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Hespeler, 27 November 2022 © Scott McAndless – Advent 1
Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44

When I was about seven years old, Larry Norman, who was kind of famously called the first Christian rock musician released a song that would go on to mess me, and many other young Christians, up completely. It was called “I wish we’d all been ready,” and part of it went like this:

Life was filled with guns and war
And all of us got trampled on the floor.
I wish we’d all been ready,

Children died the days grew cold
A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold.
I wish we’d all been ready.

There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind.

A man and wife asleep in bed
She hears a noise and turns her head he’s gone.
I wish we’d all been ready.

Two men walking up a hill
One disappears and one’s left standing still.
I wish we’d all been ready.

There’s no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind.

Horrifying

This song, and Christian books I was reading at the time, presented a picture of the near future that was filled with horror and terror, even if it ultimately lead to a vision of victory for Christ and his followers. But one part of this was particularly disturbing. We were told that this terrible time predicted by the Bible would be preceded by an event called the Rapture.

When this happened, the faithful followers of Christ were to be snatched up into the air, taken away alive into heaven, where they would be spared all of the turmoil and suffering of the tribulation that was to come. And this was going to happen without warning, all of a sudden people would just disappear.

It was supposed to be good news, was supposed to comfort us with the idea that we would be spared the terrors that were ahead, but I didn’t really see it that way. It was more of a cause for anxiety. What if I was not worthy? What if I was not faithful enough? What if I was left behind?

A Disturbing Passage

The song was based on the passage we read this morning from the Gospel of Matthew. So, reading it again this week brought up all of those old anxieties for me. And I suspect that I am not alone. I know that succeeding generations of young Christians have grown up being traumatized by this idea of what is to happen at the end of all things and how we are to navigate it. I also know that various preachers and authors have used the idea to manipulate people by their fear. So, I felt the need to look at what is really going on in that passage.

After Jesus had been crucified on the cross and died, his early followers were surprised to experience him alive and among them again. But then he departed, he said, for a while. But he left with the promise that he would be back and that, when he came, he would set things right in the world.

Living in Expectation

And so those early Christians lived with a constant expectation that, at any minute, their Lord Jesus would return in power. So potent was this expectation that many of them basically put their lives on hold. They sold all of their possessions and gave them away to the poor and to the church. The Apostle Paul literally counseled people not to get married – not because there was anything wrong with marriage, but simply because he felt there wouldn’t be enough time to be bothered with it. Jesus was coming back that soon.

This expectation was pervasive, and it motivated many good things, but there was a problem. The weeks, the months and then the years went by, and Jesus didn’t come. And it is one thing to put your life on hold, to wait in constant expectation, for a short time, but it is very different in the long term.

Living in Crisis Mode

Do you remember when the pandemic first started? Remember when things first shut down? We were all convinced that this was just going to last for maybe a couple of weeks, three tops. And then we would have flattened the curve and we would be able to go on with our lives. And it seemed all right to think of doing that for a few weeks because we were in crisis mode. People were being sacrificial and encouraging and doing everything they could to support others. It was kind of beautiful.

The Mood Turns Toxic

But, when things went on for weeks and then months and now years, that sense that we could just put our lives on hold all went away. We have learned that it’s just not sustainable as a society to live in crisis mode all the time. You kind of need to find a way to get on with your life. That is one thing we have learned through this pandemic.

I think there is a danger, and we have seen this throughout our experience with Covid, that when you keep a people in a state of uneasy anticipation for a long time, their mood can easily turn toxic. We have seen some of that happen as people turn against one another in the midst of the stress of the past few years and as they turn against medical and political authorities as well.

The Q-Anon Expectation

You have maybe heard about a similar problem that has developed among some extremists in our time. Over the last 5 years or so, there was this conspiracy theory that developed and spread far and wide in the world. It is called the Q-anon conspiracy theory. This theory states that many of the most powerful celebrities and political personalities in the world today are actually figures who perpetuate absolute evil.

According to people who follow this theory, they are pedophiles who traffic children all over the world for their own purposes and power. But this theory also came with a promise. At some point, very soon, an event would occur. It was called, “The Storm.” And when this happened, all of this evil would be exposed and the perpetrators would be rounded up, given a swift trial and imprisoned or maybe even executed.

And yes, it was promised that this storm was going to happen very soon. In fact, dates were set, signs were announced, and on various occasions the followers of this conspiracy theory gathered to watch eagerly for it all to happen.

