“Look Who’s Coming!”
The Revelation to John 1:4B-8
November 22, 2009 + Christ the King Sunday
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404
In my childhood Thanksgiving had a stand-alone significance all its own. No more. Since Halloween we have been caught up in the pre-Christmas commercial rush. Thanksgiving doesn’t sell; Christmas does. If your experience at the mailbox is anything like Barbara’s and mine, you have received enough Christmas catalogues by now to fill a sizable bookshelf, many of them proclaiming that this is our “Last Chance!” to order in time for Christmas. As I recall, I think one of those “Last Chance!” catalogues arrived in October! How could it be that anytime in October or even early November could possibly be my last chance to do the right thing before Christmas? No wonder I already feel behind and it’s not even December yet! Chances are good that if I were to buy a Christmas gift in October, I wouldn’t even remember it by Christmas!
Then I come to church today and hear the opening words of our scripture reading, “Grace to you and peace. . .” But peace is not exactly what I feel bubbling up within myself as I begin to contemplate all that needs to be accomplished in this hectic season of cards and gifts, of services and celebrations. Grace is not on the top of my Christmas list as I cherish the modest goal of making it through another Christmas buying season without disappointing anyone on my Christmas list and, in the process, ruining my year-end finances. So much to be done, so little time to do it in, so much to spend, and so little money to make it happen.
Does any of this sound like grace? Or peace?
Our passage continues, “Look! He is coming…” No kidding! With the endless deadlines of Christmas staring us in the face, Thanksgiving – even Advent – seem like orphaned children camped in rags in the doorway as we rush in and out, passing them by with barely a nod of recognition. Thanksgiving Day itself arrives with an eerie calm, a brief moment of quiet in the eye of the hurricane before the vortex of the Christmas storm recommences with its concluding fury. The very day after Thanksgiving always scores as the biggest merchandising day of the year, as if we can’t possibly wait more than a few hours after our pause to give thanks to go at those store shelves in earnest.
“After the first of the year,” we hear over and over, and probably find ourselves saying more often than we think. Boards, committees, clubs, and organizations look at their otherwise regular schedule of meetings and say, “Well, let’s plan to meet again after December.” After the first of the year, all the plans and programs that have been in suspended animation will start up again, our lives will return to normal. But will they? We only have so much adrenaline, after all. Eventually, there almost has to be the post-season slump.
So, as we stand poised on the verge of the frenzy, looking ahead to the week of Thanksgiving and the frantic season that follows, what are we to make of this passage and a day which the church calendar insists on calling. “Christ the King” Sunday? It is, as church calendars persist in referring to it, the last Sunday of the church year. Each church year begins with Advent, the season of expectation of the coming of Christ. Then, twelve months later, it ends with Christ the King Sunday, always the week of Thanksgiving, where we remind ourselves – just ahead of all the talk about the baby Jesus- that Jesus is what scripture says he is: King of kings, Lord of lords.
I’m feeling the tug of responsibility to the King of kings today in a way that combines our abbreviated pause for thankfulness with the promise of scripture that something is coming which is bigger and better than anything we could have imagined: thanks combined with a sort of hopeful expectancy.
Thanks and anticipation together begin to make sense out of my sermon title for today. In Revelation, John began the words of our reading with an acknowledgment of the one “who is, and who was, and who is to come…” Thanks, almost invariably, involves a look back in time. If we take time to be grateful at all, it is likely that it will involve a backward glance, an appreciative thought for the parent, the teacher, the counselor, the uncle, the brother or sister who at some time in the past made a difference in our lives. Remembering that the God who is is also the God who was is a very biblical way of looking at the world. Israel had to be reminded time after time that the God of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations was also the God who longed for their hearts in the present day. The God who brought them up out of Egypt, up out of slavery, was also the God who brought the remnant of Israel back from exile a thousand years later. This was the same God who sent prophets, the same God who meets kids at camp when they finally throw caution to the wind and fall on their knees in a prayer to receive the love of Jesus. This is the same God who motivates churches like ours to be involved in the community for goodness sake, who calls each and every believer to faithfulness and loves us as we inch our way toward trust in God. We can thank God that God is a God who “was.”
