A few years ago, Nancy and I went kayaking on a beach in Bermuda.  I didn’t even know you could kayak on a beach.  As it turns out, I couldn’t.  As you may know, a kayak is basically a big, narrow shoe with a hole in the top of it that is supposed to float upright.  You’re supposed to skinny down into this hole and row yourself around and call it fun.  The problem is, I haven’t skinnied myself into anything in a long, long time.  But, we rented these $35 per hour kayaks anyway.  Nancy skinnied down into her kayak right away and took off, while I was still on the beach. 

Part of the kayak’s in the water, part of it’s up on the sand.  I’m trying to get down in the kayak, and I’m not having much luck.  I’d get halfway in and fall over and have to start all over.  It was becoming quite embarrassing but not quite as embarrassing as it was about to become when total strangers who were watching this whole scene on the beach took pity on me came up and helped me into the kayak.  Finally I got in the kayak, and we rowed out about 100 yards, which is where we kind of wanted to be.  Then, I flipped over.  Getting into a kayak on the beach with help from total strangers is one thing.  Trying to get back into it when you’re 100 yards from shore all by yourself is another thing altogether.  Forget about it!  It ain’t gonna happen!  I had to spend the rest of our time swimming with one hand and dragging the kayak with the other.  That was the end of my kayaking days. 

There are just some things some people shouldn’t expect to be able to do.  One thing none of us should expect to be able to do is to name the day or the hour when Jesus will come again.

A little housekeeping in this passage of scripture, if I may, before we go any further.  Interspersed in this passage, up to about the 35^th verse, are teachings of Jesus about both the fall of Jerusalem that would take place in 70 AD and his second coming, which we are still awaiting.  There is a remote relation in this text between those two but it is a little complicated sorting it all out and not the purpose of this message. 

The key, as I see it, for our understanding of this particular faith verb, “Expecting,” is found in verse 36, where Jesus says, “About that day and hour,” referring to his second coming specifically, Jesus says, “neither the angels of heaven nor the Son of man knows, but only the Father.”  So, this much we can know from these very complicated and very difficult-to-understand verses of scripture that can leave you feeling like you’re trying to get into an undersized kayak.  First, very clearly, without any equivocation, Jesus taught that he would be coming back.  He is reaching out beyond his own death, burial and resurrection to say that there’s even more to anticipate beyond all that.  That he would return someday.

Frankly, just saying that sounds so mind-boggling to me, because it is, in fact, going to be an experience like none of us have ever known before.  One of our problems with faith is our temptation to define everything that will ever happen in the future by our limited experiences in the past.  It’s a very dangerous thing to do, because Jesus says we’re about to have, as we like to say, our minds blown by this God who loves to surprise us.  Jesus is coming back.

This is a statement about God’s purposeful next step in his redemptive plan for all of creation.  If we have ever believed anything Jesus said or did, then we have to believe what he said here, that he is coming back.  We are not given the privilege of excising from scripture those parts of it that we do not understand and cannot comprehend, or that, for some strange reason, seem totally irrelevant or unrelated to our lives now.  We do that at great peril to our own faith.  That’s the first thing, Jesus said he’s coming back.

The second one is that Jesus said that no one, not even he, knew when that time would be.  In a sense, if you read carefully in these words, what Jesus was actually saying was that his coming again would be at a predictably unpredictable time.  Many things would point to its imminence in time.  In fact, so many things would begin to happen that made is look like it was about to happen, Jesus said that some people would begin believing it had already happened.  Like, losing weight.  You can be doing all the right things, so that you just know it’s happening, until you stand at the mirror and realize nothing’s happening.  We can want something to happen so badly that we will begin to believe it’s happening even when it’s not.  In the 26^th verse of this text, Jesus said, “‘So, if they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out, if they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out, but if they say, ‘Look! He [referring to the Messiah] is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.’”

What would motivate someone to want to report that Jesus had come back when in fact he hadn’t?  Jesus actually goes on to describe some of those people as having sinister motives.  They want to intentionally, for some reason, lead people astray.  They know that there are some people who know that there will always be others willing to believe anything they say, simply because they’re holding a Bible and calling themselves “Reverend.”  Jesus says specifically, “‘There will be false prophets.’”  False prophets.  It seems like an oxymoron, but it’s not.  People who appear to be proclaiming the truth by virtue of either their motives or the content of their message, have nothing to with the truth.  A false prophet is someone who looks like he or she is telling the truth until you stop long enough to weigh their words.

My good friend, George Mason, who is the pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church, said that some years ago, some of his people were complaining to him that his preaching was too intellectual and academic, that he was preaching way over their heads.  George said in response, “Then lift your heads higher.”  Not a bad response, wouldn’t you agree?  You see, he refuses to accommodate lazy thinkers.  And so is Jesus.  In this text, Jesus says, “Pay attention!  Sit up!  Don’t be led astray by people simply because you won’t weigh their words.  Don’t be someone who expects everything about God’s truth handed to you on a silver platter.  Lift your heads higher.  Think more clearly.”  I have come to believe that discipling people includes, among other things, training people to weigh what they hear before simply accepting it as true.  Isn’t that what Jesus was saying?  “If they say he is here, don’t believe it.”  Some have sinister motives.