Things Turn Toxic Again

And guess what, date after date passed, sign after sign was given, and the storm just didn’t happen. And what do you suppose happened to the followers of this conspiracy theory when everything they were promised didn’t happen or was inexplicably delayed? Did they just give up and go home? No, they didn’t. They stormed the US Capitol on January the 6^th, they actually attempted to arrest police officers in Peterborough, Ontario a few months ago and they have gone on to do many other dangerous and disturbing things. It all boiled over in very dangerous excesses.

And that, my friends, is the crisis that the early church had to deal with. They had primed believers with this incredible expectation. They had them in a constant state of anticipation. Things that they promised did not occur, at least not as soon as they expected, and the emotions that they had stirred up boiled over in some potentially dangerous and certainly very disruptive ways. Good Christian brothers and sisters began to turn against one another, perhaps even to blame one another and maybe especially the leaders of the church for the delay. Who else were they to blame? They couldn’t really complain about Jesus, could they? And so, the delay became a very big problem for the church, a problem that needed to be solved.

When this Passage was Written

The passage we read this morning from the Gospel of Matthew was not written in the early flush of the expectation of the return of Jesus though. Scholars believe that this particular Gospel was written somewhere around the end of the first century. And so, by the time this passage was written down, people had been waiting for almost seventy years. So that sense of waiting had definitely entered a more toxic phase.

And, though I do not doubt that the words behind this passage came from Jesus, I also know that the gospel writer did not hesitate to rework those words to address the particular needs of the church in his day. He clearly acknowledges the tension that they were all living with – the tension between being ready for God to break into your life at any moment and that basic human need to just get on with your life.

People Getting on with their Lives

So, he speaks of it in those terms. He talks about how the people in Noah’s time were getting on with their lives. “For as in the days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too, will be the coming of the Son of Man.” He acknowledges the tension that the people have been living with. He recognizes that it causes enormous stress.

He then goes on to acknowledge the real crisis they are dealing with. “But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Unsustainable Crisis Mode

I’m sure you recognize the problem there. Of course, it is true that, if somebody knew that a thief was coming to break into their house at a certain hour of the night, they would be awake and ready. They would be sitting there holding their baseball bat and have 911 on speed dial. They might even call in all their friends so that they had support.

But that is just the problem, isn’t it? We don’t know the hour. The fact that we don’t know the hour has just been underlined when Jesus says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” But if you don’t know the hour, nobody can do that. No one can sit awake all night every night and continue to live and function. At some point you have to get on with your life. So that is the huge dilemma of the church of his day that the gospel writer is trying to address in this passage.

200 Centuries Later

He addresses the issue, but I’m not really sure that he solves it. And, of course, if people were dealing with that problem five decades after the death of Christ, where does that leave us over 200 centuries later? How do we work out that balance between being ready and getting on with our lives? I do believe that Jesus left us this teaching about being ready for a purpose. But I also believe that throughout the long history of the church, people have abused that teaching.

When I was a young man, being terrified by the songs of Larry Norman and the writings of Hal Lindsey, I do not believe that that was because those people were being faithful to what Christ was trying to teach. They were using people’s fears to try and manipulate Christians for their own ends. In fact, I have since learned that that whole idea of the Rapture that so terrified me does not actually come from the Bible. It is a weird theological idea invented about a century ago that no Christians had ever seen in the Bible before that. That kind of invention and use of terror is never what Jesus intended.

That is what Jesus is saying in this verse: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” He was saying that nobody, no singer, no church leader or politician or conspiracy theorist, not even the angels of heaven nor Jesus himself has the power of knowledge of what is to come. That is exclusively in the hands of God. You should let no one manipulate you or use you because they claim to have such knowledge. Far too many in the long history of the world have forgotten that lesson and have paid a heavy price.

Keeping it a Message of Hope

The very idea of a return of Christ, the idea that God should finally break into all of the trouble of this world, is meant to be a message of hope. It is meant to be a reminder that God will not ultimately be satisfied with the shortcomings of humanity. God cares and will break through to bring hope. Those who manufacture fear in their followers have betrayed that basic hope. People do it because they think it will give them power and control over others, which is exactly what Jesus says we should not allow to happen. We must leave the control and timing up to God.

