The Coming of Jesus

Sunday 30^th Nov - Sheila Bridge

The Coming of Jesus – Jesus declares that he will come again.

            (Long pause at start)…..

            Waiting is a difficult thing to do.

This morning is the first Sunday in Advent. Advent is a season of waiting. In Advent we are waiting to celebrate and remember the birth of Jesus at Christmas. So week by week as the candles gradually get lit around the Advent ring we are counting down to Christmas. Tomorrow many of us will open day 1 of our advent calendars and for those of us who are really excited about Christmas all of these methods of counting down the days are things that help us deal with the wait. You can try saying 24 sleeps till Christmas to a small child but 24 is a big number and opening one door a day and eating the chocolate is much more fun.

Let’s face it it’s when you don’t know how long you are going to be waiting for whatever it is you are waiting for that waiting is difficult. Very difficult indeed when you really want whatever it is you are waiting for.

Maybe you are waiting for a prayer to be answered. Maybe you are waiting for a problem to be solved. Maybe you are waiting for something about your future to become clear. Waiting to feel better, waiting to finish school, waiting all day long to get through a tedious working day. We all wait for different things.

The passage we have had this morning reminds us that there is a future event that all of heaven and earth is waiting for, whether we are aware of it or not. Advent celebrates Christ’s first coming into the world but it also points us forward to Christ’s second coming. One of the shortest belief statements we sometimes use in the communion prayer is a simple triplet of beliefs: Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again’. They roll of the tongue so quickly but between the second and the third statement the church has been formed and continues daily to spread and grow and grow but it also waits. We are all waiting for the third statement to be fulfilled.

I’ll admit that when I was a younger Christian and a much younger person and anyone preached on the second coming of Christ I would find myself thinking ‘yes that sounds awfully exciting but not just yet Lord, I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to do first. It was an understandable but short sighted view because I couldn’t really see how amazing that second coming would be and that a real life of joy and jubilation lies beyond that event.

Every time we pray the Lord’s prayer there is a sense in which we are asking God to bring that day forward ‘Your kingdom come’ we pray. We know that in one sense that means we want God’s rule and authority in our lives and the life of our nation now but there is another sense in which is reminds us of the image we get in this passage of Jesus coming in clouds with great glory and power. Eugene Peterson translates the phrase ‘your kingdom come’ as ‘Set the world right’ and for me that would be the subtitle under that image of Jesus returning in glory. He comes to set the world right: to free the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to lift up those who are bowed down, to bring justice and righteousness.

Now that I’m older and have seen more of the world, it has only given me an increased sense of urgency about that prayer: yes Lord, set the world right… for children who are abused, set the world right for the hungry, for the homeless, for those who have no hope, no meaning, no purpose. Set the world right.

This passage shows us three things about the second coming. 1) yes, it will be obvious 2) no, you do not know when it will happen, so stop trying to guess 3) let the certainty of this future event inform/change how you live your life now.

Back to that first point: commentaries disagree whether the cosmic events described are actual or symbolic of huge political changes. Whichever interpretation you put on it the point is the same: it will be obvious. Jesus is saying don’t worry when it happens you’ll know. If the sun isn’t actually falling out of the sky whatever is going on will make it very obvious. In complete contrast to his first coming as a fragile baby in an obscure part of the roman empire to young teenager a long way from home, where no one would have guessed that something of overwhelming significance had happened, the second coming will be obvious and obvious to all.

The second point is that we don’t know when it will happen: this point seems rather obvious but it hasn’t stopped a lot of people speculating over the years and putting 2 and 2 together out of this prophecy and that prophecy and making 5. Jesus says ‘Look you don’t know, I don’t even know’ the point is not to speculate, the point is to live expectantly.

Jesus’ instruction is to watch, to be on your guard, to be alert. Don’t doze of, don’t lose your focus, don’t get distracted and forget what you’re here for. The little parable is of the picture of a houseful of servants each with an assigned task each waiting for the master of the house to return. Literally they don’t want to get caught napping. 

