I’ve mentioned to you before that in the days prior to my being called by Jesus to be one of His
followers, I was a student of yoga, and of Eastern spirituality in general. Yoga is largely a school of
thought derived from Hinduism, which teaches that all people are on a path of spiritual evolution.
The idea is that through amassing good karma through good works and so forth, along with doing
certain techniques and practices, you accelerate your spiritual evolution toward the day that your
spirit basically dissolves into blissful unity with God. At the end of your life if you haven’t evolved far
enough to do this, you’re reincarnated into another body, and you continue on the long “journey” to
cosmic consciousness.
Back then this all seemed fine and good to me, and made a certain amount of sense. So in my early
20’s I got on the stick and started working at it. But then something happened that kind of threw me
for a loop. Some astute devotee inquired as to what happens once you attain cosmic
consciousness. That is, are we then forever in a state of bliss? And the answer was something like,
“No, because at some point you get re-separated from God, sent back to earth, and then you start
the whole thing over again. It’s all a big circle. It felt to me kind of like someone offering a million
bucks, then retracting the offer a few minutes later. (“Psych!”) And please note, this wasn’t some off-
the-cuff remark made by a mid-level yoga bureaucrat, but a statement made by a famous and widely-
respected proponent of that way of life.
The reason I mention all of this is to point out a fundamental difference in world views here. There is
much good to be found in many of Hinduism’s beliefs and practices. But they tend to have a very
circular and fatalistic view of time. How this affected me reminds of Gertrude Stein’s famous
comment when, as an adult, she tried to find her childhood home in Oakland, California: “There’s no
there there.” Our scripture readings this morning give us assurances that history is actually going
somewhere. There is a ‘there’ there. This is revealed in words of prophecy which claim to be given
by God himself to show us glimpses of what awaits.
First, let’s look at our Old Testament reading. The prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the 6th to 7th
Century BC, looks ahead to the coming of a righteous king. He writes, “The days are surely coming,
says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Judah. In those days and at that
time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and
righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And
this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”
Many believe that this is a direct reference to Jesus the Messiah, whose words are quoted by St.
Luke in our Gospel reading. He, too, prophesies about the future, and His imagery gets pretty
intense. Jesus says, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth
distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from
fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers will be shaken. Then they will
see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.”
So we have kind of a two-step prophetic process going on here. We have Jeremiah pointing forward
to the long-awaited figure who will set things to rights. Then we have that very person, Jesus,
speaking prophetically about how things, in the end, will be, as he looks ahead to His return to earth.
This is kind of a microcosm of our focus in the season of Advent. Because with similar bifocal lenses,
we’re looking ahead to two things: First, the coming of Jesus to the manger in Bethlehem, which we’ll
celebrate at Christmas, and second, His return to judge the living and the dead. It’s believed that
Jesus’ words today refer to the latter.
Now, there are few things that get our attention in the scriptures like good, old apocalyptic imagery.
Our eyes grow wide and our minds engage in trying to figure out what it all means. We put on our
Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hats and try to unravel the word puzzle. “Let’s see, signs in the sun,
the moon and the stars… I bet that means we’re going to get nailed by a comet or an asteroid!” Or,
“Roaring of the sea and the waves… Hey, we just had a big tsunami so this must mean that the
apocalypse will be any second! Quick, let’s buy some land in the mountains!” And it’s off to the
races.
This semi-morbid curiosity sells. There was an ancient Mayan calendar that happens not to
proceed past 2012, so now we have a movie blockbuster about the impending destruction of the
world in that fateful year. No one seems to be asking whether the Mayan prophet’s pen merely ran
out of ink, or perhaps if he or she simply got tired of the whole thing and decided to stop at 2012.
In any case, everyone loves a mystery, and so much the better if we have some scary imagery to
spice it up. And please hear me clearly, I don’t say this in any way to make light of the warnings in
what Jesus is saying. His words are kind of scary, and frankly, it’s hard to know exactly what they
mean. But I think it’s more than safe to say that He foresees great, great upheaval on the earth
before His return. Something big is going down. And many, if not all generations from then to now
have seen signs that made people believe that the time was near.
