Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

[please click on one of the items above for more information]

============================================================

Sermons

December 2002 (click here to return to "December 2002 Sermons" page)

1st Sunday in Advent (December 1, 2002)

“At Any Moment . . . ” Dr. Julie Adkins

Text: Mark 13:24-37

SERMON

I will never forget something interesting that I learned

the day I went to my very first soccer game.

Like many of you,

I went to public schools in the days

long before soccer had become a popular sport

with both boys and girls …

so I knew nothing about the sport,

except that you couldn’t touch the ball with your hands

unless you’re the goalkeeper.

So, I was really glad to have a “team mom” along with me

to explain things as they happened.

(It was her daughter that we were watching play.)

But anyway, the most interesting thing that I learned is that

only the referee knows when the game is going to end.

Yes, there is a set length of time per half …

but the referee has the option of granting more time

if, in his estimation,

an unusual amount of playing time has been taken up

by penalties, and warnings,

and in-bounding balls that went out-of-bounds,

and other stuff like that.

It’s up to the referee’s judgment

whether the game gets extended.

There is no time clock ticking away for the players to watch,

like in football or basketball.

There’s certainly no two-minute warning

to tell you “it’s now or never.”

After a certain point,

the game could end at any moment,

and so each player must play as if

this is his last chance to kick the ball,

the last chance she has to prevent a goal, etc.

The end of the game can come at any moment.

The players must be prepared

for whenever that happens.

It’s this same kind of thing that Jesus is telling the twelve,

in our gospel lesson this morning.

“But of that day or that hour,” he says,

“no one knows, not even the angels in heaven,

nor the Son, but only the Father.”

The mysterious event that he’s talking about

is his own coming in glory,

or the “second coming,” as it is sometimes referred to.

And Jesus is very open about the fact that

he himself doesn’t know when it’s going to happen,

only that it’s going to happen.

He says it will be like a person going on a journey,

leaving the servants in charge of the house.

They must remain ever alert and watchful,

for they do not know when the householder will return.

They have to stay on the job,

and keep the house in good order,

because the master will be coming back.

Jesus tells the disciples – and through them, he tells us as well –

that we must wait, and watch.

Now here’s what that doesn’t mean:

It doesn’t mean that we sit passively by

and kill time until something happens.

That’s how most of us think of waiting,

and we don’t like it!

We think of forty-five minutes in the doctor’s waiting room,

reading the same five-year-old magazine

we read the last time we were there.

We think of being stuck in an airport

somewhere between home and wherever we’re going,

bored out of our minds with waiting

for a delayed flight.

Most of us think of waiting as a colossal waste of time,

and a real good way to send your blood pressure

somewhere up into the stratosphere.

But that’s not at all

what Jesus is talking about.

Perhaps in this context,

a better word than “waiting” would be “anticipation.”

It’s not at all a state of boredom,

it’s an almost constant feeling of hope.

It’s not a sense of being stuck with nothing useful to do,

but of having meaningful work to do.

It is not passive, detached, or uninvolved,

but active and engaged.

Waiting for Christ’s coming

doesn’t mean retiring to the top of a mountain somewhere

and passing time until he comes to get us.

It means keeping his home here on earth in order

until he comes again.

One of my favorite stories from American history

has to do with this, believe it or not.

It’s from colonial days,

or maybe just after we became a nation.

It happened in New England, I believe …

something very unusual for them:

We wouldn’t give it much thought,

but most of them had never seen … a dust storm.

Folks got up one morning,

and it was as if it were a cloudy day outside,

only there were no clouds.

But you couldn’t see the sun.

And as the day progressed,

instead of getting lighter and lighter as it ought to do,

the dust thickened, and it grew darker and darker.

So that even at noon,

people were having to work by candlelight.

And the longer this went on,

the more afraid people became.

Partly because they simply didn’t understand

what was going on …

They wouldn’t have been particularly frightened by

darkness caused by heavy clouds and a fierce rainstorm.

But the sky wasn’t gray, and it wasn’t raining.

But they were also afraid because

they knew their Bible better than most of us do,

and they knew very well passages like the one from the prophet Joel,

saying “the sun shall be turned into darkness …

before the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

As the day wore on, and things stayed strange,

people became more and more convinced

that this was it,

the end of the story,

the day of the Lord,

the final judgment,

the second coming.

And they were terrified.

It so happened that the legislature was meeting that day,

trying to get some work done,

but not having much success.

The members were too busy discussing among themselves

whether this was or wasn’t the day of the Lord,

whether Christ would or wouldn’t be coming,

and whether they should or shouldn’t do anything.

Finally one of them got tired of it,

and he stood up and was recognized by the chair.

“Gentlemen,” he said – and of course, in that day they were all gentlemen –

“either this is the day of the Lord, or it isn’t.

If it isn’t, then we have nothing to worry about.

If it is,

I personally would like for him to find me doing my work.”

And he sat down.

And everyone hushed up.

And they got back to the business

which they were supposed to be discussing in the first place.

To me, that’s what Jesus is getting at

in the story about the householder going on a journey,

and the servants and the doorkeeper, and all that.

We don’t know when that return is going to be.

So like the servants in that house,

we must do our work and be prepared at all times.

Like that legislator,

we should want to be found doing our work,

not cowering in fear

or appointing a committee to study the issue

(in good Presbyterian fashion!)

Let me note something important just briefly:

We need to be sure we notice, in Jesus’ story,

what is expected of the servants –

and what, therefore, is expected of us.

Notice that the householder who is leaving

puts the servants in charge,

each with his work.

That means, first,

that each one has a given task to do,

and he or she had better do it!

But it also means, secondly,

that each is not responsible

for the other servants’ work.

The doorkeeper is the only one mentioned specifically,

but he is commanded to do his job,

to be on the watch;

he is not commanded to cook dinner

or to clean the house

or care for the animals.

We each are called by God

and given tasks to do.

Sometimes they are the same things as our “paying jobs,”

and sometimes they are not,

but they are what is expected of us.

God does not expect us to do the other servant’s work;

God does not expect us to do it all ourselves.

That’s why it takes all of us together

to make up the body of Christ.

But what about the “second coming,” anyway?

We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, do we?

Part of the communion liturgy reminds us that

“we show the Lord’s death,

until he comes again,”

but we’ve heard it so often

that it just kind of slides by.

And, if we got up one morning and couldn’t see the sun,

and it wasn’t clouds or a dust storm,

even so, I doubt that many of us would think

“It’s the day of the Lord!”

These days, our first thought might be that Saddam had launched

some kind of bizarre weapon of mass destruction against us.

It has been so long since

the first time Christ came among us,

that we’ve lost any sense of urgency

about the second time,

whenever it’s going to happen.

There are so many other things

which seem more important and more urgent to us.

And yet, he is going to come again,

and we don’t know the day or the hour.

I think most of us have probably wondered at some time or another,

what we would do if we had only six weeks left to live,

or six months, or six days, or whatever.

Most of us would probably do some things differently.

We’d focus on what’s important,

and forget about the rest of it.

That’s a way of living that we Christians

probably ought to take a lot more seriously.

We don’t know how much longer we have.

We can gamble that it’s a long time,

and we’d likely be right … but we don’t know.

Perhaps this is a good time to think about it,

as we prepared ourselves for celebrating

the anniversary of Christ’s first coming.

What has he called us to do? What is our work, each of us?

Are we doing it?

Are we ready for him to come again?

Watch therefore.

We do not know when he will return.

But we can be ready.

Amen.