Are We There Yet? A Sermon for 1 Advent
“Are we there yet?”
“Are we there yet?”
“Are we there yet?”
This irritating refrain is still ringing in my ears after our 11-hour drive home from North Carolina yesterday. It was the same refrain Emily and I heard on the drive up to North Carolina last Sunday. And it is the refrain my parents heard from my sister and me decades ago. And I’m sure that it is a refrain that many of you have heard before during your own family adventures.
Julian and Madeleine weren’t impressed when I applauded them for asking such a theologically apt question on the eve of Advent. But the yearning cry of “Are we there yet?” is an apocalyptic question. It is an Advent question.
Our gospel lesson today is a brief snippet from the 24th chapter of Matthew, which contains Jesus’ lengthy response to his disciples’ question, “Tell us…what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” In other words, “If we are not there yet, when and how will be know when we are?” Will there be a “Welcome to the End of the Age” sign when we cross the line?
So, I think it is fair to say that the Church doesn’t ease us into the beginning of the new year. We are immediately thrust into the breadth and depth of the questions of the end times.
During the Middle Ages, when the Bubonic Plague killed an estimated 75-200 million people, Christians, like their Jewish and early Christian ancestors, began to interpret the calamities of the times as a signal that the end was near. Once again, the refrain of “Are we there yet” began to surface. As such, the season of Advent became the time when the Church focused their preaching and teaching on what became known as the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
The first of the Four Last Things – death - was an ever-present reality in the Middle Ages. Even before the plague, as populations grew in urban areas, there was a much higher infant mortality rate and a much shorter life expectancy. Illness, suffering, and death happened in homes, not in hospitals or nursing homes. The reality of death was something that people of all ages had to face. Folks couldn’t just decide to do what we do now and talk about uplifting things like faith, hope, joy, and peace. So, in the midst of such prolific suffering and death, Christians during the Middle Ages rightfully began to search for a way to reflect theologically on what was happening around them. The Church was the context for them to grapple with the meaning of this life and the next. For Christians, hopefully there was something better waiting for them than the misery that they experienced in their earthly lives.
Fast-forwarding to today, for 1st-world, post-modern Christians, there is much less interest or focus on the Four Last Things of death, judgment, heaven, and hell. One reason is that overall, we live much longer, healthier lives. Another reason is that for many of us, life here is pretty dang good. In our post-enlightenment context, for many people there is much less hope or expectation for a life other than the one we are experiencing right now.
What would be the benefit of having topics of death, judgment, heaven, and hell burning in our hearts and minds like they were for our forebears in the faith?
Perhaps the answer lies in Jesus’ response to his disciples’ question in today’s text. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas tells us that, “Jesus had earlier condemned the Pharisees and Sadducees for asking for a sign (Matt 16:1-4), but he now uses the disciples’ question to train them to know how to wait in a world in which some presume they can read the signs of the time. Jesus tells the disciples that this is exactly what they must NOT do. Their task is not to anticipate the end of time, but rather their task is to learn to endure even under persecution (Matt 24:13). All the disciples need to know, all we need to know, is that a new age has begun in Christ. Jesus is preparing his disciples for the long haul…Endurance is the way of the disciple between the time of Jesus and the proclamation of the good news of the kingdom throughout the world… Jesus’ name for such faithfulness is endurance.”[1]
Perhaps the season of Advent is calling us also into a space of watchfulness; perhaps we can hear the Church inviting us to be alert… to be awake… but not to be anxious about the day and time of our own death as well as that of the 2nd coming of Christ.
Stanley Hauerwas goes on to assert that, “We, along with the disciples, make a disastrous mistake, however, if we all allow our imaginations to be possessed by the image of apocalypse rather than by the one on whom those images are meant to focus our attention – that is, Jesus…Disciples are not in the game of prediction. Rather, they are called to be ready and prepared. Disciples, like Noah, are to build an ark even if it is not raining. The name given to that ark is the Church.”[2]
I’d assert that the same goes not only for the apocalypse, but also for our own death. We are not in the game of prediction. We are simply called to be ready and prepared to meet our own death, which none of us will avoid.
On the topic of anxiety about trying to predict the day and time of our own deaths, one of the great early Church fathers - John Chrysostom said, “If most people knew when they would die, they would exert themselves in that hour. But in order that they may exert themselves at all times, [God] does not specify either a general time or the particular time. He wants them vigilant in their readiness and always to be striving. For this reason, he also leaves the end of each person’s life uncertain.”
When I was on vacation up in North Carolina, I had the opportunity to go visit my uncle Jim in the hospital on Thanksgiving Day. He is in the ICU after having heart surgery a few weeks ago. Since his surgery, there have been several complications, and we have all been fervently praying for him to come through this ordeal.
When I think back on my aunt Sally, my cousin Anna and I praying over Jim, who is a retired Presbyterian minister, I now see that we were being held afloat by the ark that we call the Church. The medical professionals have language to describe Jim’s medical condition and outlook. But those explanations don’t provide us with ultimate meaning. Only the ark of the Church can give us the language to make meaning of things that matter as much as life and death. As I doused Jim’s head to remind him of his baptism, and as I read the psalms and prayers of the Church, I thought of the countless people my uncle Jim had done this for when he served a pastor of the ark that is called the Church. And I was confident that should Jim die in the days or weeks to come, he will meet his death with the blessed assurance of life everlasting.
As such, in the holy season of Advent, the Church invites us to focus on what really matters. Where are we headed with all of this? What are we doing here? Who or what are we waiting on? Is there a meaning to this life? Surely there must be more to Christianity than just being kind, generous, and behaving well. If so, what is it?
I can understand a hesitancy and reluctance for us to pull out our Advent wreaths with our children and grandchildren and tell them that we are going to focus on death, judgment, heaven, and hell this month. But I can’t say the same for adults. These themes are presented to us in our scriptures during Advent, and it is spiritual malpractice if we turn the other way.
So, back to the initial question: Are we there yet? This was the disciples’ question 2,000 years ago; this was the question of Christians during the Middle Ages; and this is our question today. Jesus’ answer was “yes and no.” In him, the kingdom of heaven had been inaugurated. But not yet wholly fulfilled.
And Jesus’ response to this important question about the day and time of our own death and well as the day and time of the consummation of salvation history is the same: “It’s not for us to know. Therefore, we are to navigate these times with patient, hope-filled endurance…a faithful, humble submission to “not knowing the day or time,” but believing that when it comes, we will be ready.”
[1] Hauerwas, Stanley. “Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Matthew.” P. 201-202.
[2] Hauerwas, Stanley. “Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Matthew.” P. 206.