What's Your Perfect Day?

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

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

December 2, 2012 • Portage First UMC

All of us have, in our minds, an idea of what a perfect day would be like. For me, I imagine a sunny day, sitting under a shade tree with a good book and no place to be, no agenda to accomplish, nothing to do. That would be a pretty-near perfect day. Maybe yours is something similar, or maybe something very different. But we have in our minds this image—and yet, how often do we experience days like that? Even on a day when we might say something was “perfect,” the world too quickly intrudes and reminds us that life in this world is hard. The world is dark and difficult. Pick up a newspaper or scan the news online and you’ll find accounts of murders, car wrecks and theft. You’ll read the latest details in the tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and for those of us who were there this summer, that causes us to worry about the friends we met there. Or you’ll read about a bombing in Afghanistan, or the latest corruption scandal in politics, policies being debated in Washington, or general uncertainty about the future. Even Twinkies aren’t safe from the devastation the world presents! And then you read about how the puppeteer of the popular Sesame Street character Elmo has been forced to resign under allegations of improper behavior. Sesame Street, for generations, has represented childhood and innocence, and now that innocence has been shattered and a life has been changed forever—whether the allegations are true or not. Truth no longer matters in our world, just accusation. This world intrudes into our perfect days and reminds us that life is hard.

So how do we respond when the world breaks our hearts? Some duck their heads and “just try to get through.” Others try to escape, block out the struggle, and ignore what’s going on. They’ll say, “I don’t want to know about the harshness of reality. Just tell me good things.” I remember, many years ago, during December a speaker came to a group I was a part of and spoke about the homeless problem in our community, and after the speaker left, there were many complaints. “I don’t want to hear about that during Christmas season,” we were told. Just ignore the struggle and maybe it will go away. But neither of those responses really work, at least not for long. Because ignoring it or denying it doesn’t change the fact that the world is harsh. And that’s why the Bible suggests a third response, a response that is our theme for the next four weeks: anticipate.

This morning we begin the season of Advent, a four-week season set aside on the church calendar to help us prepare for the celebration of Christmas. Advent is a time of waiting, and because of that, it’s countercultural in our world. Waiting is not something we do well. Why wait to buy that new shiny thing when we can just put it on the credit card and worry about how to pay for it later? Why wait to cook something wonderful when we can just run through the drive-through or microwave something less nutritious? Why wait in a line at a store when we can just buy it online or download it instantly? Why wait to talk to someone when we can e-mail, text or instant message them right now? We live in a frenzied, get-it-done-yesterday sort of world that is exhausting to many of us. We’re expected to multi-task, learn the newest technology, keep up with 24-hour news sources, and be in three places at once. In his book Addicted to Hurry, Kirk Byron Jones contends that speed is the standard of American life. People are so anxious to get on with whatever they have to do that they have no time for relationships and community. That’s our world, and then comes Advent. And every year, Advent calls us to wait and anticipate something joyful that is coming. But we’ve even learned to hurry through Advent, to fill it with endless activity, and to rush to telling the Christmas story before we even know the story before the story. So our Advent devotional this year, the “Anticipate” books, will help us read and understand the story that leads up to Jesus’ birth. We’ll slow down, read intently, and anticipate his coming. I hope you started reading yesterday, and that you’ll stick with it as we begin with Adam and Eve and work our way to Jesus on Christmas Eve.

And on Sundays, during this season, we’re going to be looking at the promises of the Old Testament prophets, the ones who so often spoke about more than they knew. Above all else, they were confident God would fulfill his promises, every one of them, and even if they didn’t live to see it, they were going to help the people have that same confidence, that same faith. In many ways, the job of the prophets was to help people wait, to anticipate that a better day, one even better than the most perfect day they could imagine, was coming. The prophets reminded the people that it was always God’s desire and plan to bring hope out of despair and good out of evil. Long before the time of Jesus, the prophets reminded the people that the worst thing is never the last thing.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t get bad. Jeremiah is one of those prophets who lived through a very difficult time. God’s covenant, God’s relationship with Israel was always conditional, always couched in terms of “if you obey, I will continue to be with you, but if you don’t obey, I won’t—I will give you up. It’s your choice.” Even though, as is obvious when you read the prophets, it broke God’s heart when his people turned away from him, he could not stay in relationship with them if they didn’t want to be with him. He would not. But so much of Israel’s history is tied to the faithfulness of their kings. When the kings followed God’s way, things were good. But too many kings decided to go their own way, or to worship “God plus” something. They believed it was okay if they did all the rituals they were supposed to do but also brought in the gods and the idols of the people who were around them. Even when the prophets continually told them such practices would lead to their destruction, the kings didn’t listen. And so along comes Jeremiah, in a time when there have been four weak kings in a row in the southern kingdom of Judah, and the king on the throne now is Zedekiah, whom one scholar describes this way: “a puny and compromising figure of hopelessness” (Guest, Communicator’s Commentary: Jeremiah, Lamentations, pg. 239). In that context, it becomes Jeremiah’s task to preach an unpopular message: that if Judah didn’t change, they would be conquered and taken away into exile. Little would be left of this once-great nation. As you might imagine, Jeremiah wasn’t popular with those in power. No one wants to hear that you’re leading the nation in the wrong way, and that punishment might be coming. So Jeremiah found himself often in trouble, and in fact, in this section of his book we read this morning, he is in captivity. He’s in jail when this word of the Lord comes to him (33:1).

