Not as an Enemy, but as a Friend

Far more often than I like, I have a problem with waking up at around 3:00 in the morning. Sometimes I can roll over and be back to sleep in a few minutes, but other nights I can lie awake for an hour or more. I need to tell you, if I have something to worry about, 3:00 a.m. is my best time for worrying. In those wee small hours of the night, any worry, no matter how unimportant or trivial, can be whipped up into a storm of heroic proportions! But even if I can't find anything to disturb my thoughts, sometimes I just can't turn off my brain, I can't get back to sleep. The minutes slowly tick by on the clock. You lie there, and all you can do is wait it out.

The season of Advent is a bit like that. Advent is a dark time of year. A few months ago, we were sitting out on the patio with sunshine until late in the evening, but as the Northern Hemisphere tips away from the sun, the hours of daylight shrink. With the end of daylight savings time, night takes over. It gets dark at 5:00, and every day, night comes on more quickly. By the time the Earth rounds the corner on December 21st, it is the shortest day of the year. For people of faith, Advent is a reminder, it gets darker before it gets light. And so during this season, week after week we light new candles on the Advent wreath, to remind us … the light will return.

As the darkness of December grows deeper, we challenge the darkness with the light of hope. It doesn't make the darkness go away, but it's a reminder of past brightness, and the hope it will come again. And so, Advent is a bit like waking up at 3:00 in the morning – awake in the dark … awake … we look forward to the return of light.

On this first Sunday in Advent, the candles and the wreath, remind us we are waiting, as we've done year after year, for the holy child of Bethlehem to be born among us. But as Advent begins, Scripture also reminds us, we're waiting for something else, the final return of Christ at the end of time - a coming not preceded by candlelight, the sweet smell of Pine, and presents accumulating under the tree, but rather, preceded by deep distress among nations. That's what Jesus told the disciples in the Scripture passage we read today from the Gospel of Mark. There were only four of them – Peter, James, John and Andrew - the inner circle. They walked with Jesus to the Mount of Olives, and looked out over the great city of Jerusalem.

Jesus told them the whole place would come tumbling down one day. He spoke about the dismantling of the sky … how the stars would fall from the constellations … the sun would disappear, and the moon be snuffed out, and then he would appear among them with power and glory. Jesus didn't say all this to scare the disciples out of their minds. He said it to let them know what would take place one day. Jesus wanted his disciples to know, even something as frightening and dark as the end of the world, was in the ultimate plan of God. So, when the universe collapsed and every light in the sky was put out, they were to remember what he told them - God is Sovereign, even over the darkness and the light. He told them to watch and wait for his coming.

More than 40 years later, the writer of the Gospel of Mark wrote all of this down. At that time, the late first century, people were convinced the end was very near. Jerusalem lay in ruins, the temple was destroyed, the emperor was murdering countless Christians, false Messiahs had set up shop on every street corner … everything was falling apart. Those who believed in the message and ministry of Jesus - those who trusted God - must have wondered, “How could we be so stupid?” This wasn't the way things were supposed to turn out. Surely God had intended a peaceful, non-violent renovation of the world – a sort of massive renewal project with loyal believers in charge. But not this … not this chaos … not this outrage … not this darkness.

That's why it was written down in the Gospel of Mark - so they wouldn't forget how Jesus had predicted all of it. How he tried to tell them, they could not have a new world without letting go of the old one – the old world had to crash and burn, for anything fresh to be born in its ashes.

It was, and it is, good news of the “end of the world,” but in our comfortable Western lifestyle, it also happens to be a piece of the Gospel, most of us would just as soon forget … but there it is. This is the promise of God - the old empires of the earth, the pillars of the universe, will come crashing down, not in spite of God, not because God is absent, but because God is very present - coming in power and glory to make all things new! In the meantime, our job is “to watch,” Jesus says - not to watch on tiptoe for the first signs of his flaming chariot, but to simply stay alert, to pay attention - to not be asleep when Christ returns.

There are many ways Christians have done this over the years. For some watching means to wait for a literal end of the world. Book stores are filled with all kinds of mathematical and historical calculations - prophecies of an end, soon to come, and much advice about how to be in the right place at the right time. Bad timing would be as a non-believer on a jet plane flying at 35,000 ft, and the Christian pilot is raptured to heaven. Bad timing would be as a non-believer under anesthesia in the middle of an operation, when the Christian surgeon is raptured to heaven.

