Time to Go Home - Luke 21:25-36 (Advent 1C)

 

How is everyone feeling? I know today’s topic is Coming Home, and we are right after Thanksgiving, so how many went home for it (or welcomed travelers from out of town) - traveled more than two hours for their celebration? Four hours?  For those who did not travel or to spend time with extended family - how were you feeling? Were you relieved? Anxious? Hopeful? Ambivalent? 

Time to Go Home needs thoughtful preparation, but no matter where home is hope lives. You have freedom to be who God created you to be. 

There are preparations to do, whether traveling or receiving guests. Now, when preparing for either hosting or traveling, it would be helpful to have a plan to make sure everything gets done before you leave, and then another method while you’re on the road - mapping out the route to your destination. I spent many hours on highways between here and southern Wisconsin, where my extended family lives. This was in the days before personal electronics, so there was a lot of staring out the window. You’d see lots of signs all along the way, but not all are there for your benefit. Some are for exits going other places or rest stops, or areas to get fuel for your journey; billboards of every kind of thing to sell. We can’t go thinking that every sign is one for us in our journey. If we try to find meaning in every single sign, we will end up exhausted and lost. I think that’s what Jesus was getting at in the first section of our reading this morning. When the time comes for the return of the Son of Man, hope comes with it because redemption has come close. 

I believe I was called to be a pastor, and that’s why I’m standing in front of you this morning. I believe I was called even to be here at Bethany. Now my job isn’t really to make sure that you’re entertained for a good 45 minutes to an hour every week on Sunday morning. That is not something to look forward to. But my job here is to get you excited about how God is working in your life and the lives around you; to see God in the ordinary not just the big exciting events, and bring the two of you closer together on this journey of faith. Some days I feel like I’m a hitchhiker, but others I feel like I’m a navigator. You see a sign that you think is meant for you, and you know what? I can help you interpret what that means. If you don’t feel like the road that you’re traveling on is leading anywhere, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your route and maybe a detour is necessary.  Sometimes we need help to see when it’s time to go home. 

 This story sounds like the opposite of an Advent story, but still offers the good news in that Christ will return. In the larger context of our story, this is the final section on Jesus teaching in the temple that we had been talking about the first two weeks of November, out of Mark chapters 12 & 13. Luke does go on to relay this, but in a different way. 

If you came this morning, expecting a story about a star, some shepherds, and a baby, I hope I’m not disappointing you. I’m sure you didn’t expect an apocalypse story in church at Advent. The lectionary (or the order of scriptures) actually puts the next few weeks in backwards order. We start at the end of Jesus’ story, the week before his crucifixion, then next couple week, we’ll meet up with John the Baptist and tell his story, before we get to Mary in the last week. It’s gonna be different, but Advent is the time to be doing something different. Advent is the time when everything is fresh and new. The story we are telling over the next month or six weeks isn’t the thing changing, but is our attitude about it coming back, getting excited? Are we really anticipating the coming of the Messiah? Or are we just coming to be entertained for an hour, because that’s what we’ve done? 

You know the most terrifying time that I’ve had to come home? When each of my kids were born. More so when Ali was born than Aaron, since I was brand new to the demands of a job I had no idea what the parameters were. After you load up the car with all the stuff you brought to the hospital, there’s still that one thing that was still incomplete when you arrived. But now has become real. Arriving home, there is something about bringing a new life into a home that also brings hope. 

Even when the world is falling apart, hope remains. This is what is lost in today’s scripture. We can run all the world ending scenarios our anxieties will allow, but you know, at the end of the tribulation, and through the creation of the new one, there is restoration and redemption. 

This reminds me another one of my favorite movies: the Lord of the Rings.  Toward the end of the second part of the trilogy, the main character Frodo is finding it increasingly difficult to keep focused on his quest. 

He tells his best friend, Sam, “I can’t do this, Sam.” Sam responds:  I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something. 

Frodo  shoots back, "What are we holding on to, Sam?"

Sam answers, "That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for". 

Friends, do you know where you’re being called to? Do you know where you can be authentically who God created you to be? I hope it’s here. If not, we need to talk. If hope is hard to come by, let our community offer that hope. 

 

Hope lives where our hearts are, no matter where we physically are. Our hearts are most at home in Jesus Christ, and among His people. We need to prepare prayerfully for the coming of the Messiah. There is good news in Christ’s birth each year at Christmas, and the hope in second Coming. 

May there be joy in finding places to be accepted and valued. May home be a safe place for you and all. Christ comes to us, not because he wants us to be safe, but to be faithful to Him. Wherever your spirit is weak in hope, let the community surround you to lift you up. Wherever your hope cannot be found, lean in to the spirit to guide you back on the righteous path. 

As Christians, we have Jesus, who will come in final victory over sin and death. He is at the beginning and at the end. Only He knows how this story will unfold. As disconnected as that sounds, it is truth. Hope in the face of hopelessness is a defiant act by definition, so stepping out in faith of the promise that Jesus will conquer may seem naïve, but the act of faith can be inspiring and could lead to achieving God's plan of ending hopelessness.

There’s lots of good in this world, just as Sam said. Let’s fight for it, and give the hopeless a sign that not everything is as bleak as the winter lets on.