And in the meantime, we do live in that difficult tension between expecting God to break into this world and just getting on with our lives. That is not always easy. That might sometimes leave us feeling torn. But so long as we react to that tension with hope and not fear, I think we’re going to be okay. At least, that is how I have come to see it. The song that haunted me when I was growing up, does not disturb me anymore. I will trust in God for my future, and that was always what Jesus intended.

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Hespeler 20 November 2022 © Scott McAndless – Reign of Christ
Luke 1:68-79, Jeremiah 23:1-6, Colossians 1:11-20 (video), Luke 23:33-43

The Prophet Jeremiah kind of famously never quite got along with most of the kings of Judah that he knew. He didn’t like them because they were bad leaders who were making bad decisions that literally led the entire nation into an unmitigated disaster. It ended with the city of Jerusalem destroyed and the people led away into exile.

Jeremiah Criticizes the Kings

The kings didn’t like Jeremiah either because he never hesitated to tell the truth about just how bad they were as leaders. Which is, of course, what Jeremiah is doing in the passage we read this morning. “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord.”

The shepherds in question are pretty obviously the kings of Judah. He is simply saying how disappointed God has been with their leadership which has resulted in the destruction of the nation and the scattering of the people. The point is clear: bad leadership leads to bad outcomes for the nation.

A Golden Age?

And I’m not sure that we could find a timelier message for the age in which we are living. For we, like Jeremiah, appear to be living in a golden age of really bad leadership. I mean, Jeremiah might have dealt with some really bad leaders, but were they really as bad as the recent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who managed to lead her country into exile in a mere matter of 44 days? That is some pretty bad shepherding.

And I do not want to drag Canadian partisan politics into a sermon where it doesn’t really belong, so I’ll just say that none of our provincial or federal leaders of any party are looking particularly spotless in the light of recent events and leave it at that. I think we can share Jeremiah’s frustrations without getting into the specifics.

The Challenge of Christ the King

Today is Christ the King Sunday. And the thing about this day is that you really cannot deal with its themes without straying a little bit closer to political questions than we are normally comfortable with. For how can we talk about how Christ is our King without comparing him, in some sense, to the kind of leader that he’s supposed to be better than in this world? To refuse to do that is to strip the very notion of the kingship of Jesus of its radical power.

Jesus, as we know, was constantly talking about something that he called the kingdom of God (or sometimes the kingdom of heaven). And he chose that language very carefully. He was living and teaching within a kingdom that belonged to a man named Herod the Tetrarch. That kingdom was also part of a larger political entity called the Roman Empire.

Calling Worldly Leadership into Question

The central point of every parable he told and every saying he made about the kingdom of God was it was another way of doing things – a kingdom whose existence and nature called into question everything about the other kingdoms that people were living in.

The idea of the kingship of Jesus is there for the same reason. Everything about the leadership of Jesus is meant to criticise and put to shame the actions of this world’s leaders. So let us take a look at some aspects of Christ’s kingship today because I kind of feel as if our leaders could use a little bit of advice.

Who Identifies the Leader?

The lectionary gives us an odd passage to delve into that question today. Oh, the theme of Jesus’ kingship does come up in it, but it does not come up in the way you might expect. How do we usually find out that someone is identified as a leader? We expect that person to get up and announce it to us, don’t we? “Just follow me,” they will say, “and I will lead you!” And then that identity is confirmed when that leader’s supporters come to their rallies and their announcements and cheer. That is when we know that there is a leader among us.

The quintessential example of this, of course, is the former US president Donald Trump. Whenever he has been challenged as to whether he should be a leader, you know he’s going to point to one thing above all, the number of people who turn out to his rallies. He is the kind of leader who understood this right from the very beginning.

I believe that it has been confirmed that, when he began his presidential campaign with that now legendary ride down the golden escalator, the adoring followers who greeted him on that day were paid to be there. He just knew that it didn’t really matter why the people were there, he just had to show the world that video of adoring fans to convince the world that he was ready to lead.

Maybe this is something that Trump understood best, but, to a certain extent, it is something that all of our leaders are aware of. If there are no crowds, you just know that a certain person might be a politician, but they are not a leader.

Identified by Enemies

And that’s what makes this story in the Gospel of Luke so surprising. For who, in this story, tells us that Jesus is a king? Not Jesus and not his supporters and fans either; they’ve all run away at this point. No, ironically, it is Pontius Pilate who tells us. He orders his troops as they impose his sentence of death upon our Lord, to make sure they have fixed the charge that he has been accused of above his head as he hangs in agony. “This is the King of the Jews,” the placard proclaims.

