The Little Apocalypse

A sermon preached December 1, 2024, in First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

Luke 21:25-36 

The Heinz family – that singular conglomeration of aristocratic noblesse oblige that gave us H.J. Heinz, Senator John Heinz, and 57 combinations of condiments – didn’t get rich by underestimating the American people.

When they made their luxuriously thick ketchup, they realized they had a potential problem. The ketchup was so dense you could hold the bottle upside down for what seemed like hours before the first drop would dribble on to your cheeseburger. Almost no one in the United States has that kind of patience and the Heinz people feared millions would desert their delicious condiment in favor of Brand B, some thin, runny, but instantly available tomato liquid. Brand B offered lower satisfaction, perhaps, but instant gratification.

In 1979 – yes, I remember it well – with the aim of stemming the migration away from their viscous product, the Heinz people implemented a TV commercial. Two boys are shown patiently holding a Heinz ketchup bottle over their hamburgers as the first drops of red goo begin to form at the bottle’s mouth. In the background, Carly Simon sings: “Anticipation. Anticipation. It’s making me wait.” In the 32-second commercial, the boys decide that postponed gratification is good. The words appear on the screen: “Heinz Ketchup. The taste that’s worth the wait.”

There you go. An Advent sermon in a single sentence. The taste that’s worth the wait.

This singular phrase, historic in the ad business, is a helpful clue as we parse the passage placed before us this morning. 

The passage, sometimes called “The Little Apocalypse” because it quotes the adult Jesus’ prediction of the end times, is not very Christmassy. There is no babe in the manger poetry, no paeans to the Christ child, no glory to God in the highest, no peace on earth. Instead, we are warned that stars will be falling from heaven and we are advised to keep awake.

That’s not Silent Night. That’s the Ride of the Valkyries. Who knew we would begin this joyous season with dark warnings of the collapse of all we know? Where are the tidings of great joy?

Karoline Lewis, assistant professor of preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, thinks the rhetorical bombshell might be good for us. “There is a certain realness in this Gospel text to begin the Advent season,” she writes. “It cuts through any sentimentality and romanticism about Christmas and reminds us that incarnation is risky business.”

The passage in Mark, like its counterparts in Luke and Revelation, is the basis for the expectation of the rapture, that at the end of time Jesus will appear in the clouds and send out his angels to collect his elect from the four winds.

Rapture theology can be distracting and predicting the rapture can be dangerous. In May 2011 a misguided evangelist named Harold Camping said it was about to happen. Camping and his followers spent fortunes on bill boards and T shirts to alert people to the end of time, financed in part by many who sold everything they had to pay for the ad campaign.

Most Christian scholars said then that Mr. Camping, who died in 2013, was clinically nuts. Even Al Mohler, the conservative president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, spoke with wisdom on the Camping issue.

Mohler wrote: “Given the public controversy, many people are wondering how Christians should think about his claims, the Bible does not contain hidden codes that we are to find and decipher. While Christians are indeed to be looking for Christ to return and seeking to be found faithful when Christ comes, we are not to draw a line in history and set a date.”

In the first centuries after Jesus’ resurrection, persecuted Christians yearned for the return of Jesus and prayed daily for him to keep his promise.  The Apostle Paul didn’t predict the date of Jesus’ return, but he thought it was imminent: “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (I Corinthians 15: 51-52). A couple millennia later we are still waiting, and many Christians have lowered their expectations.

I was in a workshop with the late Robert Schuller in January 1981 when he bet the millennialist Hal Lindsey a million dollars that Jesus would not return before the year 2000. Clearly Schuller’s ideas about the Second Coming of Jesus drifted leftward, but I was more impressed by the fact that he was a man who knew a sure-fire bet. Lindsey, incidentally, declined. And it's 2024 and Lindsey, now 95, is still waiting for the rapture while soliciting contributions and selling merchandise as if he thinks the world will last forever.

The Second Coming of Jesus is a basic tenet of faith, appearing in the Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds. It’s something we should be eagerly anticipating. But our reaction to the “The Little Apocalypse” set aside for our first week of Advent suggests we find the idea a little scary. It’s no coincidence that most of the end-of-world movies are classified as horror, and even films with a rapture theme portray a vengeful Jesus in pursuit of terrified sinners.

That probably says more about us than it says about the films. Most of us live lives of reasonable contentment and we would prefer to indulge the non-threatening Yuletide trappings of tinsel and wassail than contemplate the stars falling from the sky.

