Longing for the Second Coming

Sermon delivered Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014 (1 Advent, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37).

Our Gospel passage from Mark today is one of those “end times” passages, talking about the sun and moon being darkened, and stars falling from heaven, and “the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”

It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and although our culture is jumping quickly from Thanksgiving into the Christmas season, we’re not there yet in the church calendar.

Although we have a tendency to think of the season of Advent as just a prelude to Christmas, Advent actually has an additional theme, a theme about end times. In fact, the last few Sundays after Pentecost and the first few Sundays of Advent are the only place in our lectionary where we specifically focus on the “end times,” the final judgment of the world, but so often it gets glossed over in the rush to Christmas. So today, let’s take a moment to reflect on that “end times” theme.

The reason we think about the end times during Advent is because Advent is not just about the first coming of Christ in his birth in a manger in Bethlehem, but about his Second Coming to judge the world at the end of time. The word “Advent” means “coming,” and if Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem was his first Advent, his return to judge the world at will be his second Advent. As we anticipate our celebration of that first Advent during this season, we also watch and wait for the Second Advent.

In a sense, this anticipation of Christ’s Second Coming reflects the core of the Christian experience as we currently know it. Every week in the Creed and the Eucharistic prayer, we assert that we are waiting for Christ’s coming again – not just during Advent, but throughout the church year. Every day of our lives as Christians, we live in an “in between” time – after Christ’s first coming in Bethlehem, but before his return at the end of time. Some theologians speak about this in between time with the phrase “already but not yet.”

As Christians, we believe that Christ has already redeemed the world and delivered us from the power of sin and death, but we do not yet see that redemption clearly in the world around us. We can see the transformative power of Christ at work in the lives of individual believers, but we still feel the effects of sin in our lives, and the world continues to worship many things other than God, including money, power, and human achievements. To the skeptic, Jesus’s life and death seems not to have changed much in the world. If Jesus has redeemed the world, why is it still so broken?

The Christian answer to that question lies in the “already but not yet.” The world is still broken because we live an in between time. We do not yet know the fulfillment of Christ’s redemptive work for all creation, which will be completed when he comes again.

What will that look like when it happens? In our current state, we can only imagine. Jesus gave us some clues in the parables he told while he was here on earth: we know that the kingdom to come will have something to do with turning the current state of affairs upside down – with exalting the humble and humbling the exalted, with making the last to be first and the first to be last. We know that Christ the King whom we await to be our judge is a king who rules in an unconventional manner – by becoming completely vulnerable in the form of a child. And despite the passages about throwing certain people into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, we also know that the Christ who will come to be our judge is the same Christ who taught us to forgive not seven, but seventy-seven times, and who practiced the ultimate act of forgiveness on the cross when he prayed for his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

So often, when we think about the “end times” or the Second Coming, we tend to think of Hollywood movie images of the end of the world: death, destruction, asteroids, chaos. And somehow in this midst of this scary picture, the Jesus who taught us the way of love and forgiveness morphs into a harsh, cruel judge, someone of whom we need to be afraid. Despite all the scriptural predictions of stars falling and wars and famines and the like, we should remember that the Christ who will return is the same Christ we have known from the Scriptures and from our own relationships with him, someone who is a comforter and lover of our souls. When he comes again, Jesus will come not to bring death and destruction, but to save us from it.

The anthem that the choir will sing at the 11:00 service today is a beautiful illustration of the Second Coming as something to be longed for, not feared, of a Christ who comes to comfort us, not to destroy us. (Since you won’t get to hear it today, I highly recommend that you look up a version of it on the internet and listen to it when you get home. The piece is called “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come,” and is written by the composer Paul Manz.) The piece has a haunting and plaintive quality to it, and expresses a depth of longing difficult to put into the spoken word. It is based on a text from the book of Revelation that speaks about the Second Coming, in a vision that tells us that when Christ comes again, “there will be no more night,” and those gathered at the throne of God “will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light” (Revelation 22:7).

What makes this piece even more powerful and poignant is the fact that the composer wrote it when his three-year-old son was deathly ill and he and his wife feared they would lose him. In the midst of that great anguish, Paul Manz composed this brilliant, beautiful piece expressing praise and glory to God, and expressing a deep longing for Christ to come again. We know that Christ will return someday, but the piece pleads, “e’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come” – please, God, come quickly, come quickly to deliver us from the pain and sorrow and despair of this world. You can imagine the composer sitting at his son’s bedside and pleading for Christ to come to him and to his son, to come and bring his redeeming work to fulfillment, to grant us a world where “death will be no more, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4).

As this particular story goes, the composer’s son survived his illness, despite the fact that doctors had given up on him. But we all know of similar stories that do not have a happy ending, and for all of them, and for all of us in our brokenness this Advent, we plead for Jesus to “quickly come,” to come not to bring destruction, but to deliver us from it. From that perspective, the Second Coming becomes not some abstract matter of doctrine, but a very real longing and desire for this life. Please, God, deliver us. Come to us. Help us.

This Advent, amidst all the busy preparations for Christmas, I invite you to take time to reflect on that Second Coming, to imagine a world where all the promises of the Christmas carols would finally be fulfilled, a world where the Prince of Peace would truly reign. As we live in that in between time of the “already but not yet,” we long all the more expectantly for that fulfillment of the promise. And even in our moments of sorrow this season, no matter what our personal grief or struggles, we can reflect on the hope of the Second Coming and pray with the words of our anthem today,

E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come
And night shall be no more
They need no light nor lamp nor sun
For Christ will be their All!