Looking Forward, Looking Back

Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44

December 2, 2007
by Dr. Charles Parker

I. Introduction

On October 22, 1844, as many as 100,000 followers of a Baptist preacher named William Miller dressed in white robes and gathered in makeshift temples and on hillsides around the eastern United States to await the return of Jesus Christ to earth. Throughout the 1830’s, William Miller played a major role in what historians call the “Second Great Awakening.” After a great deal of intense Biblical study, he had come to believe that Jesus was going to come to earth again on that October 22, and because he was a dynamic and charismatic figure, he developed quite a large following of people who believed that this would happen too and were prepared for it.

It didn’t. And in Seventh Day Adventist tradition, October 23, 1844, is a date known as the “Great Disappointment.” Miller died five years later still waiting for Jesus to come again, while many of his followers fell away; but others of his followers reinterpreted his predictions, eventually forming the Seventh-Day Adventist Church; which just goes to show that you can be dead wrong and still start a powerful movement.

William Miller’s story is just one of countless attempts of religious people throughout history who have tried to figure out when the Second Coming will occur and God would bring an end to history as we know it. In recent years, particularly with the turn of our most recent millennium, there has been tremendous interest and reams of books and novels, like the Left Behind series.

This phenomenon has always fascinated me, because it seems to me that Jesus is so clear in this passage from Matthew that we can’t know when God will bring an end to history, and if Jesus didn’t know when he was coming again, why should we expect to? And yet many folks seem to have an obsessive need to speculate on it. I am not one of those people; I don’t lose a bit of sleep over the Second Coming. But the danger for people like me is on the other end of the spectrum: we sometimes never reflect on it at all.

II. Advent

Which is why it’s wonderful that we have the season of Advent, to remind us of the shape of salvation history. Advent is Latin for “coming” and is a time of preparation for the coming of Christ into our lives. But it’s not simply a preparation for Christmas and the coming of the Christ child. It’s also preparation for the time when Christ will come again in final victory to bring a close to time and usher in the Kingdom of God in its fullness.

So to use an image from Prof. Larry Stookey at Wesley, in Advent, Christians take the form of a cross: our feet are firmly planted in the present, but we reach an arm back to the past as we remember the incarnation of the Holy One, and at the same time reach into the future as we anticipate his coming again. Looking forward and looking back.

As we get closer to Christmas, you will notice that the lectionary readings will focus more on the incarnation, but here at the beginning of the Advent season – the beginning of our church calendar year – the readings focus on this forward looking. This forward look is critical for us because Christ’s coming again is what gives shape to our salvation history. For the Christian, history is not – to use Arnold Toynbee’s phrase – “just one damned thing after another”: it has a beginning and it has an end. And because it has a goal and a purpose, we then have a goal and purpose, and our work fits into the grand sweep of God’s purpose.

And yet, this is an uncomfortable concept for a lot of Christians. We get vaguely embarrassed by our brothers and sisters dressed in white, standing on hilltops, and waiting for Jesus to come again. And, to be fair, after waiting for a couple of thousand years, a little bit of cynicism about the return of Christ is to be expected.

But it’s also a problem. When we forget that ultimate purpose, the tethers that moor us to the fundamentals of our faith become unhitched, and we become adrift in a sea of purposelessness. In the passage from Matthew, when Jesus talks about the people living during the time of Noah, he doesn’t criticize them for their wickedness, but for the fact that they were unprepared. They simply assumed that business-as-usual would continue forever. Now Noah didn’t understand what the future would bring either, but the difference was that he trusted the word of God and built a boat.

A faith in the ultimate return of Christ is central to who we are as God’s people. In his most recent book, The Coming of God, one of my favorite theologians, Jürgen Moltmann, argues that Christ’s first coming can really only makes sense in light of his promise to come again. We can’t separate the two. In the incarnation, the Kingdom of God has broken into our reality. But that breaking in is ultimately only a promise that the Kingdom will finally come in its fullness and set all things right. Without the consummation of the Kingdom, the promise of the incarnation is a lie.

So part of the Advent journey that we start today is about reaffirming in our own hearts that God’s promises are true. Advent invites us to awaken from our numbed endurance and our reduced expectations, and to consider our life afresh in light of new world that God is about to give. It is to claim with renewed vigor that part of the Lord’s Prayer that we so often repeat without thinking or meaning: Thy Kingdom come.

III. Shaped by the future

This aspect of our faith, this looking forward to the end of time, is something that theologians call “eschatology,” which simply means the study of “last things.” And it has always been an important aspect of our faith not only because God’s final victory is a source of great hope, but because that great hope shapes who we are and what we do right now. In other words, the Kingdom is not merely a future time or event; it reaches out to us from the future, shaping who we are right now, so that the Kingdom is a force that shapes us today.

A movie Jeannine and I enjoyed greatly about ten years ago (you’ll probably notice that all of the movies we’ve seen are at least seven years old) is a Stanley Tucci film called “Big Night.” It’s a film about two Italian brothers who have opened a restaurant in Paradise, New Jersey , hoping to strike it rich. The older brother, Primo, is a master chef and passionate about the integrity and quality of his cooking (for Jeannine, he is a bit of a soul mate). Secondo, the younger brother, is the business manager; and he’s willing to cut some corners on the quality if it will bring in a little more money and a few more customers. So they have got these internal tensions, which are exacerbated by the fact that they are not an economic success, fighting a losing battle with a lower quality restaurant in the neighborhood.

On the brink of collapse, the brothers learn that the famous musician Louis Prima is performing in the area, and they orchestrate hosting a dinner in his honor, hoping that a "big night" built around the celebrity will get them the buzz that they need to make their restaurant a success. So the brothers pool all their talent, energy and every cent they have to plan a sumptuous banquet of unsurpassed magnificence. The film becomes about all the preparation, excitement, and anticipation of this visit. They pull all of their friends and neighbors into the planning and execution for this night and in doing so they create the kind of place that they want to be.

That is how Advent is supposed to feel: the palpable sense of the presence of the One who is expected that changes all the dynamics of our relationships and work. Our anticipation and preparation for the coming of Christ into our lives makes us who we are as we prepare to experience God’s Kingdom in its fullness.

IV. Conclusion

One of the recurring images of the Kingdom in Scripture is what’s known as the Messianic banquet: the great feast where we shall all gather at the Lord’s Table and feast and celebrate in his presence. We have the opportunity this morning to share in this foretaste of life in the kingdom. Let us prepare our hearts and minds for this great gift.