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This Sunday I’m preaching on one of the texts for the first Sunday of Advent, Mark 13:24-37. Because it didn’t flow that well with the rest of my thought, I had to cut the following paragraph. But I liked it so well that I wanted to say it here!
“Because we are watching for the day of the Lord we do not put our hope in this world. At least not in the sense that “this world” tries to separate itself from the God who created it and who still rules over it. The temple was the focus of the Jews’ national hopes, but Jesus told his disciples not to trust in the temple, because it would be destroyed long before the final end. Just as the hope for the ancient world did not lie in the temple or in any worldly structure, so our hope today does not lie in anything that is of this world. It does not lie in communism or in capitalism, it does not lie in dictators or in democracy, it does not lie in poverty or in prosperity. It lies in the coming of the Son of Man – as he comes into each of our lives personally, and as he comes ultimately to judge the world and to save his own.”
