First Reading: Isaiah 51:4-6
4“Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation; for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples. 5My righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait. 6Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.”
Psalm 93
1The Lord is King; he has put on splendid apparel; the Lord has put on his apparel and girded himself with strength. 2He has made the whole world so sure that it cannot be moved; 3Ever since the world began, your throne has been established; you are from everlasting. 4The waters have lifted up, O Lord, the waters have lifted up their voice; the waters have lifted up their pounding waves. 5Mightier than the sound of many waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea, mightier is the Lord who dwells on high. 6Your testimonies are very sure, and holiness adorns your house, O Lord, forever and forevermore.
Second Reading: Revelation 1:4b-8
4bGrace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. 8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Gospel: Mark 13:24-37
24{Jesus said to Peter, James, John and Andrew,} “In those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. 28From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 32But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35Therefore stay awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning — 36lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”
Stay Awake!
A young professional from Ohio decided to seek her fortune, discern her vocation, and potentially change her life for the better, by moving to England. Once in London, she began to pursue an advanced degree and sought new opportunities in the working world. One of the things she kept from the Midwest was her insatiable love for the Chicago Cubs baseball team. She followed the games on the internet, listening to the live feeds. The problem was that when the games started, often around seven or eight o’clock in the evening in the United States, it was one or two o’clock the following morning in London. That made for some very late — or early — bedtimes.
In the year when the Cubs were on the cusp of going for the World Series, she eagerly tuned in to listen to the game that would decide who would qualify. After tuning in to the game, the inevitable happened. She fell asleep and awoke only to hear the post-game wrap-up. The Cubs had won, they were in the Series. However, she had missed all the excitement. On her Facebook page she lamented, “I’ve waited years for a moment like this, and of course I slept through it!” Two things can be learned here. One, try to get more sleep. Or, and more importantly, try to order your affairs in such a way that you’re alert when events transpire that you believe are of critical importance.
St. Mark sets the tone not only for this Christ the King Sunday, but also for the coming season of Advent, with this appropriate advice: “Something important is coming. Stay awake! Don’t miss it!” The context for Mark’s good advice is a parable that sounds to modern readers like an antique story hardly applicable for today. The entire thirteenth chapter of Mark is known to biblical scholars as ‘The Little Apocalypse.’ To 1st century listeners, an apocalypse was understood to be a rolling up of the scroll of history, a dramatic ending of one age and the ushering in of a new and different one.
The parable Jesus told, is about watching and waiting — and staying awake — and is meant to prepare the faithful, including this generation’s faithful, for that moment in human history when God’s surprise interruption of the ordinary flow of things, can and does break in. And the why is important. Simply put, it’s because the universe is grounded in God, who is the source and creator of everything. We don’t exist, much less stay alive, thrive, and survive, without God’s love and mercy flowing in and through us, giving us life and meaning, both now and for the future.
The question is, is it possible to go to sleep with the reality that Jesus will return at an unknown time, and suppose that life is an accident—or a meaningless joke. Can we live our lives with no realization, whatsoever, that this life will come to an end and then will come the final judgement? Can we simply stumble along, without wondering where we came from and where we’re going? This is the purpose of today’s Gospel reading and the whole of the Bible for that matter. As St. Paul reminds the Ephesian church, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (5:14). Jesus’ warning, in today’s reading, echoes Isaiah’s words as well, “Be on guard, keep awake.”
What’s important is that we need to stay awake to the power, commands, and promises of God. They come at us endlessly, surprisingly, in ways we sometimes least expect. If we choose instead to sleep, we could miss it, we could sleep through this life changing event. Or we can remain awake to the promises—that we are loved, that we are God’s children, and that we have an eternal destiny. But this is a reality that requires us to be ever prepared. We cannot be found asleep at the wheel.
As most of you know, I served in the Air Force for nearly 3 decades, and in that time, I learned the meaning of the phrase, “Hurry up and wait!” As the years progressed in my career, I spent countless hours preparing for briefing after briefing, meeting after meeting, and training session after training session. As someone who held a subordinate rank to the officers in charge, I learned that I had to be fully prepared to answer any question that might be asked, and always be at the meetings ahead of time. Being late and being unprepared was not an option, not if I wanted to continue serving in the military.
Deterrence aside, one of the areas we were always preparing for was war. This is the primary mission of the military. As my older brother was so fond of saying, ‘When deterrence fails, it’s the job of the military to blow things up and drive the enemy into submission.’ Now this isn’t a direct quote, Phil would oftentimes be much more colorful in the way he phrased his statement. The point is, we spent countless hours and countless trillions of dollars for one reason, to be ready to “fly, fight, and win.” This reality came into sharp focus for me in early August of 1990.
On Tuesday, August 14th at 2:45 PM, my boss walked out of his office and told me to not let anyone go and to have everyone—no exceptions—everyone on both day and swing shifts to meet in the hallway. I knew something was up; not only had my boss told me not to go anywhere the previous weekend, but all day he seemed agitated and had been going back and forth to meetings. The reason for his directive and behavior became clear when he quickly informed us that we were to prepare to deploy in support of Operation Desert Shield. What we had spent years preparing for, was now about to be a reality.
In the hallway briefing, he told us the bare minimum and said that there was no time for further explanation; we needed to immediately begin packing our equipment to be loaded on the first available C-5 aircraft that landed. Worse yet, they couldn’t tell us when that would happen. Over the next several hours, the team that was to deploy was selected and about 10:00 PM that night I was told I would be part of that team and was sent home.
