The Day Is Near
Romans 13:11-14
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11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (Rom 13:11-14)
Welcome to Advent! Today we switch the colors from green to purple and we begin a new liturgical year.
The lectionary does a funny thing though – it begins with the end. Every year we kick off Advent with a kind of “the end is near” vibe. Just when we’ve shifted into holiday mode and we’re excited to sing our songs and deck the halls, we come to church and hear readings about the end of the world.
In our reading from Romans this morning, Paul warns us to stay awake, to know what time it is, because the day is near.
Today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel similarly warns us, saying:
“Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (Matthew 24:40-41)
While end-times might not inhabit a big part of your imagination or spiritual life, it has certainly taken up a lot of space in other imaginations throughout history.
If you were living in London in 1666, you might be excused for thinking that the world was ending like many people did – between the great fire, the bubonic plague and the ominous year ending in 666…
If you were living in 1843 you might have seen 100,000 of your neighbors sell their belongings and head to the hills because of William Miller’s prediction that March 21st that year was the end. When that day came and went, he revised the date to October 22, and then October 23 subsequently became known by his followers as “the great disappointment”.
Of course, in the 20th century end times thinking was popularized by the likes of Hal Lindsey who predicted the world’s end in 1988 – supported by a book titled “88 reasons why the rapture will be in 1988”. It sold a 4.5 million copies!
These are just the greatest hits – there are so many times over the last 2000 years that Christ was expected to return.
The next end times prediction I could find is for Dec 28 this year, so, who knows?
Obviously, none of this is the kind of wakefulness that Paul encourages in our passage from Romans this morning. Creative fear-filled number games with Scripture is not what Jesus had in mind when he told us to read the signs of the times. And yet, these examples of paranoid failed predictions dominate our cultural imagination when we approach these kinds of passages.
The theologian Jurgen Moltmann is a good voice to turn to in this season. In his classic book the “Theology of Hope” he laments that the study of last things has become (in his own words): “like a loosely attached appendix to Christian theology that was wandered off into obscure irrelevancies.” Where it has been coopted by fanatical sects and revolutionary groups.
He laments that the study of last things has become about ‘end times,’ as if the return of Jesus will end history and make everything we do here and now irrelevant. Actually, Moltmann argues, it’s not a doctrine about endings at all, it’s a doctrine about hope. It’s not about the end of the world, but the beginning of a new world, the fulfillment of all that creation has been longing for and working towards, even now.
What we hope for is not an escape from this world, but a hope for God’s perfect justice, peace, and love for all of creation. This is the robust kind of hope that weaves its way through Scripture from the first page to the last. It’s the hope at the center of Christian faith that says history is going somewhere and we’re part of the story. And it’s to this hope that we are called to keep watch.
The early church, including Paul and the community he was writing to in Rome, initially expected a quick fulfillment of this hope. But as the early church moved through that first century and realized that their timetable for Christ’s return was wrong, they found themselves in the middle of that universal human conflict between what we hope for and our actual experience of reality.
It’s the same conflict the exiles in Babylon felt – the hope of quick return to Jerusalem juxtaposed with the reality of a long exile in a strange land.
It’s the same conflict we feel when we read Isaiah’s beautiful vision of that day when swords will be beaten into plowshares…..and then we read the day’s news.
I imagine everyone in this room is familiar with this conflict between hope and experience.
Perhaps it’s as simple as your hope for a harmonious family meal at Thanksgiving that yet again did not find fulfillment.
There is often an ache attached to hope, isn’t there?
We are all stuck in this conflict between hope and experience.
It seems to me that there are two ways that people have gone about resolving this conflict.
The first way is to do away with hope
A couple years ago a couple of engineers at UCLA attempted to write an equation to engineer happiness, and what they came up with was: happiness = reality - expectations. If you have no expectations, then you’ll be happy, they suggested. If you have no hope for something more, you’ll be okay with reality as it is. Learn to live in the present, learn to be content with the way things are so you won’t be disappointed by the thought of how things COULD be.
While we know that life is more complex than any one equation, maybe we do recognize the grain of truth here about the importance of learning how to be present in the moment without getting ahead of ourselves or ambushed by unrealistic expectations. Yes, this might be true. But it’s also true that there’s a difference between wishful, unrealistic thinking and the kind of biblical hope that all creation longs for.
The second way people have gone about resolving this conflict between hope and experience is to go the other way and minimize experience.
Like the disciples who stood looking up at the sky when Jesus ascended, the temptation is there to live looking up, detached from the reality around us. Head in the clouds. Pie in the sky.
At a dairy farm outside of Moscow, in order to make cows happier and produce more milk, researchers have fitted cows with virtual reality goggles to make them think that they are standing in the middle of a lush summertime field rather than in a barren Russian dirt patch.
This is called escapism – and we’re especially good at it during the holidays. It’s tempting to just put the holiday virtual reality goggles on and celebrate the birth of Jesus while ignoring all the other ways we’re still waiting for him to arrive in our world.
Advent calls us both back to reality and calls us forward in hope. Advent invites us to recognize, and to sit in the conflict between hope and experience, not to resolve it. Christ has arrived and yet is still arriving.
When we begin Advent with Paul’s words to the Romans about keeping watch for the quickly approaching day of salvation, it’s important to notice that his words about hope are couched in an entire section having to do with daily living in everyday reality – not escape from it. If anything, the hope that we long for, the vision of God’s Kingdom, rather than detaching us from reality, allows us to enter more fully into the present and to see it more clearly. With a vision of God’s Kingdom, we are able to know what time it is and understand our place in God’s story. Paul encourages us live as if it is already that day, even though we yet find ourselves in the dark.
Here’s another thing about hope though – it comes with a warning. Hope might sound all warm and fuzzy, but actually, if it’s working right, hope can be deeply unsettling.
As Moltmann describes it: “faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in us. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it.” (Moltmann 21)
Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is
When Isaiah’s vision of peace is planted in our hearts, we are spurred on to work for an end to all wars.
When Jesus’ example of welcoming the stranger and foreigner is set before us, we are spurred on to works of love and advocacy, extending that compassion to the vulnerable and marginalized.
When we eat the bread and drink the cup at the Lord’s Table, we get a taste of that great feast and are spurred on to extend that abundance and welcome to others, making sure that all people are fed, healthy, and made whole.
Hopeful people are troublemakers, because we refuse to settle for the way things are. We are called forward in hope to raise our voices against injustice, to call out unfair systems, to act according to compassion rather than greed.
Even while the world feels dark, we live as if the night is gone and the day is near.
The great Yogi Bear once said that “if you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”
Which, in a funny way, is what I kind of think Paul was trying to say. Know what time it is, know where this story is going, and act accordingly.
At the heart of Christian faith is this belief that a new and unexpected day has dawned and is still dawning. So, friends, let us walk in the light and be renewed by hope as we journey together this Advent season, and may our hopefulness always make us troublemakers in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.