How Will You Live?

Based on Luke 21:25-36

Christmas is coming! What an exciting, busy time this is. Some of the best music we sing is right now. All the decorations and parties, the anticipation of being with friends and family, giving just the right gift and receiving some surprising ones, Christmas carols, snow, there’s so much to like about the coming of Christmas. This is a time of great anticipation and preparation. It’s almost as if the holiday season just picks us up and takes us on a ride.

Christ is coming! This truth is a bit more uncomfortable for many. Some can’t wait for Christ to return. For many others, the bearer of this message is like the man walking the streets with the sign that says “The end is near!” To talk of Jesus coming back is a lot harder to get our minds around than the annual celebration of his first coming into the world as a baby born in Bethlehem. The church has been on tip-toe in anticipation for about 2,000 years waiting for his return. It’s hard to keep the anticipation level up with that kind of wait.

Besides, when the Bible speaks of the end times, it describes times that are very troubling before Jesus comes back. I remember being profoundly disturbed when I was younger and the topic of the rapture would come up, when all of a sudden people just disappear and the rest are left behind. I remember seeing bumper stickers that said “Warning: this vehicle will be unmanned in case of rapture.” In my young faith I would anxiously wonder, which will I be? The moment of truth: will I be left behind? The descriptions of a final battle between good and evil, the sun going dark like a lunar eclipse or the moon turning to blood like a solar eclipse, the world being burned up by fire, plague and war, it’s not a happy picture. It’s certainly not something to anticipate, right? It gets really bad before Jesus comes back, and when he does, everything is turned upside down and the End arrives. One day, the sun won’t come up and there won’t be a tomorrow. What then?

It was a normal spring day. People were going to work or school or heading out on their morning errands. At the water resources board, a couple who desired to tap water on their land and bottle it for sale were meeting with others who were concerned about the impact that might have. The person assigned by the board to be the arbitrator of the hearing introduced herself, shared the agenda and the process to work through the issue, and without warning, BOOM, a bomb blast from across the street shatters glass and knocks them out of their seats. A few seconds of collecting themselves and the people who were concerned about selling water are now concerned about their own safety. They exit out of the building and look at the Alfred P. Murrah building across from them. Half of the nine story building is gone. People are strewn about wounded and in shock. Emergency workers are pulling in from everywhere. The beautiful spring sun is occluded by thick, black, and grey smoke. Confusion, disbelief, and fear permeate the air. An average day in April turns into a horrific catastrophe where 168 people, including 19 children, were dead and over 850 injured, many of them permanently disabled.

As the dust settled, and the rain came to help wash away this terrible mess of destruction, love and support came from all over the nation and world to Oklahoma City. The stories of the heroes and survivors and victims were told. Countless numbers of people stuck between the links of hastily thrown up fencing all kinds of mementos and expressions of solidarity. Funerals were planned, of which 20% of the area population went to at least one. A huge memorial service, with prayer offered by Billy Graham, was a powerful testament to faith in the midst of broken hopes and dreams, and the power of unity and love against the forces of hate and division. A national memorial was constructed. The survivor’s tree, a huge elm located right next to the building yet somehow withstood the force of the blast, even though being embedded with concrete, steel and glass, expressed for many the deep roots of faith.

Life returned to normal. The regular day-to-day stuff of life worked its way on all who went through that experience. Back again were the days of average existence, the petty bickering, the soap operas of dysfunctional relationships, the everyday anxieties of life. And then it happened again that fall morning in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania six years later, when the act of terrorism in Oklahoma City seemed like a warmup to the main event. And the vicious cycle of catastrophe, rebuilding, and normalcy spins again. In the back of our minds, we wait with anxiety and discomfort for the next catastrophe to hit, those shocking events that eclipse the relatively minor disturbing events like we saw in Waukesha, Wisconsin a few days ago. Some of us wonder, are these shocking events signs of the End? Is Christ coming soon?