The future, for many of us, is a very scary place because so little is known about it. No matter how hard we try to live virtuous lives, all of us have fallen far short of perfection – and the future, we fear, is where all our chickens come home to roost.

This month when we watch the inevitable rebroadcasts of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (if you only have time for one, I recommend the 1992 Muppets version), the ghost of Christmas yet to come is the creepiest character of all – not because of his menacing cowl and skeletal fingers, but because he shows Scrooge his own just desserts, the righteous judgment on the grasping, self-obsessed life he has led. It is Scrooge, not the ghost, who is the chilling character in these scenes. Ebenezer’s life of depraved indifference to the poor leaves him no chance of heavenly reward, and he knows it. He fears the ghost of Christmas future most of all. He has no hope of relief, no promise of the joys of postponed gratification, so his anticipation of the ghost’s awful truth is agony for him.

“Anticipation. Anticipation. It’s making me wait.” And the anticipation can be unbearable.

Most of us, perhaps, have less to worry about than Ebenezer Scrooge, but at Christmas time we’d still rather trill with Silver Bells than pulsate with apocalyptic cannonade.

Given all this, it will take a little discipline to remind ourselves: when we anticipate the coming of Jesus, there is no difference between welcoming him as an innocent child or as a rescuing savior.

Karoline Lewis offers reassuring words: “The darkening of the sun, the dimming of the moon's light, and the stars falling from heaven means the end of the world as we have known it. That death will be no more because God will die is something to anticipate during Advent. This is not to be a downer just when Bing really kicks into high gear with White Christmas. It’s to speak the truth, about ourselves and our unrealistic expectations; about God and how God exceeds them.”

Advent begins, and there will be many joys to share in the coming weeks: the Advent wreaths, the manger tableaus, the pageants, the lights, the presents, the family gatherings, and the familiar carols.

The Advent message, as always, is that the Creator of the Universe has taken on human flesh, coming to us in the form of a powerless, innocent infant.

And the message is also that God, through this child, has come to die on a cross, conquer death, and ultimately to return to gather those who have been redeemed in loving arms.

What does it matter if the stars fall from the sky if death has been defeated and a new, more perfect life begins?

The bottom line on the first Sunday in Advent is this: the coming of Jesus is good news.

And our Advent prayer is to savor the anticipation of the miracles yet to come.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Christ the King

Preached November 24, 2024, at First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

I’m always a bit surprised to see this Good Friday story appear in the lectionary a week before Advent.

Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus is disturbing on many levels. Clearly, Pilate doesn’t think Jesus looks like a king. The man before him is dirty and bleeding and his simple garment is torn to shreds. You can almost see Pilate’s lips twisting in a mocking grin as he asks, “Are you King of the Jews?”

And we almost understand what Pilate is thinking. Jesus does not look like a king. When we think of kings we think of jeweled crowns, capes of ermine, luxurious gowns made from the most expensive silks, and gold-plated shoes. Pilate may have been remembering the bling surrounding his glittering boss, the Emperor Tiberias, and thinking, “now THAT is a king.”]

Jesus, of course, rejected imperial trappings when he was tempted in the wilderness. He proclaimed that the first shall be last and our goal as Christians is not necessarily to be a kindly boss but to be servant of all. 

So what do we mean on Christ the King Sunday when we acknowledge His kingship throughout the world? What kind of King is Jesus?

I begin many days reading a brief devotional by the late, great Henri M. Nouwen, a Dutch-born Catholic priest who wrote 40 books about spirituality. Daily emails of these snippets can be obtained at www.henrinouwen.org.

Each day, emails from Nouwen’s writings take seekers on a guided tour of the mysteries of the universe, offering fresh insights into Jesus’ teachings about life, death, faith, and moral behavior.

Recently the editors chose a Nouwen comment that has stuck in my mind like the lyrics of a old song that bursts forth with new and unexpected meaning.

“The largest part of Jesus’ life was hidden,” Nouwen wrote. “Jesus lived with his parents in Nazareth, ‘under their authority’ (Luke 2:51), and there ‘increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and with people’ (Luke 2:52).  When we think about Jesus we mostly think about his words and miracles, his passion, death, and resurrection, but we should never forget that before all of that Jesus lived a simple, hidden life in a small town, far away from all the great people, great cities, and great events.  Jesus’ hidden life is very important for our own spiritual journeys.  If we want to follow Jesus by words and deeds in the service of his Kingdom, we must first of all strive to follow Jesus in his simple, unspectacular, and very ordinary hidden life.”

