…And I Feel Fine

Luke 21:25-36

First Sunday of Advent

November 28, 2021

First Christian Church

Mahtomedi, MN

This is not an easy passage to understand.  What are the signs all about?  Are they signs of the coming of Jesus or signs of something else?  Are the signs a sense of hope or foreboding? It’s hard to not see the signs as something to worry about.  Prince came out with a song in 1987 called Sign of the Times where he talks about some very dark signs of the mid to late 1980s: drugs, AIDS, natural disasters, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and fear of nuclear war.  The signs were signs of a dark future.¹

The writer of this passage talks about a creation in an uproar, nations in distress, leaders in disarray, the public in a panic. It is then and only then that we are to look up and know that Jesus Christ is returning.  This is the time when we know when hope is on the way.

So, happy holidays?

The day after Thanksgiving is when we will start hearing Christmas music until Christmas.  Actually, we started hearing holiday music after Halloween.  The wider culture views this time of year as a time of joy and celebration, but we know that more times than not, people are dealing with trials in their lives.  We are dealing with COVID–19 and just when we thought we could put the masks away, another variant, Omicron appears to be spreading.  Our country is splintered and it is not uncommon for people to talk a Second Civil War. Ethiopia, which was considered a stable nation in East Africa is on the verge of civil war as an army from the Tigray ethnic group battles the Ethiopian Army and heads towards the capital of Addis Addaba. The Russian Army is massing on its border with Ukraine, sparking fears that Russia will soon invade its ex-Soviet neighbor.  China continues to rattle its saber as it toys with Taiwan and people wonder when this will lead to a showdown between the United States and China, two nuclear powers. I could go on.  The signs are present in the air.  

Advent comes from the Latin word, adventus which means coming or arrival².  Advent is the time we prepare for the coming of Jesus, remembering Jesus’ first coming and waiting for his Second Coming. 

But is Jesus telling us when that Second Coming is happening?  I can remember growing up and hearing about the rapture.  This is a belief that Jesus will come at some point and snatch up believers.  They will escape the coming dark time which follows called the Great Tribulation. 

The problem with the rapture theology is that it allows the faithful to escape the coming trials.  But if you look back at history, there are scores of Christians who faced torture and were killed. Why did they not escape the tribulation?   In this passage, Jesus is telling us that none of us, none of us will escape trial and tribulation.  But when those signs are happening, this passage does give us a clue in how we should live in those foreboding times.  As the late Disciples theologian Fred Craddock notes, this passage is “a dramatic witness to the tenacity of faith and hope among the people of God. ³”  When we face difficulties, we can look up to heaven to God and are given hope that the present problems won’t last forever and that God’s new age will come.

The good news is that when these signs happen we are to look up to heaven in hope because our salvation will draw near.  We are not told when it will happen, but we know that it will happen and we wait in hope knowing that the present sufferings where it looks like the evil powers of this world will win won’t win in the end. Advent is about a God that doesn’t stay uninvolved but enters into time to put the world to rights and to bring us back to God.

Of course, God’s coming isn’t going to be good news to everyone and that includes you and me.  Theologian Justo Gonzalez notes that many of us who are in mainline congregations want the good news without the eschatology or last judgement⁴.  The book of Luke is really focused on reversals where those on top exchange places with those on the bottom.  Reversal can make one afraid that we are going to lose everything and in some way we are.  Good news can feel like not-so-good news sometimes.  Gonzalez says that since we can’t become poor or what have you, we are called to engage in solidarity, to join in God’s work especially with those who are on the outside.  It means working against the forces that mar God’s work like racism.  We aren’t going to solve everything, but we are working with God towards the day when God returns and all of the isms in our lives are ultimately defeated.  It’s about hope, knowing that the bad in our world will not always win.

This past week, we saw a jury in Georgia hand down guilty pleas for three white men who killed Ahmad Arbury, a young black jogger.  Kimberly Deckel, an Anglican priest, wrote in Christianity Today that the verdict is on this side of heaven only partial justice. “Advent reminds us to contemplate the many losses we experience as part of the human condition,” she writes. ⁵  We are glad that the racism reflected in the killing of Aubery was brought to account in the conviction of the three men.  It’s important that justice was carried out in the Deep South after a long, long history of African Americans being murdered by white men and getting away with it through exoneration from all-white juries.  But it is partial because this justice will not bring Ahmahd back.  He is still in the grave. But Deckel believes that Advent is about expectant hope, now and in the future.  “I believe it begins with resting in the assurance that all will be made right when Jesus returns,” she says. “ But I also believe it means caring about, longing for, and actively pursuing justice in the meantime—especially for the marginalized. A faithful response centers on those the sidelines and prophetically calls for justice for them.”

The theme for Advent is “Its the End of the World As We Know It.”  The signs we see in our world, plagues, wars, local strife, crime, climate change can feel like the end of the world.  But if you are of a certain age, you know what follows this phrase⁶.  Micahel Stipe the lead singer of the band REM sings the following words after talking about the end of the world, “And I feel fine.”  I don’t think feeling fine is about ignoring the problems of this world.  It isn’t about giving into hedonism.  Instead, it is about hope, hope that while our worlds might be ending, this is not the end.  We will feel fine because we know Jesus is coming.  Jesus came long ago and he will come again and no matter the troubles we face, we can know that we will feel fine because of the One who will come to set things right.  Thanks be to God. Amen.

1. Prince, Sign of the Times. Sign of the Times, Warner Brothers Records, 1987.

2. Advent entry, Wikipedia.

3. Craddock, F. B. (1990). Luke (p. 243). Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.

4. González, J. L. (2010). Luke. (A. P. Pauw & W. C. Placher, Eds.) (pp. 236–237). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

5. The Ahmaud Arbery Case Equips Me for Advent. Kimberly Deckel, Christianity Today, November 24, 2021.

6. REM, It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), Document, IRS Records, 1987.