Live with the End in Mind

Live with the End in Mind is our worship theme for the first Sunday in Advent, December 2, 2012. Our focus scripture is Luke 21:25-36.

The main passion of Jesus’ life, teachings and actions is the coming of the kingdom of God. Having just celebrated the reign of Christ on the last Sunday of the church year, we now begin the first Sunday of the new church year with this passage about the fulfillment of the kingdom. Although Jesus is the catalyst who prepares the way for the kingdom to fully blossom, he does not expect it to come with his death in Jerusalem or with the destruction of the temple. In fact, the risen Christ makes clear in Acts 1:6-7 that it is not for his followers to know the time that God will choose. Yet in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection the power of God that will create the kingdom is evident and already at work.

The verses we have before us comprise the last part of Jesus’ teachings about the end times in Luke. These teachings begin at 21:5 with remarks about the destruction of the temple where Jesus has been teaching, an event that had actually happened at the hands of the Romans by the time Luke wrote his Gospel. As Jesus and his followers arrive at Jerusalem, he tells them the Parable of the Pounds in order to make it clear that the time for God’s kingdom to come is not yet here. And neither is the destruction of the temple the sign that the kingdom is fully coming. Rather, Jesus teaches that his followers must prepare for a time of persecution, in which even family members will turn them in for their faith and some will be tortured and killed. Nevertheless, he tells them, “By your endurance, you will gain your souls.” He goes on then to describe cosmic signs that echo the prophecy of Joel 2:30-32. As Eugene Peterson translates Jesus’ words in verses 25-26: “It will seem like all hell has broken loose—sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.” These verses make it clear that the coming of God’s kingdom is not limited to human history, but that as Paul puts it in Romans 8:22: “The whole creation has been groaning in labor pains.”

Having predicted so many painful things, Jesus finally comes to the great resolution to the turmoil. As we know that summer is coming when the fig tree begins to sprout its leaves, so these signs will eventually foretell the coming of the son of Man on clouds of glory and with great power. Then all things on earth and in the cosmos will be put right. And the generation of suffering will be over.

The key, Jesus stresses is not to endlessly speculate on when the kingdom will come, but to live each day with the end in mind. We must be careful not to let our hearts become weighed down with the entertainments or the worries of this life. Rather, we must pray for strength to endure the persecutions that come with following him and to live with expectation that the kingdom will be fulfilled.

During his earthly life Jesus cast a circle of the kingdom of God all around him. Wherever he went, God’s love and justice and power shone like a beacon of light and caused revolutionary things to happen. Even though the kingdom has not yet fully come, to live with expectation means to let Jesus come to life in us. Then we also will prepare the way by casting a circle of his love and justice and power into the dark places of our world.

Here is a Call to Worship based on the Church’s understanding Jeremiah’s telling of the first coming of Jesus. Please feel free to use or adapt anything in this post that is helpful to you.

Call to Worship     From Jeremiah 33:14-16

L: Friends, on this first Sunday of Advent let us recall God’s promise to Jeremiah:

    “The days are surely coming when I will fulfill my promise to my people.

P: At that time I will make a new branch sprout from David’s tree.

    He will follow my leading and will execute justice throughout the land.

L: In that day my people will be saved and they will live in safety.

All: Then they will declare, ‘God has set all things right for us.’”

    Thanks be to God for keeping the promise! Let us worship God!