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The End is Near
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
Sunday, December 9, 2007--Advent II
Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

Is. 11:1             A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
                        and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
2             The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
                        the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
                        the spirit of counsel and might,
                        the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
3             His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
                        or decide by what his ears hear;
4             but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
                        and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
            he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
                        and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5             Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
                        and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6                The wolf shall live with the lamb,
                        the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
            the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
                        and a little child shall lead them.
7             The cow and the bear shall graze,
                        their young shall lie down together;
                        and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8             The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
                        and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
9             They will not hurt or destroy
                        on all my holy mountain;
            for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
                        as the waters cover the sea.
10   On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Rom. 15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.   5 May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus,   6 so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
7     Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.   8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs,   9 and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
            "Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles,
                        and sing praises to your name";
10 and again he says,
            "Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people";
11 and again,
            "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
                        and let all the peoples praise him";
12 and again Isaiah says,
            "The root of Jesse shall come,
                        the one who rises to rule the Gentiles;
            in him the Gentiles shall hope."
13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matt. 3:1     In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,   2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."   3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
            "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
            'Prepare the way of the Lord,
                        make his paths straight.'"
4 Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.   5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan,   6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7   But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?   8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance.   9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.   10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11   "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.   12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

I. INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 2004, our Episcopal chaplain, Carolyn Seaton, gave me a New Yorker cartoon.   It was a picture of a man dressed in ratty clothes, wearing a sandwich board that said, "This is the year."   The other detail about his appearance that is worth noting is that he was wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap.

The joke, which I found somewhat painfully funny at the time, was that anyone who claimed that this would be the Sox' year--or that any year was-- was like those guys who walk around in sandwich boards that say "The End is Near."

            You know--a nut case.

            There have been a lot of people predicting that the end was near and so far--all of them have been wrong.

            The Millerites gathered on hilltops in 1844 after their leader, William Miller had completed with exact precision the date of the Second Coming.   It didn't happen. The Seventh Day Adventists, who are the descendents of that movement continue to refer to it as "The Great Disappointment."  

            In the 1970's, Hal Lindsey wrote a book called The Late Great Planet Earth that predicted that the Second Coming would take place 40 years after the founding of the modern state of Israel--that is, in 1988.   That didn't happen either.   (For those of you here born after 1988, you'll just have to take my word for it.)

            There is a husband and wife TV preaching team that used to be on TV on Sunday night on Channel 20 here in D.C.   Every week they would count down how close we were to the Second Coming.   They would point to the fact that the European Union had 12 member states--just like the 12 headed dragon of the Book of Revelation and that the end was near.   They were really thrown when the EU admitted more countries.

            And don't even get me started on the Left Behind series.

            All in all, it seems that the business of predicting that the end is near is the province of people whose grip on reality --or at least whose sense of historical perspective --is severely affected.

II. THE TEXT

Is John the Baptist such a person? He certainly looks the part--wearing camel's hair and a leather belt (not exactly normal 1 st Century Judean street attire), he's living out in the desert, eating locusts and wild honey.   She's shouting all this apocalyptic stuff--like about how the Messiah will clear the threshing floor--that's where they separate the grain--with a winnowing fork, keeping the wheat and will burn the chaff.   This is not the behavior of a man we'd call "ordinary".   Is John one of those people?

For that matter, are we?

III. THE GREAT PARENTHESIS

For nearly 2000 years, the Christian Church --taking our cue from John the Baptist--has been announcing that the Kingdom of God was near, or "at hand" as the more literal translations say.   The Kingdom of God--that reality that far from being a feudal system, or a patriarchal system, or a power-driven institution like all human kingdoms--will be that reign of God in the world that will see peace, justice, compassion.   An event that will transform the very fabric of creation itself.   It is an in-breaking reality that Jesus himself proclaimed.

The Apostles proclaimed it.   Paul lived his life and ministry firmly under the conviction that Christ would return and inaugurate the Kingdom any day now.

That was 1,950 years ago.   Well, is the end near?   Is the Kingdom at hand or isn't it?   Are we as a church just like some guy walking up and down the sidewalk in a sandwich board that says, "The End is Near"?

Some in the church have referred to the time between the Resurrection of Jesus and the Second Coming as "The Great Parenthesis", as though everything that has happened in between is a parenthetical--in parentheses--just an aside, if you will.