These words are actually directed toward those who went through the fall of Jerusalem and are in exile, far from home. They’re aimed at those who are experiencing the message of Jeremiah that has unfortunately come true. But now Jeremiah’s message changes; he begins to offer words of promise, words of hope. He tells the exiles: remember, the worst thing is never the last thing. Come back to me, God says through Jeremiah, and this land that you love will once again be filled with cities and flocks and good things. The land that is desolate now will once again flourish. The exile will end and the people will go home. There will be sounds of joy and gladness here again, and the sounds of weddings and worship. There is hope, Jeremiah says. And then, he looks beyond their immediate circumstances and begins to speak about what the prophets referred to as “the day of the Lord.”

When Christians hear that phrase, we usually associate it with the return of Jesus, the second coming. But the Hebrews understood “the day of the Lord” to be a single day when the Messiah would come and would set things right, when Israel would be rewarded and all the heathen nations would be punished. That would be a perfect day, indeed, they thought! But the prophets warned the people that it wasn’t that simple, that just being Jewish was no guarantee of reward. Amos told the people, “Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light” (Amos 3:18). Jeremiah, however, gives this promise: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah” (33:14). Literally, he will fulfill the “good word” he spoke to them long ago. And what was that “good word”? You heard it a little bit ago, but let me read Jeremiah’s words again: “‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior’” (33:14-16).

Now, to understand what Jeremiah’s saying here, we need to know a bit of Biblical history, particularly what he means by this reference to David. David, some of you might remember, was Israel’s ideal king. It was David who established the nation as one, David who was called “a man after God’s own heart,” David the warrior who brought peace to the land. In people’s minds, everything was good when David was king, and in fact, God promised David that as long as the people were faithful, there would always be a descendent of David on Israel’s throne. That lasted just one generation after David’s death; by the time of his grandson, the nation split in two. And ever since then, there was this longing for a return to David’s time, to when things were better. We do the same thing. We pick an idealized time in our lives or in our nation’s history or even in the life of the church and we say, “If only we could go back to when things were like that. Then everything would be good, even perfect.” But Jeremiah here is not promising an actual return to David’s time. Rather, he wants the people to anticipate an even better ruler than David: a “legitimate ruler,” an ideal king who will rule justly and rightly (Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah, pg. 601). That king will do what is right by the people. That’s Jeremiah’s vision of the day of the Lord.

But the word Jeremiah offers gets even better. He promises two things in verse 16. First of all, there is the promise of salvation. “Judah will be saved...Jerusalem will live in safety.” I’m going to teach you a little Hebrew this morning so you can impress your friends at parties. The word translated “saved” there is “yaw-shah.” Say that with me. “Yaw-shah.” It’s from the same root as the name “Yeshua,” or, as we translate it into English, Joshua or Jesus. “Yaw-shah” means “salvation,” which is something only God can ultimately provide. For the exiles, “yaw-shah” would have looked like coming home, returning to the land. But Jeremiah has something much larger in mind than just land rights, and we know that because of what he says next, that the city would be called “The Lord our Righteousness.” Jerusalem at this point is a pile of rubble. It’s not a gleaming city or a place of hope. Rather, it represents the people’s unrighteousness. They were punished because of they failed to be righteous. And yet, when God looks at them, when he provides salvation for them, he will see them not as they are but as they ought to be, as he can make them. The one who is coming, the promised one, the savior Jeremiah tells them to anticipate, will see the people not as they are right now, but as they could be if they accept God’s coming salvation.

That’s good news. That ought to have an amen, because here’s what it means for us: God sees us not as we are but as we could be. In fact, early Christians quickly associated this promised savior with Jesus, for we believe only he can provide salvation and that he was and is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). Paul told the Corinthians: “God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). When we allow Jesus to begin his work in our lives, when we allow him to live in us, God sees us as we ought to be, not as we are. None of us are able to be perfect on our own, though a lot of us certainly try, but it’s exhausting. Jesus didn’t come so that we would still have to earn our way into God’s good graces. Jesus came and lived and died and rose again so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God when we welcome him into our lives. That’s why, just one verse before, Paul says this: “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Jeremiah saw more than he knew. The world he envisioned is much larger than any community that was formed when the people finally did return home (Dearman, NIV Application Commentary: Jeremiah/Lamentations, pg. 269). Oh, he did promise the people they would return home, and that one day God would fulfill all his promises to them, to bring salvation and hope and light. But he didn’t know that the ultimate fulfillment of his prophecy would happen in a manger in Bethlehem. Still, he had unshakable confidence that the day of the Lord would come and the people would be saved by one who would do what is just and right.

