How to live when the Kingdom is near
Sermon for the 1st Sunday of Advent, year C
Bible reading: 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luther was once asked what he would do today, if he knew that Jesus was coming back tomorrow. I’d go out and plant an apple tree,
he is supposed to have answered. In other words, ‘I’ll just go about doing my normal business.’
No panic, no mad scramble, no last minute repentance for a wasted life or ministry.
I don’t know when Jesus is coming, but I know when I am going – when I am leaving this parish. Just nine weeks from today. And I’ve been wandering what I should do in those nine weeks. Panic because I will be leaving so much undone? Engage in a mad scramble to visit as many homes as possible, perhaps even all of the 500 or so? Apologise to people I may have offended or let down in some way? Call on those who have turned from worship, or still appear not to believe in Jesus, and have one last really direct call to them to believe, or be baptized, or to follow Jesus in greater commitment?
Maybe I can learn from Luther to just go about what I have been doing for the past 10½ years. Just go on preaching, and praying, and visiting, and encouraging, and exhorting, and baptising, and marrying, and conducting funerals, and maybe planting an apple tree, or painting the eaves of the house, and enjoying my family and friends – but always as one who hopes with certainty for the return of Christ, and believes with conviction that Jesus is my Saviour, and loves other people the way Jesus has loved me on the cross.
I don’t know when Jesus is coming, but I know he is, and that makes all the difference.
Victor Frankl spent three years struggling to survive in Auschwitz. Being a psychiatrist he decided to observe how people survived suffering, and his observation was simple:
Those who had hope or a reason to live had a much greater chance of survival.
Those who had lost all hope for a future were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food and medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something live for. [In an Arthur Miller play] an upper middle class professional man appears before the Nazi authority that has occupied his town and shows his credentials: his university degrees, his letters of reference from prominent citizens, and so on. The Nazi asks him, “ Is that everything you have?” The man nods yes. The Nazi then throws it all in the wastebasket and tells him, “Good, now you have nothing.”
All the bits of paper we have from universities or from friends count for nothing on the day when Jesus comes. Our stocks and shares, our businesses, our homes, our sporting achievements – none of them can help us. Not even the families we love can get us through on that final great day when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones
. Of course there is nothing wrong with any of these things. These are God’s good gifts to us, and if we’re locked in prison, the hope of being reunited with these things may be what keeps us going. But all these things can pass away even more quickly than they came. Hope, if it is true hope, is pinned on that which lasts forever. Even heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away
, says Jesus.
In the first reading, Jeremiah comes with such a word of hope from God. He sits in prison for having faithfully announced that the forthcoming destruction of Jerusalem was due to the unfaithfulness of Israel to her God. As the invading armies moved through the land, there was nothing but doom and gloom. What does Jeremiah do? He buys property and says: this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.
In the midst of gloom, Jeremiah brings a word and action of hope to his people. There is a future and a hope.
As we struggle with climate change, and with family breakdown, and with church decline, and with falling away from the faith, and with the challenges of older age, God’s Word calls us to a future and a hope, for this life and the life to come. Hope in God,
calls the Psalmist. Paul writes to the Thessalonians saying:
we continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Hope in the coming of Christ, and in the promises of his Word, and you will be able to endure all that comes your way.
And Paul says: Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.
Not only does Paul call his congregation to faith, but he wants to visit them to mend what is lacking in their faith.
Is there something lacking in your faith? Perhaps you believe God will take you to heaven when you die, but you don’t turn to him in faith to guide you through all the hard decisions of this life. Perhaps you want to be in that number when the roll is called up yonder, but you don’t want to know that you’ve been called to live on earth
, here and now, as in heaven
. Jesus warns of this in the Gospel for today: Watch out! Don’t be found living in careless ease… and filled with the worries of this life. Don’t let that day catch you unaware.
I read about some yachtsmen who said: ‘you know, when we are at home we hardly ever listen to the weather forecasts, but when we’re on the yacht we listen to them with all our ears.’ God calls you to keep growing in faith, for this life and the life to come. God calls you to trust him to get you to heaven through faith in Jesus Christ, but also to get you through this life, living a Godly life in every situation you are found in. In a wonderful prayer of the church we pray: Guide and rule your church forever Lord, that it may walk warily in times of quiet, and boldly in times of trouble…
May God fill what is lacking in your faith, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.
Like faith, love is something we are called to grow in continually – love for one another in the church, and love for all those who are not part of God’s Kingdom… love for people we disagree with… love for our enemies… love for the poor, the aids sufferers, the refugees… love for Christians in other churches, and in other religions. The prayer is that we don’t hold back when it comes to love. Owe no one anything except to love one another.
Pray for God to help you love without limit, just as God in Christ has loved you
.
And may God so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
May you be so filled with hope and faith and love, that you are already living on earth, as in heaven
, that you won’t need to do some mad last minute scramble to get ready for the coming of Jesus and his Kingdom, that you’re already living an authentic and Godly life of faith, hope and love, in his Kingdom on earth. As we live and grow with Jesus in faith, hope and love, we’ll always be ready for his coming. Then we can pray with Dag Hammarskjold: For what has been, thanks. For what will be, yes.
Amen.