We are preparing ourselves for the days.  Being prepared is not a matter of externals.  Do you have your jumper cables in your trunk?  How about flares?  Anybody keep flares in their vehicle?  Water?  How about duct tape?  Have you ever gone camping and forgotten something?  Were you unprepared to camp?  Have you ever gone fishing, but left something at home that you had wanted to bring?  Were you unprepared to fish?  Now, with Advent, Christmas rises on the horizon, and we are preparing: lights going up, lawn balloons filling up, trees plugged in.  Lovely and happy as all these certainly are, these aren’t the preparations that matter.  Is your life prepared for Christ?  Is your heart prepared for Jesus?  Being prepared is an inward matter: a matter of character, of faith.

Jesus tells those listening to him that, when the dreadful signs begin, when there is a general sense that something is about to happen, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (21:28).  Those who can raise their heads and stand up when the rest of the world trembles, can do so because they have cultivated the character that comes with faith.  The Holy Spirit has guided them, instructed them, tested them, inspired them.  The character that the faithful will have cultivated is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

I opted for the NRSV translation today, rather than our TEV translation, because I do not find that the TEV makes sufficiently clear what Jesus is saying in verse thirty-two.  In our version, what Jesus says gets translated this way: “Remember that all these things will take place before the people now living have all died.”  The NRSV translates the same Greek sentence this way: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.”  Now I’m going to say something that may sound a bit picky and fussy, but it’s important.  It’s important because all the things Jesus described, these cosmic signs and the elements in an uproar, the Son of Man in a cloud—this did not happen.  The people living at the time Jesus said these things did die, all of them, and the things Jesus described did not take place.

Our translation is one way of rendering what Jesus said.  It’s not a poor translation; it’s just not adequate, here.  Unless we think it’s alright for Jesus not to know about ultimate things.  I mean, he was human too, right?  But if Jesus is wrong about some ultimate things, might he not also be wrong about other things, too?  Do we want to stake our salvation, our restoration to God, upon someone who might be wrong?  If Jesus is wrong, then let’s just close up now and use our Sundays for more important things, like everybody else.

“Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.”  Have you ever heard someone say something like, “Kids these days!”  “What’s with kids these days?”  “The kids these days!”  I’ve heard it.  My parents (Baby Boomers) heard it.  I suspect my grandparents heard it.  Maybe older people have always shaken their heads in mystified wonder over the young generation, this generation.  This generation.  Now where did I hear that?  In what Jesus said.  “This generation.”  He also speaks of “this generation” elsewhere in Luke’s account.  Look through chapters eleven and seventeen, later today.

When older people scratch their heads over kids these days, as they have been doing for centuries and probably longer, it has little to do with actual people of a certain age at a certain time.  What’s being marveled at is a set of attitudes, a set of behaviors, perhaps a set of values, that are quite different from those of others.  We’re the same species, yet the two groups do not seem to think the same way, act the same way, relate the same way, or even speak the same way.  They don’t seem to want the same things.  They don’t seem to think that the same things are important, certainly not equally important.

So it is with “this generation” to which Jesus refers.  Either we say Jesus was just wrong about what he said in verse thirty-two, or, if we are hesitant to say that Jesus could be wrong, that he is just wrong, about ultimate things, then we look at what he says across the Gospel accounts with some care, attention, and deliberation.  Biblical student and scholar Joel Green, has this to say: “‘This generation’ refers in Luke’s narrative not to a set number of decades or to people living at such-and-such a time, but to people who stubbornly turn their backs on the divine purpose.”[1]  There are in every generation those who “stubbornly turn their backs on the divine purpose,” as we know too well.  You know them; I know them.  Jesus is telling us that it is going to require all these ominous, dreadful cosmic signs, all these natural forces in an uproar, to bring such stubbornness to an end.  All such stubbornness will end when judgment comes, when Christ comes.  We are preparing ourselves for the days.  Advent means coming.

William Barclay puts the matter simply: “We must live [. . .] in the certainty that we are men who are fitting or unfitting themselves to appear in the presence of God.”[2]  All that we do between now and then is preparation.  Let us be fitting ourselves to appear in the presence of God.  All must appear; let us be striving to become fit to do so.

Jesus exhorts us not to let our hearts become weighed down, as much as to say, let your hearts be light.  This isn’t just chipper and cheerful, though that isn’t necessarily a bad way to be.  It is faith, hope, and love that helps to keep our hearts light, light with the light of God, illuminating our own lives, providing light by which we may see our way, and helping others to see, too.  Jesus warns us against becoming people who stuff themselves, who stuff their lives with stuff, as though that was the way to fill the emptiness, to bandage over the hurt, the sorrow, and the loneliness.

Oh, how we medicate ourselves with stuff!  I guess mine is sugar.  What’s yours?  What do you pursue to find some little happiness, a taste of joy, fulfillment and contentment?  It’s so fleeting, and then we don’t feel so good: what have we done?  Yet how else shall we face our emptiness?  How else shall we stand up to our sorrow?  Where else shall we find a friend for our loneliness—you know, a friend who won’t bother us or expect things.  Where can we turn in our frustration and lack of fulfillment?

Jesus tells us to be observant, watchful, alert.  He tells us to pray for the strength to escape all these things and to stand before the Son of Man (21:36).  Be strong!  Oh, yeah, alright.  So, we rummage around inside, looking for strength.  Now where did I put that?  It was just here a moment ago.  This strength is part and parcel of being prepared.  We don’t have to search for it.  It is already with us.  It is grace.  It is love.  It is Christ.

Where to obtain that strength?  Where to obtain Christ?  Here, beloved.  Here.  From this table, by this Sacrament.  From this Word.  In faith, by prayer, through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Here, by these signs of abundant, overflowing, joyful love God feels for you, offers to you, to bless you, to encourage and strengthen you, to keep you for Himself.  We are preparing ourselves for the day that has no end, for the life that is coming.  Fill your heart.  Let your heart be light.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

                [1] Joel B. Green.  Gospel of Luke.  NICNT.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997.  742.

                [2] William Barclay.  Gospel of Luke.  Daily Study Bible.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975.  261.