“AN UNEXPECTED HOUR”

Matthew 24: 36-44

A Sermon based upon Matthew 24: 36-44

by Dr.  Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Partnership,

First Sunday of Advent, Year A

November 28^th, 2010

On January 27, 1986 my wife and I were headed from Shelby to Chapel Hill for a medical consultation.  We had the radio on in the car as we traveled down I-40/I-85.  The whole nation was in expectation and it was a special moment.  It was suppose to be a great day.  As we were listening to the radio, the eyes of most people were on their Television.  We had the first school teacher as an astronaut.    It was supposed to be a great moment in American history.  We loved the very human stories about all those astronauts headed into orbit that day.   There was the countdown, the ignition, the liftoff as all the power of that rocket lifted them up higher into the air.  Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the rocket exploded.  I couldn’t believe my ears.  Most couldn’t believe their eyes.  It wasn’t until we stopped to eat that we were able to see the truth of what we did not want to believe.  All the dreams, hopes, prayers and efforts of NASA, those families, and these astronauts were blown into smithereens.  It all came at such a sudden, unexpected moment.  No one anticipated it.  No one saw it coming.

WE WON’T SEE IT COMING

So shall it be with the coming of the Son of Man, says Jesus.  This is how the end will come.  It will come suddenly, unexpectedly, surprisingly, out of the blue, we say, and like a flash of lightening.   It will come like that thief who crashed into the Amish store on Windsor Road.  The owner tried to get out, but he didn’t have a key for the back door.  He could not escape until the thieves entered and beat him on the head.  He did not see it coming. No one will see the final end coming, there will be signs, but the end will come suddenly, at an “unexpected hour”. 

It will be something like that stampede in Cambodia last week.  No one saw that coming either and no one is sure why it happened.  During a festival to mark the end of the rainy season in Phnom Penh, a crowd of people walking on a suspension bridge suddenly panicked, and 375 people were trampled to death.   It was horrible.  There were depressing scenes of suffocation and desperate cries for help.  Someone thought people were being electrocuted and others shouted the bridge was collapsing.  But it appears that the cause was panic, not electricity nor collapse.   Relatives were weeping over the pile of bodies, which included their loved ones.  It came suddenly and no one knew what or why it happened.

When the end comes, Jesus says, it will come in an “unexpected moment”, says Jesus.   But the moment Jesus describes here is more normal, and much less dramatic.   “For as the days of Noah….as in those days…they were eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark.  They knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away….” (24: 37-39).  It will be so sudden, so unexpected, “two will be working in the field… one will be taken, the other left…. Two will be grinding meal….one taken, the other left. Keep awake…YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT DAY YOUR LORD IS COMING…. (24: 40-42).

  

What Jesus wants to do with this “word” of warning, is not to be frightened into a panic, but to be prepared, to get ready, and to keep our eyes wide open, in a world where it seems more and more have their eyes “wide shut.”

Just the other day I visited a man in the hospital and his wife was there.  She said, we were just going through the day and suddenly, unexpectedly, without warning everything changed.   In the next moment he was in ICU.  We know how quickly everything can change.   Endings are happening all around us and in every moment.   Someone is being born, but also someone’s world is coming to an end.   I’ve worked in a hospital and I’ve been in the center of life and death all my life.  You don’t have to live at the end of the world to face the end of your world.  Be ready.  Be alert.  Stay awake.  This is the very “true”, but often “denied” or “ignored” wisdom of the Bible and the wisdom of Jesus.  YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT DAY YOUR LORD will come for you.  BE READY!

GET READY, THE END WILL COME!

But what does it mean to “get ready”, to “stay awake” and to prepare for a moment in time we cannot predict, and even Jesus could not predict?  Our text begins with this very “disclaimer” about predicting the end:  “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (vs. 36).  How do we get ready for what “no one knows”, even Jesus didn’t know?

A couple weeks ago, when we considered a very similar text from Luke, I spoke about the wrong and wayward use of the Bible, which is very popular these days, to turn the Bible into some kind “crystal ball” for reading into the future.   If you’ve read the Hebrew Bible, God didn’t like King Saul calling upon a witch of Endor to call up the dead Samuel to make predictions.  It is not good use of the Bible or the words of Jesus to make them some kind exact detailed account of what the end will be like.  Jesus is not telling us “what” will happen, but he is telling us “how” it will happen.  He wants us to know that it will take place suddenly, unexpectedly, surprisingly, and unpredictably.   Again, as I said in the sermon a couple of weeks ago, most of the imagery Jesus uses refers to the Fall of Jerusalem, like invading armies entering the fields grabbing up certain people to make them slaves, but leaving others behind.  The terrors of the end will be random, unpredictable and without logic.  “One will be taken…the other will be left.”  Remember Jesus has already told people, “If someone asks you’re your coat, give him your overcoat also. …. If someone asks you to go one mile, go with them two.”   The imagery here is much the same.  It is random, unexpected and unpredictable.  When the Roman armies came to Jerusalem, people were randomly grabbed and taken, while others where left alive.   Jesus says this is the unpredictable and random way the end comes. 

