Jesus is Coming—Look Busy!

Jeremiah 33:14-16, Luke 21:25-36

December 3, 2006

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

People sometimes give clergy strange religious themed gifts. (This is not a request!!!) One of the most interesting I’ve received is this T-shirt. On the front there is a rather traditional picture of Jesus with the exciting pronouncement that Jesus is Coming! One assumes this does not mean the first coming on Christmas, but the Second Coming in power and glory we heard about in the Luke reading. But then the message on the back reads: Look Busy! Hence the title of the sermon this morning.

Jesus is coming. Look busy! Those two sentences incorporate so much of peoples’ attitudes toward both the first and the second comings of Jesus. More than looking busy, all our culture seems to say that for the next three weeks until Christmas Eve we should be busy. Buy the gifts and wrap them; make the cookies; decorate the house; go to the parties; visit the relatives; go to the concerts; sing in the concerts. Yikes! I don’t think Mary and Joseph went to that much work for their trip to Bethlehem and the birth of the baby! It’s as though we think that if we don’t do it all or do it all right, Christmas won’t come.

I’m going to liberate you with some good news this morning. Even if you don’t do a darn thing between now and December 25, Christmas will still come. Jesus will still have been born. God will still have come into the world with good news of great joy. How does Dr. Seuss, my favorite theologian, put it? “Christmas time will always be, just as long as we have we.” And, my beloved, how good it is that we have we!

But the picture changes a little when we consider the second coming implications of my T-shirt. The emotional tone is that of a classroom whose teacher has gone out to talk with the principal a minute. She’s asked the class to work quietly on a project. But while she’s out, the paper airplanes fly and the notes get passed and the chatter goes on. As soon as the students hear the door open, they diligently bend their heads over their desks and act as though they’ve been working steadily all along. Of course, teachers all know exactly what’s been going on in their absence.

Of course, God does, too, especially because God has actually not been absent, assuming you believe in the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ words in this passage from Luke, coming right before he eats this meal with his disciples one last time before his imminent death, are meant to keep his disciples from being deceived into thinking just looking busy is enough. He’s not telling them they have to do miracles and behave absolutely sinlessly in order to meet the apocalypse and escape punishment. It’s important you hear that, because so much of popular culture around apocalyptic literature stresses this thing that if you don’t behave, you won’t get “raptured” and will end up in eternal suffering. That sentiment is not here, nor is it actually in anything Jesus ever said, despite the Left Behind hype.

What Jesus is trying to do is to comfort and strengthen his disciples who will very quickly after his death be thrown into a time of persecution and struggle. He’s not telling them either to be busy or to look busy. He’s telling them quite the opposite. “Stand up and raise your heads.” Be alert, pray, don’t get bogged down in meaningless work. Don’t self-medicate your fears with alcohol, don’t be overcome by worry.

He’s telling them to pay attention to the presence of God which is in evidence all around them and will be even moreso in future times. Don’t pay attention by means of cataloguing catastrophes in a cosmic calendar to predict just when Jesus might come again. Pay attention because God is at work all around you now and will be in the future to bring about not only your redemption, but that of the whole world. If you’re not paying attention, all you see is a world in chaos and lots of things to make you worried, fearful, frustrated, sad and angry. The emphasis of Jesus’ words here is not on our deeds, or lack of them, but on the faithfulness of God who has come, is present, and will come, not just in a sweet baby in a manger, but in the sun, moon and stars, among all the nations, and this is good news. So don’t cower like Adam and Eve in the garden anticipating God’s presence. Stand up; raise your heads, the one who keeps trying to show you and me and all of us the way out of disaster, despair and death will still do precisely that, even though Jesus will not be here in the flesh.

If you live your life trying to be busy enough to make other people and God think you are faithful, thinking of God as some kind of Santa Claus who keeps a list of naughty and nice and stacks up the eternal rewards accordingly, you are apt to have your hearts weighed down with worry and fear, and you are apt to be disappointed as some people are with the Christmas presents they receive or don’t. God is so much bigger than that. Remember that this same Jesus shared bread at the Last Supper with the ones who would betray, deny and desert him. This same Jesus forgave those who killed him as he was dying. This same Jesus, risen from the dead, offered a blessing of peace to those who had run away from the cross and hidden, weighed down with dissipation and worry. This same Jesus offers us the same promise of love and forgiveness as well as the tools we need to live our lives in such a way that we ourselves radiate love and forgiveness to the world. This same Jesus empowers us to become the signs that others can see that God lives.

This same Jesus, this morning, offers us bread and cup, the strength to raise our heads to see past the tinsel and hear past the muzak, the strength to stand and receive the embrace of the one who loved us first and loves us best, the only one who can free us from both our own foolishness and the evil of others. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God.

But only those who see take off their shoes

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

Jesus is coming. Watch and pray. Amen.