CALVARY
BAPTIST CHURCH
Rev. Fred Weimert December
2, 2007
Not So Fast
I have thrown a little purple sheet in your bulletin this week…
It is a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks…
“In
Emanuel’s Nightmare: Another Coming of Christ”
I am not going to read it to you…
It is too long for me to do that…
So why’s it there?
It is there because I am hoping that you,
in a more inquisitive moment,
one of those quiet moments in this service,
have already read it.
If you haven’t please do…
sometime later…
or even now…
while I am stumbling around
in this Advent sermon…
It may well be that Ms. Brooks
has more to say about advent than I do.
I put it there because, even though Ms. Brooks is dead,…
In fact she died seven years ago tomorrow
you should still know her.
She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950…
I think she was
the first African American so honored,
And It wasn’t charity
wasn’t a gift.
She deserved it.
She was brilliant.
I might have put this poem in because of all the hype
about
the Army Navy football game in
and because of that remark
I made in the call to prayer.
Or I may have put it in because of the remarks
earlier in this 24th chapter of Matthew…
prior to today’s reading
there were words about wars are rumors of wars.
And oh how we love those rumors…
Do you remember the good old days
of the first Gulf War…
Back when you would rush home at the end of the day…
to watch General Norman Schwarzkopf
debrief us on the events of the day…
with all that marvelous bombsite/gun camera footage
of smart bombs blasting bunkers…
Didn’t our hearts burned within us as he
opened to us the marvels of
our technological triumphs.
Sadly rumors of the current war aren’t as heart warming.
the footage now is of broken bodies
ours and theirs
blown-up and burned out vehicles
ours and theirs.
We don’t rush home any more
to see the pictures of this war…
its not gun camera or missile guidance, footage kind of war.
it’s simple videos of carnage, kind of war.
The saddest thing is that we have merely tired of this war…
we haven’t tired of war itself…
If a good one came along we would be right there cheering.
Maybe that is why I put Ms. Brooks poem in…
because I like the way she pictures
Jesus’ coming.
I
love that little short stanza on the back of the sheet: He
had come down, He said, to clean the earth
Of
the dirtiness of war.
I
love the stanza that begins a little further on:
The
people wanted war. War’s in
their hearts.
(In me, in your snag-toothed fool
Who
won the Great War-Naming Contest and
All
the years since has bragged how he did Beat
His
Fellow Man.) It is the human aim.
Matthew 24: 36-44
"But
about that day and hour no one knows,
neither
the angels of heaven,
nor the
Son,
but only the Father.
For as the
days of Noah were,
so will be
the coming of the Son of
For as in
those days before the flood
they were
eating and drinking,
marrying
and giving in marriage,
until the day Noah entered the ark,
and they knew nothing until the flood
came
and swept them all away,
so too
will be the coming of the Son of
Then two
will be in the field;
one will be taken and one will be left.
Two women
will be grinding meal together;
one will be taken and one will be left.
Keep awake
therefore,
for you do
not know on what day your Lord is coming.
But
understand this:
if the
owner of the house had known
in what part of the night the thief was
coming,
he would
have stayed awake
and would not have let his house be
broken into.
Therefore
you also must be ready,
for the Son
of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Here
ends the reading.
This lesson is part
of a longer apocalypse
which
is found mainly in Matthew’s gospel
in chapters 24 and 25.
Luke’s gospel has similar long
apocalypse
but
Matthew has the most material in his apocalypse.
These
passages address the second coming of the Lord.
In his book Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings,
and Relevance
of
a Religious Revolutionary,
Marcus Borg writes of his struggles with
this apocalyptic Jesus:
“Most mainline scholars (including me)
do not think that Jesus spoke about his second coming. To suppose that he did would require
imagining that he tried to teach his followers about a second coming when they
had not yet understood his ‘first coming’ very well, including not
really understanding that he was going away, that is, that he would be killed.
The synoptics consistently portray his disciples as ‘not getting
it.’” pg. 179
I
would agree with Borg’s assessment…
but
for the purpose of this sermon…
I
might go even farther.
I
would struggle with Jesus spouting apocalyptic visions
because
of the inherent violence
in this form of literature.
An
apocalypse is always about us over you…
good
over evil…
The
triumph of right over wrong…
The
defeat of our enemies.
It
is a continuation of that competitive,
warring
spirit…
that
Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about.
Now,
it may be that Jesus, coming from
an
area in
that was a hot bed of revolutionary
thought…
It
may be that Jesus was exposed to apocalyptic thinking
I
think he believed that God wanted
to renew creation…
and
that God would bring judgment
on those who were unfaithful
But
I don’t think that Jesus was deeply committed
to
apocalyptic thoughts or visions…
My
reason for saying that is Luke 23: 34
When
Jesus is hanging on the cross…
He
doesn’t shout down…
“God is going to get you for this!”