But these words are not just true to invading armies, but they are true to how the end can come to any of us.   We just don’t know who will be here in worship next week.  We don’t know who will have to go to the doctor and not come back home.  We don’t know who will lose their job.  We don’t know who will die of a heart attack.  We don’t know who will lose their health or worse, lose their mind.  I don’t know whose funeral I will have to do next, or whether or not you will be making arrangements to bury me.   Be ready!   We just don’t know!   This is undeniable wisdom of the Bible and of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

But again, what good is it in considering this information, this reality that we all spend so much time in our lives avoiding, denying, and putting off as long as possible.  What good is it to be ready, to stake alert, to wake up and know the end could come any minute.  Isn’t this like those poor people in Cambodia, like shouting “fire” in crowded building, or shouting “collapse” on a crowded bridge?  Isn’t this just a tactic to get us to make our will or to get us to “straighten up” and live our lives for God?   Well, yes!  Maybe it is, or maybe it’s more than that.   To realize, recognize, admit and face the coming ending of our life and of our world can shake us into living the way we should.

Let me tell you two things “facing the end” can do for you.  First it is only when we face the end, can we invite true meaning into our lives.   Consider this.  Walk about into a cemetery and look at all the tombstones.  I did this just the other day.  I was headed for Statesville on a back road and stopped at Snow Creek Methodist Church Cemetery, not far from my home.  It was a beautiful day and I needed to get out of my truck and stretch my back a moment.  I thought I might look around to see if any of my ancestors were buried there.  It’s one of the oldest cemeteries in Iredell County, pre-dating the church and dating back to the Revolution.   When I pulled up a woman and her small children came up to my truck, telling me there had been some vandalism and they had called the sheriff.   She walked me to the one broken tombstones, out of the many hundreds in that cemetery with names such as Millsaps, Gaither, Robertson and others.  Of all the stones, the one laying on the ground had the familiar name on it: T-O-M-L-I-N.   In other words, it was a “stone” with “my” my name on it.   I looked at the woman and exclaimed: “Hey, It looks like somebody has been attacking my ancestors.”  Fortunately, a neighbor walks up and tells us that there was no vandalism, but that they were reworking some of the oldest tombstones.  It just so happened that the one stone they were working on in that moment had my name on it.

There’s actually a “stone” with “all” our names on it.  The end is coming, says Jesus.  What are you doing to get prepared?   One thing you can do is look at those “stones” and the date.  You see between the date of birth and the date of death, a simple dash.  What are you filling that dash with?  What kind of “meaningful”, “purposeful”, and positive things are you doing with your life that will matter when your date of “death” gets added to your date of birth?   You might think you’ve got forever, but there are “book-end” like dates already, with a specific date labeled on your life.  You don’t have forever.  The coming end urges us to do something we need to do, we should do, we ought to do, we must do, now!  Have you done it?

But there is something else that comes from knowing about the “end” that can suddenly, unexpectedly come.   Not only are there no promises about tomorrow, there are also no guarantees about today.   All our lives, even our world has a “boundary”, a “limit” and a “constraint”.    But this “constraint” or “boundary” can help us know what we should do now, and how we should live our lives.  The question is not just what are we doing that is worthwhile, but what are we doing that gets us ready for the endings that are already coming all around us, and will come to us, one day in a final way.

One thing for sure, Americans have not been thinking about “endings” lately.  Most American have been living, spending, risking, and owing so much that they have acted like this day of reckoning will never come.  But it appears, an kind of “ending” has come and there is no real way back.   Republican Senator Alan Simpson has recently told the NY Times that the day of reckoning has come and that debt is driving our nation and our government into the ground.   “There Will Be Blood”, he says.   The day of cutting and reckoning is here and everyone is going to get hurt   (NY Times Article by Columist Paul Krugman, Nov. 22, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=There%20will%20be%20blood&st=cse)

There is truth in what the Senator is saying, but are we ready?    Are we ready for the changes, the shortfalls, the time for the payment of the debt we now owe?   Whatever this means, it means that a certain kind of “ending” has suddenly come, and the truth is, that no one saw it coming.  No one saw it, but it came anyway.  And the “end is still coming and no one knows who will get hurt or when the “ending” of the “end” will be, or even whether the “ending” will be the end of everything we have known so that there is no way back.  Are you ready?    

