Lookout Below!

¹⁴The 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. ¹⁵In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ¹⁶In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD is our righteousness.”

²⁵“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. ²⁶People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ²⁷Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. ²⁸Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near…³⁵Be on guard…”

In Calvin and Hobbes, that thoughtful old comic strip about a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger, the following conversation takes place.

"You could step into the road tomorrow and WHAM, you get hit by a cement truck! Then you'd be sorry you put off your pleasures. That's what I say - live for the moment."

Listen carefully, can you hear it? It’s a freight train. No, maybe its that cement truck that Calvin is so afraid of. Maybe it’s a herd of elephants…

Have you begun your Christmas shopping? Have you thought about what kind of Christmas tree you’ll put up this year – fake or fresh, from the farm where you cut it yourself or from Home Depot? Have you figured out whose house you’ll be visiting for the Christmas feast? How many days are you taking off? Is your child prepared for the Sunday school Christmas pageant? Have you figured when your favorite TV Christmas specials are on and how you’re going to find a moment to watch them? Have you brought out your Christmas decorations yet? Have you worked out your new route to get around town with all the extra shoppers jamming the main roads?

Can you hear the cement truck - freight train - herd of elephants it’s coming?

I can… This past Thursday, when we were making our Thanksgiving phone-calls to family and friends, to visit at least from a distance with those whom we couldn’t join on the holiday, we found out that Kim’s cousin, who usually hosts the family on Christmas day, will be unable to do so this year because of construction on their home.

We volunteered. Now this isn’t such a big deal because we’ve had family over before, lots of family and many times. We hosted Thanksgiving again this year for maybe the fifth or sixth time. It’s becoming a tradition. So when I overheard Kim on the phone with her cousin this past Thursday, I said quietly to her, so her cousin wouldn’t hear, “No Problem, we’ll do it.” I was confident…

When Kim got off the phone, she said to me, “OK, now if we’re going to do this, we have to do it right… We have to decorate properly and we have to start thinking about it now.”

Thinking about it now… November 27^th for an event we will host on December 25^th… My goodness she was right. I thought of how beautiful her cousin’s home has been each time we went there for Christmas day. I remembered how special my own mother’s home is every year on Christmas Eve, ever since I was a kid… all the great food, the silver tinsel tree. Not the silver tinsel on the tree, but a silver tinsel tree. Growing up, we had a silver tinsel Christmas tree that we used to decorate. Nobody has those anymore. I did see one on display yesterday at the Methuen Festival of Trees set up as a nostalgic reminder of the year 1959.

Lookout below, because here it comes! Here comes Christmas! Its about to drop on us like an avalanche! Like a grand piano. Like a load of bricks.

Pretty soon we’ll be so wrapped up in Christmas, we’ll forget there’s a war going on and young Americans are being fired upon each day. We’ll forget other responsibilities and maybe even postpone some things until after the New Year. I’ve already been in two different spots where in attempts to schedule particular events on our calendar, the words “better wait til after the holiday” sprang up…

It’s easy to get so distracted and pulled away from balance in our lives, isn’t it? And it doesn’t only happen around Christmas distractions.

Two pastors were e-mailing each other as this passage from the Gospel of Luke came up on their lectionary and they discussed what to preach. Neither of these is me by the way…

One of the two friends who was expecting a new baby in his family, wrote especially about the passage where Jesus says, "be on guard":

“I'm caught. The passage spoke straight to me. It told me - Don't get so caught up in the worries of this life that you are unprepared for the return of the Master. It told me, be alert to the bigger picture. It told me - Understand your place in the greater scheme of things. Be on guard.

And I was convicted. I had been so caught up in waiting for this baby, that I have no idea what else I missed. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was grumbling and hard to get along with. All because of one aspect of my life.

And then Pastor asked his friend – “Now how about you? I'm curious, what one thing or couple of things do you tend to be so focused on that you kind of lose your context?”

The second pastor e-mailed back, “I have to answer - my work. I can get so involved in it, so caught up in it, spending hours before the computer, and then rushing around doing visits and getting ready for meetings and then going to them - that I forget what it is that I am proclaiming - that I can miss my family's joys and what it is God is actually doing all around me.”[2]

Personal events like these can be so dangerous, because they are subtle and sneaky. We don't realize what is happening until it is too late. Remember that freight train or herd of elephants I mentioned before. Most times, you can’t hear such things coming unless they’ve already passed.

