LENT 2016 – GOING TO JERUSALEM

Thursday, March 3

The Coming of the Son of Man: Matthew 24: 29 – 31

            When I was a boy I scared the living daylights out of a younger cousin by “preaching” to him and telling him all the terrible horrors of the “End Times”. I must have made it sound all very gruesome and horrendous because he ran into the house, crying. My mother scolded me for frightening my cousin. My argument was that I had learned it in Sunday School but it didn’t seem to matter. So much for my career as a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

Nevertheless, riding into this sad, abysmal, tragic story, when all appears doomed and hopeless, comes the Hero, God’s Champion -  just in time. The Son of Man, another reference from Daniel, appears and saves the Day. All’s Right with Creation.

            Let me approach this text through Paul’s words in his letter to the Romans, but I will use The Message, just to freshen it up a bit:

That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times… Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us.  But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. (Romans 8: 18 - 25)

Finally, some Good News! I was beginning to wonder there for a while.

            Whether one takes apocalyptic language literally or is influenced by the power of its dramatic, symbolic imagery, the core message is one of transformation, new birth, new life, new possibilities, new freedom, new heaven, new earth, new humanity… well, new everything.  Yet, there are things happening now, in the present, that are preparing for the outbreak of God’s power.  Sometimes, we find it hard to see this in the mess that the world can seem to be in.  

Our eldest daughter and husband are expecting their first child. As they wait for this joyous, momentous event in their lives they are getting things ready for the baby.  They are buying furniture for the baby’s room, finding clothes for the baby, thinking about baby names, and so on. I don’t hear them expressing too much worry about bringing their child into an imperfect world.

Similarly, our lives as followers of Jesus Christ remain ‘pregnant’ with sacred possibility and potential. We are living in the gaps, in the meanwhile, in the in-between times, in the not-yet times. We are waiting. We need help while we wait. We need to let the Bigger Picture motivate us to be actors on God’s stage while we wait. Our waiting is not wasted time or futile, passive time for we are empowered by God’s Spirit to visibly demonstrate today the Great Love that is yet to come.

What are you waiting for?