Normal Isn’t Coming Back, Jesus Is Transcript

September 03, 2023

First Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Second Reading: Mark 13:1-8

01:22

It's that statement that we have to recognize that the world has changed. We must recognize that things are different now than they have been at almost any point in modern church history, in modern world history at least. Things are probably not returning to how they were. But we can rest in some truth in that we can rest in the promises that our God is great he sang that earlier, and our God's goodness and our trust and our security and our salvation have nothing to do with how the world is changing around us. It has nothing to do with the ebbs and flows of our culture. It has nothing to do with how stable or unstable things are, for our God is great, and our salvation rests in him. It's the one who created the stars in heaven, and the universe and everything around us created the wonders of nature around us and loved us so much that Christ would die for us. God truly is steadfast that our salvation is secure in him, no matter what we go through, no matter what challenges we face, and no matter how changing the world is around us. We also rest in the promise that Christ has promised us that he will return, that all things will be made right, that the world that seems so ordered by chaos and violence, by injustice, that those things will not remain, that the world as it is now, that seems so bent on destruction, that seems so bent on selfishness and self-gain that is not the final state of all things and that Christ will come again and so on its face value, on just those two things, we have hope.

03:35

But there's a way of reading and understanding this that can get us into trouble. If we approach this saying, we approach these ideas that one normal isn't coming back, and that Christ will come again and fix everything, there's a way of reading it that can make us sit on our laurels and sit and rest. There's a way of reading this that says, you know, there's a way of thinking about how the world has changed and how things keep repeating that we can sit and wait. If normal isn't coming back, we can sit in this holding pattern and say, okay, what will be the new normal. Let's figure that out first before we do anything. Let's figure out what the world is and how we must live in it first before moving into it. And this can force us to sit into a holding pattern just waiting. Sometimes, we sit and wait, hoping that eventually things will fix themselves and everything will turn out fine, and we hope to last as long as we can until that time comes.

This isn't specifically for Berwyn, but perhaps it is, but it's been in other churches that I've pastored. Unfortunately, they've gotten into difficult times, like any other church that's out there. It's straightforward to say, okay, we've had this heyday. We had this time when our Sunday school classes were full. We had this time when the pews were full. We had this period when things were going a lot better. And if all we can do, if we can hold on just a little bit longer, for as long as we can, and just sit and wait and make sure that the church stays open as long as possible, then those days may come back, people may come back, the world may change and people may seek out faith and may seek out a church. And all we have to do. We aim to stay open as long as possible for that to happen.

05:45

But there's this danger in this holding pattern because I don't know if the world will get to that point where people will magically start coming to church again. I don't know if it will get to that point where if we sit here and do things the way we've always done them, things will write themselves, and people will start returning. And so it's a little bit of a challenge to say, okay, if we keep things going, if we keep the doors open, we keep the lights on, we keep doing things the way that we have been, if we keep making decisions based on making sure that we can propel ourselves as far into the future as we can, then there will be that time. And if we rest on that, if we look for the new normal, if we wait for that normal to come back, the church will eventually run its course because the world is radically different. People's lives and spirituality where they're seeking help and where their trust is radically different.

06:50

Unfortunately, we're living in a culture where the church has lost all sorts of trust and authority through decisions that have been made through cultural shifts, through what they see on the news and the radio of pastors who are getting into trouble, of churches who are trying to, who end up getting into trouble because of the authority they're trying to exert on people. And we live in a culture where people don't want that authority, and I get that. The decisions that we make and our choices are paramount, and so we're not going back. We're not going back to that time where it's the right thing or the expected thing for people to go to church on Sunday, and that's what drove a lot of the attendance. When we look at the heyday when our pews were full, and our Sunday school classes were full, and as much as I'd love to tell you those days are coming back, it's likely not going to happen. It's not the cultural expectation that we go to church.

07:51

We can say, well, if we just brought back the blue laws when there was nothing else to do but go to church, I've heard that before and this lamenting of the world if we just got rid of Sunday morning soccer games or baseball games and then people would have nothing else to do but come to church. But do we really want a church of people who are only here because there's nothing else better to do? Is that the understanding of faith that we have? Is that the power of the Christian faith that we want to pass on to people? It's great if you have nothing better to do with your time. I would suspect that most of us who are here now, who proclaim faith in Christ and a God that created all of the heavens and the earth and who created you and died for you and has shaped your faith in how you live in the world today, I doubt any of you would say that we want faith, we want to proclaim a faith. That is good as long as you have nothing better to do. It's just not the case Now.

08:54

On the other side, this idea of Jesus coming back, too, is based on a promise that Christ himself made, and it's one we lean into that the world as it is is not going to be how it's going. It's not how it will be when Christ returns, that Christ will fix everything. But if we rest and sit in that, it can also lead to the same outcome. If Christ will fix everything, then I don't need to do anything now. I can sit and wait, and I have no idea when Christ will return. I have no idea what that's going to look like. We have signs pointed to in the Bible that these things must happen, but it makes no sense that these wars and famines will happen right before Christ comes. It just says they have to happen. We have no idea.

09:49

The Christians throughout the last several hundred years, probably since Christ said hey, I'm coming back, have tried to figure it out, have tried to say this is the year that Christ is coming back. And they pick some years twenty years in the future, fifteen, fifty years in the future. Then we got to that time, and they said, well, I forgot to carry the one, or there was this decimal point where I misread it, I did something wrong in my calculations, and then they bumped it out five years, maybe ten years. They've been wrong whenever somebody has tried to pinpoint the exact year Christ would come again. All that we have is this promise that he will return. And if we try to pinpoint it, think it's coming soon, or think we know when it's going to happen, it can cause us to sit and wait, just like waiting for a normal to come back. If Christ is going to fix everything, everything is going to be made right. I don't need to do anything in the meantime because he's going to come back, and he's going to come back soon. That problem is we have no idea when he's coming back, and people throughout the last two thousand years have thought he would come back in their lifetime.