Thanksgiving begins with that sort of acknowledgement of God whose faithfulness to God’s people stretches back hundreds of generations. The God who is is the God who was, and for that we can be thankful. Of course, the God who is present with us this very day is not prepared to cut us loose, not with that kind of investment in our calling. John reminds us of the God who is, was, and “who is to come…” Our God is an arriving God, a bound-for-glory God, a God who will not let us go, who comes to us again and again, and is surely coming to us now. That is the theme that runs through Advent while we impatiently await the arrival of Christmas. God is coming to us. The way things appear to be today may not be the way they truly are. It is time to start living as though the arrival of God were accomplished already, because when it happens, it will change everything.
A few years ago, in an otherwise unremarkable folk-a-billy kind of album called Songs for the Daily Planet, songwriter Todd Snider sang these words, made all the more startling because they fairly leap out at us on a Revelation-reading sort of day from a collection of songs that do not carry any other obvious religious message. The title for this song is “Somebody’s Comin’,” and the words go like this:
Tell everybody that ain’t got nobody, Somebody’s comin’.
Tell all the people who think they need money, Somebody’s comin’.
Tell everybody walkin’ tall and proud, that their money talks but it talks too loud.
That there’s Somebody comin’ that’s gonna change everything.
Tell all these people making all these decisions, Somebody’s comin’.
Tell all these people with their hateful opinions, Somebody’s comin’.
Tell everybody in the KKK, the FBI, and the CIA,
Somebody’s comin’ that’s gonna change everything.
Somebody’s comin’ to change your mind
Sneak up on all you’ll be leavin’ behind.
Somebody’s comin’ who won’t let you down,
To turn everything you thought was right around.
Somebody’s comin’ that’s gonna change everything.
Tell all these people at the end of the line, Somebody’s comin’.
Tell all these people holdin’ “I’ll work for food” signs, Somebody’s comin’.
Somebody’s comin’ who’s been here before.
If you think you’re out of chances, you’ve got one more, ‘cause
Somebody’s comin’ that’s gonna change everything.
Somebody’s comin’ who don’t need your vote,
Gonna rattle your cage and rock your boat.
Somebody’s comin’ like a thief in the night,
Gonna to stand by his people when we’re too weak to fight.
Somebody’s comin’ that’s gonna change everything.
We could write some verses to add to that song, couldn’t we? Just complete a line in your own mind, “I feel powerless when…” The answer every time is “Somebody’s comin’!” Try it. I feel powerless when…
. . . I pass homeless people on the street. . .
Somebody’s comin’!
. . . I read about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all those men and women dying . . .
Somebody’s comin’!
. . . I had to sit and watch my momma die . . .
Somebody’s comin’!
. . . I hear that church membership goes down every year . . .
Somebody’s comin’!
. . . I wonder if I’ll lose my job like so many other people . . .
Somebody’s comin’!
. . . I feel as though nobody knows or cares what I am going through . . .
Somebody’s comin’!
Scripture seems clear to me. Whatever it is that is coming, Christ will be in the center of it. Christ will be present in all the things to come, hard at the work of salvation, changing everything from the way we thought it would always be to the way God wants it to be, a world that reflects God’s love and peace and joy. John the Revelator, writing from his cell on the prison colony of Patmos, saw the Roman Empire’s ships sailing by each day. If you had asked people in the Roman Empire who would have the last word in history, most of them would have said, “The Emperor, Caesar.” But the powerless prisoner of Rome looked out on that world and declared that God will have the last word. God in Christ is coming. God in Christ is “the Alpha and the Omega,” the beginning and end of everything in history. So who’s coming this year? Not just Christmas but Christ. Christ is the reason for the season. Christ is coming, the one who loves us and frees us from the sin and misery and futility of this world and gives us a blessed hope of a better future for us and for all people. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.