Needless to say, there have been a number of different Christian responses to this situation.   This delay of the end.

A.  Spiritualizing it Away

The first is to claim that the Kingdom of God has arrived and that it is first and foremost a spiritual reality.   That is, all the language that John, Jesus, Paul, and all the apostles used is not discussing a physical reality, but an inner spiritual one.   The Kingdom of God is among you--in the community, in a spiritual sense.   You are saved in a spiritual way, perhaps your eternal soul, and that the peace that we are looking for is an internal peace of the soul.   It's not really talking about the Arabs and the Israelis, or the Pakistanis and the Indians, or the Serbs and the Croats.   In effect, the Kingdom of God is removed from the material, historical realm to be solely a spiritual reality.

B.  Ignoring it

The second way of dealing with this situation is to de-emphasize it --to shy away from even talking about it.   The Kingdom isn't something that we're expecting God to bring.   The Kingdom is something that we're in the process of building with all our actions of social justice.   It did start with Jesus, but now it continues as a slow and steady progress of our own Christian action.   And all that stuff that John was talking about, all that apocalyptic stuff about separating the wheat from the chaff, and winnowing forks, and so one, well, we'd rather not talk about that.   And all that stuff in Revelation about beasts and monsters and the Four Horsemen, and so on, well, that's like the relative who continues to embarrass everyone at family gatherings who we wish would just go away and leave us alone.   We have work to do.

There is a problem with each of those solutions.   The first unduly spiritualizes away the promises of the Gospel.   "I see, the poor aren't actually fed--they're spiritually fed. But they still don't have any food."   The second option places far too much emphasis on what we're doing and in the extreme situations (of which there have been a number) one social program or ideology becomes equated with the Kingdom.   There's nothing transcendent--the Kingdom is a social reform initiative.

IV. PUTTING ON THE SANDWICH BOARD

For my part, I am going to put on the sandwich board and say, "The End is Near."   And I'm not talking about the end of finals, either--though those will end soon enough.

The Kingdom of God is at hand.   It is near.   It could be here tonight.   It could be here tomorrow.   It could come next week.   It could come in 10,000 years... in 500 million years.   It is no less near.   No less at hand.   It is a reality that is bursting into the world.   And glimpses of it are all around.

When we see acts of social justice, of lifting the voice of the oppressed, we see a glimpse of the Kingdom.   When we see people living out lives of love and mercy, we see a glimpse of the Kingdom.   When we encounter a community--like this one--of love and acceptance shared with all, we see a glimpse of the Kingdom.   In the love between people, in the working for justice, in the establishing of peace, in the witnessing for peace, we see glimpses.   Foretastes.   The way that the communion is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, these witnesses to love and grace are foretastes of the Kingdom.

One theologian (Robert Morse) says that as Christians are to be "on hand for a reality that is at hand but not in hand."   The Kingdom is not here yet--it's why we continue to pray, "thy kingdom come..."   But we needn't lose heart or lose hope.   The Kingdom is near.   It is at hand.   God's promises are true.

The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

V. END

You know, there is one thing to remember about the Red Sox fan in that New Yorker cartoon wearing the sandwich board that said "This is the year": it was the year.   He was right.

And so was John.   And so are we.   Advent is that time of year when we prepare ourselves not only for the coming of Christ at Christmas, but for the coming of the Kingdom.

Advent is that time when we as a community put on the sandwich board that says "The end is near." When we commit ourselves to justice for those who have never had it, we put on that sandwich board.   When we push for peace in the face of a seemingly never ending cycle of violence and war, we proclaim "The End is Near!"   When we seek out the lonely and the lost, when we love those whom no one else will love, when we creat communities of shalom, when we give our all for the Gospel, we put on that sandwich board and proclaim, "The End is Near."

We may look foolish.   Others may scoff.   The wisdom of the world may deem us no saner than the nut case walking down the street in a sandwich board.

But we are being 'on hand' for a reality that is 'at hand' but not yet 'in hand'.   We are testifying to a love that we have already seen at work.   To a kingdom whose glimpses and foretastes we have experienced.   We have seen that love and are living that our for the world.

There may be times when things look bleak and we may be tempted to despair.   Times of doubt and discouragement.   Times of setbacks and dismay.  

Then as always: rejoice and be glad--the end is near.

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Copyright © 2007. Mark A. Schaefer.

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