Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Making Room for God’s Disruptions”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
I have to begin this message this morning with a confession. These last couple of weeks have made me slightly uncomfortable. The Scriptures from Luke have had a lot to do with eschatology; with resurrection and heaven. So our Bible studies and the sermons have struggled with this from our human point of view. Basically what I’m saying is that talking about heaven is a little uncomfortable for me, because what do I know about heaven from where I stand?
I can only hope that you have shared in part with my discomfort, mainly because that’s the best kind of complement a preacher can get. It’s always nice for a preacher to hear, “Good sermon today.” But a great complement in a preacher’s ear is when a congregant says, “That sermon made me uncomfortable. That sermon made me squirm. It made me think.” Well, thank God!
Now, in the past I relished that complement, “the sermon made me uncomfortable,” because I thought, “Good job, Dan. Pat yourself on the back! You did your homework. You got the people thinking in a more honest way or a more refreshing way or a more challenging way about the Scriptures.”
Over time, though (thankfully), I have come to appreciate that rare complement on a level that has nothing to do with me and entirely to do with God. I have come to understand that sermons need to make us feel uncomfortable from time to time; sermons need to disrupt our lives, because God is a God of disruptions.
We think we’ve got it all figured out, and then God comes along and disrupts everything. It’s like I’ve shared with you before: If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans.
I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to be confident in describing heaven, because having faith in God means that there is no such thing as a sure thing in this life. And that includes how I imagine heaven, or even how my human eyes read the Bible.
If God is a disruptive God and nothing in this life can be deduced to 100% certainty, then there are no rational grounds for the inerrancy of Scripture. Or to be more preachy here, there are no righteous grounds for the inerrancy of Scripture. As another preacher, Peter Gomes, puts it, “In choosing to hear those texts that satisfy our image of ourselves or of Jesus, we run the considerable risk of learning more and more about less and less.”
Learning more and more about less and less in the Bible, for example, leads people to believe in the sure thing of the rapture; it’s the modern day doctrine of the apocalypse that believes in God’s unpredictable judgment when the good will be separated from the bad.
The rapture says that in the blink of an eye, the righteous pilots of an airplane will disappear from the cockpit, and the sinful passengers will go down with the vessel and crash into the earth. It’s the belief in this interpretation of heaven—this sure thing—that has caused sales of the Left Behind books to soar. And it’s this sure thing that has produced the boastfully proud bumper sticker that reads, “In case of rapture, this truck will be unmanned.”
Well, I’m more of the school of thought that we don’t achieve God’s salvation by upright living. I’m more at peace with the offering of God Incarnate, the Word made flesh, Christ Jesus, being a profound indicator of God’s grace; God’s grace that is so big, so limitless that there is no way for me to achieve that God’s salvation by my own achievements in my own time. Confident claims about rapture don’t mesh with my confident thoughts about simple things, like 2 + 2 = 4, and James K. Polk was our 11th president. I find more sarcastic truth in the bumper sticker that says, “In case of rapture, can I have your truck?”
But rapture and my comfortable depiction of salvation and heaven are only two human outlooks on eschatology. Someone who is confident in the rapture has one view of heaven and I have another. But can’t we cooperate with each other? Why does this thing called faith have to get so messy? Can our two visions of God’s realm strive toward a common goal?
Michael A. King is the pastor of Spring Mount Mennonite Church in Pennsylvania, and he recalls growing up with a guy he refers to as Robert. Michael’s parents were missionaries, and this guy, Robert, showed up at their home back in the 1950s. And when Michael’s parents switched countries of service, Robert showed up on their doorstep at each of those homes, too. Basically, you never knew when Robert was going to show up from one of his worldwide ministry tours expecting to be fed, housed and supported by Michael’s parents.
Decades went by and Michael was a pastor far away in time and space from those boyhood memories. And then one day the phone rang. It was Robert. He was at the airport and he said he’d wait for Michael to pick him up. But Michael turned him down.
Robert sounded so angry that Michael could feel his rage over the phone. And Robert warned Michael that by not picking him up from the airport, he was interfering with the Lord’s call.
Another one of the Scriptures for today comes from 2 Thessalonians. Lately I’ve been in situations where I see college students with reminders written on the backs of their hands: “Make copies,” or, “Read Syllabus.” This verse, 2 Thessalonians 3:13, is one that we may as well write on the backs of our hands so that we never forget it. It says, “And as for you, brothers and sisters, never grow weary of doing what is right.”
Michael King remembered that angry phone encounter with Robert when this text came up for him to preach recently. He remembered what a fierce visionary for the Lord Robert was. He pondered how our consumerist society convinces us to never look beyond ourselves, and how we are told that money and credit cards can buy security and happiness.
