Musical Prelude and Service.

Jeremiah 33:14-16 & Luke 21:25-36
You don’t have to look very hard in popular culture to find movies, television shows, and books centered around the end of the world. Movies about alien invasion, a meteor crashing into the earth, zombie apocalypses can be popular, or perhaps a deadly uncontrolled plague.
We humans do have a great deal of anxiety about how everything comes to an end.
The thing is this is not a new phenomenon. Impending doom seems to be a constant part of the human imagination.
That’s part of the reason we can find a number of so-called apocalyptic stories throughout our scriptures. The speculation of how everything will end is a real attention grabber. But the other part of that, is it also offers an opportunity to shine some light on the issues of the day. So authors of various books of the bible can speak about impending invasions, or the oppression by occupying empires, the threat of natural disasters, which is always there to keep the people concerned.
By the same token, in our modern world we find stories these days about pandemics, environmental disaster, threats from space or global conflict.
I will confess my preference runs to those stories; like the ones we find in scripture offer us that sense of hope. That yes, things are coming to an end; people are suffering now and there is likely more suffering to come. But there is a new world, a new heaven to come when this is over.
Apocalyptic literature, like we find in the book of Daniel, in Mark, what we read today in Luke or, in the Revelation of John, speaks to the here and now but also promises something new when God intervenes.
Today we begin a new church year. It’s the first Sunday of Advent. It is a time of preparation as we anticipate the coming of Jesus. If we draw back to look at the story we are telling with Advent and Christmas and the seasons that follow, the church calendar essentially tells a wide-ranging Apocalyptic tale.
There is a conflict ongoing. The people of the world are enduring incredible hardship. We face temptations, and we anticipate even greater difficulties. Things must come to an end. The first signs of God’s intervention in this time of darkness; this broken world, is the coming of Jesus, the word made flesh.
All too often we see these apocalyptic stories in scripture as a foretelling of what is to come. We can get caught up in trying to predict when those end times will actually come to pass. Instead, what I have been taught is these are stories that critique the things are right now. They encourage us to hold on to those things God truly values and to work to be part of bringing about the world God desires for us and that God will work with us to bring about.
Don’t wait passively for what might come but work to prepare for the coming of something new.
In the reading this morning from Jeremiah, the prophet is speaking to the coming conquest of Judah and Jerusalem. Babylon is invading. As much as others in the King’s court maintain God will protect the Hebrews, Jeremiah insists that won’t happen this time.
But. But, He adds, in time a new ruler will be raised up and God’s people will be restored. This is a reassurance to people who are about to be separated from all they know. Who will be separated from their homes, from their culture. Their memories and their stories will be threatened.
Jeremiah is essentially telling them to hold onto who they are. Maintain a grip on their history, their culture, their values; because something new, that restores that which they will lose is coming.
Likewise, Jesus tells his followers that there will come a time of incredible destruction. It is a precursor to the new world that God promises. Keep an eye out for the signs of what is to come.
Essentially Jesus is saying, “don’t sleepwalk through your lives.” “Don’t give up and assume things will never change. Don’t succumb to the temptation of nihilism, that nothing matters. Stay alert and hold on to the teaching and the values I have shared with you.”
I have spoken about the nature of hope quite a bit in the past month. Hope holds within it, I believe, the acknowledgement that something is wrong with the world. Hope admits that there is suffering; that there is injustice. Hope sees the presence of violence and oppression. But hope also insists that this can and must change. And our scriptures tell us that God will, in fact intervene. God shows up and shows us a new way to live and to be.
God offers us a new vision of this world; the Kin-dom of God that rules through love, offers justice and mercy. We can’t get there without the work of God, but God will not force this upon the world. We need to be God’s hands and feet.
“Stay awake”, Jesus says. He cannot tell us when this new world will come, but we need to be ready. We need to hold on to the values of love, of compassion of mercy. We need to be working for a world of justice and of peace. Don’t give into the pressures of a world that is happy to maintain the status quo. Don’t surrender to the fear of being shouted down for insisting on seeing everyone as a beloved child of God. Don’t be swayed by a culture that prioritizes greed and celebrates power and wealth. And don’t give into messages that tell us to fear the stranger and demonizes those who look or sound different from dominant culture.
We live in a world that offers numerous reasons to be afraid. I will confess that I regularly experience heartbreak and fear for loved ones and strangers alike. The presence and the apparent renewed permission to express homophobia, misogyny, racism and intolerance of different religious expressions is deeply troubling. The constant shift to valuing so-called rugged individualism and fear or hatred of migrants is not something I welcome. It runs counter to every message I receive from my faith.
So I hold out hope that this current state of affairs cannot last. I cannot say when this end will come, but I am assured I need to stand vigilant and awake and hold onto and live by the principles I have been taught to value. To love God, love my neighbour as I love myself, to love kindness, to do justice and to walk humbly with my God.
Thanks to be God.
Amen.
Rev. Warner Bloomfield

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789