Signs of the Times
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
November 30, 2003
Jeremiah 33: 14-16; Luke 21:25-36
I. INTRODUCTION—SIGNS
Every car has a number of little warning lights on the dash board that alert the driver to some kind of danger or problem. The car industry calls these indicator lights. Everyone else usually calls them “idiot lights”—the reason being that if you wait until the light comes on before addressing the problem, you’re an idiot. The experienced motorist would have seen the signs of impending danger long before the idiot light came on. The experienced motorist would have regularly checked the oil or the tires, listened to the sounds of the engine and noticed a problem before a factory installed failsafe called their attention to the problem.
In the same way, sailors of old could tell what kind of weather was awaiting them long before it arrived. That’s the origin of the “red skies at night, sailors delight; red skies at morning, sailors take warning.” It doesn’t do a sailor any good to discover what kind of weather is coming by going through it. A prepared sailor seeks to know the signs of the weather.
II. THE TEXT
Jesus is teaching his disciples to be mindful of the signs that will let them know when the Kingdom is at hand. Jesus and his disciples are in the Temple. Some of the disciples had remarked about how beautiful the temple was. Jesus had responded:
“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Luke 21:6
His disciples then ask him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” They want to know the signs that will give them a clue into the future and into God’s plan. Like a good motorist, or an experienced sailor, they wish to know what to look for. It is after this question that Jesus begins to teach them concerning signs.
He describes false messiahs, nations at war with one another, earthquakes, plagues, arrests, and persecutions. Divisions within families and betrayals by family members. Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies. The faithful will have to flee.
Then after this, there will be signs in the sun, moon, and stars themselves, along with roaring of the seas causing confusion and fear among the peoples. That is, the destruction and chaos among people will be followed by signs in nature itself.
III. COMFORT
It’s an unsettling vision. Though it’s not meant to be—it’s meant to be reassuring. The early church would have recognized much of what was being referred to in this passage. They had seen wars. They had seen the temple destroyed, stony by stone. They had seen foreign armies surrounding Jerusalem. They had suffered persecutions. They had been handed over, arrested. They had been betrayed by members of their own families. They had witnessed great devastation.
Jesus’ message here is one of staying fast. “…do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately, “ he says. “But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
In effect, Luke gives us Jesus’ words not so much as a record of something Jesus happened to tell the disciples, but of something Jesus is telling the ancient church about the signs are already around them. Here Luke gives us Jesus’ words to be a message of comfort to an afflicted and suffering Church. It is meant to address a church eagerly awaiting Jesus’ return, that is witnessing calamity and catastrophe everywhere around it. It is saying, ‘Hold fast, these are but the birth pangs—the Kingdom is at hand.’
Nevertheless, it is not always interpreted in a comforting way. Many look at these texts as predictive of doom and gloom, rather than interpretive of existing problems. There are people getting rich off of speculating about the end and tying those speculations to current events. There’s a man and his wife who used to be on Channel 20 every Sunday night (they still may be, I haven’t checked in a while), who spend a great deal of time trying to tie current events to Biblical prophecy. These two are particularly convinced that the European Union is the 12-headed beast of the Book of Revelation. (Never mind that the EU has 15 members—three of them are expected to be expelled from the EU, according to these “experts.”) This is not a new industry, people have been trying to interpret their particular war, or their particular plague, or their particular devastation to the devastation described in these Apocalyptic passages of the Gospel. All you had to do was turn on the radio on September 11th to hear callers tying the event to Biblical prophecies of the end.
But, Jesus is not giving us a checklist of things to watch out for so that we’ll know the time of the Second Coming. Quite the contrary, he warns us that no one knows the hour of that coming—not even the Son! Jesus is not teaching us look for calamity—he is teaching us to read the signs of the times in the context of the Gospel. If the world around you seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, the gospel—almost paradoxically–tells us that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
IV. SIGNS OF THE TIMES
How should we read the signs of our times?