That’s why God’s people have hope even when things seem dark. There’s this marvelous passage in the Gospels, where the disciples ask Jesus about the end of the world. When will it be? What will happen? Questions people have been asking all throughout history. And, as Luke tells it, Jesus gives them a rather vague answer: persecutions, wars, betrayals, famines…things that, honestly, have happened all throughout history. It’s like Jesus is saying history will roll on with humanity doing unspeakable things to each other. And when these things start happening, he says, there will be people who are terrified, apprehensive, fearful. But not so for God’s people. Instead, Jesus tells the disciples, “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (21:28). In other words, even when things get difficult and it seems as if the world is ending, when you feel like you’re in exile, stand up. Have hope. Have confidence because the worst thing is never the last thing and God is still at work. God is still with you. That’s Advent faith. The writer to the Hebrews put it this way: “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). 

This time of year, the temptation is to put our confidence in things. We’re told to buy more, get more, store up more. What you have now is obsolete, so get a new one. The neighbors just might have one more thing than you do, so go get some more stuff. And on it goes. We come on Sunday and claim our confidence is in the God we hope for, but our actions show where our confidence really lies—in Visa, Mastercard and lay-a-way (cf. Guinness, A Free People’s Suicide, pg. 166). But how long do those things bring happiness, joy, contentedness? About as long as it takes for the box to be opened. Children are the prime example of this. How many parents spend time buying expensive gifts, only to find that by the end of Christmas Day, the kids are playing more with the box than the toy? And yet we keep doing it, every year. We join the rat race, beginning Thanksgiving evening, and we keep it up until we’re exhausted by Christmas Day. Why? Why do we put such confidence in things? Why do we swear our allegiance to consumerism rather than to Christ during this holy season?

My grandmother never had very much. She wasn’t in poverty, by any means, but she had lived through the Depression, raised most of her children during that time, and so she was always very frugal. Her house was simple, and even when she remarried, she kept a simple home for the two of them. She had what she needed, and I never remember Grandma seeming less than satisfied. She had her family, she had her home, and she had her faith. She taught Sunday School for longer than I can remember, and until a stroke took her personality away, she was one of the most God-fearing people I knew. I can still picture Grandma standing in the back of the sanctuary every Sunday, teaching Sunday School. Early on in life, she put her faith in Jesus, and she lived an Advent life, a life that anticipated his coming into her life every day. You see, an Advent response to this crazy, difficult, commercialized world is to anticipate Jesus’ coming and to live as he would have us live every day until that day. And so one of the things we have been doing the last few years to live out an Advent faith, to live the way Jesus would have us live, and to break the power that commercialism has over us is to give away our Christmas Candlelight offering. We give it away to make a difference in the lives of others and to help someone else possibly know that Jesus loves them. So this year, we’ll be giving half of that offering to fund clean water in Guatemala, and the other half will feed children in poverty situations here in Portage. I’ve challenged you for the last couple of years to give generously to that offering, to even consider giving an equal amount to the offering that you spend on gifts for each other. Several years ago, in our family, the adults realized the ridiculousness of trying to buy one more thing for someone who pretty much has or can buy whatever they want. We were buying stuff just for the sake of buying stuff. And so we quit that. We quit buying gifts among the adults and instead use what we would have spent to make a difference in the world. Cathy and I give what we might have otherwise spent on stuff for people who don’t need more stuff to the Christmas Candlelight offering. That’s one way we look forward to celebrating Jesus’ birthday—because it’s his birthday, not ours. Living in an Advent spirit of anticipation changes everything. It puts everything in perspective. That new, shiny thing doesn’t matter all that much in the long run. It’s going to rust and break and wear out. What matters, in the long run, according to the Gospel and according to Jeremiah, is what kind of people we become. Our hope is not in stuff. Our hope is in him, in one who will, one day, break through the clouds and fulfill all his promises, bringing the perfect day. Where is our hope this Advent season? And how do we live that hope out?

Shortly after Jesus challenged the disciples to trust him in the midst of difficult times, he gave them a practice, what we call a sacrament, to help them remember to do that. In the very next chapter, as Luke tells it, Jesus gathers his disciples around a table for a final meal, and he turns that Passover gathering into something new, something unexpected. The bread, he says, is his body. The wine, he tells them, is his blood. And what he is about to do will be, in some mysterious way, the fulfillment of all of those ancient promises. In the bread and in the cup, the disciples are to be reminded as long as time lasts that God, through his son Jesus Christ, came to save his people, to give them his righteousness, to provide them with a future with hope. The bread and the cup remind us, as Jeremiah reminded the people so long ago, that the worst thing is never the last thing, that this world is not the source of our hope, and that we have a living Lord who is coming for his people. That we can anticipate with joy. So let’s come this morning to the table of anticipation, for the one who came so long ago in Bethlehem still comes to us today, and is one day coming again.