Jesus had a hidden life. Of course he did. The Gospels are accounts of the special moments in Jesus’ life, observed by many, and passed along by oral tradition for decades until someone decided to write them down. The gospel writers are not so much inspired auditors of God’s dictation as they are the beneficiaries of careful Middle Eastern Griots – oral historians and story tellers – whose job it is to pass the same basic story to succeeding generations. We know from African oral traditions that Griots have been remarkably reliable in preserving great truths over many centuries, so the basic veracity of the gospel stories is not in question. 

But it’s clear that the stories of Jesus became memorable when he said or did something remarkable. There are perhaps three decades in his life about which we know nothing, but which we must assume to have been – in Nouwen’s words – simple, unspectacular, and very ordinary.

Why is this revelation so exciting?

Maybe it’s just the element of mystery, the idea that we know almost nothing about 90 percent of Jesus’ life on earth. By that measurement, we are stunned that we know so little about the most famous person who ever lived.  And, too, we are amazed that so much of what we think we know about Jesus is based on information we can’t have. 

No where in the gospels, for example, are we told precisely how Jesus dressed. One account is that he wore a seamless robe of undetermined color. The gospel writers make no mention of the likelihood that he wore a tallit, or prayer shawl. Artists occasionally portray Jesus with a scarf over his head, but the artists leave out the corner fringes that would have been prescribed in Numbers 15:38 or Deuteronomy 22:12. 

Our most likely image of Jesus is of a brown skinned man with long black hair and a beard, which is what most Jewish men looked like in Palestine in the first century. But this image omits curly uncut sideburns that Jesus almost certainly wore with most of his male contemporaries. 

Our image of Jesus does not include phylacteries affixed to his forehead, the small leather boxes containing scripture verses that he undoubtedly wore during morning weekday prayers, as all Jewish males did. 

If Jesus omitted any of these things, it would have been noticed and remarked upon for gospel posterity. The Griots wouldn’t have been able to to keep quiet about it.

We have also come to think of Jesus as an ascetic bachelor who eschewed married life in order to devote himself to God and to his flock. Perhaps so. Certainly large doctrines and time-honored practices have been based on this assumption, including the celibate priesthood. But that notion, too, is based on information lost in the thirty years of Jesus’ life we know nothing about. And if Jesus had broken so radically from the Jewish tradition that the husband-led family was God’s basic unit of society, why wouldn’t the Griots have said something about it?

Perhaps the Griots didn’t mention it because women were akin to slaves in Jesus’ day, and they saw no reason to mention wives as appendages to the public lives of the disciples. We wouldn’t know Peter was married if his mother-in-law had not fallen ill and required a miraculous cure by Jesus. Did the other disciples have wives who were not deemed to be worth mentioning because they didn’t get sick? Did Jesus?

It’s all speculation, of course. And this is not a lead-in to the premise of The DaVinci Code, the 2003 novel in which Dan Brown posits that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and the church covered it up for doctrinal reasons. Until we cross over, we will not know the answer to this and other mysteries. But they are mysteries, not heresies, because they are part of Jesus’ life we know nothing about.

We do know, of course, that Jesus was a carpenter. This has led to entertaining theories as to how he plied his trade, my favorite being a scene in the 1961 epic King of Kings starring Jeffrey Hunter. 

Hunter, who also played the callow youth who attached himself to John Wayne in The Searchers and was the bad guy in Walt Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase, died before he could ice the cake of his career as the captain of the starship Enterprise. But the tall, blue-eyed actor was perfectly suited for the role of Jesus, better looking even than Salman’s Head of Christ. 

Hunter acquitted himself well in the role, portraying Jesus as a likeable guy who didn’t lord his special status over everyone else. 

But screenwriter Philip Yordan seems to have struggled with how to portray Jesus as a savior who got his fingernails dirty working with wood. 

Brilliantly, Yordan conceived a scene found no where in the bible in which Jesus’ mom, played by Siobhán McKenna, interrupts her son as he attempts to slip out of the house to save the world. But wait, she asks, have you made that little wooden table you promised me? Aw, Mother, I’ll get to it, the savior replies with a polite smile as he swoops out the door. But he knows and she knows and you know it’s never going to happen. 

