Awake and Alert

Sermon planned for Sunday, November 27th, 2011

Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37

Greetings! I wish you all a blessed Advent. If, last week, on Eternity Sunday, we remembered those who died in the previous year, and we are reminded of the certainty of our own mortality; in Advent we are reminded that life is full of uncertainties and suprises. Advent is a time of anticipation. It is a time of watchfulness. And this year, in particular, we are being reminded, in worship, of how God interrupts darkness with light; of how His holiness disturbs our ordinariness.

One of the reasons we celebrate Advent on a yearly basis is to develop important habits in our hearts and minds. If God interrupts our ordinariness with his grace and transformign power, then we better develop the habits of alertness, of watchfulness and anticipation. The passage we heard from the gospel of Mark includes several commands: keep watch! Stay awake! Be aware!

I admit that forming and sustaining these habits is not simple or easy. Keeping your attention on one thing is hard. (slam bible on pulpit) Unless of course there's something that catches your attention. For me I've noticed the difficulty of this most sharply when I'm out in the bush, hunting. I'll be tip-toeing down some path, or sitting there for two or more hours. Keeping a keen eye and staying alert for that long is tough stuff.

Now that it's growing colder, I find it especially difficult to be alert. My mind wanders. I'll start thinking about how cold my legs are. Or I'll start working on my next sermon, in my head. All kinds of things will start to distract my attention from the task at hand. And then I'll remember, "oh ya, I'm hunting", and my ears will perk up, my eyes will focus on each detail... and then minutes later, my mind is wandering again.

Two weeks ago, I was in the bush out in the Pembina valley. As per usual, my thoughts were off in lala land, when I suddenly heard some noise to my right, behind me... I looked around and I saw a good-sized buck slowly walking to my right, just shy of fifty yards away from me. How could I let that guy get so close to me without even noticing? Well, I wasn't paying enough attention. I wasn't being alert, watchful. I might as well have been asleep. The buck was too close and he was in my blind spot, so I had to let him walk past... and that was my last chance of the day.

Keeping your full attention on the task at hand is difficult... I'm getting better at it, but it's the most challenging thing about hunting. It's really hard to sustain the right amount of alertness, for a long period of time. You either want to slip into alarm mode – too much alertness – where every squirrel, and woodpecker, is driving you nuts... or your mind wanders off into oblivion. A good hunter knows how to sustain the right level of alertness for the duration of the hunt.

In Advent, our goal is to cultivate the right kind of watchfulness for the duration of our Christian lives. In Advent, we remember our future – we remember that just as Jesus the Messiah came and lived among us two thousand years ago, the Son of God will also come again at the close of history. Our passage from Mark, this morning, focuses on Jesus' return and the day of judgment. That's what's coming – are we alert?

One way to keep watch is to ratchet-up the anticipation; to get people really anxious about the End times. There are a variety of ways of doing this, most of which Jesus warned his disciples against. There's the Messianic pretender – the person who claims that he is the second coming of Jesus Christ. You have your David Karesh of the Branch Dividians, even Claas Epp Jr., of Russia in the late 1800's. The flip-side of this approach is when leaders tell you exactly who the anti-Christ is. They tell folks that the end is near and that they are standing in as God's representative in the closing drama in history. These are clear examples of disobedience to what Jesus taught about his return. When Jesus returns we will know him, just as sheep know the voice of the Good Shepherd – we will recognize his Call.

Another way to get people to live in fear and anxiety of the end is to speculate about dates. A religious leader will tell his people that he has considered all the relevant scripture passages, interpreted all the signs, and that the leader is certain that Jesus will come again at a specific time, or that the tribulations will start by a certain time or date. Most recently, this approach was taken by Harod Camping and his fellow leaders. Camping claimed that the world was going to end this past May 21st. When that date came and went, Harold Camping changed the date, taking into account that God's mercy meant that the world would get a few extra months... his new precise calculation pointed to October 21st, just over a month ago. In a November news release, Harold Camping admitted that his reading of prophetic scripture had been mistaken; but he made the promising statement that their community was now learning that God knows all these things, even if we do not. I couldn't agree with him more!

These kinds of speculations about dates are directly prohibited by Jesus' words in our passage this morning. Jesus clearly states that "concerning the day and hour no one knows". Mark's gospel has Jesus using very specific words, here, to talk about time. In the Greek we have "τῆς ἡμέρας" and "τῆς ὥρας". Concerning the day and the hour, no one knows. These measurements of time are chronological measurements. You will never be able to guess which day on a calender, or which hour on the clock, Jesus will return... no one knows this: not the angels, not the Son, only the Father.

But that's not the only kind of date speculation out there. Just recently I ran accross another way in which Christians, in our time, are raising their anxiety levels about Jesus' return. It's related to this last method, but a little different. It's a perspective that says that, even though we may not know the day or the hour – the chronological moment of Christ's return, we can, however, know exactly which season we are in, and exactly when we are in the last season. The word 'season' here isn't so much a chronological measurement as a 'kairological' measurement. Kairological time is fulfilled time, the right time, the appropriate time... the time after all signs are fulfilled. It doesn't ask about which day on the calendar, or at which hour Jesus will return – rather, it asks if it is the right time, the apointed time, the fulfilled time.

The pregnancy metaphor works here. Kairos time makes much more sense for couples who are expecting a child. They don't know the exact date or hour (unless you're having the child through cessarian); rather, you know the signs to look for, the approximate date, etc..

