“No Time for the Snooze Button”

 

Mark 13:24-37

December 1, 2002

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

 

I want to invite you to go with me to my elementary days.  Join me at the Highland Park Elementary School in my hometown of Jackson, Tennessee.  There I am getting off the yellow school bus.  I am the blonde headed child.  We will be going to Mrs. Whetstone’s fourth grade classroom.  The classroom is off by itself.  In a back hallway, across from a resource room is Mrs. Whetstone’s class.  There are no classes across the hall from it.  Mrs. Whetstone, my mother’s good friend, is my fourth grade.  I am in her class with twenty or twenty-five other students.  I do not know why Mrs. Whetstone left the room.  I don’t know if she had a phone call in the office.  I don’t know if she needed to get some supplies for our upcoming art project.  I don’t know if she just needed a break from twenty-five nine and ten years old.  I don’t know why she left the room.  But I do know that when she did, she left us specific instructions.  We could either do the work that she had assigned.  Or, we could put our heads on our desks.  Mrs. Whetstone walked out.  Ab Taylor was our spy.  He stood near the door and he watched for Mrs. Whetstone to return.  His job was to let everyone know when Mrs. Whetstone was coming back to class.

 

I have learned what the most powerful phrase in education is.  I speak with a little authority on this.  I went to school from the time I was five until I was twenty-six.  My mom and dad taught college courses.  My aunt was a public school teacher and principal.  If the ministry had not worked out, I probably would have been a teacher.  So I speak with authority when I say that the most powerful phrase in education is the one that Ab Taylor said that day.  When Mrs. Whetstone made her way back to the room, Ab said, “The teacher is coming!  The teacher is coming!” 

I have a sixth sense about this sort of thing.   I know that some of you have had similar experiences, and while the teacher was out of the room, you did what you were supposed to do.  If you were supposed to not make a sound, then you did not make a sound.  If you were supposed to do your work, then your work is what you did.  You were very good while the teacher was out of the room.

 

Others of you wrote our names, secretly on a sheet of paper.  So that when the teacher returned, she would have a list of those who did what they were supposed to do and a list of those who did not do what they were supposed to do.  In our fourth grade class, that person was Melissa Watkins.  Melissa always did what she was supposed to do.  And whether she was asked to or not Melissa kept a list for Mrs. Whetstone.  I don’t mind telling you that Melissa was the cause of my staying after school several days.  What made it worse, is that she lived next door to me.  Not only did she tell on me at school, she told on me at home, too, and I would get in trouble all over again.  Some of us did not behave while Mrs. Whetstone was out of the room and so when the and so when the warning came, it made us more than a little nervous.

 

If you don’t mind the preacher coming out in me this morning, then you won’t mind me saying that when we hear the news that Jesus is coming again, it makes us anxious because of something that is not right in our lives.  Just this past week I got a letter in the mail.  There was no return address on the envelope and there was no signature at the end of the letter.  The letter was addressed, simply, to the pastor of the Methodist Church near Cammack Village.  It began, “To the church that awaits my coming.  I am the Lord.”  That, as you might imagine, got my attention.  To tell you the truth, I was excited.  I had never gotten a letter from Jesus before.  The letter was handwritten and so I knew that it was authentic.  Jesus wouldn’t have used a computer.  I read on, “I am not pleased with those who claim to be members of my body.  You have turned away from me.”  The letter, you see, was a complaint about how us Christians had been acting and how we have gone astray.  The letter ended with a warning, “The end comes quickly!  You will see many signs, but they will not be from me.”  Then there was the last line of the letter.  Jesus, I assume, wrote, “Look to scripture for an understanding of what will come and what you need to think about in these important days.” 

 

It is  funny.  That is exactly what I was doing when the letter arrived.  I was working on our sermon, reading these words from the thirteenth chapter of Mark’s gospel.  Listen to the words again, “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give it’s light, and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.”  Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the first of four Sundays before Christmas morning arrives.  The first Sunday of advent always has a scripture lesson about the end times.  You can’t avoid it; it’s always there.  And John the Baptizer always shows up the second week.  Just when Target and Wal-Mart are playing Christmas music in hopes that it will encourage us to shop, the gospel writers seem to say to us that there are things to do, besides shopping, before Christmas morning arrives. 

 

I do not mind telling you that I am not a big fan of passages like this one, of end time prophesies.  The problem, I think, is that passages like this one, scare people.  And as long as I can remember people have been predicting that the end of the world will happen at a certain time.  But it has not happened.  Every single prediction of the end of the world has been wrong.  Which, if I were a predictor, would cause me to stop trying to figure out when the end of the world will happen.  But it does not slow predictors down. 