Early the next morning Terry and I got up and began to pack the house, because we had signed for a new house the day before. Terry’s dad rented a truck, and I was at the old house loading and Terry was at the new house unloading until the phone was moved to the new house, we then switched places. Oh, did I forget to mention that Terry was 7 weeks pregnant with Leanna! The process went on throughout the day until I was called back into work at 7:00 pm that night, on what was now Wednesday, to process. We were placed in a room and our Chemical warfare gear was inspected, our medical records were checked, and we received our shots. We were then moved to another room to once again wait. A few more hours went by.
About midnight, I was again sent home and told to stay by the phone. Early on Thursday I received a call that the aircraft we needed inbound and we were to once again report to the staging area. I said goodbye again and headed in. Needless to say, this process repeated itself at least two more times until late Thursday evening when a C-5 actually landed and was loaded with our cargo. Late that night we finally took off and early Saturday morning local time, we were informed that we had landed at our deployment destination, a lovely spot, in the middle of nowhere, called Thumrait, Oman.
Thumrait was a vehicle storage base with no sleeping quarters, no dining facilities, and only a handful of buildings needed to support air operations and the maintenance and storage of vehicles. The standing joke among the leaders was that you have those in Dharan, you have those living in austere living conditions, and then you have Seymour Johnson. As the ramp of the C-5 aircraft was lowered, we found ourselves looking across the fence at a very curious camel.
The point of me sharing this story is to drive home the fact that there are certain things in this life that we must spend our time being prepared. And just like my time training for things like Chemical and Biological Warfare, where a single mistake could cost you your life, being prepared for Jesus’ return is even more important. And I can’t stress this enough, unlike in a chemical environment, where a mistake could cost someone this life, being unprepared for the return of Jesus could cost someone their eternal life. And just like I didn’t know when I would come home from the Missile East after Desert Storm, we don’t know when Jesus will return to take His followers to be with Him forever.
Jesus is very clear in our Gospel reading for today, “Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33). This is of such importance, that Jesus tells us 5 times in four verses to “Be on guard, keep awake or stay awake! (vs. 33-37). To underscore just how important Jesus words are here, understanding the Greek phrase “Ble-pete agry-pneite” might be helpful in emphasizing what Jesus is saying in these four verses. Ble-pete means to perceive, or to discern the importance, and agry-pneite is to be sleepless, always prepared, to remain ever vigilant in keeping watch.
In the Amplified translation, the transliterators of this version chose the following words for verse 33 adding the words, [and pray]; “Be on guard and stay constantly alert [and pray], for you do not know when the appointed time will come.” Later in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus would once again warn the disciples, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). We are entreated to remain ready and be ever vigilant for Jesus’ return. However, this doesn’t mean that we should obsess over this fact, nor should we allow this future event to cause us anxiety. These warnings from Jesus are meant to inform us of His promise to return, not scare us as if we had little hope for the future.
Growing up in a different tradition, passages like these were used by pastors to scare the stuffing out of us. In the 60’s and 70’s, it was a regular practice of the clergy and evangelists of my former denomination to, “scare the sin out of us.” I spent my early childhood absolutely convinced that I was but one, tiny, slip of being forever condemned to the eternal fires of Hell. I was sure that if I wasn’t “saved” at least three times a week, or at every church service or revival meeting, then I was absolutely doomed. I lived in constant fear that the “Rapture” would happen, and I would be left behind. The point is, that I needlessly spent my younger years in constant anxiety over my eternal fate.
Of course, this type of teaching leaves a person in perpetual fear of their eternal fate, and God is seen as a vengeful God who is looking for any way He can, to condemn someone to eternal punishment. There is no assurance of the promises given in Baptism, or that God is indeed a loving and merciful God. Of course, we must be careful that we don’t go to the other extreme that sees God as big Teddy bear that is all love, and fails to acknowledge that God is also a just judge, and as our Confession so states, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end” (Nicene Creed).
This Teddy bear view of God is the opposite extreme from my childhood teaching which forwards that since God is love, and that He doesn’t want anyone to be lost, and since we are Baptized, then all “good people” go to heaven. This heretical teaching is called “Universal Salvation”.
Universal Salvation teaches that so long as we acknowledge that God exists, no matter what you might call Him, Budda, Brahman, Allah, the Great Spirit, or whatever, and a person is basically good, then everyone who is “good” will go in heaven. While this is a comforting thought, it’s blatantly untrue. Jesus was clear when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Farther but by me (John 14:6). Furthermore, Jesus in Matthew 7:21, tells us, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
As a preacher of both Law and Gospel, I’m bound by my Ordination Vows to dispel this errant teaching. To be clear, salvation isn’t difficult. And as I’ve said many times, we don’t earn salvation by simply being good. All we must do is confess our sins, believe that Jesus died to save us, and trust in God’s amazing grace. Jesus also reminded us that, “If you love me, [you will] keep my commands” (John 14:15). As I remind you all the time, our call is to serve God with a willing heart and be faithful in our service in God’s kingdom. If we do this, there’s no need to fear the future.
In Baptism we were, “named and claimed” as a child of God. But this is just the beginning of the life of a Christian. Luther reminded us that the life of a disciple is the daily return to our Baptism, of dying daily to sin and the Old Adam, and returning to the grace and mercy of God. As Baptized and forgiven Children of God, we are called to spend the rest of our lives in faithful service to God’s kingdom and in the joy filled preparation for Jesus’ return. Jesus’ warning is of paramount importance for us today, “Be on guard, keep awake”, the future is indeed bright for all who are faithful.
Amen