JESUS IS STILL COMING

How do you get ready, when you don’t know “when” or “how” it will end?   There is a way.   Jesus says that you need to be able to look into the middle of everything that is ending and “see the Son of Man coming on the Clouds of Glory.”   That very thought, used to scare me to death.  I used to look up into the sky at night and wonder what it would be like when Jesus “splits” the eastern sky.  But, then I remembered.  Jesus was trying to tell us that you nor I will see “it” coming, but you and I, who trust in him, will see “him” coming.  Do you know what that means?  It is not about scaring us, but it’s an image about saving us.

Last week Weatherman Austin Caviness gave us an amazing account of how the “end of his world” came when his parents divorced.  It crushed him and he pretty much lived out of bitterness and rebellion until the Fall of Trade Towers on September 11, 2010.  Then he saw, in that “ending” what he needed to do with his life.  He saw in the “ending” a new beginning.  He realized that he didn’t need to hold on to his “root of bitterness”.   More than anything else, he saw Jesus standing their forgiving and restoring his life, his family and his faith.  In the “ending” he saw the Son of Man coming in glory into his life.

What do you see coming?  Can you see Jesus coming?  I don’t just mean do you see him coming in the sky one day.  That is certainly a very “unpredictable” part of this text, but it’s not all Jesus is saying and it’s not what happened at all.  Jesus expected the “end” to come when Jerusalem fell, but the end of all things did not come.   What did come into the “ending of Jerusalem” was the coming of Jesus through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal power of truth, power and glory.   Jesus came into the world through the rising up of the church and it gave the world that was broken apart a word of redemption, promise, salvation and hope.  

I don’t know whether or not Jesus is coming very soon.  I do know things are falling apart in this world.  It will never be the same, at least not any time soon.  No one knows what kind of ending is coming, but it is coming.   But what we also can know is that even when “endings” come Jesus also comes every time, to those who will make themselves ready and will prepare their hearts, minds and souls.  Just as Jesus is here now, in your heart, he doesn’t just come and bring some unexpected, fearful future, but he is already here, living in the middle of your heart and helping you get through this “ending” that must come.  A homebound member of one of my churches suffered a stroke a few years ago, and recently discovered she had breast cancer.  She told me that when the doctor told me, I first told myself, “Oh no, not again and I asked the Lord, why me?   Then, it was like another voice came inside that also asked, “Why not me?”  She had the strength to say “why not me?” because she knew the Lord would “come” and be with her, no matter what she had to face.   

As I conclude, I want you to hear some sobering words from a Lutheran Pastor  Edward Markquart in Seattle: “Who is this passage of Scripture addressed to today? It must be the old people, everyone who is sixty and over, receiving ARP advertisements, on social security or getting ready to die. Those people think more about mortality and death; these Bible verses are for them.

I don’t think so. Life changes so quickly. The totality of life moves by so quickly. …  I look at an infant, and the infant today is a two year old tomorrow.  And you blink and the child is thirteen.  And you blink, where did time go, and the kid is now a young adult. I blink my eyes again and you are now married.  I blink my eyes again and you have children.  I blink my eyes again and those children are gone and you have an empty nest. I blink my eyes again and you are grandparents. I blink my eyes again and you are a widow or widower. I blink my eyes again and you are ready to die. That’s the way life is.

Who is this passage for? It is for all of us because it, life, moves so quickly, doesn’t it? …I was a baby and suddenly (snap) I was two years old; and then suddenly (snap), I was ten, growing up in Jackson, Minnesota. And before I knew it, (snap), suddenly I was twenty and at college; suddenly I was thirty and a pastor in Eugene, Oregon; (snap) suddenly I was forty and a pastor in Seattle, Washington; and suddenly (snap) I was sixty and thinking about retirement; and suddenly (snap) I was eighty and getting ready to die. Suddenly (snap) there was an explosion in the sky and the astronauts were gone; and suddenly (snap) there was an stampede and 350 people were gone; suddenly (snap), a woman who was healthy today is gone tomorrow. 

Suddenly, all of life happens too quickly, too suddenly, and so unexpected, doesn’t it? And Jesus said to all people of all ages, the end will come so suddenly (snap); live today as if you were going to meet God face to face tomorrow.   (From SermonsfromSeattle.com) 


But the last word, Jesus gives us in verse 44 is himself.   He will be there when the end comes.  When “endings” suddenly come in that “unexpected hour” he will “come”, even when everything else falls apart and goes away.   You can’t know when or how the end comes, but you can know that Jesus will be there to help us make it through the ending that comes; whether it is the ending of how things were, the world’s end, or your own end, whichever comes first.  The most important question not “how will you escape, like my Mormon neighbors used to have all kinds of canned goods ready for that time.  You can’t get ready for a time you don’t know how or when.  But what you can “get ready” is your heart.  This is what Jesus asks:  “Are you alert, awake and ready?”   “Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when “HE” arrives.  (vs. 46). Only those “standing” and “working” with Jesus, will have anything left to “stand” on when that time comes.   Keep standing with him!   Amen.