There is a tongue in cheek slogan that you sometimes see on T shirts ‘Jesus is coming – look busy’. It’s funny but it has a grain of truth. The trouble is how should we live while we wait, are to be frenetically busy? Never allowing ourselves a moment’s rest out of fear that we’ll be caught napping?

There’s a verse in Lamentations 3:26 that says it is good to wait for quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Peterson renders it as ‘God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits’ and that phrase passionately waiting caught my eye. How can you passionately wait? I understand passionate running, passionate fighting, passionate activity of any sort but passionate waiting? Surely waiting is inactivity.

As I thought about I realised there have been times in my life when I have waited passionately. Short periods of time in the early hours of the morning when you ‘wait passionately’ for the sound of car returning with the teenager who has just passed his test. Longer periods of time when going through a trail of ill-health, or unemployment or disappointment over frustrated plans, I’ve waited passionately before God. I’ve woken with the words on my lips, ‘I’m still here God, I still want to know about X, I’m still asking you to do Y, I’m still hanging on for A, B, C or D! Times when I’ve gone to bed praying ‘how long O Lord, how long’. That’s passionate waiting. Passionate waiting is hard to maintain, sometimes it slides into depression and despair ‘God’s forgotten me, God’s not listening, I’m being ignored. The difference between a state of depressed desperation and passionate waiting is faith. Faith says I’m waiting but God is still God, I’m waiting but I’m confident that God has good in mind for me, I’m waiting, I’m hurting but God is worthy of praise and I’m trusting that he will one day ‘set this right’. When we become depressed and despairing we can feel doubt and fear, at those times don’t let’s beat ourselves up, just lean on someone else’s faith.

Back in October I leaned on the faith of my brother Farai, he had written a daily devotional based on a parallel passage to this one called ‘Waiting with Expectation’ He wrote

Every believer in Christ I know prays or has prayed for some need. We also know and believe that God is faithful and answers prayers. By why do we sometimes not see the results of answered prayer? I believe part of the answer lies in what we do in the waiting period. When Jesus comes to answer our prayers will he find us doing what we are supposed to be doing? Will he find us standing in faith, still believing the promises he gave us twenty years ago or two days ago? Do we realise God is not like man, we don’t always know which way or when he is going to appear.

So waiting passionately is waiting, living with confidence in God. Saying whatever is going on, whatever the circumstances, God is God and he is worthy to be praised.

So what would God want to find us doing when he returns? Just the stuff we know he’s asked us to do: love sincerely, hate evil, cling to what is good, honour one another with mutual affection, never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour serving the Lord, be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer, practise hospitality, bless those who persecute you, rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn’, just a selection of everyday instructions from those from Romans 12. Everyday? Yes, they describe a lifestyle. Not a special event, not a big effort for a one off occasion but an everyday faithfulness. 

I’ve just finished studying the book of Ruth, it’s an ordinary story about ordinary people but they end up stepping into history in an extraordinary way. Why? Because God comes down and intervenes in some dramatically exciting way? No, he doesn’t  but that’s not to say that God couldn’t do just that if he chose and in other stories he does that. The miracle that comes about at the end of Ruth’s story happens entirely because people are simply doing what they should be doing: Ruth puts her trust in God and commits herself to Naomi, Boaz is careful to provide for the widow and alien in his community, Naomi gives wise advice to Ruth, none of it miraculous but by God’s grace their simple actions lead to a place in history.

I have a quote from Oswald Chambers above my desk at home, it chides me whenever I’m tempted to superhero activity levels it reads, ‘It requires the supernatural grace of God to live 24 hours of every day as a saint, going through the drudgery and living and ordinary life, an unnoticed and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life and holy the ordinary streets, among ordinary people and this is not learned in five minutes’.

  Another theologian said more or less the same thing ‘I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the might shoves of its heroes, but also by aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker’.

Jesus when you come ‘set the world right’. Jesus when you come may we found doing the simple things well, by your grace and for your glory. Help us expect the miraculous but  also see you when you work quietly and unobtrusively in our lives.  Help us to wait passionately, to wait in confidence that you are for us, you are with us and you will never leave us. Come Lord Jesus, Set the world right’.