But, of course, Pilate does not mean it; Pilate is making the claim mockingly. He is making fun of the very idea that Jesus could be a king. And, of course, the people in the crowd take up the same mocking tone at the claim.

What then does this teach us about the kind of leadership that we need? I think it certainly invites us to look for something other than the enthusiasm of adoring fans for confirmation of leadership ability. A good leader is not always a popular leader because the decisions and directions that are needed are not always going to be the popular ones. Leadership always has to mean more than popularity.

Leaders who Serve themselves

But there are others who also take up Pilate’s mocking tone. The people in the crowd watching begin to call out concerning Jesus, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” Andthe soldiers who are carrying out the sentence, even though they are foreigners who barely understand the local language, know that the people are making fun of Jesus because of his claim to be a king and so they join in calling, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”

This mockery makes it quite clear that everyone present understands something about the way that leadership works in this world. They are understanding that people seek leadership and power in order, above all, to save themselves – that is to say, to benefit themselves. Any leader who fails to obtain benefits for themselves from their leadership role is just a fool and deserves to be laughed at.

A Servant King

But, once again, Jesus models a very different kind of leadership for us. If Jesus is a king, he is not a king who is there in order to benefit or enrich himself. Jesus is the very model of a servant king and nowhere is that made clearer than when we see him willingly choosing a mode of service so radical that he takes him to the cross where he gives up his very life for our sake.

Do we have such servant leaders among us today? I think we can perhaps say that they are somewhat rare. But I do believe that they still exist. And as followers of Christ the King, I think it is important that whenever we see a leader in this world acting selflessly, giving of themselves in service of the people that they lead rather than getting what’s coming to them, we need to pull out all the stops in celebrating them and honouring their contributions.

“Father, Forgive Them”

But if you thought of Jesus not seeking his own benefit from kingship was extraordinary, what about this? We are also told that, when Jesus was being most mistreated, this actually happened. “Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’” And Jesus had every reason not to be forgiving at that point. He was being nailed to a cross! He had the power necessary to hold a grudge against the people who crucified him and punish them forever. But Jesus chose not to do that. Jesus showed us that leadership is not about holding grudges. How many leaders today model something so different from that? Many seem to see themselves as having a privileged position precisely so that they can punish their enemies. Again, Jesus shows us a better way.

More than that, Jesus shows us that true power is found in forgiveness. Powerful people often think that they don’t have to invest energy into understanding what the people who oppose them are thinking or feeling. But Jesus understood that his deep understanding of the people who were victimizing him, his understanding that they didn’t even know what it was they were doing, showed a much deeper strength of character. And that is always what true leadership is about.

Brings Others Along

But Jesus’ final display of leadership in this passage is perhaps the most powerful. As he hangs there in agony, one of the people who has been condemned alongside him is only too happy to join in on the mockery. But another one of the thieves shows a great deal of understanding. He recognizes that Jesus has been unjustly condemned. And so, he makes of him what seems to be a huge request, “Jesus,” he says, “remember me when you come in your kingdom.” And to this Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

And I know that many readers have some theological problems with this part of the story. How is it that Jesus can grant to this man heaven without requiring anything of him? He does not require repentance of him; He does not ask any faith of him. He simply grants him what he asks. But this is, you see, the power of a true leader.

Such is the depth of Jesus’ power, his love and his service, that he is able to bring people along with him by the force of who he is. If people are well led, they will get to the destination. Things like faith and commitment and repentance which leads to a change in life, these things will follow if people are well led. But when there is no leadership, there is no vision, and no one can follow.

The Challenge of this Day

To call this Christ the King Sunday is to issue a challenge to all believers and even to the whole world. I don’t care who you are or what faith you may follow, if you aspire to be a leader – aspire to be a prime minister, a president or a good monarch – you will never stand up to the example given to us by Christ. The example of Christ calls into question whatever leadership I have been able to give in Christ’s Church, but it also calls into question whatever leadership you have given in the church or in the world.

None of us will ever measure up, but the example of Christ the King is there to help us understand what real servant leadership is about, and how it actually can and does transform the world. May the Lord send us such leaders. But perhaps the prayer ought to be, may the Lord make you and me such leaders.

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