Which
is probably what one steeped in the Apocalyptic
would
say
Instead
Jesus says:
“Father forgive them
for
they know not what they do.”
I
think Jesus really said and meant that.
I
think Jesus really came with a belief that his coming and way
would
lead people to life
which
would be made more abundant
by love and not hate.
I
think these passages about the apocalypse
have
more to do with the fact that Matthew and Luke
were
written after the Destruction of
at
a time when Christians were being expelled
from
the synagogues…
I
think these passages reflect that first century feeling
that
these events were the beginning of God’s judgment…
on
those others… not like us.
Jesus
may well have believed in judgment
as
this passage indicates…
but
to see what he believed in…
you need to look closely at his words.
“so
too will be the coming of the Son of
Then two will be in the field;
one will be taken and one will be left.
Two women will be grinding meal
together;
one will be taken and one will be left.
Keep
awake therefore, “
The
believer in the apocalyptic would say…
This
is a picture of the rapture
Just
like I Thessalonians 4: 17
“Then
we who are alive,
who are left,
will
be caught up in the clouds together with them
to meet the Lord in the
air;…”
Ah,
the rapture, the good taken up into heaven…
while
the evil are left here on earth…
to
endure the tribulation…
but
is that even what the passage says?
Listen
to what it said about the days of Noah:
“For
as in those days before the flood
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day Noah entered the ark,
and they knew nothing until the flood
came
and swept them all away,
In Noah’s day it was the evil who were
swept away,
while
Noah and his family…
the
good were left here on the earth.
I don’t think
this story was told as part of an apocalypse…
I
think it was Jesus way of saying…
that
life ends suddenly…
in
a moment…
persons
one moment are at work…
in
a field…
at
the work of grinding…
and
the next moment one is gone…
It
is like Isaiah 40’s
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the LORD blows upon
it;
surely the people are grass.
and
the key words in Matthew are:
“Keep awake therefore, “
Rain
falls “on the just and unjust”…
and
death comes in just the same fashion…
so
keep awake
live
a life faithful to God…
till
that moment comes…
when
we stand fully in the presence of God.
So
may we live…
so that in the end we may stand. Amen.
In Emanuel’s
Nightmare: Another Coming of Christ
by Gwendolyn Brooks
(speaks,
among spirit questioners, of marvelous spirit affairs.)
There
had been quiet all that afternoon.
Just
such a quiet afternoon as any,
Though
with a brighter and freer air.
The
sleepy sun sat on us, and those clouds
Dragged
dreamily. Well, it was
interesting—
How
silence could give place to such a noise.
But
now—is noise the word? Is
that exact?
I think not.
I’ll
try to name it. Naming is my line.
I
won the Great War-Naming Contest.
Ah,
I
put it over on them all. I beat
Them
all. I wear an honor on my
name—
Sound
wasn’t in it. Though it was
loud enough.
I’d say it was a heat.
But
it took us. Did with us as it
would.
Wound
us in balls, unraveled, wound again.
And
women screamed, “The Judgment Day has come.”
And
little children gathered up the cry.
It
was then that they knocked each other down
To
get to—where? But they were
used to Doors.
Thought
they had but to beat their Fellow Man
To get to and get out of one again.
It
wasn’t Judgment Day. (For we
are here.)
And
presently the people knew, and sighed.
Out
of that heaven a most beautiful Man
Came
down. But now is coming quite the
word?
It
wasn’t coming. I’d say
it was—a Birth.
The
man was born out of the heavens, in truth.
Yet
no parturient creature ever knew
That
Naturalness, that hurtlessness, that ease.
How
He was tall and strong!
How
He was cold-browed! How He mildly
smiled!
How
the voice played on the heavy hope of the air
And
loved our hearts out!
Why,
it was such a voice as gave me eyes
To
see my Fellow Man of all the world,
There with me, listening.
He
had come down, He said, to clean the earth
Of the dirtiness of war.
Now
tell of why His power failed Him there?
His
power did not fail. It was that,
simply,
He
found how much the people wanted war.
How
much it was their creed, and their good joy.
And
what they lived for. He had not the
heart
To take away their chief sweet delectation.
We
tear—as a decent gesture, a tact—we tear
Laxly again at our lax, our tired hair.
The
people wanted war. War’s in
their hearts.
(In me, in your snag-toothed fool
Who
won the Great War-Naming Contest and
All
the years since has bragged how he did Beat
His
Fellow Man.) It is the human aim.
Without,
there would be no hate. No
Diplomats.
And households would be fresh and
frictionless.
God’s
Son went home. Among us it is
whispered
He cried the tears of men.
Feeling,
in fact,
We
have no need of peace.