Well, let’s see. There are plenty of nations at war with other nations (including our own). There are plagues—AIDS, cholera. There are persecutions. There are arrests. There are all kinds of false messiahs out there. And there are earthquakes. Portents. This passage could have been written for the 21st century as easily as it could have been for the first century. Why is it that we don’t feel very hopeful about these signs? Luke’s text is meant to comfort those who would hear it.
Maybe it’s because things are a little different for us than for Luke’s audience. After all, they lived in the Pax Romana, a period of peace because no nation was strong enough to attack the Roman Empire. There weren’t a lot of invasions or wars. There was peace and stability. Perhaps, the Jewish revolt in the year 68 and all the violence and destruction that followed it really shocking to everyone and they struggled to interpret what such an event could mean. Perhaps a text interpreting the strife as a pre-figuring of hope was easier to understand.
And as a corollary, perhaps we don’t take hope from this passage because in our experience, wars and plagues and strife are nothing new. Indeed, they are very old and seem to have been going on in our world every moment since Jesus said “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.”
How on earth are we to take hope in something that we have become so used to? In something that we have come to see as a sign of the brokenness of the world rather than as a sign of its restoration?
Well, there are hopeful signs if you know where to look for them. When I look out upon this congregation, I am hopeful. You as a generation are a sign of hope to me. You’re much more tolerant and inclusive than my own Generation X, and certainly more global in your thinking than the baby-boomers ever were. You take racial and gender equality as a given, rather than as something you never expect to see. You are more involved with one another and your horizons reach out from beyond your neighborhood or town to the world itself. That’s a sign, if ever I saw one.
I was waiting outside a movie theater Friday when I saw a young woman get out of a cab. She noticed an elderly woman on the sidewalk trying to hail the cab she had just gotten out of. She told the cab driver to wait, then went over and helped the old woman along, giving her the shelter of her umbrella in the process. That’s a sign.
There are signs of God’s grace as surely as there are Christmas decorations in all the shops downtown.
V. IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS
I don’t know how many of you have had occasion to be downtown lately. They have already put up the wreaths that trim Georgetown streetlights. There are pine boughs, red ribbons, and Christmas lights going up all over every day. A sure sign that Christmas is on its way.
We sure make a big deal about Christmas in this country. So much so that I often have to fight to preserve a sense of Advent in our congregation, a sense of Christmas coming as opposed to Christmas already arrived. Because Christmas has become such a big deal in America, we in the Church can often forget an important truth about the Christian Year. Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and Hollywood may not agree with us, but for those of us in the Church, Christmas is not the most important day of the Christian year. You may have known that already. But Easter isn’t either. How many of you knew that?
The most important day of the Christian year is Sunday. Today. Last Sunday. Next Sunday. The most important day is the Lord’s Day. The ongoing commemoration of the Resurrection that took place on Easter—the Great Sunday. For us Christians, it is the Resurrection of Christ that gives meaning to everything else. We would not celebrate Christmas if God had not raised Christ from the dead in the first place.
The early church saw in Jesus’ resurrection proof of the vindication and resurrection that awaits us all. They saw it as proof that God was at work in the world, that God’s purposes were being fulfilled, that God’s people would not wait forever.
The Resurrection is the biggest sign of them all. It is the sign which informs all others. When the early church saw wars and devastation they were confident in God’s justice because they had already experienced it in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
VI. CONCLUSION
I have said many times before that I only have one sermon, you just get to hear it twenty minutes at a time. My one sermon is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s it. That’s the list. If you’ve heard me preach at least once before and haven’t gotten the idea that the Resurrection is the cornerstone of our faith, then I haven’t done a good job of preaching my one sermon.
We go into advent with expectation of imminent Incarnation. We slog our way through a difficult and often discouraging world with a profound sense of hope. Some might question us as to how we can maintain such hope and faith in the light of such depressing signs of the times.
We can respond with the same conviction shared by the prophet Jeremiah, when he said, “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah…” We can be confident of God’s vindication because we have seen the greatest sign of the times in Christ Jesus.