Even still, Michael said this: “I’m not sure I’d undo my rejection of Robert’s airport plea. But I wish that he and I had known how, instead of opposing each other, to collaboratively stitch together life’s ordinary labors and our longing for the day of the Lord.”
Our visions of heaven cannot be 100% certain, because the end can never justify the means. What kind of a gift would this thing called life be if we were so certain about the next life that we completely disregarded this one? The end doesn’t justify the means. What matters most is not that we get the vision of heaven correct. What matters most are the paths we choose to get there, and that we leave room on those paths for everyone.
But we’re always so much like the disciples of Jesus from these biblical stories. The disciples hear Jesus talking about how things are going to be when God flips everything on its head, and they want to know exactly when that will happen? We want to be ready for it, Jesus! They don’t ask him how they prepare for God; they just ask him when they should expect him. It doesn’t do a whole lot of good to know when God is coming out of a whirlwind if we don’t know how to receive God, does it?
Wednesday night in worship, we talked about time: our concept of time in light of God’s concept of time. Now, there are two kinds of time that we find in this morning’s gospel story: chronos and kairos. When the disciples ask Jesus when all these things will happen, when no stone will be left on another, they are asking about chronos. When we read their question from the Greek New Testament, we find that they are asking about chronos, and chronos is our concept of time. Chronos is calendar time. Chronos is something we can read, something we can manage, something we’re comfortable with.
But when Jesus responds to their question, his words are translated from the Greek kairos. Jesus talks in terms of kairos, and kairos means “opportune time”—God’s time. We think in terms of chronos and God works in terms of kairos.
And finally Jesus says to the disciples as clearly as he speaks to us this morning, “By standing firm you will gain life.” What’s important for us is not pinpointing the certainty of when things might change in our favor. What’s important is that we are always ready—ready for the opportune time, ready for God’s time when things change; God’s time, when all things work together, when the wolf and the lamb feed together, and the lion eats straw like the ox, and the serpent eats dust, and no one harms or destroys as all things live together on God’s holy mountain.
We’re connected in this time, and we live together in this time, just like all things live together in God’s realm, where no one harms or destroys. But we still go through life on chronos. We go through life on our time. We think our living doesn’t affect anyone else around us, and we can choose our own destiny.
But then God witnesses Creation turning against itself. God’s children hurt each other with wars, with greed that adds to the problem of poverty, with a lack of respect for others’ well being, with rape, with drunk driving, with cruelty toward animals, with child abuse and spousal abuse, with the domination of our suffering environment—God’s children hurt each other. And what can God do but call on you to do something about it? What can the God of disruptions do but tap you on the shoulder and say, “I need that to stop. I need all of my children to return to my holy mountain and be at peace with each other and with the world.”
God disrupts our lives by calling on us to respond to the brokenness of this world, and just like that our plans change. And the only advice Jesus gives us about when this might happen is that he says to stand firm. Sisters and brothers, we’re called to maintain endurance. As people of faith, God needs us to stand firm. But what does endurance mean?
Michael King took one more lesson from his reunion with Robert. He says, “However powerfully we intuit the ending of this earth or dream beyond it, we prepare not by fleeing ordinary responsibilities, but by maintaining them even as we see past them. This too is a form of endurance.”
Stacy, Mac and I are expecting a fourth member of our family to come into this world in a few weeks. But our house isn’t ready for it. So, I’ve spent the last three weekends out of five trying to fix that by way of foam board, cellulose insulation, and sheet rock, hammering nails, tightening screws and making measurement after measurement. Our house looks like ground zero.
Now, you could say that I’m standing firm. I’m showing an endurance that is preparing for what is to come. That is a confident thought that speaks from chronos—my calendar time that grows shorter from here to the delivery date.
But the truth is that baby is coming whether I get a nursery ready or not. I can prepare the best room in the world for that child to rest her head, but it will not change the fact that—God willing—she is coming. I must maintain my responsibilities in my time, but for God’s sake, and for the sake of the child coming into our lives, I have to also look past those responsibilities to what God might have in store. My true endurance comes not in my pinpointed preparation but in hope to always do what is right as the years go by. That is an endurance that prepares for kairos, for God’s time.
A child’s laughter can often be a sure indicator of God. There is so much of God’s glory and Christ’s love that we find in the joy of children being around. My son is often giving me reminders of God’s love and what that love means. But recently he gave me a lesson on what endurance means in God’s eyes.
Picture of Mac at two years old waiting for trick-or-treaters at the front door the day after Halloween
I think this is how God waits for us and how God watches over us: longing for all to come home; to reside with one another on God’s holy mountain. As we’re scrambling around on our time, let’s be sure we don’t lose sight of God’s time. Let us stand firm and wait for God’s call. Let’s make room for God’s disruptions so that everyone will gather on the doorstep of God’s realm. Amen.