“Times and Signs”
Original sermon given December 3, 2023, written and delivered by Pastor Jeffrey Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Watch the sermon live.
“Times and Signs”
Mark 13.24-37
Mark 13.24-37
In the name of the Living God and the Christ who is coming soon. Amen.
I brought something with me this morning as an object lesson: my father’s pocket watch. It dates to 1870s or 80s and was given to him by his father, who received it from his father, and a few years ago it was given to me. Guess who gets it next? Way better than an apple watch, don’t you think!? This pocket watch won’t buzz when you get a text message, which I think is a good feature!
I brought this with me this morning, not to hypnotize you. No, we don’t need encouragement to sleep during sermons! But to illustrate for you the difference between telling time and seeing signs; between clicks on the clock and signs of the seasons; between counting minutes and discerning moments.
Consider how my great-grandfather’s life changed by having a pocket watch. He carried on his person a device that enabled him to catch the 5:43 train out of Boon Iowa; or get to church for an 8am service; or meet my great-grandmother at the drug store when it closed at 5pm; or gather the farm hands for a 6am start.
Now in contrast, consider life before watches in pockets or clocks on walls. For millennia, telling time was the domain only of the very rich and powerful—and was inaccurate at best. For most of the history of most of the world most everyone saw in seasons rather than seconds. The advent of precision time pieces, especially for an individual house or person, is a relatively recent phenomena, and certainly has been world changing. Our attention to time has made us more productive, efficient, exacting, even wealthy, but has it made us better?
In this morning’s gospel Jesus tells his disciples to stop telling time and start seeing signs. At the beginning of Mark 13, they’re looking over the great Temple of Jerusalem. One of these Galilean bumpkins, gawking at the wonderful stones and wonderful buildings, points them out to Jesus. The Lord sort-of ruins the touristy moment, and prophesies that all of it will be destroyed—not one stone left upon another. This word of the Lord indeed was fulfilled in 70AD, when the Emperor’s son, Titus, commanding four Roman legions, sieged and sacked Jerusalem. It’s one of the most graphic, unsettling, and horrifying scenes in human history, the details of the siege recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus, an eyewitness to the events. This is what Jesus references when he says “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place”—Jerusalem would be destroyed and many of his disciples with many early Jerusalem Christians would experience the horror firsthand.
But then the Lord turns all cosmic on them… and us. Just like Jerusalem will be shaken to its core, so will the powers in the heavens. Jesus also prophesies that one day, when the “Son of Man” returns, the fabric of the universe will be torn apart. Time and space will crumble as easily as the walls of an ancient city. It’s hard to imagine anything more permanent than the sun and the moon and the stars. Just like it was hard for the Galilean gawkers to imagine anything more permanent than the great foundation stones of that great temple. But it will all crumble and fall—all of it—: every mighty city or temple; every earthly ideology or governmental system; every monarch or warrior or politician or peasant or poet. Even you and me. Our own personal temples will also crumble and fall.
This is why Jesus calls us away from just telling time and towards looking at the signs. He calls us away from our watches and into a life of watchfulness. We don’t know the day or the hour. We don’t know when our last breath will come—whether when we’re 90 like our beloved brother Paul, or on the way home from Church today—God forbid. Nor do we know when Christ will return in all his glory, so trying to calculate precisely when is an unfaithful waste of time—unless you think you know more than Jesus himself.
But what’s not a waste of time is discerning the season: to look around, and in wisdom, know that this world is temporary. To know that it will get worse and worse as the end draws near. To live a life faithful to Christ and to be filled with urgency for his work. To give and live and love in the name of Christ with the knowledge that his word alone endures forever.
Jesus gives them a couple of parables to illustrate watchfulness rather than watches. The fig tree’s branches grow tender first, then its leaves come forth, and you see spring is on its way. A man goes off on a journey, and his servants stand awake with readiness, because they won’t get a notification on their Apple Watches that he’s in the uber on the way home from the airport! In either case you can’t mark it with precision, but only with faithfulness. The blossoms will come: be ready. The Lord will return: stay awake.
The season of Advent is the Church’s tool for measuring time. It’s not so much a count-down clock, like the two-minute warning at a football game. But more like a yearly reminder of what’s most important: living a life poured out for others, returning to God in repentance and faith, and clinging to the one thing that can’t be taken from us—the word of the Lord.
May our Advent journey together be more about signs than times; more about watchfulness than watches. May we live in the assurance that the one who holds all the universe in his hands also holds us. His grace, which broke into our world at Christmas and was poured out on cavalry, is enough for us—no matter what time it is.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.