“Are You Ready?”
Text:
Luke 21:25-36
© December 3, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen
You
better watch out. You better not
cry. You better not pout. I’m telling you why: Jesus Christ is coming to town. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be
good for goodness’ sake. Oh, you better
watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout. I’m telling you why: Jesus Christ is coming to town.
During
the month of December, most of us have rather long lists of things that we know
we need to do to get ready for what’s coming.
We need to decorate the tree, hang the wreath on the door, bake cookies,
mail the Christmas cards, buy presents. But get ready for the end of the world – get
ready for the day when Jesus will return here to earth – is that on our
list? According to the reading that we
just heard from the Gospel of Luke, it should be. In fact, according to the reading that we
just heard from the Gospel of Luke, getting ourselves ready for that day when
Jesus will return is the single most important thing that any of us could be
doing this Advent season.
This
may come as a surprise to some people, but the season of Advent that begins
today is not primarily about getting ready for Christmas. The season of Advent is not primarily about
getting ready for Jesus to be born in
No,
the season of Advent is primarily about getting ready for that day when Jesus
will return. And so that’s why we’re
singing hymns today like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come, Thou
Long-Expected Jesus.” Those are hymns
that focus our attention toward the future, toward that time when Jesus will
come to us again.
When
some people hear about the Second Coming and the End Times and the final
judgment, they think, “Oh, only the book of Revelation, at the end of the
Bible, talks about that sort of stuff.”
But the truth is that in all four of the Gospels, you find Jesus
speaking at some length about his eventual return. And as you look at the rest of the books that
are in the New Testament, most of them say at least something about a belief
that one day Jesus will come again. And
so the belief that Jesus will return at the end of time to judge the world is
not some tiny little side issue when it comes to the Christian faith. No, whether we realize it or not, as far as
the New Testament is concerned, it’s one of the central beliefs we should have
as Christians.
One
of the problems, of course, is that almost 2,000 years have now gone by since
Jesus was raised from the dead and was taken up into heaven, and he hasn’t
returned yet. So when will that day
come? When is Jesus coming back? If you read the Gospels and the rest of the
New Testament, you pretty much have to come to the conclusion that as far as
those first Christians were concerned back in the first century, Jesus was
going to return almost immediately – within a matter of a few months, within a
few years, or at the very least, within a few decades.
For
instance, here in the reading we listened to from Luke, it said: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not
pass away until all things have taken place.”
The simple meaning of those words indicates that the writer of Luke
believed that his generation, those who were alive in his day, would see Jesus
come again.
Likewise,
the apostle Paul showed that same kind of belief when he wrote to the
Corinthians about 20 years after Jesus had gone up into heaven. The Corinthians had apparently asked Paul
about marriage and about what qualities a Christian should look for in a
prospective spouse. And although Paul
gave them some answers to their questions, he ended that part of his letter by
saying that in his opinion, the best thing for Christians to do is to forget
about things like getting married because he believed there was so little time
left until Jesus would return, that Christians should spend all their time and
energy getting themselves ready for that, and not spend any time at all worrying
about things like who to marry.
Obviously
Paul and many of the other New Testament writers turned out to be wrong about
their predictions. They believed that
Jesus was going to be returning right away, but now almost twenty centuries
have gone by, and that day still hasn’t come yet.
So
what do we do? Well, some Christians
figure that the problem is that the Gospel writers and Paul and the other New
Testament authors just messed up. Some
Christians figure that the problem is that the Gospel writers and Paul and the
other New Testament authors just miscalculated.
So throughout history there has never been a shortage of people who have
claimed to come up with the correct calculation.
For
example, in 1836 a man by the name of William Miller announced that according
to his calculations, Jesus would return and the world would come to an end in
1843. Well, 1843 came and went, and some
of his followers began to doubt. But
then early in 1844 a comet appeared in the sky and those people started to get
excited, figuring that was a sign, a sign that the end was near. And so very quickly William Miller ended up
with about 50,000 followers who all believed what he had to say about Jesus’
return. But as time went by and Jesus
didn’t return, Miller’s followers slowly began to drift away.
Or
consider the group known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They were founded by a man who thought that
the world was going to come to an end in 1874.
When that didn’t happen, he changed his prediction to 1918, and then to
1920, and then to 1925, and then to 1940, and then to 1975. Finally the Jehovah’s Witnesses adopted a new
policy, a policy that said that you shouldn’t try and calculate when Jesus is
going to return.
Even
though knowing all the details about exactly when Jesus will return might be
something that we’d really like to know, we always need to keep in mind what
Jesus himself said about that when he said:
“About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor
the Son, but only the Father.” In other
words, if God the Father hasn’t let the angels in on that secret and if God the
Father hasn’t even let Jesus in on that secret, why should we expect to be let
in on that secret?” (Matthew 24:36).
There
is no question that the New Testament speaks about Jesus’ second coming. But the purpose of those passages isn’t so
that we can get obsessed with making predictions about when it will
happen. That’s one danger that people
fall into when they read passages like we heard today in the Gospel of Luke.
But
the other, opposite, danger that people fall into when they read passages like
this one is they end up ignoring them altogether. Some people read passages like this one in
Luke, where it talks about things happening to the sun and the moon and the
stars, and Jesus coming to earth amid clouds of glory, and they say, “This
stuff is just too weird for me. It’s too
strange.” And so they look away and
pretend that it’s not really there. But
it is there.
So
what do we do with the belief that Jesus will come again? Do we ignore it? Do we try to calculate when it will be? Or is there some other approach?
As
this passage in Luke shows us, there is indeed another approach. And that approach is to take seriously the
fact that one day Jesus will return, to take seriously the fact that one day we
will all stand in judgment before him.
And even though we can’t know exactly when that will be, what we can do
is use the time we have to get ourselves ready.
We
can use the time we have to get ourselves ready by looking inside
ourselves. What are the things in our
lives that are not entirely the way that they should be? What are the things in our lives that we
would be ashamed about – or perhaps even horrified about – if we suddenly had
to stand in judgment before Jesus? Are
we using the time that we have to make those changes that need to be made?
And
beyond ourselves, we can use the time we have to take a good hard look at the
world around us. What are the things in
our communities, in our nation, in our world, that are not the way they should
be? What are the problems in the world
around us that maybe aren’t directly our fault – but what are the problems in
the world around us that maybe could be solved if we, and other people of faith
like us, spoke up and took action to do something about them? Are we using the time that we have to make
those changes that need to be made?
Are
you ready? Are you ready for that great
and glorious day when Jesus will return?
We don’t know exactly when it will be.
But we do know that that day is coming.
So make the changes that need to be made and get ready – get ready for Jesus.