The Already and Not Yet
Preacher: The Rev. Deacon Logan Hurst
Passage: Luke 21:25-36
T.S. Eliot writes:
Since golden October declined into somber November and the apples were gathered and stored, and the land became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud, the New Year waits, breaths, waits, whispers in the darkness…
- Murder in the Cathedral
This poem played on repeat in my head this past week as Mikey and I drove to see my brother Chase and his family in Missouri. Looking out over the beautiful landscape as it whizzed by at 70 miles per hour. When we got to my brother’s home, we loaded the kids up in their RV and headed out to the campground where we went hiking, taking in all the beauty of the leaves changing colors and under brush already brown. Nature is shutting down; this time of year is called “the locking”. It’s a time when everything dies, hibernates, suspended… locked in the posture of waiting…hoping for the first signs of spring. This happens every year. Days seem shorter and nights are longer, darker…colder.
We, too, find ourselves in a season that comes around every year… Advent. Most of us love Advent because it means that Christmas will be here in four, extremely short weeks. However, we are given a different type of imagery this morning. Imagery that is in stark contrast to the cute baby Jesus nestled in the manger. Instead, Luke throws a curve ball, beginning our quest to the manger with imagery of the end of days. The time when Jesus will come again. It will be scary. In verse 26, Luke tells us that people will faint with fear. Luke is taking our “Christmas” air right out of our sails. He is stopping us in our tracks.
Why are we starting with the end? Shouldn’t there be a caption at the beginning of this reading in big bold letters “SPOILER ALERT”? We aren’t ready for this. This hasn’t happened yet. The baby comes first, he lives, he dies, he is resurrected, he ascends and then we wait.
We live our lives in this great in between. In between the birth of Jesus (the already) and Jesus’ coming again (the not yet). Let me put this another way.
Do you remember being on a swing? You get on the swing, back up as far as you can and lift your legs. You swing your legs back and forth until you are flying through the air. In that moment at the top of the swing when you don’t know whether you are completing one sweep, beginning another, or are you just still, the “in between time” that doesn’t really exist except as a sort of moment out of time. The already and the not yet.
Jesus creates for us a doorway, a view of the things to come. We stand in the threshold of this doorway as he tells us that it is going to be rough. We are going to have to live through wars, pandemics, broken relationships, depression, guilt, anger, and death. It’s scary and sometimes we have to hold each other up when one of us faints.
This isn’t where Jesus stops. He continues to tell us what is going to happen in the end. He is giving a glimpse of the “telos”, the end game, his plan to gather all of creation to himself making us whole again. Out of all that death, struggle and waiting comes life. Hope becomes reality. Hope happens!
Last Sunday, the youth took Thanksgiving supplies down to a ministry called Gateway of Grace. We met up with Dennis who works to serve refugee families from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan who come to Dallas to start a new life. Each year Gateway of Grace holds a Thanksgiving dinner for all refugees and their families. They set up two pole tents in the courtyard of Church of the Holy Nativity in Plano. Dennis told us that they invite around 75 people to the dinner. However, they plan to serve between 2 to 3 hundred due to word of mouth invites. The refugee community is drawn together by common life and similar stories. They come together to break bread, fellowship, and share each other’s burdens. They are constantly standing in the threshold of the horrors of the life they left behind and the hope of a better life to come.
And so, we too gather in the threshold to hear the stories about Jesus’ birth through the Live Nativity and Christmas pageant. We break bread and fellowship with each other during Advent Family Night. We gather to study during the Wednesday Advent Series. We gather on Sundays to read, pray, and share a common meal in hope for the day that Jesus comes again. Because it’s in this liminal time, standing in the threshold of the already and not yet, that hope happens. Amen.
