Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Between Now and Not Yet "
Date: November 27, 2005
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Mark 13:24-37

I remember the date.  I don’t always, but I do this year.  Sometimes it passes by without me taking note, but this year I remember:  it was on a Thursday, November 3, on the Today show that I saw the first television advertisement for the Christmas season. 

Maybe you’ve seen it too.  It’s been repeated many times.  The background is a sort of 1960s cartoon of a house surrounded by snow.  While a voice sounding like Dean Martin sings “Winter Wonderland” in the background, and cars pull up out front and people enter, the voiceover says “cheese and cracker platter, $30…turkey and all the trimmings, $55…warm apple pie, $12, a full house, priceless.”

Shortly thereafter, on the same morning, I drove up out of my underground garage and looked down Fourth Street to see the Christmas trees floating in the Colorado Lagoon.  ‘It’s started,’ I thought to myself.

Now that was three weeks before the traditional Friday-after-Thanksgiving Christmas sales began at the malls, and three-and-a-half weeks before those of us who work in ecclesiastical settings believe the season begins on the First Sunday of Advent.  Even if you were to officially adopt today as the beginning of the season leading toward Christmas, we are all somewhere between now and not yet.

While the school year revolves around the September to June calendar; and many businesses adopt a fiscal year of July 1 to June 30; and the most common use of the calendar is from January through December, the Christian year actually begins today, on the First Sunday of Advent.  There is a three-year cycle of scripture readings that run each year from this Sunday until the Sunday known as the Reign of Christ Sunday, usually observed here as Thanksgiving Sunday.  Today we begin year B of the cycle of lectionary readings, and it is a problematic one for me.  For many of the gospel lessons in year B are taken from Mark.  While it is the earliest gospel written, and thus may be free from embellishments added to the later gospels, I must confess that Mark is my least favorite of the four gospels.

There is no journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, no pregnant Mary, no shepherds, no singing angels—that’s all in Luke.  There are no wise men bearing spectacular gifts—that’s all in Matthew.  There is no encounter between the risen Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden on Easter morning—that’s all in John.  Mark is utterly unconcerned with the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, embellishments that found their way into the later gospels. 

Rather, we are challenged on this first Sunday of our journey toward Bethlehem by images of a darkened sun and stars falling down from heaven.  Such imagery may seem dark and threatening to us, but here in Mark, such portents are described as signs that the Son of Man, this powerful, divine figure “is near.”

On this Sunday of the year, we preachers are always challenged by how to preach apocalyptic language to our congregations.  The challenge is not that congregations are so very modern and too sophisticated; rather, it is that we are complacent and accommodated, well-fixed with present arrangements.  How many of you are going to put the Christmas tree up in a different location this year than last?  See what I mean?!  Apocalyptic preaching images are for those who are desperate, who need heaven rending, radical change.

It is also quite probable that we 21st century Christians, openly or secretly, claim to already lift up and possess God in our lives, and therefore have lost this element of expectation, this sense that we live between the times, in between the now and the not yet.  The first generation Christians were very sure about this.  Christ had risen; he was coming back; and it was expected to be within their lifetimes.  We need to admit that we wait for complete deliverance too, that God’s work among us is not done yet, that the world as it is is not all that it can be.

Today as we begin Advent, this is a message for people who are not there yet, who are stretched between the times.  Here in our sanctuary this morning, some of you may feel well-fixed, complacent, and at peace.  You have the Christmas cards, the stamps, and a draft of your Christmas letter is already on the computer!  For you, perhaps you need a word that this world can be more than the present arrangements.  Still others of you may experience this world and your present circumstances as painful, or sorrowful, or tragic.  These sufferers may have more in common with the intended audience of Mark’s gospel—those who wait, those who need divine shaking of the heavens and the earth, divine deliverance.

We are not very good at patient waiting.  A teenager wants to know when is she old enough to baby-sit, when can he get a job.  A teen desperately waits for their 16th birthday to drive.  We apply to college and search the mail every day for our acceptance.  No matter how long the engagement is, it never seems enough time to adequately plan every detail of the wedding.  What mother wouldn’t like to wait less than nine months for the baby?  We anxiously await our child’s first word, first step, first day of school.  Will retirement ever come?  Now what do we do with our time?  And then you die.  We hurry up and rush our way through life, compiling a list of things we wish we had done.  We don’t always use the time spent waiting between the now and the not yet in a productive or useful manner.

How many times have I heard a person say, “I’m ashamed to say I’m fairly ignorant of the Bible”, but then do nothing to take advantage of Bible studies through books, internet, or actual study groups?  How many times have I heard a person say, “I plan to take that up when I have time someday”, but then someday comes and they never take the time to do it?

It is characteristic of the texts for the Advent season to speak of a yearning for fulfillment, of being stretched between times of “now” and “not yet.”  We are not yet at that place were God longs us to be.  We are not yet at the place of fulfillment.  Howard Thurman, a prolific 20th century writer, theologian and teacher loved to preach a sermon in which he went through each phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, following each phrase with, “But not yet.”

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, . . . But not yet.”

“Thy kingdom come, they will be done, . . . But not yet.”

You and I always live “between the times,” between the first advent of God in his Son Jesus, and the time of the kingdom of God, but not yet.  Perhaps the most challenging charge that a first-century Jesus can direct at us 21st century Christians is “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.  …  And what I say to you I say to all:  Keep awake.” (Mark 13:33, 37)

One of our church members told me recently about her father in his final health battle.  For years, family members had tried to direct him toward knowing the Lord.  “Fine for you,” he’d say, “But it’s not my thing.”  Finally, not long before his death, he accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior.  A day or two later, he told his family, “I feel as if a tremendous burden has been lifted from my shoulders.”  The good news is that he died knowing the Lord, but what if he had accepted him earlier?  How much sooner might that undefined burden have been lifted from his shoulders?

Today’s gospel reaches for strange, stirring imagery, signs from heaven, darkened sun and moon, the Son of Man coming down on clouds, all to say that the present world in which we live is not fixed, not final.  There’s a new world coming.  Something is being born among us.  Wait.  Watch.  Hope.  You will see a world breaking open into something new and wonderful.  God, having begun creation, shall finish creation.  There will be a new heaven and a new earth.  God intends to have the world as God’s own and God will not stop until God gets the world that God intends.

But not yet.