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November 27, 2005 , 1st Sunday in Advent, All Souls Episcopal Church

When the Trumpet Sounds 
  Mark 13: 24 – 32

I invite you on a journey to explore a territory that might be a bit unfamiliar.  Imagine, if you will, that we are riding along in our car…that we do not have a map or a compass and certainly not  GPS…and that we are, quite suddenly, in an area that is strange and unfamiliar.  It’s a place of high mountains and deep valleys; there are sharp curves, alternate side-roads and we drive along not entirely sure of where we are headed.  While the terrain is unfamiliar, it is also very fascinating. 

 Something similar to this experience is the way many people feel when they look at certain passages in the Bible.  They enter what Karl Barth, the theologian, called “The strange new world within the Bible.”  Many parts of that world are mysterious to people today and the Gospel we just heard can certainly be classified as a “strange” passage.  For we are in the realm of the Apocalyptic and this is not familiar territory to us cell phone “techies”.  The images and the language are not the sort that we are accustomed to using and so these passages are usually skipped over or ignored entirely.  But this is a serious mistake, because within these passages of the apocalypse …..our story reveals truth; it reveals reality.  The word apocalypse means “revelation” or “unveiling” and so, yes….On this first Sunday in Advent we not only think of the Coming of the Christ-child, but also God’s Second Advent, when He comes again.  This passage can speak, as the Quakers say, “directly to our condition.”   We shall see, as we go along, that the terrain as described in Mark l3 and the landscape of our modern existence have striking similarities.  By looking alternately at Mark l3 and at our society we can gain insight into what is the human condition and what ought to be the human response to this condition as we anticipate the Coming of God.

 If we are really to appropriate the help available in the passage, we must become more than people who only look at the material.  We must become those who listen as well.  This chapter is a trumpet blast. It is a Wake Up Call for Christians.  What we hear is not the gentle strains of the flute or harp but rather the sharp, insistent blast of the trumpet.  I am obviously not predicting when God will come again, but important matters are underway, and it is not a time for Rip Van Winkle Christians, sleeping through a revolution. I think one of the most dangerous “ism” today is not hedonism, not materialism, not secularism; it is somnambulism.  Christians who sleepwalk through a demanding time.  Are we sleep-walking, my friends?  Listen, then for the sound of the trumpet that calls us this Advent to faithful watchfulness!!

There is no question but that the first note we hear, sounding loud and clear is the note of urgency and crisis.  Events were taking place that upset the smooth and even ways of life.  The verses of the Gospel do not show us a serene or easy time.

Our passage (and verses before and after our reading in Mark 13) tell us that there were wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom.  To be followers of Jesus was no easy or comfortable calling, for such persons were be delivered up to councils and beaten in synagogues and made to stand for testimony before governors and kings.  Families would be divided, brother against brother, father against child, and children against parents.  Even the world of nature would be in cataclysm, the sun darkened and moon giving no light and the stars falling.  It was, in short, a world in a very serious crisis.

What we are discussing is not a comfortable scenario, is it?  It’s not “happy” bible-reading.   And so some devise strategies to tone down the note of urgency and crisis.  One strategy is simply to refuse to look at unpleasant scripture truths. On a side note: this is really at the heart of the controversy in our Episcopal Church.  What we don’t attempt to see in the Bible, we can pretend doesn’t truly exist.  It’s the “ostrich” approach….it’s indifference with determination.

Or, back to our Scripture, we can ignore the reality of this Scripture, and adopt the strategy which says that conditions such as those outlined in Markl3 may have existed in the past, but they are not part of our  time or our society (a sort of “pollyanna” approach…..everything will be OK)!!  And for a long time in America this was our complacent conviction.  The ills and evils known by other people were unknown to us.  We didn’t have such things in our midst—Ozzie and Harriet live next door to each of us. We all wore bulletproof vests. We were a people who believed in progress; we were improving every day, and perfection was just around the corner.

 But that mood is over, isn’t it?