Where I grew up in Belmont, there was a train track behind the school. At certain times of the day, if we were outside we’d hear the commuter rail trains go by. Man, they could be loud if they were going fast. But you wouldn’t hear them until they were right on top of you. We learned in those days about the Doppler effect. Do you know what that is? It’s when the sound around a moving object is distorted because it is moving.

Ever hear a car go by in the moment its driver is leaning on the horn. The sound of the horn changes because of the car’s movement. With the train it was the same. Because the train moved so fast, the din of its passing was almost outrun by the speeding train, so by the time the sound waves traveled to reach your ears, the train was on top of you as well.

Sometimes personal experiences, everyday life, the Christmas rush can be right on top of us and we never hear them coming. All of a sudden we're trapped, working so hard, being so focused on one thing, that we begin to miss the bigger picture.

That's why Jesus tells us to be alert. To watch. To not get so caught up in the everyday little things or the big things that we lose sight of the larger scheme, that we fail to look down the road, that we fail to see the presence of the Kingdom looming towards us with all its hope - all its promise.

What about you? Do you feel lost in today? - lost in the moment that is at hand and the concerns that this moment brings? Has your life been taken over by one thing or another so that you can't appreciate what else is going on? What else is happening?

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. ²⁶People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ²⁷Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.”

Jesus spoke of a time that would be even more traumatic and more unbelievable and more intimidating and more awesome than the Christmas rush. It was not Christmas - the coming of Santa Claus or our families and friends bearing gifts and expecting us to have theirs.

Jesus was talking of the coming of Christ himself. Yes he’s talking like this as he’s already walking the streets with his disciples. He was the Christ, and he was already there. Yet he was telling them of a time after he would be separated from them, that he would return.

In our lives we celebrate Christmas, the coming of a holiday, a time for families and friends and food and fun. We can hear it coming down the road and we can anticipate its responsibilities and tasks falling on our shoulders like a great weight. But as we do so, we can be so easily distracted. We can be wrapped up on the hurry, the hassle of the holiday and forget the promise that reaches beyond the date on the calendar, the red and green colors and the parties we plan.

Yes we’re so distracted that we haven’t got time to slow down and enjoy the moments and blessings of our days. We get so rushed and hurried that we put so much of our regular lives on the back burner and on hold. Yet there’s even more that we miss.

Jesus tells his disciples to prepare for something else. He tells them to prepare for a new reality. A new world, a new world order more radical and profoundly different than anything a politician can propose or predict. He tells them of his return.

And when he returns, he told them a new age would dawn with him. He tells them to Look out Below.! “Stand up and raise your heads for your redemption is drawing near.

And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. ²³And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.[3]

No abomination or falsehood. Nothing unclean. No night, no crying, no tears, no death. The nations and the kings of earth will accept it and will walk in its light!

These words are words of assurance as well that the prophecies of Jeremiah would be fulfilled…

Jeremiah himself said when the righteous Branch of Jesse springs up, that righteousness and justice would be executed and the people of God will be saved. When we look down the road at the freight train that is Christmas, yes we are distracted and pulled away from the rest of our lives, from a certain balance and normalcy of the rest of the year. But we're also distracted from the truth of Christmas. During Advent we look down the road listening to the signs that something huge is coming. We stand up and raise our heads to the skies, like Jesus said, but the grand piano falling on our head is not what Jesus is warning us about. Generally even we who anticipate Christmas and celebrate Advent are look out, not necessarily for the righteous reign of God, for a time when the nations and their rulers will accept the reign of God, when there will be no falsehood, abomination, or uncleanness, no crying, no tears, and no death, all under the banner of the Lamb of God, the righteous, meek and humble kingdom of God, Jesus promises. This isn't so much what were anticipating as we prepare our Christmas celebrations as much as for a great winter festival of lights and food and family and Santa Claus. Nice things, but not quite true to Christ's warnings of what to prepare for. This Advent, as Christmas rushes upon us, I hope hat we won't be completely trampled, that we might enjoy our Christmas festival. But that we might also stand up and look up, look to the heavens for what it means that Christ is coming. What it means that when the Righteous Kingdom comes, everything as we know it will change. Would you be prepared for that? To have everything in your life aligned with God and appropriate for acceptance into God's righteous kingdom? That's what Advent is about, preparing for that coming kingdom. I pray that in the coming month, we may devote some thought to what we might do in our lives to make that kingdom a reality, to usher it in, at least as much as we are able, in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives and in our world. Amen.

[1] Sermon material and Calvin and Hobbes quote from “Looking Forward in Hope” Rev. Richard J. Fairchild 2000 http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/c-ad01smsu.html

[2] Fairchild 2000

[3] Revelation 21:1-4,22-27

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