Who Knows...

I remember the very first sermon I ever preached. How many of you remember the first sermon you ever preached? I don’t remember all of the ins and outs about it, but I do remember I was a senior in high school and I was preaching on our youth Sunday which was in January of every year. It was actually this sermon that God lead me down the path of discerning becoming a pastor. That’s for another day though. While I don’t remember everything I preached about, I do remember as I said, it was in January. But it wasn’t any January it was January of the year 2000. I remember that part of my sermon focused on the Y2K bug that was supposed to ruin computers, and in the views of some eccentrics, be the end of the world as we know it.

I remember the panic that existed as people backed up computers, people ran tests to figure out what would happen, etc. So that New Years there was a mix of excitement for the world to leave the 1900’s and enter the 2000’s and panic as people were unsure what would happen once computers made that switch. Looking at the amount of technology that now has invaded our world with cell phones, tablets, smart cars, etc. it is safe to say that the world did in fact not end when the year 2000 hit.

What has always struck me about the Y2K panic is that it wasn’t even a religious movement. If I had the time or the fortitude to go through all the end of the world predictions from religious standpoints, I think we would need an entire seminar, not just a Sunday sermon to talk about all of this stuff. Let’s just suffice it to say that there are some Christians who have made their living both because they felt it was important, but also some for financial gain, to try to predict the end of the world so that we would all be warned and prepared for it. We even have predictions from Mayan calendars and everybody's favorite astrologer Nostradamus. Suffice it to say that what happens next has been the focus of people for a very long time.

Even the people of Israel were familiar with these kinds of conversations. Look at some of the prophets and how they talk about endings and the way they describe the world when it happens. This style of literature has come to be known as apocalyptic literature, and in this literature there are images of war and strange beasts like in Daniel’s prophecy, the land being laid bare like in the prophet Joel. Then take a look at the time Jesus was in and the occupation of Rome and how high tensions were between Rome and Israel, especially with the militaristic Zealot group and everything they were doing to oust Rome. It may not have been a real surprise to the disciples to hear Jesus say that all these enormous buildings would be demolished.

While maybe not surprising, I believe Jesus is trying to help give perspective to both the destruction of earthly things as well as his leaving and coming again. He wants his disciples and us to understand that there are a lot of things that are going to happen in this world and people are going to be constantly trying to interpret all these signs as the beginning of the coming of Jesus, but we see Jesus himself tell us that nobody knows the time it will happen; not the angels and not even Jesus himself. Jesus doesn’t have the timeframe to give them for when it will happen. He does, however, say that we will know when it is happening. So when it happens, it seems like there won’t be all these questions and conversations about it. We’ll know.

However, what I feel is even more important than the conversation of when and whether or not we’ll see the signs to know if it is happening, is the conversation about being ready. Which is why I appreciate this final part of the text we read from today about the servants keeping a watch out for the head of the household to come back. Each servant has a job to do and the doorkeeper is supposed to stay alert. So for me the most important part is that we have all been called by God, learned about the life of Jesus and been given gifts by the Spirit. Let us use what we have been given by the Trinity to live our lives and journey together so that it doesn’t matter when. It won’t matter when because we have been following the path of faith the best we can.

And I think something else that’s equally important to hear today is that we get too bogged down with the negative images that we lose sight of the good that is talked about. It’s similar to the way that we sometimes hear and focus on parts of the stories from the Old Testament. The image of his coming is the image of a fig tree sprouting new leaves during the summertime. Now I know that it gets really hot here during the summertime and some of you head for cooler climates, but I think we can all agree that this imagery of summer and new life from the fig tree is a beautiful one.

Part of the reason the fig tree imagery is so beautiful is that we have fig trees here at the Harvest of Hope Community Garden and so if we pay attention we get to see the lifecycle of this tree. It goes from a dormant tree to sprouting these beautiful giant leaves. It then produces the fig which if you like the taste of figs is a wonderful treat to eat.

It then starts to lose it’s leaves and it looks kind of sad as it goes back to a dormant state. But that’s not where it ends. When it seems like it’s done for another season, Rich prunes the tree so that it can be healthy and productive for another season. He then takes cuttings from the pruning and places them in good soil where these cuttings then turn into beautiful new fig trees.

So again, while the text may spend a great deal amount of time talking about so many things that makes our heads hurt and our hearts race, we should really focus on the message that matters and the message that we can actually do something about. We are called to stay alert by living our life of faith and to know that summertime will come, new growth and new life will come, and with it will come Jesus. Until then, we have the everlasting words of Christ that sustain us in both the good summer times and in the difficult wilderness times. So hold tight to the words of the Messiah and trust that his love is more powerful than anything else we may face in our lifetime. Amen.