Scripture Text:
Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
Sermon:
Do you remember this spring when America was all abuzz about the end of the world? It was the message coming from Harold Camping, the apocalyptic preacher, through billboards coast to caost, and from his Family Radio network, based in the unlikely location of Oakland, California. May 21 was to be the end of the world- or at least the beginning of the end. Of course, it didn’t happen. I successfully went to my friend Robert’s birthday party that day at a Mexican Restaurant, and lo and behold, no rapture, no doomsday, no clarion call of the trumpet.
Several days before, Harold Camping and his followers more or less headed for the hills. The offices of his radio station were empty and locked, the broadcasts were from prepared tape recordings. Where they went, I’m not quite sure, but shortly after, Camping reappeared with a hastily-composed statement reframing the nature of his prediction and stated that the Rapture would be in October.
I’m not here to mock Mr. Camping. But if you’ve been around a while, you know that these things come along every couple of years. Most are based on someone’s interpretation of the Bible, but others aren’t- there’s the Mayan Calendar theory which says we’ll all be going about this time next year; a theory by the way, which is completely deflated by the fact that just like our calendar, the Mayan Calendar just goes right back to the beginning each time it ends.
There is something in us that hungers to know when the end of days will be, and to know what will come beyond it. For all the good things in our lives, we know things are often pretty terrible, and the hope of all of it changing, while difficult, has a certain promise- the difficulties we know could be transformed or wiped away and replaced with something better. Who wouldn’t want to find something better?
The early Christians hungered for this, and so did their Jewish ancestors in the faith. The Old and New Testaments alike are awash with the apocalyptic mixture of dark judgement and bright hopes for a new world to come on the Day of the Lord. Today we read from the Second Letter of Saint Peter. This letter was probably not written by Peter himself, but by someone who wanted to imitate the way Peter might have thought and written. And it was probably written around the year 90 AD- so sixty years after Christ’s resurrection, and about forty years after the letters of Paul. So the people who first read this letter were really beginning to wonder- We know Jesus is coming back, but why does he seem to be taking so long?
Little did they know- it’s been two thousand years and we’re still waiting. We’ve been waiting so long, most of us don’t even think about this- ever. We dismiss those who take the Second Coming seriously. Many of us cross our fingers mentally when the words roll around in the Creed, “he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.” But the words of this letter should be as important to us as they were when first they were written and read: “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you. The day of the lord will come like a thief.” It’s coming- but we don’t know when. Not because it’s some sort of secret that we have to figure out. Jesus himself several times tells us that trying to calculate when he’s coming back are a waste of time. We don’t know because God’s timing is different from ours. We don’t do time the way God does time. What looks like delay to us looks like patience to God. And God’s got all the time in the world.
That should put us at ease- sort of. It relieves us from having to bother with calculating when. It relieves us from having to stock up for an apocalypse, and from running around making preparations. It frees us to do what we ought to be doing, doomsday or not: leading lives of holiness and godliness, striving for peace in our lives and in our world.
There’s an old story about an Episcopalian from the South, where liturgy is simple and reserved and profoundly Protestant in the best low-church tradition. He visited New York City and walked into one of the great high-church parishes of the Northeast, and was shocked by the liturgy of an Episcopal church where Solemn High Mass was the norm- with long processions, acres of lacy vestments, lots of bowing and genuflecting, and worst of all, the smell of incense thick in the air. On his way out of the church at the end, he complimented the Rector on a fine sermon and thrilling music, but he could not help lodging a complaint about the incense. The priest looked him square in the eye and said, “you will smell one of two things in the next life- either incense or brimstone. Which one would you rather have to get used to now?”
The point isn’t really about high church or low, or about whether Morning Prayer is better than incense. It’s about what our lives are like now, and what we hope them to be like when Jesus returns. The life of the world to come, that life for which we hope and long, is coming. Sooner or later, it is coming. And we are taught clearly by scripture that it will be a life of peace and harmony, a life of justice and love, a life in which God’s people will be fed richly around a table at which everyone is welcome. It will be a life in which the petty concerns of our present world will be over and done with, and the things which consume us now will be long-since-faded memories.
That means the best thing we can do to get ready for the return of Jesus Christ, is to make this the way we live in this life. If you want to be ready, then peace and harmony and justice and love are the things to practice and embody here and now. If you want to be ready when you are called to that feast which is coming, then go out and call everyone to this feast which is set before us now. If you want to feel at home in that new heaven and that new earth which will be so profoundly different from this old world which is drawing toward night-time, then sharpen your skills of love and peace now. It does seem to be taking a while- but you never know. It could be here come tomorrow.