Heaven and Earth: Advent and Incarnation- Will Willimon (1st Week of Advent)

Heaven and Earth: Advent and Incarnation- Will Willimon

Watch out. God is on the way. It’s not within our own power to make a fresh start. If we’re to have a future different from the past, it must come as a gift, something not of our devising. What we need is a God who refuses to be trapped in eternity, a God who not only cares about us but is willing to show up amount us and do something with us, here, now.

 

Through these reflections using traditionally scriptures associated with Advent and his book, Heaven and Earth: Advent and the Incarnation, we follow Will Willimon’s guidance as he introduces us to the God who does just that, bringing heaven to earth and changing everything. In Advent, we celebrate and anticipate the earth-shaking, life-transforming good news that God is coming to us. Watch out. Get ready. God is on the way.

Chapter 1: Meanwhile                Focus Scripture: Mark 13:24-27, 32-37

 

I want to begin this reflection with a warning: READING THIS WILL MAKE YOUR TOES HURT! When I read this chapter, I have to confess that Will Willimon stepped on my toes multiple times…HARD! But I feel that many times a good toe stomping is needed to get our attention.

 

Apocalyptic Jesus…sounds like a new superhero, right? Or is he possibly the next super villain? That is who we are introduced to in this scripture. Jesus tells us to be ready, watch because the sun is going to go dark, and the moon isn’t going to shine. The second coming is on the way and all we are called to do is be prepared and stay alert. This passage of scripture comes as Jesus is leaving the temple in Mark’s Gospel for the last time before his crucifixion and resurrection. He begins to talk about the temple being destroyed earlier in Mark 13, but as he continues his sermon, he goes beyond the temple and talks about when God comes again during the second coming. Many people get uncomfortable when Jesus talks about this topic. The Second Coming of Christ, or the apocalypse, can be a scary topic, and people want to avoid it and just think about Jesus as the guy who taught us to love one another and welcomed the children with kindness, tells us to consider the lilies and offer a cup of water, but when Jesus goes apocalyptic…I’ll let you finish that thought.

 

But Jesus is doing nothing but tell us the truth. He is getting us ready for an earth-shaking second coming that God has promised. We all too frequently make worship and religion a private matter. It’s between me and Jesus. When we go to church it is a time to ask God for his assistance for what we have identified that week as our individual problems. We apply the questions, “What does that have to do with me?” or “What’s in it for me?” to each week’s sermon. That’s what makes us react to the jump-scare that is Mark 13. God goes from the loving, moral, Father figure we see him as to the heaven and earth-shaking cosmic warrior that He is, speaking of darkened sun and moon, and stars falling from the sky. This causes many people to get nervous and even possibly scared with such highly poetic, primitive, and even unsophisticated and fundamentalist language that is used. But this is the type of language we need to hear. Willimon points out how content we were as a Christian people and how we had gotten to the point of thinking Jesus had no idea what he was talking about in Mark 13, and he was just having an off day because he knew what was coming in the next few days. Then 2020 came along and the COVID-19 pandemic happened. We were bombarded with nightly numbers of excessive body counts, fear from both the left and the right, rioting occurring, people secluded to their homes with very little to no human connection for extensive periods of time. This is when people started thinking, maybe Jesus DID know what he was talking about and those apocalyptic prophecies he made were starting to come true. We don’t like to think of this world as terminal. It’s scary to hear Jesus tell us we are profoundly unsafe. When we begin think about these ideas we often revert to the ideas of, “God we really didn’t mean to ask for you to intervene. We just want you to give us some guidance and would rather improve this situation down here rather than you saving us. You stay up in heaven and just let us handle earth with a little help from you.”. Unfortunately, that’s not how God works because of who God is and what God is up to. God is relentless. He didn’t just create the world and then say I’m done; he is constantly working to critique his creation to improve it and make it better. This is what we as his creation want, we don’t want him to be finished with us. And second, God is love. His love does not abandon or give up on us. That is one thing we as God people know from His scriptures: God is constantly looking for ways to love us, connect with us, and fulfill his promises to us. That is why, at times, God must create those earth-shaking, rocking and rolling moments to show us He is still there and isn’t going away. He’s still in charge and still working to perfect his creation and people.

