Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus talks about signs in today’s lesson and warns us that there is a connection between what happens above us, that is, out in space and what happens here. We all know that the position of the moon affects the tides at Ocean City and in Honolulu. Somehow the gravitational pull of the moon causes the vast ocean to rock and roll a bit. Two years ago, we had that horrible earthquake in the Indian Ocean that created the great Tsunami which killed thousands when a massive wall of water deluged beaches in Southeast Asia.
President Bush has been hitting the diplomatic trail hard trying to win peace in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel - Palestine and we all look for an encouraging word from there. Pope Benedict gets a cool reception in Turkey – he too is trying to wage peace and create calm so that we warring children of God can live together without violence. Jesus said “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken”. The signs of the times weren’t good in Jesus’ day; they aren’t much better in ours. We all long for a word of peace and the promise of peace.
That word is also in our lesson from St. Luke. Jesus says “that the Son of Man will come in a cloud with power and great glory.” When he says the Son of Man he is referring to himself – the exalted Risen Messiah who has conquered sin and death and who will return to bring in the new, “post mortem life”, that is, the “after death or demise of death,” life. Revelation speaks boldly of that new age, we always read that text at funerals and on All Saints Sunday. It is moving to hear; “See the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples and God himself will be with them and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things will have passed away.”
Some folks who read these words say they are words of warning, words to make us shake in our shoes. Who could stand and raise their heads when the judge of all the earth returns? If we are to give an account of our sins, all of us would tremble and shrink back in terror, but we have already been judged! The unbearable price of our sin has been paid. The slate is cleared. The one who comes as judge is simultaneously savior so we have nothing to fear, our future is bright – it is to live in the perpetual light of Christ – the “bright morning star” as scripture calls him.
I’ve been reading a fascinating book lately by one of my favorite writer/preachers. It’s called “Genesis – The Movie.” Robert Capon lives on Long Island and is a New Yorker and he has that funny, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that lots of New Yorkers have. He explains in his book the timelessness or eternality of God and the times that we live in. The clock is always ticking for us; we are always running out of time. We live in chronological time, the time of beginnings and ending. I began in 1950 and I am still winding down – one day I’ll run out of time. But Jesus Is Alpha and Omega, he is the beginning and the end which is scripture’s way of describing eternal beings. They do not have beginnings and endings, they encompass them.
Jesus talks in today’s lesson from Luke about fig trees sprouting as a sign that Spring is coming and says when you see the signs he is talking about you will know that the Kingdom of God has come near. Yet Jesus is the Kingdom of God, he is God’s reign made actual, real, manifest. He says that himself throughout the Gospels – when he heals, or when he forgives us, he tells those healed or forgiven that the Kingdom of God has come to them.
Because Jesus is simultaneously temporal – “of and in time,” and eternal – “above and beyond time,” we are always perplexed when we hear him talk like this. He was born, yet as John’s gospel says, “He was in the beginning – at the creation of the world.” The old KJV of the Bible talks about the fullness of time as in “at the fullness of time God sent his son to the womb of Mary, a Virgin.” This kind of time, this fullness is called ”Kairos” in Greek. It is eternal time, God’s propitious moment.
In the bible, in the church and the world, the Chronos and the Kairos are always intersecting. Sixteen years ago, about this time, the Berlin Wall which had stood for 50 years as a symbol of division, suspicion, hatred and fear was torn down by the prayers of the people of Germany on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Not a shot was fired. God simply overruled and the Kingdom reigned. It truly was a miracle of the living God.
Sometimes God simply takes away cancer or emphysema – the Kairos and the Chronos intersect and we usually call it a miracle.
We pray to God for calm and ask God to help us find our keys or another important lost item and the Spirit lead us to them. Kairos and Chronos, time and eternity collide, and God reigns.
Every time we baptize or share the bread and wine God collapses the categories of Kairos and Chronos and we share the meal that is his very real body and blood – Christ the victim of our sin and cruelty simultaneously the feast and food of forgiveness – all at once. God rules! God reigns!
Today’s lessons remind us that Jesus is one of his identities, the Son of Man, will come again. The image is one of judgment. When we hear the word judgment, we remember. If you are ever been in traffic court, you can relate. But judgment in the Bible has to do with restoration. Putting things back.
In the book of Genesis, for example, Sarah and Hagar, her servant are having a bad time. Sarah is not yet pregnant with Isaac, and Hagar has given birth to a child, Ishmael to Abraham, thereby giving him a son and an heir. Hagar gets “uppity” with Sarah and she comes to Abraham and says “The Lord judge between thee and me.” Here, the word “judge” means “put right” or “restore the relationship to its rightful beginnings.” Judgment of this kind is not something to be feared. Rather it is something to be longed for. In baptism, we have passed through punishment because Jesus took on our sins and took them to the cross. There they stay. We have been judged already, and final judgment is not to be avoided but welcomed – for it will mean that God in Christ takes us to himself.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Who We Are