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slast03
Countdown to Eternity:
Stay Awake
Text:
Mark 13:32-37
Date: The Last Sunday in the Church Year
11/23/03 ACDSEE Serial COde
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine
has marked nuclear danger since 1947 when its famous “doomsday”
clock first appeared on the cover. Since then, the clock has moved
forward and back, reflecting international tensions and the developments
of the nuclear age. It began being set at seven minutes to midnight.
In the past 56 years it has moved, back and forth, in the range
of anywhere between two and seventeen minutes to midnight. At this
moment, as we speak, it is as it began, at seven minutes to midnight.
No one, of course, can predict if much less when nuclear annihilation
might happen. “Midnight” has also been defined with the term “Armageddon,”
the word used by St. John in the Book of Revelation to symbolize
the last, worldwide battle before the End of the world. (In these
days, thanks to the recent decision of the supreme court of Massachusetts,
I’m not as worried about “Armageddon” as I am about another “Sodom
and Gomorrah”!)
We use the word “countdown” to speak of something in
the future, near or far. That “something” can be good or bad, benign
or evil. For instance, we countdown in eager anticipation, on the
one hand, waiting for that ball to drop on New Years Eve or that
moment (usually during the night) when it’s time to grab the suitcase
and rush the wife to the hospital for the birth of a baby. We countdown
to the precise second for the launch of a spacecraft both for the
sake of the computer-planned program of tasks and experiments to
be done as well as for the avoidance of colliding with “space junk,”
each little piece of which is meticulously tracked by teams of “space
janitors.” But we also “countdown” with dread, on the other hand,
of impending deadlines. Sometimes it is just a low-level depression
as in savoring the last days and hours of a vacation before having
to return to the regular grind. Other times it is a more intense
fear—anxieties ranging from merely fear of a dentist appointment,
to the long hours of waiting with hospice volunteers, to the minutes
of watching the monitor in the emergency room after life-support
has been removed.
The problem—and the mystery!—of the “Countdown to Eternity,”
the Last Day, the Day of Judgment, the second advent and final return
of Christ, is that we don’t know where to set the clock! “Concerning
that day or that hour, no one knows,” says Jesus. You don’t know.
I don’t know. “Not even the angels in heaven” know. And then there
is this strange, mysterious fact: Jesus says he doesn’t even know.
That’s strange and mysterious, of course, because we acknowledge
him to be the Lord, the Son of God, the second Person of the Holy
Trinity, the omniscient God himself! So how can Jesus be God and
not know something? We wouldn’t know that he doesn’t know had he
not told us. Like all bone fide mysteries, we don’t understand how
he doesn’t know! But, like all bone fide mysteries, we accept the
fact simply because he said it. The day and the hour of the Last
Day is the greatest and best kept secret of God the Father in all
history. And that for one very good reason. As Jesus says in the
mini-parable he tells here, it is so that we might be concerned
with the real, important issue of personal preparation by repentance
and faith and the most important work we have been given to do,
namely, the faithful proclamation of the gospel to all nations,
the only answer to life’s deepest questions, hopes and fears.
Therefore, the last word in our “Countdown to Eternity”
on this Last Sunday in the Church Year is the word “watch,” “be
on guard,” “stay awake,” “for you do not know when the time will
come.” “Stay awake.” The Greek word is "gregoreo."
The name “Gregory” means “watchful, alert.”
Who is Jesus talking to, here? Well, first, in his
mini-parable, he “commands the doorkeeper to stay awake.” The doorkeepers
are his immediate audience there on the Mount of Olives, the apostles
and therefore also all in the apostolic ministry as pastors. Pastors
especially are to stay awake, alert as the doorkeepers of the sheep.
As Saint Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus, they are to “preach the
word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and
exhort, with complete patience and teaching” [2 Timothy 4:2 (ESV)].
“As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of
all, so that the rest may stand in fear” [1 Timothy 5:20 (ESV)].
The pastor “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so
that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also
rebuke those who contradict it” [Titus 1:9 (ESV)]. (So much for
keeping silent so as not to offend, just to preserve outward peace!).
But he is also speaking to all Christians. “What I
say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” In one sense this is a call
to vigilance, to make a point of being ready at all times by a constant
tending to the care and strengthening of God’s baptismal gift of
faith, as well as being prepared at all times, “to make a defense
to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you”
[1 Peter 3:15 (ESV)], in other words, witness and testimony and
speaking the gospel to others. In today’s Epistle Jude describes
this vigilance in terms of “build(ing) yourselves up in your most
holy faith,” and “pray(ing) in the Holy Spirit.” “Keep yourselves
in the love of God.” I know of only one way of doing that! And that
is by staying in connection with God’s means of grace: hearing the
gospel preached and being where God promises to be strengthening
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