St. John on the Mountain, Bernardsville, NJ

Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19

Here we are, on the brink of the change of the season. I don’t mean that Christmas is coming. Or Winter is coming. I mean that we stand on the threshold of Advent.

While retailers have already decorated their stores with trees and twinkling lights, we who follow the liturgical calendar must first go through Advent. Before we can hang the greens or lay baby Jesus in the manger, we must spend a season in anticipation.

Next Sunday is Christ the King. In two weeks, Advent begins. Advent was not meant to be a time for just opening calendars or getting your Christmas cards in the mail early. The scripture lessons we hear during Advent don’t feature shepherds or wise men. Instead, they are prophetic. They prepare us for the coming of Jesus as God incarnate, the babe lying in a manger, but they also are meant to prepare us for the second coming of Christ as conqueror, come to put an end to the reign of evil, sin and death.

Our readings this morning already sound prophetic and, let’s face it, ominous. This reading from Malachi is about as dark as prophecy gets, with the wicked being burned, contrasted with the God rising like a bird with healing. And Jesus’ words of coming persecution are quite unsettling, but there’s also a glimmer of hope. Prophecy is like that. Prophecy is usually full of good news and bad news.

Unlike what we often assume, prophecy isn’t the same as fortune telling. People want to use the prophecies in the Bible much like others use the works of Nostradamus – as a glimpse into the future. I grew up reading prophecy in the Book of Revelation like that. People even figured out a calendar for the end times. 

Every few years, it seems, we hear of another coming “end of the world”! Remember Y2K?  Or when the Mayan calendar was set to run out in 2012. These predictions come and go. They still do. Another came and went last month.

Anytime our world is shaken by cataclysmic events, whether natural, such as earthquakes and droughts, or man-made, such as war, or mass shootings, the prophets start buzzing on TV and even social media. Just think about the days immediately after 9/11. The rise in prophetic, “end-time” chatter reached a fever pitch, especially among American fundamentalists. Some Christian leaders predicted that Armageddon was surely upon us. But these claims are hardly anything new. They forget that both Napoleon and Hitler were thought to be the anti-Christs in their day. Doom was at hand. The end of the world was near!

Prophecy is much more complicated than a fortune cookie. Some of the prophecies in the Bible seem to be predicting events that would actually happen in the lifetime of the original audience, those who actually wrote the prophecies. Other prophecies point to the coming of the Messiah. Still other writings seem to the forecast future times, an end of the world or, for Christians, the return of the Christ. Sometimes all three of these future-time categories exist side-by-side in prophetic writings, making it almost impossible to tell which future time the writers were referring to. Which, I think, may be the point.

None of the Biblical prophets give a timetable of when their prophecies will take place or put an expiration date on their prophecies. From “behold a virgin shall conceive” to “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars,” prophecy would seem to be a bit of a jumble, until we look back on them from our perspective, what was the future for them.

It is in hindsight that we see prophecy fulfilled. For most Christians, “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son”, can be checked off the list: fulfilled. “Behold I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” obviously: not yet. But I still think this black and white thinking about prophecy is misguided. It leads to those clumsy predictions and charts of End-time events.

What if prophecy, instead, is always written for the benefit of the hearers during the time it was written? What if prophecy’s main objective is not to give a preview of coming events, but instead is intended to give the readers and listeners hope? What if prophecy was meant to be used not as a means to peer into the future, but as a way of encouraging God’s people, to give them an attitude of expectation?

In a sense, prophecy tells us more about the character of God. Events and circumstances will change, and the players on the world stage will come and go, but God’s nature and God’s character do not change. Prophecy is meant to speak to our hearts, not draw our eyes to charts and our minds to conspiracy theories. When we do not know what is going to happen next, we are forced to trust God.

The Gospel of Luke was read and written by a group of early Christians who had witnessed the very things Jesus is describing in today’s lesson. The Temple was destroyed in the year 70, and the Jewish community, including these new Christians, were persecuted and scattered. These prophetic utterings from the mouth of Jesus were hardly meant as a warning of what was to come. I think it is a very important message to them, from Jesus. 

The imagery and language Jesus is using would have shocked them like it shocks us. Jesus repeatedly warns his listeners that they are too focused on watching clouds and discerning portents and not preparing their hearts for what God is going to do. Today’s gospel lesson is no different. Luke’s Jesus catches their attention by predicting that the Temple would soon be destroyed. This is perhaps as unthinkable as if someone predicted on September 10^th 2001 that the World Trade Center would soon lie in rubble and dust. And yet so many of the hearers would live to witness this very thing.

Jesus also warns them of false-messiahs and of the persecution that is to come. Yes, Jesus’ words are ominous, but he’s not bent on predicting everyone’s fate. His words are more importantly directed at the hearts of his hearers to give them courage and hope in the face of coming difficulty.

“Nation will rise against nation,” “there will be great earthquakes,” “they will arrest you and persecute you,” “you will be betrayed by relatives and friends.” Where’s the good news here, Jesus?

Notice, Jesus doesn’t tell them to flee to the hills or start a militia group. Jesus doesn’t tell them to take up arms and go to war against Rome. Jesus doesn’t tell them to hurry up and figure out who they can trust. Instead, Jesus tells them to be prepared to witness in the midst of unfolding events.

Jesus is telling his followers to “stay on message”, as we might say these days. Despite the circumstances, don’t lose heart. Jesus reminds them of God’s character and God’s ultimate plans and purposes. “Not a hair on your head will perish”– this promise is more comforting to some than others. “Your endurance will gain your souls.” God will see your faithfulness in the face of hardship. Don’t lose hope! Stay on message! I think “Keep the faith!” is Jesus’ true message here.

The reading from II Thessalonians gives us a perfect example of what can go wrong when Christians take their eyes off Jesus and become obsessed with the timing of Jesus’ return. Some members of that local Christian community were convinced that Jesus was going to return imminently. Any day now! So…they had stopped working. They had stopped helping out the community. They had put their feet up. Why bother? Jesus is coming back!

I recall hearing an interview with a woman, a true believer, some years back, who believed her pastor who had predicted the imminent return of Jesus. He even gave them a date and a time. So what did this woman do? She ran up all kinds of credit card debt. Living beyond her means because, she fervently believed, that Jesus was coming back, and she wouldn’t have to pay the bills. Oops!

This is the same phenomenon happening two millennia earlier among the Thessalonians. Paul’s words encourage them to keep working almost as if Jesus wasn’t coming back tomorrow. Like Jesus, Paul is telling them, “Despite what time times are like, keep working hard!” Stay on message! Keep the faith!

Through the coming weeks of Advent, we are going to hear many more prophecies, some that inspire hope and some that do not. Through prophetic readings both optimistic and dire, let us keep in mind the purpose of prophecy, at least in my view – reminding us to be hopeful and to keep the faith, no matter what! Remember what God is like and what God has promised. When the news is bad, remember God has not forgotten us.

We have centuries of examples, whether it be the martyrs of the early Church or those killed in the struggle for civil rights in this country. We must not lose heart or shrink back from the task that is before us, the work God has given us to do.

Jesus promises that he will be with us. The Eucharist is a tangible reminder of this promise. It gives us strength for the journey ahead. Our commitment must not falter – do what is right, no matter what the time…

Circumstances will come and go.  Leaders and political dynasties will rise and fall. But our task remains the same, in the words of another prophet, Micah, “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”  Amen.