Spoiler: Alert

Luke 21:25-36

Are you one of those people who read the end of the story first?  Who flip to the back of the mystery and find out whodunnit before you even know the crime?

I’m not that kind of reader, myself, so it has always seemed odd to me that we start at the end of the story today.

As many of you remember from sermons past, the First Sunday of Advent – today – is the first day of the new church year. All the cycles and seasons of the church, all the patterns and stories of our faith start here, every year.

And every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, we read the end of the story.

We hear Jesus tell his disciples about how it all ends – the full and final coming of God into the world, the righteousness and redemption and judgement of God finally and forever coming into a world filled with chaos. The certainties of heaven and earth – stars, sun, tides, maybe gravity – will change disruptively.  Whole nations will dissolve in distress, and people will simply fall down under the weight of fear as the Messiah is revealed, coming out of the clouds in overwhelming glory.

When you see these things; when the end has come, Jesus says, stand up confident and proud. Raise your heads because your redemption is near.

This is the end of the story that starts with the baby in the stable. Not a gentle, hidden, domestic scene, but every bit the opposite: a world-wide apocalyptic whirlwind of international and environmental turmoil, terror and power and great glory.

This is what we find when we open the book at the end today, before we turn to the beginning.

A few years ago, psychologists at the University of California San Diego found that spoilers – reading the end of the story first – actually improved people’s enjoyment of stories.
Vindication, there, for all of you who check out the end of the book before you start it.

Support, if it were needed, for Jesus “spoiling” the plot for the disciples, telling them ahead of time not only about his resurrection, but about just how exactly they will – we will – experience the ultimate coming of God.

Affirmation for us, as a community of faith, reading the end in order to start at the beginning.

We start at the end now so that in a few weeks, when we read the beginning of the story, we don’t forget that that fragile, beautiful, humble baby is also about to come into the world in clouds and power and glory, throwing the sun, stars, moon, and nations into chaos. We start at the end, so that we look for and recognize the devastating, utterly transformative, final and ultimate power and presence of God in the infant and the healer and the teacher and the teller of stories about mustard and pennies and sheep.

And we start at the end so that we know where we are supposed to arrive in our journey: heads high in eager expectation; alert and watchful and confident, eyes peeled for the signals of God’s nearness, even – maybe especially – in the face of chaos and fear; collapse and confusion.

By starting at the end, we know our own role – as readers and hearers and central characters – in Jesus’ story. We know what to look for in the pages of the story from long ago, and the hours and days of the story here and now: Look for the signs of God’s nearness, as cyclical as fig leaves; as extraordinary as the shaking of the heavens.

Sometimes it seems that what God wants most from us, from God’s people, is expectation. God wants us to be people of eager, attentive, anticipation: not waiting for the story to unfold, but looking eagerly ahead, attentively seeking out and spotting the clues, the signs, of what we know is coming: the reign of God; the kingdom come; God’s full, righteous, awesome presence all over the world we know.

When we know the end of the story, we keep watching for it to happen as we read. We involve ourselves in finding out not just where it ends, but how we get there.
And when we know how it ends, we know it’s safe to keep going, we have reason not to give up when the plot seems to slow and drag, or dives into the scariest, thorniest, almost hopeless places.

Jesus emphasizes that to the disciples around him in that long ago Jerusalem, and to the disciples here today:

It’s going to get scary. It is. (You and I know this, don’t we?) It’s going to get messy and it’s going to not make sense.

And that’s when you keep alert. Don’t get distracted by either indulgence or anxiety. Don’t put the book down because you’re busy. And don’t give up in fear.

Watch for the signs – like the spring leaves on the fig tree, easy to overlook because they happen every year, or they lag behind the first leaves – that mean the season is just about to change, and bear fruit.

Live like a reader watching for the earliest, smallest ways in which the author reveals whodunnit.

Watch exactly that way: alert to the small things, absorbed and attentive, confident in redemption. Watch and really see, because you know the end. You know what you are looking for, that God’s kingdom is really, absolutely going to come – in power and glory and cosmic upheaval and stunning faithful justice.

Now, Jesus knows this is a long story, and that you and I may get tired of watching that closely, wondering if we ever will get to the end we know we have read. It’s hard to stay alert and attentive and all that for years and decades and generations.

But we’ve read the spoiler for that, too. Seen and heard from Jesus at the end that God provides the strength and the stamina to keep us alert, to escape from the chaos or the distractions and finish the story with God. And that spoiler means we know how to pray: with confidence and trust and that attentive, keen, anticipation.

We start, today, at the end. Because the spoilers are what lead us through the story with all the joy and expectant trust Jesus wants us to have. The spoilers are what keep us alert, looking all around and into the smallest clues, so that we don’t miss a moment. Don’t miss a gift, a twist, or a sign of the coming of the Kingdom and the salvation of God, near to us on every page and day of the story.

Stay alert. Because you know how it ends.