"Great Expectations"
August 12, 2007: 11th Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.UnitedChurchontheGreen.org
Scripture:
Luke 12:32-43 (NRSV)
Jesus said to them,
"Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your heavenly Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give
alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing
treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth
destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are
waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that
they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed
are those servants whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly
I tell you, the master will fasten his own belt and have them sit down
to eat, and he himself will come and serve them. If he comes during
the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are
those slaves. But know this: if the owner of the house had known at
what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken
into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected
hour." Peter said, "Lord, are you telling this parable for just
us or for everyone?" And the Lord said,
"Who then is the faithful and prudent manager whom his master will
put in charge of his servants, to give them their allowance of food
at the proper time? Blessed is the servant whom his master will find
at work when he arrives."
"Friends, God is still
speaking to the world. May our hearts be
open to hear and respond. Amen."
Sermon:
In today's reading from the
Gospel According to Luke, Jesus talks to his disciples and the gathered
crowd about how believers are to wait for the coming of the Son of Man.
Though the phrase "son of man" itself was a common Semitic idiom
meaning "a human being," a First Century Jewish audience would have
understood Jesus to be talking about the messianic figure mentioned
in the book of Daniel and other biblical and extra-biblical apocalyptic
literature—that is, writings about the "end times." This Son of
Man was to be a harbinger of the great Day of the Lord, when God's
purposes on earth would be brought to completion. In Daniel 7:13-14,
we read, "I saw one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.
And...to him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples,
nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is everlasting
dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall
never be destroyed."
Of course, in time, the Christian
communities that sprang up in Jesus' footsteps came to interpret Jesus
himself as the Son of Man, whose coming again, his second coming—this
time with dominion and glory and kingship in contrast to the poverty
and humility of his first incarnation—would mark the end of this fallen
age and, according to some, inaugurate a new age, millennium, 1000 years
of perfect peace, obviously an outcome as frightening as it is devoutly
to be wished. Surely the very earliest gospel communities expected Jesus
to return almost any minute. And even though that didn't happen, such
millenarian tendencies have remained a part of Christian traditions
down through the centuries, with more or less emphasis in any given
moment. Even as we endured a period of heightened anxiety around Y2K,
not all of it computer-related, so Christian communities facing Y1K
a thousand years ago struggled with their own hopes and fears, heightened
by a timely wave of prophetic preachers proclaiming that the end was
near. The same sort of end-times fever broke out across Europe again
in the 1300's in reaction to the "wars and rumors of war," plagues
and other disasters of that unhappy century.
And it happened again in the
first half of the 19th Century, particularly in a region
of central and western New York State that would come to be called the
"Burned-Over District" for the prodigious frequency and ferocity
with which religious fervor swept over that particularly area. It was
there that the Second Great Awakening came to full flower, that same
period of intense Christian revivalism, tent meetings and enthusiastic
worship, which led the "New Light" founders of our own congregation
to separate themselves from the sisters and brothers next door and strike
out on their own. Out of the same spiritual and physical geography sprang
groups as diverse as the Shakers and Mormons, the utopian Oneida community,
and transcendental spiritualists, each of them embodying a strong belief
that God was acting directly in the world to bring about something new,
a new revelation, a new way of life, a new age.
William Miller, born in 1782,
was a farmer in Low Hampton, New York during this period. After returning
from active duty in the War of 1812 a somewhat shaken man, Miller had
a conversion experience that drew him into deeper participation with
his local Baptist church. There his Bible studies soon took a millenarian
bent, as he became convinced that Biblical prophecies, correctly interpreted,
would yield the date of Christ's return. He began to tell his friends
and neighbors that, by his calculations, "I believe that the second
coming of Jesus Christ is near, even at the door, even within twenty-one
years,--on or before 1843."
(Memoirs of William Miller, Sylvester Bliss, p.79). By 1831 Miller
was speaking publicly on the subject in venues around New England, in
1836 he published his findings, and by 1843, that portentous year, perhaps
as many as 100,000 people were convinced by his arguments and his arithmetic
that the Son of Man was about to appear.
