"Calvin, Santa, and the End Times" - Sermon for Advent 1, 2015
Sermon:
Text:
Grace and Peace to you from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who comes to us when the world seems to End.
It’s
Christmas!!!!! Well, according to the
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade it is Christmas Season now. According to most
stores it seems to have been the Christmas season since around June. Ok, not
really, but it seems like everything is going that way.
I’ve
started to listen to some Christmas Carols in the office, and one that always
gets stuck in my head in the classic “Santa Claus is coming to town!” “You
better watch out! You better not cry! You better not pout, I’m telling you why!
Santa Claus is coming to town.” It’s the theme we send to children every
December time. My favorite comic strip Calvin and Hobbes usually devoted a good
part of December worrying about the whole predicament. One of my favorites is
here.
The
whole month leads Calvin on various trials of conscious trying to be good, so
that Santa will give him the gifts he wants. Now, he usually never gets what he
wants, not because he is bad, but because his gifts are a little over the top.
He writes another letter to Santa wondering why he didn’t get the items from
his 15,000 item Christmas list. But, it’s not Christmas yet, right now it’s
Advent. And sometimes we ask, why do we do Advent? Why can’t we just jump to
Christmas? Especially this first Sunday of Advent.
The
first Sunday of Advent often feels like a continuation of the Christ the King
Sunday as it also tends to address apocalyptic/end of the world texts from the
very end of the Gospels. Where instead of looking to Christ coming at Christmas
as a tiny baby the texts focus us on Christ coming again at the End times. And
when we talk about end times we often find ourselves looking at and discussing
being brought before Christ and God at the final judgment. And since everything
else around this time is Santa and presents and his list he’s checking, we
treat it the same way. And so, these apocalyptic texts become God singing to us,
“You better watch out! You better not cry! You better not pout, I’m telling you
why!” And if we aren’t good enough we won’t get the presents we want.
And
that completely misses the point of these texts.
First
thing we have to ask, what’s an apocalyptic text? Unlike people like the
authors of the Left Behind series of books, they are not blueprints to help us
get ready for Christ coming again. They’re not even usually talking about the
future, they are written for people right then. In our two apocalyptic texts
today, Jeremiah and Luke, they are indeed written to us, but they were first
addressed to the people of their times. To Jeremiah, written to a people who
were currently in the midst of exile in Babylon, oppressed and threatened at
every turn, and for Luke to a people who are trying to figure out what to do as
the disciples die, and the temple has been destroyed.
They
aren’t texts to tell what’s coming in the future, but texts that give hope in
the midst of fear and suffering.
To
the people of Jeremiah, they hear that they will not be destroyed in the midst
of exile, that the house of David, the righteous Branch of David will spring
up. And for Luke, that no matter what comes, even if all the first believers
and disciples die, Christ’s words will never pass away. And in each we see how
it’s not up to the people. In Jeremiah God will do all the work, God will bring
forth the branch from David, God will fulfill the promise. And in Luke our last
verse states, “To stand before the Son of Man,” the word there is a passive
verb, meaning more to be stood before the Son of Man, to have God stand us, and
since we know the end of the story, that Christ died and was raised, we know
that being stood before God is not a Santa checking if we’ve been good, but God
welcoming us in.
When
we view it this way, we can see how these texts truly speak to us here and now.
Many times we read these texts and go, ok, that’s weird, lets get it done with
so we can get to Christmas texts getting prepared for Jesus to be born instead.
Where’s John the Baptist, Elizabeth and Mary and Joseph? But, we really need these texts, and we need
them first, because they help us see why we need the other texts so much.
Because
like the people of Jeremiah and Luke, we too find ourselves in times of stress
and chaos. Do I think it’s the End Times? No, I do not think it’s the end of
the world, I really listen to Jesus when he says we can’t know the time for
that. But, I do see how it connects to us here and now.
So
many of us find this time of year one of grief and burden. Is it a happy time
too? Yes, usually, but that doesn’t mean it’s all happy and merry. We too
suffer and grieve and wonder what is coming. And we hear these texts, that God
will fulfill the promises made to Israel to send a Messiah, and then we see
that the Messiah has already come, and in Christ gone to the cross, died and
rose. We need these texts because they show us the reason Christ comes to us as
a child, becoming one of us.
We
can move forward seeing that Christ is coming again, to be born again for us,
not because everything is perfect, but because we need Christ to save us.
Because everything is indeed falling apart, and we need Christ to put us back
together. We need to be stood since we often can’t stand on our own. We need to
have the branch grown for us, since we are withering, and especially we again
need the promise to be fulfilled, we need Christ to be born for us yet again.
That’s
why we need these texts, to see why the others matter so much.
As we begin Advent, remember that
Christ is indeed coming to you, and whatever is going on in your lives, Christ
embraces and loves you.
Let
us pray,
Keep us awake, help us to not
simply close our eyes at the fear that fills us, help us to see you at work within
us and your world.
Amen.
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