97 Jer 33:14-16; Lk 21:25-28, 34-36 (Endtime)
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Rev. Paul A. Hottinger End Time First Sunday of Advent/C, November 30, 1997 Jer 33:14-16; 1 Thes 3:12-4:2; Lk 21:25-28, 34-36 “The great day will close in on you like a trap.” The readings of the Advent season and even the readings of the end of the year tend to be dire warnings about the great dangers we face in failing to grasp the meaning and purpose of our existence. The Bible quotes the idea that life really is a story initiated by God and eventually completed by God. But the trouble with us is that in our daily lives, the time scale of this story is so vast that we get stuck in the middle, and we forget the beginning, and we forget that there shall be an end--and so the whole focus of the story can often be lost. So the question then is being raised: what really then are we here for? Many years ago there was a book written with the provocative title Is There Life on Earth? That is a very intelligent question from a biblical point of view. What is, after all, life?--not just breathing organisms, but life as the creation of God with intelligence and purpose and meaning--a life to which we are being invited to participate. Now, in this great scale of time the end of the world may indeed be far away, but the end of each of us may not be. And this need not be a morbid consideration to simply recognize in our own feelings and in our own awareness that today could be our last. And if so how is it? How is our life in regard to what God intends, in regard to how the creator has fashioned it? In other words, who are we in God’s sight? It might be very different from who we are in our own sight. And this is another factor that we need to think about: our own memories. When we think about ourselves we think about ourselves through the use of our memories. But our memories are often very selective. Not only are they selective, but they are often focused on the wrong thing, for example, what has happened to us. Is that really important and does that really constitute who we are or our identity? Probably you have met someone in your life who has suffered a stroke, or perhaps been burdened with Alzheimer’s disease, or perhaps suffered an injury to the head. And you may have noted how the memory can be affected. And if the memory is affected in a deep enough way, then the entire personality changes because people forget who they are. They forget how they used to act. They forget even, perhaps, their own names. Now, here is the thought the Scripture is trying to get us to think about: if disease or injury can so affect our memory, and how we act, and who we think we are, what is death going to do? What is death going to do to our memory? Will it stay with us just as it is now or will it be profoundly changed? But if our memory is profoundly changed, then who will we be? These are the issues concerning the last times as it is stated in the Greek “eschata,” the last things that Christian believers are supposed to consider from time to time. The Bible suggests that we are not the result of our memories at all in the first place, that our memories are almost irrelevant--remember selective as they are of certain supposedly important things perhaps that occurred to us in our lives. In fact, I remember my grandmother, who suffered for many years of many strokes, and her memory was very compromised. And one day I was talking with her, and I was able to get her to remember an orchard that we used to have in the yard. And she did remember the pear End Time trees and the cherry trees and the roof of the tool shed I used to climb up on to pick the cherries, and she remembered all these things. And then a lady came by. She was a nurse, and she said, “Oh who’s that visiting with you?” She answered, “Oh I don’t know; he just sat down here.” So the connection with the past was not connected with me. So who is she, or who was she? According to Scripture the suggestion is this: that we are actually not the result of our memories or things that happened, but we are truly the result of our actions and decisions; thus, we are always in the process of becoming. We are becoming someone at every moment of the day. Every choice we make is heading us in a direction. What direction is that? We need to know that. We need to see that. We need to see where we are going and what we are becoming. The great danger is that we won’t see that, and we won’t think about it at all and will allow the circumstances of our lives to dictate to us what we choose. We will become like a little twig in a river floating downstream, making no effort. We will simply react to whatever people around us are doing, or saying, or thinking, and we will be nothing but the product of our circumstances. Now, Christ brings up quite often the whole issue of God and the way God acts. He does this because the great potential we have is to become like God, to act as God acts. After all we are made in the image and the likeness of God, and therefore we do have the potential within us to become as God is. In the peculiar language of the Greeks the Fathers used to say, “We are becoming God.” Of course, they meant if we are following Christ’s lead. Now, for example, Jesus points out that God is good to everyone, good and evil. He blesses with rain the just and the unjust; the sun shines on the good and the bad. Jesus points this out for a very good reason because God acts toward people according to God’s own nature, not according to the way people treat God. We are all in danger of simply treating people the way they treat us. We love those who love us and hate those who hate us. And Jesus says about loving those who love ourselves, “What merit is there in that? Even pagans do that.” There is no merit in that type of a life. There is no value in that kind of a life. There is actually no meaning in that kind of a life, except the meaning you can give to a machine that simply does what it is programmed to do. But we are not called on or created to be machines, programmed to do what or this or that. But we are actually created to be like God--able to treat others as we choose, not because of the way they are, but because of the way we are--because we chose to use as the basis of our behavior the nature of God Himself in whose image we have been created. This is responding to the divine purpose in life and has many consequences, as does the failure to do so. I have frequently met homeless people who have come for help, for example. And I always ask homeless people this question, “Do you have any relatives or family?” And I think it’s only been on the rarest occasion that any person ever said to me, “I am completely alone in the world. There is not a living soul that I know.” I don’t know if ever once someone ever said that. Usually they say something like this: “I have a sister, but I am not welcome in her house. I have a brother, but I can’t go to him. I am not welcome.” We live in a world today where people feel justified in cutting off their own kith and kin; their own flesh and blood they care not for at all. If you remember not too long ago, in Chicago a police officer killed a homeless man. And for a couple of 2 End Time days his family, that is the homeless man’s family, was making all kinds of fuss threatening to sue the police department etc., until a newspaper reporter said to the family, “Well, if this person was so important to you, how come he was homeless?” And then that family withdrew and receded into the woodwork out of embarrassment, I suppose. But how can we live in a world where people are so heartless? Because they have chosen to be. Because they’ve made a decision to be. Because they react to people according to the way they’ve been treated, not because they are using God as the true model source of what we can be and what we are called to be. One of the great shameful things of human life and human history is the way we substitute who we are for what we could be, failing even to think about even the possibility that we could be very different, just assuming that the way we are is the way we always shall be. When we do this we are giving up on life, on God and on ourselves.