Now, a true cynic would say
that Miller's popularity was due mostly to his alliance with Joshua
V. Himes, a Boston minister in the Christian Connection tradition—another
one of our forebear traditions in the United Church of Christ—and
a man with an enormous gift for promotion. Himes saw to it that Miller's
writings were circulated in dedicate subscription journals in Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, Cincinatti, Cleveland, Rochester, and Montreal.
He outfitted Miller's tent meetings with the largest single tent in
the country, and provided Miller with an enormous illustrated chart,
a visual aid to help get his message across. Surely, if he were alive
today, Himes would be working in cable television and internet podcasting.
But to reduce the success of
Miller's movement to a matter of good marketing is to miss the human
connection. People listened to Miller and believe him because they needed
to, because they felt their lives, already the usual human rollercoaster
of unpredictable ups and downs, had somehow jumped the track completely.
The optimism with which our new nation had greeted the new century and
a continent that stretched westward toward a horizon broad enough to
encompass all our dreams, faltered disastrously when misguided federal
economic policies met ruthless real estate speculation head-on in the
Panic of 1837. During the five years of depression followed, out of
850 banks nationwide, nearly 350 failed entirely, costing investors
large and small millions of dollars, and their dreams. Given all
that, the ugly material realities of the day, who wouldn't want to
believe that Jesus was coming again, and soon, to do away with all that
and establish peace, justice, and compassion on the earth? People believed
Miller because they yearned for God to come and take them away.
As the date drew near, Miller
refined his calculations and arrived at March 21, 1844 as the appointed
time. And so in preparation his followers, taking scripture passages
like ours this morning quite seriously, sold their possessions—property,
cattle, jewelry—and gave the proceeds as alms to the poor. They stitched
white robes for themselves so they would be "dressed for action,"
and on the evening of the 22nd they lit their lamps and climbed
up as high as they could, up on mountaintops, on rooftops, in apple
trees. They wanted so badly to rise above it all, above all the problems
that plagued their lives, above the lost fortunes and the dashed hopes,
above the despair that choked them day in and day out. They climbed
up there and they waited with arms open wide for a new world, a new
life, for the fulfillment of prophecy, for God to stop with the commas
already and put a period to the end of a long and painful sentence.
So they waited... and waited... and waited... until it dawned on them
that Jesus wasn't coming, at least not yet.
There was a brief flurry of
renewed hope when, weeks later, Miller issued a correction. It seems
he had misread a passage in the prophet Habakkuk and one in Leviticus.
But he'd made the proper adjustments and was certain he had it right
this time. It was for sure going to be October 22, 1844, when Christ
would return to rule with power and might...Tuesday. And so, again with
the selling and the alms and the white robes and the rooftops and the
arms out... and again with the waiting—"Catch me, Lord!"
And again, nothing. From this second, this Great Disappointment,
the Millerites never did recover. Instead, they just climbed down off
the barn, hearts about as broke as their bank balances, and made their
way back to the workaday world, although an offshoot did go on to form
the nucleus of what is today the Seventh-day Adventist Church—"Adventist,"
as in the Second Advent of Christ.
So why am I telling you all
this, why the history lesson? Because we are in the midst of our own
difficult days, when, for many of us, life seems every bit as chaotic
and out of control as it did to our forbears in faith. Our dreams as
a nation, once as fresh as morning in America, once riding high over
that bridge to the 21st Century toward a place called hope,
have faltered as misguided federal policies at home and abroad have
collided head-on with ugly political and economic realities to bring
our world close to the breaking point. Wars and rumors of war, plunging
financial markets, disease, disasters both natural and man-made, violent
crime, and political wrong-doing dominate the headlines 24-7.
Small wonder then that so many
should once again be looking for the "quick-fix" of the Second Coming,
for Jesus to come wrap up all our frayed and frazzled loose ends into
one neat package. And who can really blame them? So many today believe
this way because so many need to in order to keep body and soul
together. And it's really very tempting, tempting to turn off the
television, turn off the computer and look up, past the terrible troubles
of this world to the joys of the next, to keep our eyes on the heavenly
prize of peace, justice, and compassion that seems to elude us so completely
here down below; tempting to build our barn walls so high and thick
that we can effectively shut out all the distractions and disappointments
that drag us down; tempting to climb up there on the rooftop and sit,
all alone in the dark, dressed in our Sunday best, and let the rest
of the world go to hell in a hand basket while we wait our real
Dad to come pick us up and take us home! It's such a persistent temptation
because it's such a powerful, pastoral image.
