Looking for the
Son
Matthew 24:35-44
December 1, 2013[1]
Last
night, Carol, Margaret and I were enjoying dinner at Lake Bistro when over the
sound system I heard a song from my youth.
In the summer of 1969, I had just completed my sophomore year at Canfield
High School. A rock group known by the
names of their lead singers, “Zager and Evans,” had released a song that was
their only song to hit the Billboard Charts.
It started out by raising the question
In
the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may
find…
The
words were a foreboding, apocalyptical look at the future. Each verse looked an additional millennium
plus ten years, and the picture looked bleaker and bleaker.
By
the year 6565,
You
won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll
pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long
glass tube.
It
seems that Zager and Evans underestimated the pace that technology would
take. It’s only 2013 and some of these
predictions sound ominously close.
The
sixth verse changes the increment of time—apparently they were running out of
words that ended with the letters “ive.”
But they scored points—both in this verse and the following one, with
the budding “Jesus Movement” that was springing across college and high school
campuses:
In
the year 7510
If
God’s a-coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe
He’ll look around Himself and say
’Guess
it’s time for the Judgment Day.”
In
the year 8510
God
is gonna shake His mighty head
He’ll
either say, “I’m pleased where man has been”
Or tear
it down, and start again.[2]
I
had never taken the time to read the lyrics until I got home last night. I was intrigued to find that the song takes
as its title the famous first line—“In the Year 2525,”—but adds the
parenthetical phrase “(Exordium & Terminus)”. In Latin, the word “exordium” means the
beginning, the introduction. In a
debate, the exordium introduces and sets the stage for the argument. As you might guess, the “terminus” refers to
the end. So we have Exordium and
Terminus, the beginning and the end, a baby-boomer variation on the theme of
“Alpha and Omega” that is used in the Revelation of St. John (Revelation 1:8). It is ironic to me
that a song like this would have soared in popularity during the same summer in
which a music festival held on a farm about 43 miles from Woodstock, New York
claimed to usher in the age of Aquarius.
Zager
and Evans end their ballad on a somber note.
Now it’s been ten thousand years, man has cried a
billion tears.
For
what, he never knew, now man’s reign is through.
But
through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight,
So
very far away, maybe it’s only yesterday.
The
song was a huge hit, but Zager and Evans never hit the Billboard charts again. They were prophets of a sort, but without
honor in their own country. I wonder if
Zager and Evans were aware that when they wrote of “the twinkling of
starlight,” that was “only yesterday, they were echoing a message from the
Bible, words written by the Psalmist so many centuries before: “For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday
when it is past, or like a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4, NRSV). This same
concept was picked up in the 1700s by a hymn writer named Charles Wesley, who
penned
A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone,
short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.[3]
It
seems like a strange way to begin the holiday season. Year after year, Advent begins with a solemn
reminder that we are not simply looking forward to a holiday of gift giving, of
shopping, of decorating. We are not
looking forward simply to the birth of a baby—even a divine One. Advent proclaims an even larger
message—larger by far—that proclaims we are looking for the Kingdom of
God. We recognize that this world has
fallen woefully short of the image of God in which it was created, and we look
for the day that God will set things right once and for all—the day when, in
the words of Zager and Evans, God will “tear it down, and start again.”
People
have been looking forward with fear and trembling for a long, long time,
wondering where it is going to take us.
They have looked with despair at the state of the world and saw a
dystopia, in which the utopian ideals of progress, technology, even freedom and
love degenerated into disaster. Perhaps
Zager and Evans could have sung their final verse that day in Jerusalem when
Jesus was warning of the days to come. A
day of reckoning will take place. Just
when that will take place remains a mystery.
“About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor
the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew
24:36). On that day of reckoning,
“one will be taken and one will be left.”
(Matthew 24:40). Jesus urged his listeners to “keep awake …
you do not know on what day your Lord is coming... be ready, for the Son of Man
is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matthew
24:43, 44).
It
would be all too easy to read these words and dismiss them as too pessimistic
for our world—not in keeping with the joy of the season. And yet the feeling remains. The world is not right and we need for God to
fix it. The Advent hymn with which we
begin the season expresses the longing and the hope that God will change
things. We sing “O Come, O Come
Emmanuel” and we plead for God to “ransom captive Israel…” These are not only the words of a people held
in captivity in Babylon 2500 years ago.
