Sunday 1st December – Begin with the end in mind – Pastor Adrian Kitson

Advent is a time that plays with your sense of time because it does not go in a standard linear; one event after another, sequence. Advent starts with the end in mind. The texts for this first Sunday of the new year start with the end of the world in mind and then work backwards towards us from the future.

Somewhere along the line I picked up this little wisdom saying – that it is always wise and helpful for the present to begin with the end in mind.

Like when you have a building project. You see it, draw it, plan it, then slowly construct the project according to that vision, that planned shape. Keeping the end in mind enables you to be accurate, alert to changes and issues that always come up.

Or when you buy a car. You know that in 30 years time, long after you have sold it to someone else and they to someone else, it will end up in a wreckers yard all damaged rusty and dilapidated, or end up in a crushing unit…. This helps you think carefully about your purchase and not blow a lot of unnecessary resource based on short-lived emotion. You wisely use the resources God gives for what you need….

Same for a church in mission. You begin your discernment of where the Lord is calling you to go with his directions and gospel heart in mind. Then you keep the vision and the plan in mind as a church and trust that the Lord will sustain you in the growing of some good fruit for his vineyard…

Luke speaks of the end of all things to encourage his people in the ‘now things’. He is not interested in predicting the future and giving them secret info on the timing of God in this. There is no secret ‘Nostradamus’ type intel.

Luke is not interested in getting people to blow all they have on some emotional plea. He speaks the realty of it.

In speaking of the end Luke is enabling us to see the vision of God for his world before we start at the beginning of that plan – the coming of the Messiah who will start constructing this new life of God in the world.

So, what does he see?

He sees signs; sign of God’s ending of his world.

Sounds very mysterious and very BIG. Night skies, shifts in tides, the burning sun….. But then familiar thing we feel now – anguish, perplexity and this sense of roaring and tossing sea overwhelming us at times.

Many know actual terror. Deep worry about what se see and hear coming on the world. So much tectonic change in the way of things that even ‘the heavenly bodies’ are shaken up with us.

For us who know this Messiah, these are signs – signs like a fig tree or vine or barley and wheat stalk budding. When they bud we know summer is coming…..

So, time to get ready for harvest; for vintage. Check machinery. Check chemicals. Organise spraying program, watch the weather, get the long range forecast, or, stock the shelves, plan the holiday, get ready for the festival …

The point of the signs?

He is near. God is near and his plan is being worked and we are still in it and in him.

We can trust this because we hear again today that what God says in his word sticks. What God says is long term and trustworthy and true.

That means that you and I can stay away from relentless searching for shorter-term pleasure.

What else are these things than searching for immediate solace in things that cannot deliver real solace?

We can also take our worries somewhere and find freedom from this ever-present fall into anxiousness about so many things…

Isn’t this our real problem? We can be so fixated on short -term pleasure and relief from all the worry and pain we experience in life that God’s life; Jesus’ presence, his promises and his wonderful resurrection ending for us get lost his day

But Luke is giving us the news that there will be a Godly end to this world and our lives so that we might welcome it, not be trapped by it.

I think Luke is saying that this ending enables us people of Jesus to remain quietly and not so quietly at times, confident, even eager for these events because they show us that God’s ending is still in play, and it is a very good ending for those who trust in this Jesus.

On the other hand, with a sadness that makes us a little more urgent in our following of Jesus, these events are signs to those who don’t believe in the love and forgiveness of Jesus.

God’s working and his ending will touch every person and every creature he ever gave life to.

For those who will not or could not or might not recognise the new King and his advancing kingdom of grace and life, there is no grace and life: Instead many

Surely this calls us to share, to serve, to love, to forgive to act and to speak about what we know and what we see in these signs?

As we often say: God has got a mission, and he has created a church to fulfil it.

I find it very encouraging that Luke seems to be particularly speaking about the ending of God for not just ‘all people’ in general, but also more specifically the political and economic ‘powers’ of his day (and ours). This ending coming will be the end of their oppressive and unjust work.

What a day it will be when the tyrants of the world with all the unjust systems they have built will be held to account and all unjust oppression will be righted!

I know that this ‘end talk’ seems a bit strange or even spooky to us. Maybe we in the West, and in this Valley don’t have too much cause to think in any detailed way about the end of the world.

But Luke says it is good that we do – so we can stay alert to what God promises and does in his world and maybe get beyond the tinsel and the trapping of what is ahead this next couple of weeks.

We begin with the end in mind so we can really see what that beginning was really all about – God coming; God’s justice rolling on like a river into an unjust world; God’s love stepping into our hate; God’s creative power creating a new community, a new earth a new future; God’s raising up his Son as Son

Women and Men, young people of children of Christ in all you are facing; in all you know the world is facing; with this end in mind and the beginning upon us again, as you see the signs of God’s good work and his good ending in this season,

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