Ask a youngster this time of year what is the hardest thing to do?  I suspect that waiting for Christmas to open presents might be the answer.  The days go by so slowly that children can hardly stand it.  They lift presents, shake them, try to guess what might lie behind the wrapping.

            I have outgrown that side of struggling to wait for the day to open gifts.  Now I find myself reading the words of Isaiah who foresees a day when God will judge between nations and arbitrate for them, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, and longing for that day to come and soon.  In fact, I felt a yearning for that even when I was a child growing up during the post World War II era.  Why I felt that way I am not sure.  Perhaps it was the drop drills we did at school preparing us to duck under our desks at a moment’s notice in the event of a nuclear attack that made me long for peace.

            This week we have prayed as the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians met in Annapolis to see if some way forward toward a just and lasting peace could emerge.  Fifty years of conflict, scores of billions of dollars spent in preparing for and waging war, thousands of lives lost, hundreds of thousands of persons displaced from their homes, all make us long for a time of peace and reconciliation.  An urgent desire for peace is good, I think, but that is not the same as impatience, which can sometimes lead us to do foolish things detrimental to our long term goals.

            Here we are in the first Sunday of Advent, a season in which we joyfully remember the coming of Christ and eagerly look forward to his coming again.  Presbyterians don’t talk much about the Second Coming of Christ compared to some churches which make it a major theme all year long and not just for four weeks leading up to Christmas.  The Left Behind Series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins has sold over forty million copies, making it the top selling series of books in decades.  The books focus on what happens when Christ returns and raptures or whisks away his faithful, leaving the unconverted to deal with a world in great tribulation during which the Jewish people once again play a central role in God’s plan of redemption as they embrace Jesus as Messiah.  Without getting into the specifics of the theology behind the Left Behind series, let me say that the certitude described in the novels is far beyond what most reputable biblical scholars feel they can endorse, and the timetable and way it unfolds in the novels represents a minority and fairly recent viewpoint in the history of the church’s thinking.

            Yet Christians of all stripes have affirmed for two thousand years that they look forward to Christ coming again to establish fully God’s gracious reign on earth, a reign which prophets like Isaiah describe in words so moving that they put a lump in my throat and a yearning in my heart for that day to dawn.  The Apostles’ Creed affirms that Jesus was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.  The Nicene Creed, the most universal of our creeds, affirmed by Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and most Protestant churches says of Jesus: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”  So we are not talking about some fundamentalist pipe dream, but rather of a hope held by Christians of all persuasions over many centuries.

            The hope reaches back further still. The Jewish prophets announced a day when God would set things right, and Jesus’ Disciples hoped that he was the one to usher in that day.  They and their people had suffered centuries of humiliation and subjugation and they wanted to know when God would come.  Jesus says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”  This verse is blatantly ignored by all those who have set up time tables and charts only to have their time tables discredited, but that doesn’t stop them from devising another.  Why can’t they live in the certain hope that in God’s good time the day will come and refrain from prognosticating as to when that day will be?   That is my challenge to them.

            My challenge, or rather, Christ’s challenge to us is to be ready for that day and to draw strength from the hope that God wills for the earth to be full of the knowledge, love, and shalom of God.  Don’t throw in the towel.  Don’t join the crowed that says the world is going to Hades in a hand basket, so we should retreat into a religious enclave as far removed from the struggle for peace and justice as we can be.  No, we should be right in the thick of the world’s struggles toward God’s will being done here as in heaven.  That is the perspective that founds universities, colleges, hospitals, congregations, volunteer agencies committed to learning, healing, helping people realize their potential as daughters and sons of God.  Princeton began as a log college to train Presbyterian clergy, and now it ranks as the best university in the nation by U.S. News and World Report’s assessment.  The prophets describe for us a peaceable kingdom, free of war, disease and deprivation, and as servants of God we should be working to that kind of world with God’s help so that when the day of Christ comes he will find us working for him.

            If you read the 24th Chapter of Matthew and the parallel chapters in the other Gospels you see Jesus describing a time of upheaval and persecution, and what he predicted actually came to pass in Israel as Rome crushed an insurrection that began in 66 A.D. and ended with Rome laying waste Jerusalem and its magnificent Temple is 70 A.D.  All that remains of the Temple is the Western or Wailing Wall.  Jesus saw where the desire for rebellion would lead and he warned his followers to flee when the day of reckoning from Rome arrived.  It seems to me that the Left Behind viewpoint wants to camp out on those grim descriptions, but I believe they have been fulfilled already and are the precursor to a day of peace spoken of by Isaiah.  That vision should be before us, inviting us to hope and work for a world where God’s name is hallowed and God’s will is done.  Gloom and doom doesn’t build schools, churches and hospitals.  Gloom and doom doesn’t invest in long term research to rid the world of malaria, aids, Alzheimers, and the like.  Hope in Jesus Christ who came to bring us life and that more abundantly, and who will come again to establish his kingdom in all its fullness does, and he is counting us to do our part to prepare the world for that day.

            Here at his table we get a taste of things to come: young and old, wise and simple, coming from north, south, east and west, to feast at his table as family, and then to go out and invite others to come in peace to taste and see that God is good.