Others, Jesus says, simply lost their perspective.  They want to believe something so badly, like a mirage in the desert, they follow it to their death, never knowing the truth.

Here’s the key.  This event of Jesus’ returning again is going to be so universal, so colossal, that it will be absolutely out of proportion to anything any of us have ever experienced.  Do you believe that’s possible, by the way?  To have some experience that’s outside the realm of anything you’ve ever known before?  It’s not as impossible to believe as we may think. 

Remember 9/11?  Do you remember where you were when you first heard the news?  Do you remember how universal its impact was, so that literally within minutes, the news of that tragedy had absolutely crossed the globe and met itself coming back?  It’s not at all unlikely that, depending upon where you were when you heard the news about 9/11, there were people on the other side of the globe who had already heard it before you did.  If it’s possible to believe that something absolutely captured the minds of the whole planet at one time, then why is it impossible to believe or comprehend that something Jesus is going to do will override all systems of communication heretofore known and absolutely transcend all kinds of man-to-man communication because it will be heaven-to-earth communication, God to man?  Language won’t get in the way, geography, culture, time zones; there will be no mistaking by anyone, anywhere on the planet, what’s going on.  Not even CNN will get the scoop on this one.  By the time Wolf Blitzer reports, it will be old news.  And he’ll only be able to tell us what we already know, because we saw it ourselves.

These two things seem clear.  Jesus is coming back, and it will be a predictably unpredictable event.

From there on out, about the second coming of Jesus, things get about as murky as Louisiana bayou swamp water at midnight.  One problem is, Jesus describes all these horrific events happening on a cataclysmic scale over the globe.  Wars and rumors of wars.  Famines.  When in history has that not already been true?  In fact, there have been some times in history when that was truer than it is now.  So, if certain events taking place in history are the tripwire for Jesus’ coming back, he should have already been here.  You see what I’m saying?  If we’re going to try to draw a chart and graph this thing out, we’re lost before we begin.

So, what’s the point?  Well, what God is up to is one thing.  Jesus has been trying to tell us about that.  But it’s, I believe, what God wants us to be up to, that is the point of Jesus’ teaching.  In other words, if it is true that Jesus is coming back, and if it is true that we don’t know when that will be, how should that affect the way we live?  Does that mean we pack our bags?  What would that look like, anyway?  Does it mean that we have every sin confessed up to the minute, and is it actually possible to do that?  What does it mean to be ready?

So, exactly what is Jesus’ point?  I find it in verses 45-47.  Jesus asks, in light of all this, “‘Who, then, is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time?  Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives.  Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions.’”  Did you hear those words?  “‘Blessed is the one whom his master finds at work.’”  At work!  Busy at work!  When he arrives.

Here is the sermon of the second coming in seven words:  To be ready means to be busy.  Busy doing the will of God as we understand it in the only moment we have to do it.  The old King James Version translates the first word of verse 42, “‘Watch.’”  Look out.  Pay attention because you don’t know the hour.  What does that word really mean?  I used to think it meant, “Watch the sky.”  Discern the weather patterns.  Watch the news.  Pay attention to the headlines.  When the war meter gets to a certain point, that’s it.  When famine gets so far, that’s it.  Watch.  Pay attention.  The weather, the headlines, the sky, the earth shaking will tell you.  No, I don’t think that is what Jesus was saying.  What Jesus seemed to mean was that watching means paying attention to the only thing we can know and for which we are responsible, which is the moment we have to live now.

You see, the gospel writers were trying to educate the early church.  And they had this tricky balancing act to work with.  One was preoccupation.  Preoccupation with the second coming.  If the signs were discernible, if there were certain things we could put together and say, “That’s it; that’s when Jesus is coming,” then people would be preoccupied, trying to work the puzzle.  And if we spent all of our time trying to work the second coming puzzle, then who would look after the widows and orphans?  Who would feed the hungry?  Visit the sick and the imprisoned that Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount?  One was preoccupation.

The other tension in the balance of faith matter was indifference.  What of the master of the slave who said, “‘Well, my master is delayed,’” so he began to eat and drink and beat the other slaves, thinking, “‘I’ve got time to clean up my mess before my master returns.’”  These words we read this morning were probably written somewhere around the end of the first century, the turn of the second century.  There were probably a few people around who had actually known or seen Jesus personally.  As they began to die off people would have begun to ask the question, “Well, these guys said Jesus was coming back, and he’s not here, so I wonder if he’s ever coming back?  Maybe that was just a good story.”  Have you ever wondered that yourself?  I have.  Two thousand years later – what gives?  And Jesus comes right back into the heart of that question with his message.  Watch.  Be ready.