Or as one woman told me about a story from her teenage years. In Sunday school, they had just learned about “the rapture,” when Christians are taken up from Earth, and the unbelievers are left behind, and the scripture phrase which stuck in her mind was “Two people will be walking in a field, one will be taken and the other left behind.” Her best friend at the time was a wonderfully sweet and loving Christian girl, and she remembered thinking, “Oh no, what if Sandra and I are together at the time of the rapture! If one is taken, and the other left behind. I'm in trouble! I’ll be the one left behind!”

In the “Left Behind” series of novels by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, the rapture, as understood by millions of believers, is described. The fictional account of Christ’s final return to Earth in the last book of the series, “Glorious Appearing: The End Days,” gives chilling account of how the Prince of Peace is expected to dispense with non-believers in the end time.

It says, “Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the Earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent, when the Earth closed itself again.” Well … that’s lovely … isn’t it?

The only problem with this approach is that it tries to tell us what Jesus himself didn't even know, “Of that day or hour,” he says, “no one knows, not the angels in heaven, not even the Son, only the Father. And secondly, it makes Jesus not the friend of humanity, but its enemy and its fearsome destroyer. Many Christians have chosen a different way of watching and waiting. They invite their awareness of the end to heighten their commitment and activity, for God, in the present. That can be in deep and complex ways, or in simple and dramatic actions, in the here and now.

In the 1970s, on Yonge Street near Dundas, in downtown Toronto, there was a Strip Club. At the bottom of a long flight of dingy, wooden stairs, a black and white TV screen faced out onto the sidewalk. In fuzzy images of darkness and light, it displayed a semi naked woman dancing on a stage. For the payment of the cover charge of $2, you could join the audience to watch these women in real life, disrobe before the eyes of hungry men.

I was leading a Youth Group at the time, and one of the young people in that youth group, confessed to me that he, and two of his friends, had paid the two dollars, walked up that dingy flight of stairs, to taste the “forbidden fruit” of naked women.

He told me, “I realized it was wrong as soon as I sat down. I was squirming in my chair, both tantalized and repulsed by the show.” He went on, “Somehow, I knew this was a pale imposter of God’s desire for human intimacy – that it made a mockery of the kind of real relationship which should exist between a man and a woman. I knew from the bored look on the face of the women, and the drooling stares of the sex starved men, that this was a “using” of people - seeing a woman as an object of lust, not as a human being with needs, and dreams and hopes.”As he sat there, it occurred to him, “What if Jesus should return to Earth right now? And this is where he finds me!” He told me, “As that thought past through my mind, I knew I needed to get out of there. I bolted to my feet, and blurted out to my friends, “I’ve got to go.” And without any further explanation, I ran for the door!” Once in a while, even if it's only Christian gut instinct, we can do the right thing for God … as he did.

Perhaps a more developed version of that Christian instinct can be found in the pages of history. In colonial New England a meeting of state legislatures was suddenly plunged into darkness by an eclipse of the sun. Many of them panicked and moved for adjournment, but one of them said, “Mister speaker, if this is not the end of the world and we adjourn, we shall appear as fools. If it is the end of the world, I should choose to be found doing my duty. I move that candles be lit and we continue our meeting.”

Whichever way you choose to watch for the end, there is one thing we do know from the biblical record. The one who is coming is not an enemy … but a friend. When Christ returns, he may come in the light, he may come in the evening, or at midnight or at 3 in the morning. Our job is not to lie in bed with a pillow over our head, or to shove all the furniture against the door in fear. Our job is to light a candle and set it in the window - to watch and to wait - for the one who comes to us with healing wings and a gracious welcome. Who knows when that end will be, or what it will look like … No one! … That's who!

In the meantime, as we wait, we light candles on the Advent wreath in preparation for the coming babe of Bethlehem. And with an even greater vision, watching and waiting for the end: Alert but without losing sleep, acting in the name of God, and in support of God's dream for humanity, because the God who created us in the beginning, will also be with us at the end. Not as an enemy … but as a friend.

“Fear not,” Jesus said, “I am with you always, even unto the close of the age.”