van, sandwiches that he would spend the rest of the night delivering to homeless people in that city.  Allan Law is a 64-year-old retired school teacher, a born-again Christian on a one-man mission to help those who need it most.  “I truly believe that God put me on this earth to help the poor,” he told The Minneapolis Star Tribune, “and I will do that until the day I die.”

            Last year Law delivered 85,000 sandwiches; this year he’s on track to deliver 170,000.  Recently word of his ministry got out, and volunteers at 100 churches in the Twin Cities organized themselves and now keep him stocked with sandwiches.  His apartment has been taken over by five freezers; his bed is covered with coats that he’s collecting for the homeless.  He makes countless stops in his van, stealing a couple of hours to snooze there or in his apartment before heading out again. 

            And he does it every night of the year.

            Said one homeless man who’s benefited from Law’s commitment: “He’s a good man.  This is the next Jesus Christ.  He’s got no condemnation against anybody.”

            Well, only Allan Law is called to be Allan Law.  You and I are not.  But you and I are called to be authentically who God has made us to be.  Saint Paul talks about that in his letter to the Ephesians, when he writes, “ … we are what (God) has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Eph 2:10)  If you have been baptized, you are a new creation, a new life, with a new purpose as God’s hands at work in the world that God loves.

            We have a terrific Purpose Statement here at Advent, “Celebrating, Sharing, Growing in God’s Love,” and four Mission Directions that evolve from that Purpose Statement and which guide our ministry in and from this place.  If I could add just one phrase to undergird those guiding concepts, it would be “No Sidelines!”  There are no sidelines in this church: everyone plays.  Regardless of what you think your limitations are, in the hands of this God who knows no limits you are a powerful word of hope and new life to a world that desperately needs to hear it. 

This coming holiday season we’ll undertake a number of service projects, many of which are listed in your bulletin this morning; and there will be others.  And we’ll be bold in asking for your faithful response in terms of your money, your time, and your abilities.  We won’t apologize for asking you to extend yourselves, and in some cases even to over-extend, in order to produce good works not because God needs them but because your neighbor does.  This is, as Scripture tells us, how God has made us, and when we fully put our own resources under God’s control and direction we discover a freedom and a satisfaction that we could never manufacture for ourselves. 

You may experience anxieties of your own, and difficulties, and even tragedy; but Jesus counsels us to understand that these are the beginnings of what he calls the “birthpangs.”  He’s very intentional about using that word, the pains of birth.  And it means that it all has a point; that there is a direction to all of history, that the pain and suffering of this life, which we all experience at one time or another, is actually headed somewhere, and that somewhere is the process of new creation, of new life.

And doesn’t that mirror the life of Jesus himself, a life that from its very beginning was headed to the cross?  An ordinary man, he was quite unlikely as a candidate for the title “Son of God.”  As we follow his story in the Gospels we watch as he collects his first followers and begins his work in some very out-of-the-way places, avoiding the limelight whenever possible; the path of his life and ministry certainly don’t appear to be headed toward greatness.  If he really is “Son of God,” it’s a well-concealed reality.

And in the end, it all seems to fall apart.  He’s killed, his body tossed in a tomb, the ultimate tragic failure.  That was supposed to be the end of the story.  But it wasn’t!  The full revealing of Jesus’ true identity came only in the grim depths of death; God was there in that tomb, with just one more glorious Resurrection surprise.  It turns out that there was, and continues to be, a purpose to even the worst things that happen, a purpose that transforms those worst things into a process of new birth.

The end of all things is not the despairing death of all that we hold dear, but the beginning of new life.  As it was for Jesus so it will be for us.  Let’s live into that day, whenever it comes; live into that new day.  Amen.