Most of the end times anxieties that get ratcheted-up by radio and televesion preachers is done so using this last kind of approach. Look at all the signs. The time is ripe. The birthpangs are already here. The appointed time is just around the corner; any day now. I know of a pastor who has promised his congregation that the children in that sanctuary will live to see Christ's return. This approach recognizes that you cant' predict the chronological time of Christ's return – but it demands that disciples know precisely the kairological time. That we better know when the time is ripe. And so we better know our Revelation timelines, and which season we're in.

This is tempting, I know. But Jesus doesn't only warn about predicting dates and hours – about chronological prediction. Read with me Mark 13:33: "Keep your eyes open, keep awake! For you do not know the apointed time." "Apointed time" here is translated from the Greek 'kairos'. In verse 32 Jesus warned about predicting the 'hemeras' and the 'horas' – the day and the hour – but in the very next verse Jesus declares that we don't even know the 'kairos' time of Jesus' return. We don't even know the apointed time, whether Christ's return is just around the corner, or another thousand years from now.

These three methods of ratcheting-up fear and anxiety about Jesus' return – they don't mesh with Jesus' words as we find them in Mark. So if Jesus doesn't want us guessing the hour, the day, or the season... why does he mention all the signs? Doesn't he want us to have a clear picture of the timing? If not, then why all the signals that the end is just around the corner?

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure of why Jesus gave us all these markers, because I don't clearly understand what they mean. For example, in our passage, Jesus talks about a time when the fig leaf will become tender and sprout. Some take this to mean the re-establishment of the state of Israel in the 40's. Fair enough, but you got to admit that you could read this passage differently. It's not absolutely clear exactly what this is supposed to be a signal of. Same with the 'desolating sacrilege'; who can be 100% certian of what that is supposed to mean? Maybe this ambiguity is why there are hundreds of different end-times preachers giving you plenty of different options. What if Jesus left us these ambiguous signs on purpose?

Despite all the ambiguity of the signs, there is absolute clarity about one thing – Jesus wants us to be prepared, awake, alert, and anticipating his return. As with hunting, though, there is the right kind of alertness, and then there is the mistake on either side. There's my common mistake, where my mind goes wandering into hundreds of different directions, forgetting the task at hand. There's the frequent temptation for us to forget about our Christian calling, being distracted by other worries. Then there's the other mistake in hunting, where you're so paranoid and over-alert, that you get freaked-out by every squirrel, mouse or bird that makes a noise. You need the right kind of alertness if you want to last for the long haul.

We've already pointed out some of the over-alertness that happens among Christians, where people get fearful and anxious to the point that it cripples the rest of their discipleship. In the extreme, you'll get Christians conspiring about how to blow up the Muslim dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, trying to speed up the Lord's coming; forgetting that Jesus tells us to love our neighbours – in fact, Paul writes: "And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

On the other end, many of us Christians live our lives as though Jesus will never return. Some have come to false conclusions, suggesting that life is some kind of never-ending cycle, and that Jesus' return is merely a symbol of what happens when we die and meet Jesus in Paradise. Or Christians live life as though there were no Judge to whom we'll give an account of our actions and our inactions. It's like when my mind goes on holidays out in the bush, Christians live their life as though its a perpetual holiday from discipleship.

This Advent, Jesus invites us, calls us, and commands us to cultivate the right kind of anticipation and alertness. It is not fearful or anxious, in the sense of timing – we're not worried about knowing the date, the hour, or the season, as though any squirrel, mouse, revolution or earthquake could mean that its "TIME TO PANIC!!!". We may be anxious, but that's only because we are a people confronted with our own sin. But we know what to do with sin – confess it, repent from it, and remember what we have become in Jesus Christ, and the freedom in which we now walk.

Cultivating the right kind of alertness, forming the habits of biblical watchfulness, has everything to do with knowing who we are and whose we are. We are the sheep, listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd. Or, as the prophet Isaiah puts it, we are the clay in the hands of the Potter. The alertness to which we are called, as Christians, is a life of confident alertness. Why confidence? Because we know that God is our Father, as Isaiah writes. We are created in the image of God and, like clay, he continues to mold and shape us.

The difficulty of cultivating the right kind of alertness and watchfulness is not an impossible difficulty. This is where, I believe, that verse from Isaiah's prophecy can really help us:
“Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.”
When we claim the Truth of that passage of scripture – that we are created in God's Image – that He is our Father and we are God's people; when we claim the gift of forgiveness that we receive in Jesus Christ, and the freedom we have to live as children of God – then we are freed to live with the right kind of alertness. We are not scared stiff – or even worried about Jesus' return, because we trust the voice of our Good Shepherd and we give our full attention to His call.

Instead, this Advent, we remember Christ's first coming. The Word was made flesh; and we have seen His glory. This Advent, we await his activity in our lives here and now. We worship the Living Word, who encounters us and calls us to joy-filled discipleship. And finally, this Advent, we keep watch for Christ's return – not only in His transforming Spirit, but we also watch for His coming as Judge and Redeemer.

It is a life of anticipation. It's a life of preparation and watchfulness. We watch with joy and ease, but also with focused obedience and allegiance, because we know that we are in the hands of the Potter. This morning we celebrate that we are created in the image of God, shaped by His hands. This means, among other things, that we await Christ's coming with hope and joy, anticipation and preparation. We are not anxious about the timing of the Lord's return; instead, we live our lives in eager expectation of the day when our Creator will reconcile all things to Himself in Jesus Christ, our Friend, our Brother, our Lord. May you keep watch and be alert in hope, joy and peace. Amen!