Let me ask you a question.  Is there anything harder in life to do, anything harder, than to stay focused on the moment at hand?  For some people an event that happened ten minutes ago or ten years ago or thirty years ago was so important in their lives, they haven’t lived one day since.  They are missing the only life they have reliving a day that’s gone forever.  A good day or a bad day.  Some would say, “My father never blessed me.”  He never will.  Some would say, “I was abused.”  I’m telling you that your abuser will never come to un-abuse you.  That day is gone.  The only thing we accomplish by reliving those moments is to go on un-blessing and re-abusing ourselves, because each time we relive the moment, we are living that moment again as though for the first time.

Some are like school children.  Have you ever been waiting for the bell to ring at the end of the day?  It’s 3:30, Algebra 2.  I remember grade school, waiting for recess, just watching that little hand tick off.  The problem was that, I was so busy watching the clock tick down, I missed some information I needed for the test the next day.  “The teacher never talked about that in class,” I’d say to my parents when grades were reported.  I was watching the clock.

This message of the second coming is so central to the Christian faith, because it is what keeps us focused on living the only life we have.  Not the one we did have or the one we hope we’ll have.  I can’t say it any better than Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest who teaches at Piedmont College in Georgia.  “The present moment is just too slippery for most of us to hang on to.  As hard as we try, we tend to slide off into what happened yesterday or what we have to do an hour from now.  And whether our problem is preoccupation with the future or disillusionment with the past, the end result is that very few of us live our lives while they are actually happening to us.  We are cut off from the present, and ‘God cannot get to us through all the layers of regret and expectation that we have swaddled ourselves in’” (Barbara Brown Taylor, “Don’t say when,” The Christian Century, September 21, 2004, pp. 34-38).

Jesus said all these mysterious things about the second coming, and right in the big middle of that he also said, “‘Blessed is the one whom the Master finds busy when he returns.’”  Not the one who figured it out and got to tell everybody else first, but the one who figured out that the most important day she ever lived was the one taking place right in front of her.

I’ve dealt with a lot of people and spent a great deal of time in my preaching, when I look back on it, dealing with those who live with regret.  Maybe that tells you more about me than it does anyone else.  But, now that I think about it, I believe that for every minute most of us spend regretting the past, we spend three minutes living for a future we may never have.  The future tends to be the closet where we store away all of our good intentions.  The people we will love or forgive, the praying we will do, the volunteering we are going to do down at the church, the weight we will lose someday, the career we will risk taking, the woman we will ask to marry us.  A life lived in the future, as though time will always unfold before us, is a life forfeited now.  But, you see, our vision of the future, of what we someday will do or will be, gets us off the hook now.  Because I’m going to do it, it’s like I’ve done it (Thanks again to Taylor). 

This past week, the phone rang one day.  A young man on the line who had just been forced out of his pastorate in another city.  I didn’t know this guy, although he said we’d met once.  Which means I could have met him last Sunday, I suppose, but I didn’t know him.  He said, “Someone told me I should call you.”  I said, “Well, I’m glad they did, but why did you call me?”  And he said, “Well, I’ve just been forced out of my church, and I’m out of the ministry now, and someone told me that you might know something about how to get back in when you’ve been out.”  I spent about an hour with him on the phone.  It was really meaningful to me to be able to share some things with him about what this church means to me, and that there are people like you out there.

When I got off of the phone I remembered that, some years ago, I wanted to write a book about that experience.  Not necessarily being out of the ministry and getting in, but what happens when your life craters and you don’t know how to start over.  And you know, I had a couple of surgeries this past year, and my father died, and things have gotten in the way.  But, I mean, I’m still planning to write the book.  You know what I mean?  I’m going to write it.  I really mean to write the book.  When I hung up the phone, and you’ll know what I mean when I say this, I heard a voice whisper in my ear.  I was getting this sermon ready.  The young man had called.  I remembered my good plans for the future I’ve always believed I’d have to finish my plans.  And,  I heard a voice whisper in my ear, “Write the book, now!”

To live expecting the second coming of Jesus means to live the only life we have right now.  So that whenever Jesus comes in our lives, it will be now in that moment and we won’t be caught off guard, unaware.  Even if “now” is ten years from now or ten seconds from now.  Now is all we have, whenever we have it (thanks once more to Taylor).

Some of us won’t see Jesus’ coming on this side.  We’ll be sailing white, puffy clouds, hand in hand with those who’ve gone before.  We’ll be coming back to join the party here, wherever “here” will be.  But, wherever we are, we won’t miss it.  And, wherever Jesus is now, now is all we have. 

So, what were you expecting when you woke up this morning, anyway?  To live a long gone yesterday over and do it right this time?  Or, to get the life you’ve always planned on living done tomorrow?  Or, to do it now?  Especially if whatever “it” is has something to do with putting off Jesus, because you think you can do that tomorrow, what if this now is the last now you’ll ever have and what if today is the last tomorrow you ever have? 

What are you expecting?