These words have echoed through history as God’s people recognized that
things weren’t right.
The
seventh verse (which we did not sing this morning) pleads:
O
come, Desire of nations bind
all
peoples in one heart and mind.
From
dust thou brought us forth to life;
deliver
us from earthly strife.[4]
Then,
despite the yearning, despite the despair, we hear once again a refrain of
hope:
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
As
we begin this season of Advent in 2013, it could be easy to get caught up in
the despair; but today is the time to be lifted by hope. This could be viewed as an escapist,
Pollyanna approach to the season, but I do not mean that at all. I invite us to hope with our eyes wide open,
to acknowledge the problems we face, but to place our trust in the One who
said, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33, KJV).
You
may ask what I mean when I say “hope with our eyes wide open.” How can we do that? We practice the present of God in our lives.[5] We cultivate what William A. Barry calls a “conscious
relationship with God.”[6] We keep looking for the One who promised not
to leave us “orphaned,” who promised “I am with you always, to the end of the
age” (Matthew 28:20). We place our hope in the One who said “In a
little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I
live, you also will live” (John 14:19). We place our hope—not in One who is far away,
but in One who is always with us. We
keep looking for the Son.
I
would like to invite you to an Advent Challenge of looking. This week, I invite you to practice looking
for the Son in our lives. It doesn’t
take fancy words. It doesn’t take
knowing a lot of “religious speak.” It
simply takes a conscious intentional decision to look for God in our lives.
When
you get up in the morning, when your feet first hit the floor and you stretch
and open your eyes, look for the Son and give Him thanks for bringing you to a
new day!
When
you take that first sip of coffee or gulp down that glass of orange juice
before running out the door, look for the Son, give Him thanks for the food and
drink that sustain you, and ask Him to help you remain aware of His presence
throughout the day.
When
you get to work or to school, or when you begin your daily activities at home,
look to the Son. Remember that you are
not doing your work for a boss or for an organization or studying to get good
grades for yourself. You are doing your
work for the Son.
When
others don’t do things the way that you think they should and you are ready to
point out to them the error of their ways, look first to the Son. Ask yourself and ask Him whether the words
you are about to speak are being spoken in love.
When
you are cut off in traffic by someone and are about ready to communicate your
displeasure, look to the Son—you might find Him sitting in the car with you—and
ask how He would react in that situation.
When
you get upset or angry with a friend and are ready to let your friend know just
how much they hurt you, look first to the Son, and ask how to respond in a way
that expresses His love for them and for you.
When
you find yourself stuck—facing a tough issue and you don’t know where to turn,
look to the Son. Don’t simply ask “what
would Jesus do?” Ask Jesus what you
should do. He is there. Ask Him.
And wait for His answer.
When
you face your own guilt—guilt for the sin in your life—look to the Son, the One
who said that whoever believes in Me shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
When
you find yourself facing loss, look to the Son, to the One who said “do not let
your heart be troubled. You believe in
God, believe also in me” (John 14:1).
When
times around you become fearful, when you wish God would just start all over
with this world, look to the Son, the one who said “I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).
You
don’t have to think about the coming of Christ as a threat or as an event
shrouded in mystery. The Good News that
we celebrate throughout the seasons of the year is that Christ has come, Christ
is risen, Christ will come again. This
Advent Season, celebrate with us that Emmanuel, the Son of God, is with
us. I invite you to look for the Son, enter
into that conscious, personal relationship with him, and give thanks.
May
it be so!
Copyright
© 2014 by Thomas E. Frost. All rights
reserved.
[1]Preached at Cunningham
United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia on the first Sunday of Advent.
[2] “Zager & Evans – In
the Year 2525 Lyrics,” viewed on the internet on November 30, 2013 at
xxx.songlyrics.com/zager-evans/in-the-year-2525-lyrics/.
[3] Charles Wesley, “O God,
Our Help in Ages Past,” in The United
Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: The
United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 57.
[4] “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”
in The United Methodist Hymnal
(Nashville: The United Methodist
Publishing House, 1989), 211.
[5] See Brother Lawrence, The
Practice of the Presence of God (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 1985).
[6] William A. Barry, S.J., God and You:
Prayer as a Personal Relationship (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 12.
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