This despite Jesus' direct
warning here in our passage this morning and elsewhere throughout the
gospels that we will not know, indeed we should not know when he will
return and the world will end, God's purposes having been accomplished
in full once and for all. "It is not for you to know the times and
periods that God has set by God's own divine authority," he scolds
the disciples in Acts 1:7. That day will sneak up on you like a thief
in the night, like a couple returning late from a party. "Then two
will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left" (Mark
24:40)—even the foundational texts of the evangelical Rapture movement
seem to argue that as much as you may want to know when it's all going
to end, you aren't going to, so stop trying.
Instead, again and again, we
hear Jesus telling his disciples, tell us, not just to watch and wait,
not to withdraw from the world, but to keep ourselves busy doing the
work of God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. There is still
plenty to do here and now, before the Son of Man comes in his glory
and all his angels with him, Jesus reminds us—feeding hungry people,
welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, caring for those who are sick,
and visiting those who are in prison, for starters (Matthew 25:31-46)—and
"blessed is the servant whom the master will find at work when he
arrives." It's like one of my all-time favorite bumper sticker says:
"Jesus is coming—look busy!"
But, you see, Jesus does come
to us every day, not necessarily down from above, riding on the clouds,
as Daniel and William Miller imagined it, but in our lives and the lives
of the people around us. If we try, we can see his face in the faces
of those we encounter on our way through life; in fact, all God's
sons and daughters bear a striking family resemblance, once you know
what to look for. But it is the "least of these" our brothers and
sisters, those who struggle and suffer in poverty, physical and spiritual
poverty, as Jesus did, who bear his likeness deep in their bones. If
the church can manage to tear our eyes away from the heavens, or from
our own navels, long enough to look around—really look—expecting
to see Jesus, we will. As Mother Teresa used to like to say as she worked
tending the needs of the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta,
we will learn to recognize Christ even in his most distressing disguises.
The truth is that if we will
climb down off our rooftops, we will be blessed to serve Jesus there,
even as we become a blessing, a useful blessing, to others, and to the
world. Then it won't matter so very much whether the world ends tomorrow
or next year or a thousand years from now, because the spirit of Christ,
who is Immanuel, "God-With-Us," will be with us here and now, already,
day by difficult day, all along the rollercoaster way, comforting us
in our own pain, supporting us in our confusion, and challenging us
to become true partners with God in God's great work of reconciliation
and restoration, the work Jesus came to do among us and to which he
has called us as his disciples.
Of course that doesn't mean
we can't look forward with great expectation to the completion of
God's purposes on earth, when "death will be no more; mourning and
crying and pain will be no more, for the first things will have passed
away" (Revelation 21:4)—God speed the day! But doesn't
it make sense that, in light of that very same hope, we ought to take
Jesus' own advice on the subject to heart and make his work our own
while we wait?
Because as near as I can tell,
following in the footsteps of Christ isn't about shutting the door
on the world while we work out the long division so we won't surprised
by the angel and the trump and the shout and end up missing our ride.
If we try to escape that way, we're likely to wind up missing the
trees for the forest. The faith Jesus shares with us isn't about turning
our faces away from the hurts of the world so we can focus on heaven
above and how much we hope God will come to heal our own hurts. We are
called to look out, look around, to look for God in very next person
we meet, and the next, and the next, in their broken hearts, in their
human needs, in their hopes. It's not just about praying, but about
becoming answers to prayer for one another. It's not about figuring
it all out, down to the last decimal point, but about learning to live
with a vigorous, resilient hope, to expect the unexpected, and loving
the world into heaven along the way home.
Throughout the portions of this sermon dealing with William Miller and the Millerite movement, I am particularly indebted to the work of Winthrop H. Hudson, Religion in America (4th ed.), 1987.