 

Church has often become too much about I/ME/US/WE and less about GOD. We tend to go to church each week for our weekly to-do lists of everything wrong with the world this week and how we need to step up and do something about those problems. Then we return the next week for an all-new list. It’s the mindset of it is up to us to set the world right or it will forever be wrong. We try to “play God”. Our focus is not where it needs to be. Then comes Mark 13 during the first week of Advent and knocks us on our backs. Jesus focuses solely on God and not on us. This leads to the idea of if we are right between us and God, then God will take care of whatever problem is out there. GOD must continue to make peace out of chaos, GOD must keep creating light out of dark, and GOD must keep creating something out of nothing because without any of this we are completely hopeless. At times we lose focus on how God works through us and just try to just do. Of course, there are people out there that are looking for God to step in and act. Willimon puts it like this, “How many Christians are languishing in the pews, quietly hoping, praying that even in their aggressively bright, cheerful, upbeat churches a few stars may fall, their souls shaken, and they be given some new beginning with God?”. Think about some of your most memorable Christmases. How many of them involved unexpected disruptions in some way? What kind of disruptions do our churches need to get us back on track? Willimon poses this question which I found very thought-provoking, “How many congregations are stuck in the mire of the mundane, boring themselves to tears, awaiting God to give them the life-giving, heavenly jolt that could give them a future?”.

 

So, all this talk of apocalyptic language and Christ’s second coming, the natural question to come up next is, “When?”. When is all of this going to happen? The answer is no one knows. Well, God knows, but he is keeping that answer VERY close to the vest and not sharing it with anyone, not even Jesus knows. We just know that we are told to be alert. That is where one of the pillars of Advent, Hope, comes into play. And with that hope comes the virtue of patience. We must be willing to wait, not have God on demand, and allow God to come and go as he pleases. We must let Christ enter our time in his time. And besides grace (which means “gift”) isn’t grace if it’s at our command. Another question that may come to mind is “Why?”. Why is God waiting so long to create that earth-shaking moment like he promises in Mark 13 and come for a second time? The simple answer is maybe he is just TAKING HIS TIME to GIVE US MORE TIME. If God had come again just a few decades or centuries after Jesus’ death and resurrection, this world would have been deprived of people like Mother Teresa, Rev. Dr, Martin Luther King Jr., Francis of Assisi, you, or me. While we may not be the best disciples of Christ, but because God hasn’t decided to bring the promises of Mark 13 to fruition, we still have time to strive to be better disciples. The real answer to the “Why?” question above simply is, God’s not done yet. We still have time to fulfill Jesus’ commands of going into the world, teaching and baptizing all nations (Matthew 28), to be shining lights in the world demonstrating what God can do is ordinary people obey Jesus (Matthew 5), and showing everybody, everywhere the truth about God (Acts 1:8). We’ve had over 2000 years to be obedient and still haven’t made it there yet. Thanks be to God, there is still time. Are you as glad as I am?

 

So now we are left with a great Advent question, “What do we do in the meanwhile?”. While we are waiting, what now? Jesus gives that answer THREE TIMES in Mark 13:32-37 (vs. 33, 35, 37), STAY ALERT. That’s it. We must be alert and ready, but we also need to prepare because when it happens it is going to rock our world. We are now to the point of the Mark 13 passage where the master has left the house on a trip and left the servants in charge, giving each a job to do. We all have been given the job of going into the world to make disciples for Christ. But we must not get so distracted by the world that we aren’t on guard and alert and miss the return.

 

How are we to remain alert and awake? Here are five different ideas to keep us expecting God’s presence here, now.

1.      Expectant.- Avoid contentment. Look for ways to find new ways to spread Christ. Don’t become pleased where you are, look for new and different ways to be the body of Christ. Expect more.

2.      Alert.- Pray this little prayer to yourself whenever you encounter scripture, “Lord, surprise me. Show me something that I’ve never seen or heard before. Go ahead, shock me. I can take it.”

3.      Pay Attention.- Look for ways God is showing up and showing out in the world. Find the positive within all the negative and know that God is involved and using people for good even in all the bad.

4.      Stay Awake.- See if you are missing any opportunities to be the light to someone in your life. Look for that coworker or friend or family member that may just need someone to talk to or shoulder to cry on. You never know what it can do for them.

5.      Signs of God’s Presence Here and Now.- Where is God working in everyday life? Find ways to draw yourself closer to Him and get ready for the new world that is coming.

 

Thank you, Lord, you have not brought the promises of Mark 13 to completion. We as a people are still working for you to bring this world back to what you would have it to be. Work through us and keep us alert as we go through daily life. As we are in the meanwhile, help us to remain focused on you and let your kingdom come to earth as it is in heaven. Bring our focus back to you and make us less focused on us. We pray this in your holy name. Amen.