St. Paul’s United Church Advent 1, Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Beginning of the Beginning – Rev. David Mundy

Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37

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On November 1^st in the year of our Lord 1755 the Christian population of the city of Lisbon in Portugal made its way to churches and chapels for worship. It was All Saints day, a significant religious holiday in Portugal and Spain and France, even in our present day.

Unbeknownst to the worshippers an earthquake took place roughly 200 kilometres off the coast from Lisbon, creating a tsunami, the enormous wave of energy which hurtled toward the city. When it hit land, the effects were devastating. At that time the city of Lisbon was one of the cultural jewels of Europe as well as an economic hub. It was adorned with many beautiful buildings, including its churches.

In a short time much of the creative energy of centuries was swept away. Historians estimate that within minutes thousands of residents perished, including many worshippers who died as they prayed, unaware that death was on its way. To make matters worse, once the flood subsided, fire broke out and raged through the city for six days, killing far more people than the tsunami, taking the destruction of the city to another level.

In the end, roughly sixty thousand died throughout the country. Needless to say, this was a natural disaster that had a huge impact on the nation. It has been suggested that it knocked Portugal off its perch as the most prosperous nation in Europe. But it was much more than that. It set in motion a kind of philosophical and a theological tsunami that was felt across the continent.

Today we expect that we will be informed quickly about situations in even the most remote places on Earth. That wasn’t the case in the eighteenth century. Yet news travelled to other countries with relative speed, and people, including the French philosopher Voltaire and the theologians of the church, pondered why this had happened. Was this a sign of God’s wrath directed toward the citizens of Lisbon and the nation of Portugal? Was this the beginning of the end of the world, and a sign of the Return of Christ? As it turns out, this historical event which you may never have heard about before is significant in the theology of the Adventist Christian movement, but for most of us it is simply a footnote in human history.

Well, Happy New Year! I appreciate that this isn’t a very cheerful subject on a Sunday with the theme of hope, but then you may have noticed that our scripture readings today weren’t exactly upbeat either. It’s a strange thing that we come to the first Sunday of Advent and the new Christian year with rather dark and sombre scripture passages rather than uplifting scriptures to usher us toward Christmas. Who came up with this stuff anyway?

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, which some have described as the fifth gospel, there are trembling mountains and destructive fires and an angry God who needs to be appeased. The prophet does hold out hope that this may be a time when renewal and restoration for the people of Israel are about to happen.

Even the gospel lesson today isn’t very “gospelly” at the start with its dark signs and portents for the “coming of the Son of Man” which people through the ages have interpreted as the return of Christ. By the end, though, there is a call to be alert, awake for the coming of the One who is hope.

What do you think, are we living in the time that is the beginning of the end, or is this the beginning of the beginning? Are we going to get a “heapin’ helpin’” of God’s wrath or will a new day dawn because Christ is with us?

It seems that in virtually every age since Jesus lived on this Earth there have been people who are almost gleeful that the signs of their times indicate that this is “the end of the world as we know it” as the song says.

Some groups of “end times” Christians have been so convinced of Jesus’ imminent return that they have given away all of their worldly possessions, certain that they would no longer need them. Don’t you wonder what it was like after the day and the hour came and went without incident?: “you know that lawnmower I gave you – mind if I borrow it?” There have been tragic consequences as well with notable groups such as the Branch Davidians in Texas who died rather than relinquish their apocalyptic convictions.

And there are always some who like to appoint themselves the prophets of “gloom and doom” with wild predictions for the end. Earlier this week my email program told me that it had put a message into my junk-mail purgatory folder that I should check out before I sent it onto junk-mail hell. It turned out to be a kooky twenty one page diatribe couched in biblical language:

then the Angel at the Gulf Coast said to me, come closer, tell the people at the Gulf Coast and Louisiana that it will be ten times worse than Katrina , and then the Angel struck the Gulf Coast, and people who were being sucked out to sea, everyone who lives there. As I looked to the East Coast I saw the Angel strike the sea and just then the twelve eroding hurricanes appeared up and the East Coast and the coastline dropped off into the Atlantic Ocean from twenty miles to sixty miles inland.

I actually tidied this up a bit because the Avenging Angels have fairly poor grammar. Jesus also makes an appearance in this prophecy and lets everyone know that President-elect Obama is the anti-Christ.

As much as we reject these outlooks and practices we can’t help but wonder where God is when the troubling events of our world unfold. We have lived with consistently bleak financial news in the past few months and of course the cowardly acts of terrorists in distant places touches us. How could we not be affected by the grief of Indo-Canadians who are mourning the loss of loved ones in Mumbai?

I would also suggest to you that we have our own figurative earthquakes and tsunamis which shake our lives to the core. When we experience major health problems or watch loved ones suffer, when we are wondering whether our own jobs are secure or if our financial security is undermined by circumstances beyond our control then we are tempted to ask “are you out there God, do you love me Jesus?” These are fundamental questions of faith which we need to ask at times because we say that God is not some distant, heartless deity but the God of love and compassion.

If we come back to our readings for this Sunday of Hope we discover that while there is dark imagery there is also Good News. Isaiah promises that the God of Israel has not abandoned them and that they are to hold on, to wait for God. Then he uses the wonderful image of a “hands-on” Creator who is willing to shape and reshape our individual lives and our world into something both functional and beautiful, the way a potter expertly shapes a vessel.

Jesus uses a very different image which may be even more hopeful and powerful. He says that no matter how bleak things may seem, Spring will come again. I find this to be particularly meaningful on a late November day!

The message we need this morning, and the message we are offered in scripture is that even though the world can be an uncertain place, and even though life can be scary, God does not abandon us and Christ is with us. Jesus does say we must be alert and we must stay awake. But we know that there is a difference between being alert and being afraid. There is a difference between being awake and experiencing night terrors. The false prophets of this world want us to live in fear. Christ invites us to live with hope, day by day, whatever we may be facing.

Some of you have read the book by Dr. Randy Pausch called The Last Lecture which is based on a lecture he gave to a college class he taught after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of forty-five. Pausch was told that he had a matter of months to live and he could have spiralled into despair and self-pity. He was the father of three young children and had a wonderful life by most standards. Instead of despair he chose a hopeful way for the next two years before his death, encouraging people to live to the fullest, whatever their circumstances. Millions of people watched Randy on television and on Youtube and read his book. Why? Surely it is because we all want to hear those messages that life still has meaning in the darkest days.

You might be interested to know that while Randy Pausch deliberately said nothing about his own religious faith in his last lecture, he and his family were active in a Unitarian church. In an interview he commented that the support and love of his faith community had been a sustaining presence during his illness.

We are the community of Jesus and as such we say that “in life, in death, in life beyond death we are not alone.” This morning as we share in our commemoration of the last supper Jesus shared with his followers we can remember that he promised them that this was not the beginning of the end. Whatever their fears, this was the beginning of something new, something that would not only sustain them in this life but would be eternal

Here is an Advent prayer that may be of comfort for you, and one I will invite you to repeat with me this morning