December 7, 2008
Second Sunday of Advent
Wait…There’s More!
2 Peter 3:8-13a
Where is the Promise of Christ’s Coming?
Leave it to Peter to put his finger on the problem that has plagued Christianity ever since its start. The promised day of Christ’s return—Christ’s parousia or “Second Coming,” some would call it—that day has not yet come. There was a time when early Christians expected Christ to come again in their own life-time. “Any day, now!” the preachers would say, “Any day, now!” “So be ready and prepared!”
But after 2,000 years of “nothing-happening-yet” isn’t that line getting a little old? Where in the world has Jesus been the past 2,000 years? How can we possibly take such a promise seriously? In our Gospel reading for today, John the Baptist says, “the one more powerful than I is coming…” and in the very next line we read, “And Jesus came…” Now that’s the way it should work! A promise is proclaimed and immediately it is fulfilled! I love it! Promise made. Promise fulfilled.
But, where in the world has Jesus been since then? Nobody’s seen him for 2,000 years. And so is it any wonder that, after many of the first-generation eye-witnesses died off, there arose a bunch of second generation “scoffers.” That’s what Second Peter calls them “Scoffers.” Skeptics who say, “Where is the promise of Christ’s coming? He died and rose, you say; but NOTHING HAS HAPPENED YET! Nothing is different. Nothing has changed. This Jesus stuff is just a myth, an empty tale.”
Go to any public college or university today and I bet that somewhere there is a professor who says: “All knowledge is scientific and empirical. We learn by observing nature around us. We test and we verify. And science shows that God does not intervene. Religion is a myth. So grow up. Look around you. Find your own path through life. Do what pleases you and gives you pleasure. No one else will do it for you. It is all up to you.”
Nothing New
Sounds pretty modern doesn’t it? And yet would you believe this line of thinking was invented by a Greek philosopher who lived 340 years before Jesus Christ was born. Epicurus was his name. Originally, he was called a soter, a “savior,” because he “saved” and “freed” people from the “religious myths” of the Greek gods. Some profs probably think that they are “saviors,” too, and messengers of “enlightenment.”
But his followers later came under censure and were called “pigs” and “dogs” for wallowing in their self-serving passions. Maybe the “scoffers” do have one point in “there is nothing new under the sun.” Human nature has been the same ever since “the beginning of creation.” Self-centered, egotistical, piggish, and selfish. “It’s all about me.”
But wait…there’s More! God is Changed
But wait…there’s more! There is a “Word” from God. A powerful, mighty “Word” from God. A Word that IS new, different and dynamic. It is that same “Word” by which God creates the heavens and the earth. Creation is ongoing. And it is that same “Word” God uses to send the flood that first destroys and then renews the earth. That is on going, too.
Maybe the first flood did not make any change in “people.” The bible, sadly, grants that after the first flood the earth was still corrupt and full of violence and that people where still looking out only for themselves. That did not change. The selfish pigs were still around.
But there WAS a change in “God”! God repented. Yes, God did. God looked at all the devastation and found the loss of life too high, for only eight were saved this way. Get your fingers up and count them off: Noah, Mrs. Noah, three sons & their wives. And God said his great “Never Again!” “Never again will I destroy the world this way.”
Jesus is a New Way
And so when the “Strong One” came—Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee—Jesus did not come with fire and flood. Well, not at least the way we normally think of it in those terrible apocalyptic pictures — those disaster movies that get played before our eyes. He came with a “flood” of God’s grace & the “fire” of God’s Spirit. He came with his gentle “washing” of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We call it “Baptism.” Holy Baptism.
And he came with the bright “flame” of God’s burning desire and love. The “Gospel light,” we call it. A fire that we take from the Paschal Candle (the Christ candle) that stands beside the font in Holy Baptism. And we take a smaller candle and we “pass it on” to the person who is baptized and we say, “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
And notice please what is happening over there this Advent season. Where we normally have the baptismal font, there we have an Advent wreath. And we use it to count down the days until Christmas…until we light the final central candle (the Christ candle)…and recall how the “Word” of God (that mighty Word of God) became flesh & dwelt among us full of grace and truth. And on Christmas Eve, we dim the church and pass that light around, person to person.
Christ’s New Day
Praying for Jesus to Come
There is a reason why the return of Christ is delayed, Second Peter tells us. There is a very good reason. God’s ways are not “our ways.” God’s time is not “our time.” Thank God for that! With the Lord one day is as a 1,000 years, and a 1,000 years are like one day.
The Lord is not SLOW about his coming, but rather Jesus is PATIENT. And Jesus is using this time so that we might be a “John the Baptist” and proclaim the Gospel of forgiveness, too. Because God does not want anyone to perish, but would rather give much more time for everyone to repent.
And that “hope” and that “promise” changes the way we live. It changes us Christians. We do not settle for what we have now. And we do not hog our resources like selfish pigs. And we don’t join the moaning and the groaning of the “skeptics” and the “scoffers.”
Rather, we are an “Advent people.” And we WAIT. We wait patiently (& impatiently!) for the coming of the Lord. And we hasten that day with a holy and godly life. In fact, later in his letter Peter lists off eight virtues. Eight. Eight virtues Christians have to match to the eight people who were saved in that first flood. And to match the “new creation” that began one the “new Sabbath,” that first Easter, the eighth day, the first day of “new creation.”
Get your fingers up and count them off with me: faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, love. Especially faith & love. The first one & the last one. There is more to life than piggish selfishness. Yes, there is more. Much more. And as an Advent people who cling to the promises of Christ we wait for it. We wait for it—“a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”
© 2008 Pastor Paul Jaster