Sermon on Mark 13:24-37

The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews

St. Joseph-St. John Episcopal Church, Lakewood

December 3, 2017

Advent 1, B

Mark 13:24-37

Doesn’t this sound familiar?

“It is like a man going on a journey,

when he leaves home

and puts his slaves in charge,

each with his work,

and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.”

We heard this a few weeks ago, didn’t we?

In that version, though,

            the master gives the servants money

                        that they either invest

                                    or don’t.

In this story from Mark,          

            the master (Jesus)

                        expects people to keep doing their assigned work.

The doorman is given the charge of keeping watch —

            especially watching to see when the master is returning

                        to sound the alarm and be sure everything is shipshape for his return.

This Mark Advent text is about as dour as it gets.

If we ignore what the lectionary has given us,

            we miss the fact that for the most part

                        Advent isn’t’ about waiting for Christmas.

It’s not a chocolate countdown calendar

            of 24 days.

In Advent the Church tells us

            to get ready for the Son of Man coming in clouds

                        and the angels collecting Jesus’ followers.

In Advent the Church tells us

to get ready for the beginning of Christ’s reign.

In Advent, it’s the end of the world as we know it.

In Anglican tradition,

            the role of the homily or sermon

            is not to teach line by line or word by word

                        it’s not to give a Bible study lecture from the pulpit.

In Anglican tradition,

            the role of the homily or sermon

            is to take a text,

                                    and say why it still matters.

My job as a preacher

            is to challenge you to change your lives

                        because they’ve already been changed

by an encounter with Jesus the Christ.

You’ll read in Joyful Noise this month   

            that someone at Starbucks

                        made a generic, vague reference

                        about why we come to church.

His comments were very broad

            but suggested that he was hoping for church to be a disconnect

                        from the reality of living in Washington, United States, 2017,

                                    a disconnection from the world around us.

He didn’t say that we come to church to feel good

            or to be made to feel good.

Our text from Mark’s Gospel

            makes clear that that can’t be why we come to church.

It’s hard to feel good when Jesus is saying,

“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.”

That actually sounds terrifying to me

            unless I rest in the comfort that those are signs

                        that Jesus is returning.

Jesus’ returning, though, isn’t just a cake walk

            of unicorns and rainbows.

Right after Jesus says that the dark sun and moon

            are signs of his returning

            he says that as he’s gone

                        everyone has a job,

                        and they really need to be doing it.

Our jobs as followers of Jesus,

            as we understand them in The Episcopal Church

                        are laid out in the Prayer Book.

The mission of the Church

            is to restore all people to unity to God and each other in Christ.

We do that by keeping our baptismal promises

            which we renewed on All Saints Sunday

                        and again on Tuesday

                        and will again on January 7 for Baptism of Jesus.

We have been given work to undertake

            and I’ll be offering

more concrete tasks for that

as we move forward together,

don’t worry.

I’m not up here to make you feel bad,

            but I’m not up here to make you feel warm and fuzzy either.

I’m up here because I believe

            that Jesus and his church have called me

            to lead you

in making Christ known as Savior and Lord.

I’m up here to preach the hope of salvation offered to all

            through Jesus Christ.

To make that happen

            we don’t have to knock on doors

                        asking people if they’ve accepted Jesus

as their personal Lord and Savior.

We do have to keep feeding the hungry.

We do have to keep giving water to the thirsty.

We do have to invite people to join us

            when the salvation we’ve known

                        could be their salvation.

I’m up here because I believe

            that following the Son of Man —

the Son of Man who will come in clouds and majesty

but came as a helpless baby

            and shows up in broken bread —

following him will change the world.

Following him in action,

            not just words,

                        does change the world.

Like the servants in Jesus’ short parable,

            that’s the work we’ve been given to do:

                        change the world by following him.

We don’t know when Jesus will return,

            so we can’t fall asleep

                        or fall down on our tasks.

We must be alert

and keep changing the world.