Combining this prophecy with others found in Scripture, it appears that there will be a time of great
trial, especially for believers. And I think we can see at least the seeds of this in our own time,
especially in the many, many places around the world in which there’s persecution. We also see
major ecological problems happening. Our ability to bring destruction on each other and on the
planet has never been greater, and there are many wars happening around the world even as we’re
gathered together in this place of peace. Large scale famine is being predicted in response to
population pressures. So I surely wouldn’t rule out the possibility that these prophecies are pointing
to our own time. But beyond this list of the signs of the times we really can’t be sure of the details.
Jesus himself said that even He didn’t know when all this would happen, but only our Father in
heaven.
I think it’s safe to say that Jesus’ main message is that there are two things very important things to
consider here. The first is that our redemption is drawing near. OK? Jesus isn’t just giving us a
trailer to a horror movie, but assuring us of something that will be much more like a stormy and
frightening night that yields to the warm and comforting glow of a new dawn. Or like the pains of
childbirth that soon are forgotten in the joy of new life. He’s telling us, “Even though things are going
to look very frightening for a while, and it will appear that things are out of control, know that your
Father in heaven is still very much in control, so stand up straight and watch, for your redemption,
your final transformation into the dazzling future of new and unending life in him, is on its way.” I
have to say, I much prefer this promise to the treadmill of work that says that, after endless toil you’ll
finally make it to God only to be bounced back and do it all over again. It’s like the movie Groundhog
Day without the happy ending.
But of course along with this is the reality that failing to heed Jesus’ words is a dangerous matter
indeed. In a word, Jesus is saying to be ready. So, why and how are we to be ready? Jesus says,
“Be on guard that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the
worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all those
who live upon the whole earth.”
I hope you hear the consistent theme here from Jesus. He once told a rich young ruler that he must
give up everything and make Jesus the focus of his life. No distractions.
He told all of us not to be immobilized by worry but to trust our generous Father in heaven. He
warned prospective followers even from placing their families before Him, and said that “No one who
puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
Jesus isn’t saying that our devotion has to be perfect at all times. But what He is saying is that we
need to live a life in which God is the center, and try to live as if Jesus were returning at any
moment. And when we deviate from the Center, as we’re all prone to do, failure to return to it is
done at our own peril. He says Be alert all the time, praying not only for escape from those hard
things that are going to happen before the Second Coming, but even more importantly, pray to be
able to stand before the Son of Man.
The great news here is that it’s Jesus himself who gives us that ability. He gives us His security. It’s
the gift of his sacrifice that will allow us to stand before Him without fear at His return. And it’s His
strength which will progressively enable us to live faithful lives and continue doing His work pending
that day. Jesus does have high expectations for us, but the incredible thing is that these things have
already been met by Him on our behalf. So our job is to remain connected with Him. Our lives are
now about faith and focus rather than fear.
I conclude with a story about John F. Kennedy, who during his election campaign in 1960 sometimes
closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport, the Speaker of the Connecticut House of
Representatives during the early days of our nation.
He said, “On May 19th, 1780 the sky of Hartford darkened ominously, and some of the
representatives, glancing out the windows, feared the end was at hand. Quelling a clamor for
immediate adjournment, Davenport rose and said, "The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it
is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty.
Therefore, I wish that candles be brought."
Rather than fearing what’s to come, we’re to be faithful and focused till Christ returns. Instead of
fearing the dark, we're to be lights to others as we watch and wait. As we begin our approach toward
the most holy day of Christmas offer on all our behalf St. Paul’s concluding prayer from our reading
from 1 Thessalonians: “May the Lord so strengthen our hearts in holiness that we may be blameless
before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” Amen.
followers, I was a student of yoga, and of Eastern spirituality in general. Yoga is largely a school of
thought derived from Hinduism, which teaches that all people are on a path of spiritual evolution.
