Impermanence

A Church article with View Comments posted 15 November 2009.
Tags: end times, millerites, sermon, trust

Occasion: Pentecost 24, Year B
Text: Mark 13:1-8, Daniel 12:1-3, Hebrews 10.11-18

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This sermon was prepared for services at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Sterling, IL on November 11 and 15.

Beginning in 1831, a baptist preacher in New England named William Miller thought that he had, by working out dates in the Bible, discovered the true date that Jesus Christ would return to Earth in the second coming to judge the living and the dead. The date picked was sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Many of his followers, called “Millerites” after their leader, sold their property to be fully prepared to embrace the second coming. They even put on white robes and climbed to the top of a mountain – I guess they wanted to be first in line. When March 21, 1844, the latest possible date came and went, he revised his views – instead, Jesus would return on April 18. When that day came and went without blessed incident, another leader in the movement predicted on the basis of a complex analysis of Holy Scripture that the true date of Jesus’ return would be October 22. You can probably guess what didn’t happen next. This series of failed prophesies has taken on the name “the Great Disappointment,” and some of the Millerites went on to become known as the Seventh Day Adventists.

At this time every year in the church’s calendar, we consider the end of the world. The days after Pentecost draw to a close, and we are almost to the season of Advent. Next Sunday we will celebrate Christ the King Sunday, where we acknowledge that Christ will return as triumphant king over all of the earth at the end of days.

And as we consider what that might mean for us, and this text, we can’t help but read ourselves into this story. Jesus tells us of “wars and rumors of wars” to come. He says that there will be “earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.” And if that isn’t frightening enough, these will be just the “beginning of the birthpangs.” Just like every Christian community before us all the way back to the days of St. Paul, we tend to see our present situation in Jesus’ predictions for the end of days. Remember how upset some people were a few years ago at the turn of the millenium? They were just as upset one thousand years earlier at the turn of that millenium. So far, every generation since Jesus has seen their current events to be reflected in the apocalyptic passages in the Bible, and so far, Jesus hasn’t come back. Yet Jesus tells us to keep watch.

So we wander with the disciples, following Jesus as they walk up to the gates of the temple. The Temple Mount is an impressive place, and in Jesus’ day it would have been even more magnificent. Imagine blocks of stone bigger than a city bus, with massive holes drilled through them to support massive cables so that they could be dragged into place. The disciples are right to say “Wow, check out the size of this place!” Yet even something as magnificent as the Second Temple could be destroyed. Thirty-seven years after the death of Jesus Christ, the Roman Legion stormed into Jerusalem, and in an act of rage against the Jews who were in rebellion against Rome, leveled practically every structure in the city and threw down the stones of the temple to the ground. They systematically dismantled a building that would have easily ranked among the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The world we live in is impermanent. In many ways, we grasp that implicitly without really thinking about it. We know that people die, that relationships fail, that institutions crumble and that buildings fall down. We know that there are wars and rumors of wars – not just the ones in Afghanistan in Iraq, but also struggles in our homes, our workplaces, and our schools. Not every one of us has been through an earthquake, but we all know what upheaval means. Not every one of us has known real hunger, but most of us know what it is to have a deep hunger for something and not be able to fill it.

And yet, at the same time, we deny these things. The way we live our lives regularly denies the impermanence of life. Pastor Mark mentioned last week that the Egyptian pharaohs were buried with all of their worldly possessions in an effort to take it with them after they die. (By the way, have you ever thought about how disappointed they must be now? Think about it: you are rich, famous, powerful, you know you’re going to be buried with all your stuff, and then you get to the next life as naked as a jaybird. There has got to be a lot of really frustrated Egyptian pharaohs in heaven or wherever it is they are right now.) But it’s not just pharaohs – we too try to hold onto the stuff of this world as if it has some permanence. It’s as if someone told us “Jesus is coming soon – quick, look busy!” And when we are trying to hold onto the flimsy stuff of this life as if it was going to stick around instead of clinging to the only One who is permanent, we deny Jesus Christ because we deny his power to take care of us.

Veterans Day was Wednesday, and I can’t help but notice the parallels. Soldiers leave home, family, and work not because those things aren’t good or important, but because there is something important to do that commands their attention. So it is with the Christian life. Money, homes, jobs, family, relationships, etc. are all good things, but we follow Christ who leads us to something more important. Just as that leads to sacrifice and difficult choices for soldiers, so it is also for soldiers of Christ.

If our trust is in holding onto stuff, buildings, people, situations, jobs, whatever, we’ll find that that eventually that stuff fails us. Jesus calls us to trust him instead of the things of the world.

Now, I hope you don’t hear me telling you to go sell everything today – I’m not. (But if you do hear me saying that, before you shuffle off to New England to wait for Jesus could you shift a little of the cash my way? I mean, you’re not going to need it, and I wouldn’t mind holding on to it for you.) This is our Big Question: How do we follow Christ, trusting that he is coming soon, but not dwelling feverishly on the details of this sign or that? Our Daniel text today tells us to be wise and to live in the way of righteousness. Our Hebrews text says to follow Jesus with a true heart, washed through baptism, holding fast to the faith and encouraging one another to do good. Jesus himself tells us to trust him, and do not be alarmed. Yes, there will be wars and rumors of wars. Yes, there will be upheaval and suffering. But for us who trust God, the end of our days holds not terror, but hope.

As we try to trust Jesus, and yet also struggle hard not to put our trust in things of the world, we find that we are “already, not yet” people. Jesus Christ already came, but the end of days is not yet here. We are already saved by grace, but we are not yet perfect people and still sin. We already trust Jesus, but we have not yet learned to let go to those other impermanent things we cling to. We will be “already, not yet” people until the day we die, or Jesus comes back, whichever happens first. Until he comes again, whether it is 2 seconds from now or 2000 more years, we watch and work and wait and trust that God will keep us in the Lamb’s Book of Life.