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"Headlights in the Window"
Anybody here in junior high? Anybody used to be in junior high?
Anybody lucky enough to miss that time period all together? Let
me tell you a story from when I was 13 years old. I remember
one night when my parents left the house to go to some function
at school, and my brothers and sister were miraculously absent
from the house for some reason. For one marvelous night I was
left home alone.
But before my parents left they gave me a short
list of tasks to do while they were away, and they said they’d
be back at 10:00. It was 7:00. When everybody left did I jump
on that list of tasks right away? No, I did what every self-respecting
13 year old would do in my position: I grabbed a big bowl of ice-
cream, popped open a can of Mountain Dew and plopped myself down
in dad’s chair and watched mindless TV.
7:30 passed, 8:00, 8:30.
Time rolled on, and I kept telling myself “I still got time, I
still got time.” 9:30 rolled around, and I suddenly saw headlights
in window and heard a car pulling up to driveway. In sudden shock
I realized my folks were home early. So, as the wise brave youth,
I quickly threw my dirty clothes under the bed, turned on water
in sink which happened to be filled with dirty dishes, and plunged
my hands into the suds just in time for my folks to open the door.
When they saw the state of the house and my guilty grin, needless
to say I wasn’t fooling anyone.
You don’t have to be in junior high to understand the situation;
you just have to be human. You know, there seems to be some
bizarre contradiction woven into the fabric of humanity. We
know our time on earth here is limited, if you make it to 100
years or greater that’s really an accomplishment. But somehow
we are really good at losing track of time and priorities. We’ve
all been through this before. We forget what matters, and
often times as we age our greatest regrets have to do with
the realization that we didn’t spend our time wisely. We
like to act like we have all the time in the world, but when
we see that our time is short, when we see those proverbial
headlights in the driveway we panic, we feel that the time
we spent was meaningless, and this drives us to feel apathetic,
guilty, pressured, or empty. Oftentimes we either work feverishly
to compensate for this lack of meaning, or just plain give up.
Which brings us to the text. This moves beyond the immediate
realization of our mortality to the broader reality that
history is limited. No one knows when the end will come,
not even Jesus who is coming Himself. When we read about
the people in the text, they don’t seem any different than
us, do they? Jesus says they were eating and drinking,
marrying, with both men and women going to work just like
any other day when history ends.
Here Jesus uses the language of the flood too. Before the
flood, people thought their lives would just go on and on,
day after day just like us ... then the flood hit, and suddenly
everything was over for them. No warning, things just end.
If you’re like me, these sayings of Jesus just make life
seem more meaningless. In the text when these peoples’
lives cease, they didn’t know what hit them. In reality
we spend so little time thinking about the limitedness
of our lives and history itself that when we hear this
passage it’s something of a startling wake up call. It’s
almost as if there is something deeply wrong with mankind
that makes us ignore the limitedness of time and just
focus all our energy and attention inward to ourselves
and block out what is really going on around us.
This is a way sin works in our lives. It draws attention
away from how things really are to how we would like them.
Simple human pride would make us seek after our own selfish
desires rather than actually see that time is running out
for us and our action or inaction has consequences. That’s
what happened with the flood when people chose to forget
about God, that’s what happened to me as a kid when I chose
to forget mom and dad were coming home soon, that’s just
the way things seem to be. We pretend everything’s fine
with the world, and by the time we realize our time here
is short it’s too late.
But at the Advent, everything changes. Advent is the time when
we remember something pivotal, groundbreaking, earth shattering,
beyond the scope of our limited minds. It is a time when we see
God, who lives beyond space and time, above the confines of
history, greater than these dimensions we live in doing the
unthinkable: breaking into history. The story of God’s plan
for man in the Bible is one of God the infinite looking down
at this limited creation in love and choosing to restore this
broken creation.
The way God chose to break into history was like a meteor coming
from space, plummeting through the atmosphere and crashing into
the earth. The impact of such an event spread to everything,
impacted everything in space and time, changed what our reality
looked like in past and present, made everything different.
But the way that God came crashing to earth was equally amazing:
He came as a humble, human child, existing in the same limited
reality as the rest of us humans, living the same lives we all
live, but without error, without giving in to selfish pride,
without taking His eyes from His Heavenly Father. And God broke
into limited human history for us, to change our fate, to remedy
the limitedness of our sinful natures, to give us the promise of
a new creation, with perfected bodies where things will no longer
be limited, where life will be greater, broader, different, and
so much more than it is now.
And in doing so, God flipped the tables on Satan and now shows
us who we were supposed to be. Before sin we were created to
live forever, to be limitless, but as sin infected the human
race we forgot this and believed the lie that living in this
limited time is all there is. Sin draws our eyes away from
God’s original plan for mankind, perfection, and pulls our
eyes inward, away from God. Thanks be to God that through
Christ we now have the hope and promised gift of a restoration
of humanity and the world to what it was originally intended.
He chose to give us this gift by what He did on the cross.
This is the promise of Advent, this is for you.
And in light of this advent realization, the text for today
takes on a different flavor. The text speaks of the second
time God will break through history in this powerful way.
This time, though, is not to give us the promise of the
gift of eternal life, this time is to make everything new.
When we least expect it, the Son of Man will return to
change everything again in space and time. And in the text
the charge to the those who believe in Jesus is to watch
and be ready. But we wait for the end of time not like
those who fear, cringe, and despair when they see all
things come to an end. But we are to lift up our heads
in eager anticipation of the one who has freely given
them the gift of a new, unlimited reality perfected by
the Cross of Christ.
But we here, who desperately cling to the hope and assurance
of the promise of Christ, who broke into history some 2000
years ago and who will come again one day, we still live
day to day in this limited reality. Though we cling to the
hope of the return of Christ, and are even literally marked
with that promise at our baptisms, we still exist in this
broken world. Perhaps that’s why Jesus includes the section
in the Gospel about the Jesus coming like a thief in the
night. If we knew at what time Jesus was returning, we’d
be tempted to procrastinate in doing His work here and
now. I get the sinking suspicion Jesus wants us to live
like each day could be our last…because it really could
be. This is what keeping watch means. We are to not live
in the dark but to put on the armor of light, daily bearing
witness to the great gift of eternal life God has given us
in Christ. We do this in many ways, by the things we say,
the thoughts we think, the good things we do, the gifts we
give to those in need as a reflection of the greatest gift
that has been given us.
Remember that story I told you at the beginning, with my being
lazy and irresponsible and being caught by my dad? I was
expecting the justly deserved righteous wrath of my father.
But when my dad came through that door and broke through
that illusion I had made that I had all the time in the
world, he didn’t treat me like I deserved. He treated me
like his foolish, sinful son. But he loved me anyway exactly
because I was his foolish sinful son. He loved me despite
my selfish intentions. Through the gift of salvation given
through Christ, we who believe are now the sons and daughters
of God, beloved and assured of our place in the family of
God forever.
So when God breaks through history again, lift up your heads,
because of Jesus you are His. And not even the end of the world
can change that.
Amen.
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