Anthropologists have a pretty good notion what other Palestinian carpenters did in the thirty mysterious years when Jesus lived under Joseph’s authority. According to the Christianity Today Library:

“As carpenters, Joseph and Jesus would have created mainly farm tools (carts, plows, winnowing forks, and yokes), house parts (doors, frames, posts, and beams), furniture, and kitchen utensils.”

Almost 2,000 years before electric power tools, that would have been hard isometric exercise. Apart from providing daily development of the carpenters’ pects and delts, it was also the kind of work that would have placed Joseph and Jesus on friendly business terms with most of their neighbors. Jesus grew to adulthood providing most of the residents of Nazareth with the tools and wooden paraphernalia they needed to live. We must assume his products were of excellent quality and that he did not overcharge.

Archeologists who study first century Palestinian settlements make it clear that Jesus would have grown up in intimate proximity with his neighbors. According to JesusCentral.com, an excellent website “where people of all backgrounds learn about Jesus,” the standard living arrangements provided little privacy.

“Houses were all purpose 1-2 room squares, with dirt floors, flat roofs, low and narrow doorways, and front wooden doors,” the site explains. “Often people would sleep on flat roofs during hot nights. The houses were arranged around a central shared courtyard where neighbors performed daily chores (cooking, laundry, etc.) in each other’s company. Water was carried in from a public well and stored in a courtyard cistern. Lighting was provided by earthenware oil lamps. People slept on mats, and owned limited personal goods.”

There are no records or apocryphal gospels that give us a clear idea what Jesus’ hidden years were like. We can only speculate that he lived like everyone he knew when he was growing up: a nice Jewish boy raised in the law and tradition of his ancestors, living and working and often sleeping with relatives and neighbors he saw every day of his life.

It was a life of extreme ordinariness. He came into the world in a barn, surrounded by the redolence of fetid hay and animals, and we shake our heads that God’s son, the world’s savior, got such an inauspicious start. But even more staggering is the probability that Jesus grew up in mundane, commonplace, everyday surroundings, where he looked and acted like everyone else. The good people of Nazareth knew him as Jesus from the block, not Jesus Christ.

It’s no wonder, then, that when Jesus finally assumed his messianic mode, his intimate acquaintances and other observers looked at him like he’d grown a new nose. 

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" (John 6:51-52)

Granted, the ensuing passage with its references to eating flesh and drinking blood is difficult for anyone to understand. Jesus’ friends and neighbors are particularly befuddled because they knew Jesus before he was Jesus. 

After thirty years of a hidden life among them, Jesus abruptly emerged from the shadows as the light of the world. That’s an unexpected and dazzling transition to behold.

But Jesus made the transition with power and ease, in part because he had put the hidden years to good use. He knew what none of his neighbors knew: that he was the anointed one of God, sent to take away the sins of the world. But he also knew that in order to accomplish his mission, years of preparation would be necessary: years of hiddenness.

“Hiddenness,” Nouwen wrote, “is an essential quality of the spiritual life. Solitude, silence, ordinary tasks, being with people without great agendas, sleeping, eating, working, playing ... all of that without being different from others, that is the life that Jesus lived and the life he asks us to live.  It is in hiddenness that we, like Jesus, can increase ‘in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and with people’ (Luke 2:51).  It is in hiddenness that we can find a true intimacy with God and a true love for people.”

Jesus could not have accomplished his goal if he had spent all his time on earth above the fray, floating like a twilight sprite above the mud and the dust and the suffering. In the thirty years of his life we know so little about, he lived – literally – as one of us. He got to know all our needs, our foibles, our temptations, our quirks, our sins. He got to know us, in a sense, more completely than God the Creator who counts the hairs on our head. The experiences and insights Jesus gained during his hidden years took on a mighty power when he began his formal ministry. 

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them,” he declared in terms that the literary minded found cannibalistic.

But Jesus had hit upon the perfect metaphor to describe the sacrifice he was to make to atone for the sins of the world – the sacrifice that opens the door to life for all who accept it.

Neither Jesus’ understanding of his role or the metaphor he used to describe it sprung up over night. Both were the product of long years discovering “a true intimacy with God and a true love for people” when no one was writing down what he said or did.

It is, after all, precisely what developed in the hidden years that would make the declaration true: 

“This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”