But there is a difference between catastrophe and The End. When the cowboy rides off into the sunset and the music comes up and the script comes across the screen The End, that’s true. The movie is over. Whereas the Greeks and Romans in Jesus’ day conceptualized time as an unending cycle of seasons, Jesus held the Hebrew understanding of time as a line that has a beginning point and an end point. There is a time when there won’t be another tomorrow. As Jesus put it, heaven and earth will pass away. But whether it is The End with capital letters or the end of your life, for every one of us the time will come when we won’t see another sunrise. What then?

I want to share a story told by William Willimon. “When I was serving a little church in rural Georgia, one of my members’ relatives died, and my wife and I went to the funeral as a show of support for the family. It was held in a small, hot, crowded, independent Baptist country church. They wheeled in the coffin and the preacher began to preach. He shouted, fumed, flailed his arms. ‘It’s too late for Joe,’ he screamed. ‘He might have wanted to do this or that in life, but it’s too late for him now. He’s dead. It’s all over for him. He might have wanted to straighten his life out, but he can’t now. It’s over.’ What a comfort this must be to the family, I thought. ‘But it ain’t too late for you! People drop dead every day. So why wait? Now is the day for decision. Now is the time to make your life count for something. Give your life to Jesus!’ It was the worst thing I had ever heard. ‘Can you imagine a preacher doing that kind of thing to a grieving family?’ I asked my wife on the way home. ‘I’ve never heard anything so manipulative, cheap and inappropriate. I would never preach a sermon like that.’ She agreed with me that it was tacky, manipulative, callous. ‘Of course,’ she added, ‘the worst part of all is that it was true.’”

When we consider the end, either the end of our own life or the end of everything when Christ comes back, there is a call to decision. And the decision you and I make in the face of the end makes all the difference. The decision will lead to fear or anticipation. Living with fear or living with anticipation, that is what is at stake. How will you live?

In the 1330s the Bubonic Plague broke out in China. In October 1347, Italian merchants brought the plague to Europe. In five years, one third of the population of Europe, 25 million people, died of the Black Death. An Italian writer of the times, Boccachio, wrote that its victims often “ate lunch with their friends and ate dinner with their ancestors in paradise.” Cyprian, a priest who had the challenge to guide people through an apocalyptic moment in history, where death was everywhere, noted that the plague killed Christians and pagans. But there was a difference in how these two groups faced this time of catastrophic disruption. While many fainted from fear and foreboding of what was coming upon the world, the Christians were able to stand up and raise their heads, because their redemption was drawing near. In the midst of unimaginable misery, Cyprian wrote: “We regard paradise as our country – we already begin to consider the patriarchs as our parents: why do we not hasten and run, that we may behold our country, that we may greet our parents? There a great number of our dear ones is awaiting us, and a dense crowd of parents, brothers, children, is longing for us, already assured of their own safety, and still solicitous for our salvation. To attain to their presence and their embrace, what a gladness both for them and for us in common! What a pleasure is there in the heavenly kingdom, without fear of death; and how lofty and perpetual a happiness with eternity of living! To these…let us hasten with an eager desire; let us crave quickly to be with them, and quickly to come to Christ.” How will you live?

Os Guiness tells the story about what happened early in American history when the Connecticut House of Representatives was in session on a bright day in May, and the delegates were able to do their work by natural light. But then something happened that nobody expected. Right in the middle of the debate, there was a total eclipse of the sun, and everything turned to darkness. Some legislators thought it was the second coming of Christ. A clamor arose. People wanted to adjourn. People wanted to pray. People wanted to prepare for the coming of the Lord. But the speaker of the house had a different idea. He was a Christian believer, and he rose to the occasion with good logic and good faith. “We are all upset by the darkness,” he said, “and some of us are afraid. But the Day of the Lord is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. And if the Lord is returning, I, for one, choose to be found doing my duty. I therefore ask that candles be brought.” And men who expected Jesus went back to their desks and resumed their debate. How will you live?

Christ is coming! Are you preparing? Are you anxious or anticipating? Fred Craddock observed, “today is a gift of God…tomorrow we stand in the presence of the Son of Man.” One day, the sun will come up one last time, and Christ will return. Until then, how will you live?