Scripture:  Mark 13:24-37

This past week or so has been magical for our family.  We have three girls in our house who are ready for Christmas.  I think most of you know that in the spring of 2010, Karla and I adopted two girls from Ethiopia.  When they came home, Meheret was three and Ezzy was one, but we’ve been here with them now for 20 months, which is amazing to us, that it’s been that long already.  The time has flown so quickly, and yet in many ways it feels like the girls have always been a part of our lives. 

Christmas last year was a blur.  It wasn’t the girls’ first Christmas, of course—they do celebrate Christmas in Ethiopia—but it was their first Christmas here in the United States… their first Christmas with Christmas decorations going up in stores before Halloween, their first Christmas with Christmas music playing everywhere they went, their first Christmas with lights in everybody’s front yard, their first Christmas with a Christmas parade through downtown, their first Christmas meeting Santa Claus at the Merchants book giveaway, their first Christmas with Christmas trees everywhere…  Add to all of that the fact that this white stuff was falling from the sky—snow, which they had never even seen before, and we scooped it up and threw it and made snowmen and snow forts! 

About a week after the Christmas parade here in Racine, I was driving Meheret and Sylvia to school.   We were coming down Main Street, and Meheret was remembering the Christmas parade and talking about it.  And then as we drove past Memorial Square, she looked at that enormous Christmas tree standing there majestically with all those giant ornaments on it and she said to me, “Dad, Christmas tree in our house?”  Wow, I thought, she’s seen Christmas trees in a few places—outside and in some stores, but she doesn’t realize that most everybody’s going to have a Christmas tree at home, too, and so she’s asking for one.  Seizing the opportunity, perhaps, to appear a gracious father, I replied, “Well, yes, honey, I think we just might do that.”  After that, it came up a few times that we would have a tree in our house, but I think that all along the way, Meheret was doubtful that we’d actually be able to fit one of those crazy things in our own living room. 

Maybe she’d forgotten about it, but then around the second weekend of December, we strapped a live tree to the top of our van and brought it home.  Of the nine or ten trees left at Kortendick’s Hardware store, this was the best looking one, though it wasn’t without some bare spots here and some needed pruning there.  It’d been raining, so when we got the thing home and untied it from the van, Karla and I set it up on the front porch where it could dry out for a bit.  Looking back, I think Meheret’s thought at that time was, “Oh, ok.  The front porch—I knew they weren’t going to put a tree in our house!” 

But then it happened.  Karla and Sylvia were out running errands and I had just put Meheret and Ezzy down for a nap.  As most parents of toddlers know, you take advantage of a time like that to either sneak in a nap for yourself or to get as much work done as possible!  I got busy getting the lights out, and the star.  I hauled that Christmas tree in the house and put the lights and the star on it so that we could add the ornaments later as a family.  It took some time—it always does.  Finding everything first, then testing the lights, making sure they all work…  But I finished!  And the girls were still asleep!  Not wasting a minute, I hustled out to the garage and grabbed the ladder so I could put up the outdoor lights on the front window.  I had just set up the ladder and climbed up a few steps when Meheret came downstairs from her nap. 

We have a large front window to our home, and I was just outside that window, standing on the ladder, stringing up the lights.  I had a picture perfect view of our living room, where our Christmas tree was now standing, inside the house.  Looking through the living room, I could see through our dining room and through our kitchen to the door that opens to the stairway leading upstairs to the bedrooms.  We keep that door shut when the girls are napping so that it’s a little quieter up there.  Standing there on the ladder, I watched that door open, and here came Meheret, padding her way through the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the living room.  I tapped on the window so that she could see me and I waved to her.  She waved back, sort of.  She was still half asleep, rubbing her eyes—looked like she needed a good snuggle and a book.  But then…

But then she looked to her left, and what to her wondering eyes should appear, but the most magical thing—a Christmas tree, with lights, SITTING IN HER OWN HOUSE!  And the best part was that she must’ve thought I hadn’t seen it, because she started to jump up and down pointing emphatically to this amazing development in the living room, and through the glass I could hear her screaming, “Dad!  Christmas tree!  Dad!  Christmas tree!  Christmas tree!”  It was golden moment.  Magical, endearing…

You know, part of what makes Christmas with children fun is that you get to experience the whole thing through their minds and hearts.  And Christmas in their minds and hearts creates an environment where pretty much any darn thing is possible.  Snowmen coming to life, flying reindeer, Santa and elves and presents magically appearing… angels singing in the sky, shepherds, wise men, baby Jesus in the manger…  All of it, sacred and secular, evokes a mysterious certainty that the world is laced with magic and hope.  And I saw all of that on Meheret’s face when she jumped for absolute joy next to our Christmas tree.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “Well, Ben, that’s a nice story, but what in the world has it got to do with Mark 13?  Especially Jesus saying, “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken”?  Passages like these in the Bible usually don’t make people nostalgic for Christmases past.  “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”  Passages like these don’t usually evoke images of Christmas trees and lights; rather, they point to end times—the end of the world, apocalypse, the second coming of Christ, final judgment, Armageddon. 

