Signs of the Times

Last month we had a new addition to our congregation.  Agnes had been living in a decommissioned United Church in Collinton for several decades. She is currently 109 years old.  She was a wedding gift to Gina Payzant, the movie director who did a documentary on George Riga, author of “The Ecstasy of Rita Joe”. Agnes was gifted to Gina in 1976. The plant was sixty four years old, at that time, which means it was born in 1912.  Wow.  It must be happy here despite the indignity of being moved from its home, because it is already blooming!

Jesus might have appreciated Christmas cacti, although he would never have seen one in his homeland.  But they like to bloom every Christmas and Easter.  How do they know it’s time to get ready to do that?  Like the Fig Tree in the parable Jesus taught, (Luke 21:25–36) they know the signs of the times.  They know when the days get short and the days lengthen again.  They know what time it is.  They get ready.

The disciples were living in uncertain times, where there were no insurance companies to rebuild homes, no armies who could bring in helicopters, no way of distributing feed to livestock stranded in floods, no governments who could step in with emergency funding and infrastructure dollars.  Their time of challenge was a daily lived experience.  So it must have been confusing to hear that when the signs were troubling, nations were in turmoil and when danger was imminent, they were to stand up straight and raise their heads.

Why? Because Jesus would return for them, and return in love amidst the violence, the troubles, the signs.  They could be comforted in the knowledge that they could stand secure.  Unlike their neighbors and friends, they would be able to rise above the worry and the indulgences, staying calm and resourceful, being patient and brave.

How?  By remembering that God was with them.  If someone like Paul, who was flawed and bad-tempered, impulsive and antagonistic, could write so lovingly to the Thessalonians, how much more assured would the disciples have been by what Jesus said?

The signs of our times have been dire.  I feel for the churches in BC preaching on this scripture.  Between fires, floods, heat bubbles, mudslides and Covid, they must feel like the end times are real and are here and now.  People ask me if I think the end of the World is at hand, and if the second coming is near.  But if we read the scriptures carefully, we hear that Jesus taught the end was happening in his follower’s lives.  “This generation will not pass away,” he said, and we see echoes of that immediate expectation in Paul’s writings as well as in the other gospels.  In fact one of the hard things the early church had to wrestle with was that Jesus didn’t appear on schedule and people started dying before the Second Coming.  They had to change and adapt their expectations while they waited.  It’s one thing to sell all your possessions and share what you have with your neighbors when you think there’s only weeks left, but another thing when the weeks turn into months and the months turn into years.  Paul wrote a lot about that, and the transition was hard.  That’s why the gospels were written down, as the first witnesses to Jesus were executed or died.  Our scriptures that we read every Sunday morning are the legacy of that shift in thinking.  The end times did not come when they were expected, but the people changed their focus from waiting for immediate results to waiting with alert readiness.

Our world ends all the time.  My world first ended when I was 10 and my 4-year-old sister died about a month before Christmas.  My world ended when I gave up on church, deciding that God was dead and worship was meaningless.  My world ended when the cute boy told me he was not interested in me as anything more than a friend, and I knew I would never get married or have kids.  My world ended when I got the phone call from the hospital that my dad finally died from cancer.  My world ended when I heard the words, “your son has been in a motorcycle accident.”

But our world begins anew all the time too.  When I was twelve and the day after my birthday, I had a new baby brother to love.  When I heard the words, “welcome to our church, we hope you find God as you worship with us.” When Tim asked me to marry him.  When I twice had a new baby put in my arms and I marvelled at their tiny little toes and fingers.  When I watched them graduate.  When the phone call about the motorcycle accident added, “but he’s okay and is very lucky.”  When I graduated first from Education then from ministry.  When I was welcomed here and told, “we’re happy to have you!”

When our worlds end, we are to stand up straight, lift up our heads and rejoice because our salvation has come.  Remember Gandolf when he faced the monster in the mines of Moria?  He stood up tall, made a  cross with his sword and staff, looked the fiery Balrog in the eye and said, “You Shall Not Pass” with a blaze of light!  

When we see signs around us that we live in troubled times, let us not look for hope, let us be the hope!  Like Agnes here who lived through the War to end all Wars, the Spanish Flu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Y2K, the Twin Towers and more, yet keeps blooming as a sign of hope and beauty.

Usually the first Sunday of Advent, I tell stories of where to find hope, but not this year.  Together, let us be signs of hope that the world so desperately needs.  Stand tall, look trouble in the eye, and shine your light of Christ so all can see! We can do this because we are blessed with the love that binds us together in one great community of saints that traces back to the disciples and Thessalonians who stood tall for us so we can stand tall for others!  And may God be our blessing and our salvation in these times.  Amen.