The idea is that through amassing good karma through good works and so forth, along with doing
certain techniques and practices, you accelerate your spiritual evolution toward the day that your
spirit basically dissolves into blissful unity with God. At the end of your life if you haven’t evolved far
enough to do this, you’re reincarnated into another body, and you continue on the long “journey” to
cosmic consciousness.
Back then this all seemed fine and good to me, and made a certain amount of sense. So in my early
20’s I got on the stick and started working at it. But then something happened that kind of threw me
for a loop. Some astute devotee inquired as to what happens once you attain cosmic
consciousness. That is, are we then forever in a state of bliss? And the answer was something like,
“No, because at some point you get re-separated from God, sent back to earth, and then you start
the whole thing over again. It’s all a big circle. It felt to me kind of like someone offering a million
bucks, then retracting the offer a few minutes later. (“Psych!”) And please note, this wasn’t some off-
the-cuff remark made by a mid-level yoga bureaucrat, but a statement made by a famous and widely-
respected proponent of that way of life.
The reason I mention all of this is to point out a fundamental difference in world views here. There is
much good to be found in many of Hinduism’s beliefs and practices. But they tend to have a very
circular and fatalistic view of time. How this affected me reminds of Gertrude Stein’s famous
comment when, as an adult, she tried to find her childhood home in Oakland, California: “There’s no
there there.” Our scripture readings this morning give us assurances that history is actually going
somewhere. There is a ‘there’ there. This is revealed in words of prophecy which claim to be given
by God himself to show us glimpses of what awaits.
First, let’s look at our Old Testament reading. The prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the 6th to 7th
Century BC, looks ahead to the coming of a righteous king. He writes, “The days are surely coming,
says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Judah. In those days and at that
time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and
righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And
this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”
Many believe that this is a direct reference to Jesus the Messiah, whose words are quoted by St.
Luke in our Gospel reading. He, too, prophesies about the future, and His imagery gets pretty
intense. Jesus says, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth
distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from
fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers will be shaken. Then they will
see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.”
So we have kind of a two-step prophetic process going on here. We have Jeremiah pointing forward
to the long-awaited figure who will set things to rights. Then we have that very person, Jesus,
speaking prophetically about how things, in the end, will be, as he looks ahead to His return to earth.
This is kind of a microcosm of our focus in the season of Advent. Because with similar bifocal lenses,
we’re looking ahead to two things: First, the coming of Jesus to the manger in Bethlehem, which we’ll
celebrate at Christmas, and second, His return to judge the living and the dead. It’s believed that
Jesus’ words today refer to the latter.
Now, there are few things that get our attention in the scriptures like good, old apocalyptic imagery.
Our eyes grow wide and our minds engage in trying to figure out what it all means. We put on our
Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hats and try to unravel the word puzzle. “Let’s see, signs in the sun,
the moon and the stars… I bet that means we’re going to get nailed by a comet or an asteroid!” Or,
“Roaring of the sea and the waves… Hey, we just had a big tsunami so this must mean that the
apocalypse will be any second! Quick, let’s buy some land in the mountains!” And it’s off to the
races.
This semi-morbid curiosity sells. There was an ancient Mayan calendar that happens not to
proceed past 2012, so now we have a movie blockbuster about the impending destruction of the
world in that fateful year. No one seems to be asking whether the Mayan prophet’s pen merely ran
out of ink, or perhaps if he or she simply got tired of the whole thing and decided to stop at 2012.
In any case, everyone loves a mystery, and so much the better if we have some scary imagery to
spice it up. And please hear me clearly, I don’t say this in any way to make light of the warnings in
what Jesus is saying. His words are kind of scary, and frankly, it’s hard to know exactly what they
mean. But I think it’s more than safe to say that He foresees great, great upheaval on the earth
before His return. Something big is going down. And many, if not all generations from then to now
have seen signs that made people believe that the time was near.