Well, friends, as I watched my daughter jump with joyful reckless abandon, it hit me:  This is how folks in the early Christian Church felt about the world around them.  In a way, this must be how they saw the universe before them.  Hugely magical, full of promise and oozing possibility at every turn! 

Fast forward slightly from our scene in Mark’s gospel.  It’s no secret that the early Christian Church believed that the world as they knew it was about to end.  Christ had lived and died and rose again, and in that process their whole existence was turned upside down.  Granted, the Messiah hadn’t come as they’d expected.  No revolution to overthrow the Roman Empire and no divine movement to sweep away evil from the homeland.  Rather, Jesus came as a servant king.  He humbled himself, behaving often like a lowly servant should.  He even washed his disciples’ feet!  And then, even at the end of his life, Christ was killed in the most humiliating way, like a criminal, on a cross with the other criminals. 

There was that moment when his followers figured they’d had it all wrong—thought they’d seriously misjudged this Jesus and got themselves ready to go back to fishing, back to farming, back to collecting taxes…  But then the resurrection.  Suddenly Christ was alive among them!  And suddenly, now, anything was possible!  And the stories in the early Church spread like wildfire—how the risen Christ had appeared to Mary and then to the twelve disciples, how Christ had appeared to others here and there, how he had broken bread with them, spoken with them, and laughed with them.  The question on everyone’s mind at the time was, “Is it time yet?”  That’s what the disciples asked Jesus when they saw him last:  “Is it time yet?  Time for your kingdom to come?  Time for a true end to suffering?”  And Jesus said, “It’s not for you to know.”  But then, the story says that after Jesus was lifted up to the clouds from them, angels appeared and said, “What are you looking at?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go” (Acts 1:6-11).

You can imagine how folks in the early Church must have watched the skies, can’t you?  Believing that at any second Christ would come again, bringing with him the kingdom of God!  So the message in the early Church was the same as John the Baptist’s before Jesus’ ministry:  Prepare!  Get ready!  Christ is coming!  As such, a sense of urgency permeated everything they did.  The early Christian community flew into action, not to lay the groundwork for a major world religion, but rather to get themselves ready for Christ to return in their lifetime and to bring the whole kingdom of heaven with him!  They were like a four-year-old girl who, having seen a Christmas tree in her living room, believed that absolutely anything in this world was now possible.  Wildly urgent, excitedly expectant!  This day could be our last!  This hour, our last!  That’s what they all believed.  And so in his letter, James wrote to the faithful:  “Be patient,” but also, “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near…  See the Judge is standing at the doors!” 

And it’s interesting—there have always been Christians who believe that any day could be the world’s last—that Christ could come back at any time.  I’ve been asked more than once, “What do Presbyterians believe about the second coming of Christ?”  You see, when you become a Presbyterian minister, you open yourself up to these kinds of things.  What would you say?  At first, I’m always grateful to quote Jesus from today’s gospel reading, and say that “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32), but beyond that, what do we believe about it?  Do we believe Christ will come again?  I don’t know about you, but I often find myself still trying to get my head wrapped around Christ’s first coming.  I’m not sure I always know what to think about a second appearance. 

But then I saw my four-year-old daughter dance for joy next to a pretty scruffy-looking Christmas tree.  And I was reminded of something that often eludes us as people of faith:  that we live in a world where God is alive and anything can happen.  We often impose our own limitations on the world around us, but this is not our world—it is God’s world.  And we could take a page or two from our faith ancestors—those who believed that Jesus could come again at any second.  Their faith was wild with imagination for what God could do in their lifetime.  They lived each year, each month, each day, hour, and minute as though it could be their very last to live.  You and I?  We always figure we’ve got time—time to get serious later, time to get our act together and time to tend to the big stuff… later.  Later when we’re not so rushed, later when we have less on our minds, later when life isn’t so busy with work and house projects and speeding from one thing to the next. 

But what would your life look like if you started living each and every moment as if it were your last?  What if you lived each day in wild anticipation for what God might do?  The word “advent” means “coming.”  What if the pervasive reality in your life was that God is coming?  Coming as a baby born in a manger?  Sure.  Coming as in “second coming”?  Sure, maybe.  Coming—as in God constantly yearning to come and break into reality as we know it and transform our thinking and believing—to make magic happen, even in our own living rooms, to bring light into darkness, to make rough places plain, to bind your broken heart, to bear your burden?

Jesus said, “Keep awake!”  That’s good advice if you believe the end is near.  But it’s good advice, too, if you believe in new beginnings.  When will God come?  When will God break into your life, offering a word of grace, of challenge, of courage or hope?  One never knows, so keep awake!