 

I can remember talking with a woman down at the church that I served near Camden.  It was this Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, and I had just preached one of these texts. I greeted Margaree Garner at the front door of the church.  She reached her hand out and I shook it.  Then she said this to me, “John, I’m eighty-five years old.  I have heard sermons about Jesus coming back as long as I can remember.  Do you think that it will ever happen?” It is going to happen.  That is what Mark says.  And then comes his advice, “So stay awake.” The whole discussion is brought up by the disciples who are walking along one day.  The disciples, looking around, seeing the temple say, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”  Then Jesus says that one day the stones will be thrown to the ground and his disciples ask him privately, “Tell us when this will be and what will be the sign that all these things are about to take place.”  Jesus says that there will be signs in the stars and the moon.  Then, as if to drive the point home, Jesus gives two illustrations and tells two stories that help the disciples of his day and our day to understand the signs.  The first is the lesson of the fig tree.  Jesus says, that when the branch becomes tender and when the bud appears, you know that summer is near.  But about that day or hour, no one knows when it will happen, says Jesus.  The angels do not know.  Jesus himself does not know.  Only God knows.  Jesus says, “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” And then the second lesson.  It is like a man going on a journey.  When he leaves home, he puts his servants in charge, and tells them to do their work.  And they do the work, you presume, because they do not know when their master will return.  Jesus says that he could come back in the evening or at midnight.  Jesus says that he could come back in the evening or at dawn.  And then these final words of Jesus, “And what I say to you, I say to all, keep awake!”  Or to borrow a line from our sermon title, “This Is No Time for the Snooze Button.”  Another nine minutes.  It is no time for the snooze button.  We are still waiting. Did you know that?  Two thousand years have passed and we are still waiting.  The Bible says that these words of Jesus will not pass away and we are still waiting.

 

My question for you today is simply this.  What are we supposed to do with these words in light of the predictions and in light of Jesus coming again in our lives?  I want you to put yourselves in Mark’s shoes.  I want you to put yourselves in the shoes of those who heard or read this gospel for the first time.  This, my friends, is a word of hope.  It says above all other things that there will be better days. 

 

In the Bible, there are two stories that speak volumes to our lives.  They tell us who we are and what we are supposed to do.  The two stories are ones from our Jewish brothers and sisters.  One is the story of the Exodus.  The story of the exodus tells us that life is a journey from where we are to where we want to be.  It is a journey filled with dangers and toils and disappointments and hopes and dreams. And in the end of the trip, there is a promised land and a life the way that we want it to be.  A life that is better than we could have imagined it.  We all

understand the story of the exodus.  Today, especially today, exoduses happen all over the place.  We leave where we are and we go to where we want to be.  We journey towards freedom and we move towards better lives.  And then there is the story of the exile.  In the Bible the exile is when life arranges it in such a way that we are in bondage and separated from the life that we used to have.  We used to have a good life, but then it was taken away from us.  Every once and a while my wife will say to me, “John, I wish it was like it was when we were dating.”  We are exiled from that now, I guess.  I will hear about that comment in the sermon later this afternoon.  But we know the story of the exodus and we know the story of the exile.

 

The choir sang, as our call to worship, the wonderful hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel.  Listen to the words, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appears...”  Did you hear the word again?  Did you hear the word exile?

 

I heard about a girl who was blind since birth and in her blindness she imagined what people were like and what the world was like.  Her family witnessed her doing this and tried to protect her from the way the world really was.  Then she had an operation, a great operation, and suddenly she was able to see. she was struck by two things. First, nature was more beautiful than she could have ever imagined that it could be.  She was amazed at the colors.  But then she said this to her parents, “I’ve been looking around.  People’s faces are sadder than I imagined that they

would be.”

 

I don’t know about the second coming of Jesus so much as I know that Jesus coming in our lives, again, gives us hope, and says to us that things can be better than they are.  At Christmas, we announce that Jesus has come, but not in the way that he was expected.  He came suddenly.  It is told that he came quietly, humbly, and mysteriously.  That is the reason that the story is told best on Christmas eve, when all is cold and dark.  Then we light candles and we sing the words of Silent Night, Holy Night.  Christmas announces that he one who is to come and save has come.  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and His name shall be called Emmanuel.  The One who is to come has never left you.  The One who has walked beside you during every breath of your life still walks beside you.  We know what an exiled life is like.  We know what it means to be in an exodus.  But as we walk we are not alone.  We are not alone.  Thanks be to God.  Let us pray. 

 

(Special thanks to Ab Taylor, the lookout in Mrs. Whetstone’s fourth grade class.  Special thanks to Margaree Garner’s advent question.  Margaree now knows about the power of Jesus and is, I am sure, in His arms these days.  And special thanks to God, who sent his Son in the fullness of time, but also helps us to understand that He is always with us.)