Combining this prophecy with others found in Scripture, it appears that there will be a time of great
trial, especially for believers. And I think we can see at least the seeds of this in our own time,
especially in the many, many places around the world in which there’s persecution. We also see
major ecological problems happening. Our ability to bring destruction on each other and on the
planet has never been greater, and there are many wars happening around the world even as we’re
gathered together in this place of peace. Large scale famine is being predicted in response to
population pressures. So I surely wouldn’t rule out the possibility that these prophecies are pointing
to our own time. But beyond this list of the signs of the times we really can’t be sure of the details.
Jesus himself said that even He didn’t know when all this would happen, but only our Father in
heaven.
I think it’s safe to say that Jesus’ main message is that there are two things very important things to
consider here. The first is that our redemption is drawing near. OK? Jesus isn’t just giving us a
trailer to a horror movie, but assuring us of something that will be much more like a stormy and
frightening night that yields to the warm and comforting glow of a new dawn. Or like the pains of
childbirth that soon are forgotten in the joy of new life. He’s telling us, “Even though things are going
to look very frightening for a while, and it will appear that things are out of control, know that your
Father in heaven is still very much in control, so stand up straight and watch, for your redemption,
your final transformation into the dazzling future of new and unending life in him, is on its way.” I
have to say, I much prefer this promise to the treadmill of work that says that, after endless toil you’ll
finally make it to God only to be bounced back and do it all over again. It’s like the movie Groundhog
Day without the happy ending.
But of course along with this is the reality that failing to heed Jesus’ words is a dangerous matter
indeed. In a word, Jesus is saying to be ready. So, why and how are we to be ready? Jesus says,
“Be on guard that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the
worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all those
who live upon the whole earth.”
I hope you hear the consistent theme here from Jesus. He once told a rich young ruler that he must
give up everything and make Jesus the focus of his life. No distractions.
He told all of us not to be immobilized by worry but to trust our generous Father in heaven. He
warned prospective followers even from placing their families before Him, and said that “No one who
puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
Jesus isn’t saying that our devotion has to be perfect at all times. But what He is saying is that we
need to live a life in which God is the center, and try to live as if Jesus were returning at any
moment. And when we deviate from the Center, as we’re all prone to do, failure to return to it is
done at our own peril. He says Be alert all the time, praying not only for escape from those hard
things that are going to happen before the Second Coming, but even more importantly, pray to be
able to stand before the Son of Man.
The great news here is that it’s Jesus himself who gives us that ability. He gives us His security. It’s
the gift of his sacrifice that will allow us to stand before Him without fear at His return. And it’s His
strength which will progressively enable us to live faithful lives and continue doing His work pending
that day. Jesus does have high expectations for us, but the incredible thing is that these things have
already been met by Him on our behalf. So our job is to remain connected with Him. Our lives are
now about faith and focus rather than fear.
I conclude with a story about John F. Kennedy, who during his election campaign in 1960 sometimes
closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport, the Speaker of the Connecticut House of
Representatives during the early days of our nation.
He said, “On May 19th, 1780 the sky of Hartford darkened ominously, and some of the
representatives, glancing out the windows, feared the end was at hand. Quelling a clamor for
immediate adjournment, Davenport rose and said, "The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it
is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty.
Therefore, I wish that candles be brought."
Rather than fearing what’s to come, we’re to be faithful and focused till Christ returns. Instead of
fearing the dark, we're to be lights to others as we watch and wait. As we begin our approach toward
the most holy day of Christmas offer on all our behalf St. Paul’s concluding prayer from our reading
from 1 Thessalonians: “May the Lord so strengthen our hearts in holiness that we may be blameless
before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” Amen.
The Coming of the Dawn
First Sunday in Advent, 2009
First Sunday in Advent, 2009
November 29, 2009
The Rev. Daniel Tuton
The Rev. Daniel Tuton
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