 Lets place the Gospel side by side with today’s newspaper. We are talking of the same conditions---talks of wars and rumors of wars….nation against nation…families divided ...false christs…confusion…discord.  Does all this sound familiar?  Of course, it does.  (People are becoming more alert, thank God, to the condition of society today, and it is not a pretty picture).  More and more voices are telling us that they feel that we do live in a time of urgency and crisis.  One such voice is that of a fine reporter and commentator Haynes Johnson.  For many years, he was a reporter on the Washington Post and frequent  panelist on “Washington Week in Review,”  he set out to discover what Americans were thinking and spent two years going from Maine to Texas and from East Coast to West Coast.  In his novel “Divided We Fall,” he shared his conclusion and I quote:

“Nothing in my previous experience of traveling across America prepared me for the depth of feelings—the fear, the doubt, the anger, the rage I encountered everywhere.  Strongest of all was a feeling of bewilderment, a troubling sense that the assurances of the old America were passing and that the uncertain new America with it’s emerging promises to be far more unsettling.” End of quote.

But, my friends, the Bible is quite confident that unsettling and tumultuous times are the very periods in which God is active and real.  This is seen all through the pages of Scripture.  The reality of God is known through the Exodus, the exile of all the people of Israel, the way of the Cross, religious persecutions. “The great ages,” said Alfred North Whitehead, “have been the unstable ages.”   And the events which are sometimes hard to bear are the very signs of God’s presence in judgement—and in love..

 What Christians are called upon to do, then, is to be people watchful…to be people faithful, and on the alert, who hear the trumpet blast and are wide awake to God summons.  “Take heed,” we are told, “watch; for you do not know when the time will come.”  Both points are important; to be watchful and to be humble.  Watchful—ready at any time for God’s coming; but humble also—never presuming to know exactly when the moment will come.  We need to take very seriously the word of caution:  “…of that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  And we simply wait and watch and listen for the sound of the trumpet.  While each day praying and striving to make Christ-like decisions—moving forward with hope and faith.  

 So….I have been concerned to sound two notes of the trumpet heard in Mark l3—the note of urgency and crisis and the note of watchfulness.  There is a third note.  It is the note of confidence in God’s final victory….A wonderful Advent theme!

 I have been concerned in this sermon to stress the realistic way in which the Bible looks at life.  It does not pretend, and it is never afraid to portray things just as they are.  It is easy to understand, however, that this realism can be upsetting.  If we look at those events depicted in Mark l3, we can feel threatened and may conclude that there is nothing to be done.  We then may sink into apathetic despair, our hands folded, awaiting some awful doom.

 However, the strange and wonderful things about Biblical faith is that such is never to be our response.  And so, for people who know and are nurtured by the faith of the Bible, despair is never a possibility…how can we be pessimistic Christians. Are these words not a paradox?  For always the Bible looks beyond the darkness of somber events to the reality of a new day.  A new era is about to dawn.  The judgements of God, which may at first seem so upsetting, are the prelude to the new day.  It will be a time of fulfillment and joy.  As the vision of  Revelation tells us, a new heaven and a new earth will come from God.   A kingdom of justice, peace and love will in God’s time be real.  The victory is not one which we achieve on our own.  It is a kingdom we are given as His people of faith!! And what we need for the good of our souls, is this confidence that God will have the victory.

 During World War II, a young Marine was involved in the fierce fighting on Guadalcanal.  He wrote home and said:  “Now please write to me.  And when you write, be sure to tell me who is winning.”   Any of us, involved in a battle for the sake of peace and justice, righteousness and love, need to know who is winning.  And the Gospel assurance is in the words of our Lord:  “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

 Yes, He will come in victory.  How He will come and exactly when He will come is the great mystery.  I reject His coming to rescue us like the cavalry in the last reel of the movie.  I believe God is working today in unpredictable and in even more mysterious ways…He will come, of course, in His own way and in His own time.

 This gives me one final thought:  With all our questions  about Jesus Coming Again, I have discovered that  “the question” isn’t the Second Coming or  “The Second Advent”…but with the First!  If I could believe the “absurdity” as St. Augustine called it, of God coming as a baby in the stable, then I should have little trouble, I think, with His Second Coming.  If this crazy notion of God cutting Himself down to human size is really true, then anything else He chooses to do is anti-climatic.

If Christmas is really about God becoming a helpless child and a vulnerable man, The Christ has to come again.  The mystery and the promise of the First Advent insists on the Second.  Clearly God has not finished His work with the First Advent. We are further away from peace and goodwill on earth than ever before.  There must be a follow-through on the promise of The Birth of the Son of God to mankind.

So our prayer for hope and deliverance and perfection lies not with us…but with Jesus Christ.  He alone is our final and true dependability.  Christ will step through time into time…healing our past, inspiring our present and consummating our eternity with Him.

You and I won’t have to ask, “Who is winning?”  He and we will have won!…………………….Thanks be to God!

 “In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost” Amen

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