11:06

And if the church had waited from the very beginning to say you know, I don't need to go out and share the gospel, I don't need to go out and share the good news, I don't need to go out into a world that is hurting and longing for the good news that justice and righteousness are good and will happen if the church had sat and waited instead of moving out into the world, we would not be here today. If the church and the disciples had said Well, Christ said he's going to come back; we're just going to sit in this room and wait for it to happen, Pentecost wouldn't have happened. Thousands upon thousands of people would not have joined the way the church over those first few months and first few years, and we certainly wouldn't be in this room now. And so we are caught in this middle. We are caught in this in-between time, between when the world looked like it did and it seemed like Christianity was in its heyday and that decline that we have seen, and in between that moment of when Christ will come back. Now, I never want to be one to tell you that the world will look like it did before, and I've said that already.

12:29

That's a deception. The idea that we can return to that is a deception. When our politicians and other people in culture say, hey, we can go back to how things were, I think they're lying to you. But that doesn't mean the world we're moving into is terrible. It doesn't mean that it's lost irrevocably. It doesn't mean Christ can't speak goodness into the world as if it's coming. It just means that we've got to change some things. It means that we've got to do things differently. It means that we've got to figure out what we're willing to change to move into that new world.

13:11

I like today's passage for this reason. It has Jesus as a promise that he will come back. But the conversation starts with one of the disciples, who says hey, Jesus, look at these big rocks, look at these buildings that we've built, look at this temple that we've erected. Isn't it grand, isn't it wonderful? In response, Jesus says I tell you that there will be a time when even these stones will not remain standing, even the temples we've built, even the homes and buildings we've erected. And we can point to now and say, look at what we've accomplished. There will be a time when even they won't remain standing. And I like to think that he's asking this question to say what is most important If there will be that time when those things that we have built and erected and said look how amazing we are and look at what we've done in the past, we'll no longer be standing, whether it's soon or distant into the future when Christ comes again. If that's not what matters, then what does? How are we sharing our faith? What are we building into the things that matter, and how are we moving into the unknown world around us without clinging onto those ultimately fleeting things?

14:38

In two weeks, we're having a fall retreat here in our in-chic hall. It'll be light refreshments, and we'll gather around tables for breakfast. There are a few exercises that we're going to do and talk about who we are as a church and where our history can feed into that. But then, where are we going next, and what do we need to do to ensure a long, sustainable future for our church? That is, sharing the good news here in Berwyn. This good news is built on those Methodist understandings of grace that we can choose God because he loved us and was with us from the beginning. We are redeemed and made whole over time, not the singular moment, but we have been called together as a body of believers to grow together, to become more holy, together to shape one another and to take that and take that shaping out from these walls into a community that is desperate to hear some good news, desperate who are to see the light of the gospel, desperate to see that there is a better way, not one shaped on the fact that if they believe now. They choose to believe they're going to avoid hell. No, that's part of the gospel, perhaps, but the main point that people will hear today is that the way things are, not the way things have to be, we believe in a Savior who turned the world upon its head. That challenged how the world was then and the way it is now. You don't have to be lonely because a group of people want to grow together and invite you to be a part of it, no matter where you are on that journey.

The Christ who ate with sinners said that tax collectors and prostitutes are likelier to get into heaven first than religious people. This is the Christ that we follow. This is the Christ that propels us into a world that's hurting. We share This gospel, and we should have some urgency about it. We can't just sit and wait and hope things get better. We can't just sit and wait and hope Christ returns in the next six months or a year.

17:01

We have a task. We have a common task that has been given to us from Christ himself to go out into the world to make disciples of all nations, sharing the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and baptizing people and making sure that they have an invitation to be a part of this excellent kingdom community. And that invitation and that task and the urgency of it we can trace throughout the millennia to us here now, and the question for each of us is, will that task end with us? Do we see ourselves as a part of that task? Do we see ourselves in the future of that task, and do we have the urgency to go about it? I hope so because the fulfilling life that is a part of God's redeeming work offers seeing lives transformed and changed, seeing people who thought they were trapped in darkness and despair and sin come to new light and new life and experience that freedom that Christ offers, that enlivens our souls. It reminds us why we do what we do. One of the challenges of a church like Berwyn is that maybe it has been a while since it's experienced somebody coming to faith and experiencing that freedom. We forget the excitement from it for those lost, and we need to recapture that.

18:36

We have yet to recapture it quite. To enliven us through others coming back, we need to remember our own stories and share our own stories with one another, and so, around the tables today, if you have a little bit of time, I know it's a holiday weekend, perhaps you have things you need to get off to. We've made some coffee, there's water, there's hot chocolate, there's the curing pods. If there's nothing in the pots you want but around those tables, or if you need to sit in a more comfortable position in the parlor itself. Share your stories. Share that excitement when you first heard of Christ, whether it was as a child or as an adult or anywhere in between, of what that freedom has meant to you over your life now, why you still come back, and why you still choose to follow Christ. Share these stories with one another. Find the similarities and celebrate the differences and spend a little bit of time getting to know that part of each other and rekindle that excitement of what can happen when the spirit transforms and catches fire. Amen, excuse me.