Sermon: "Assurance Beyond Uncertainty"
The Right Reverend Charles G. vonRosenberg
Third Bishop of East Tennessee

[This sermon by Bishop vonRosenberg was delivered using the following notes.]

Thanksgiving is over. The month of December has arrived. If anything is certain in this world, it must be that Christmas will be here soon. Even in our strained economic times, shopping has begun in earnest … a testimony to the approaching holiday. At this time of year, I remember well the experience of having young children in our household. In particular, I recall our common desire that Christmas might come quickly - for the sake of parents and children alike!

Yet, as is often the case, the Church calls us to look at our time a bit differently than our culture dictates. This time of year is not just a countdown period to Christmas. We also find ourselves at the beginning of a new church year … the first Sunday in the first season of Advent.

Advent is not so much a time preliminary to Christmas. Rather, Advent calls us to remember Christ's promise that he will return. We live in the days prior to that Second Coming of Christ to earth. And, that is the primary emphasis of Advent.

Thus, I suggest to you this morning that our time is not only one of certainty as we anticipate Christmas twenty-three days from now. But also, this is a time of uncertainty as we await the return of Jesus Christ at a time that we do not know.

About this time prior to Christ's return - these days in which we live - there is indeed much which remains uncertain. And, Jesus indicates the nature of life's uncertainties by means of several brief parables in the reading today from St. Matthew's Gospel.

First, Jesus mentions the occasion of the Great Flood in Noah's day. Jesus points out that prior to the Flood the people in general were doing those things to which they were accustomed - things like eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Then the Flood came and changed all that. Indeed, suddenly, mass destruction and death became commonplace. The message is clear - life is uncertain.

Next - and following quickly in the reading - Jesus refers to regular kinds of jobs that people have each day - two men working in a field and two women working in a mill. The text says that, in each case, "one is taken and one is left." That description of what happened seems somewhat strange and unclear in a sense. It may mean that one person is fit for the Kingdom and is therefore taken into it, while the other person is not. However, perhaps that interpretation is not the only possibility.

In the context of the larger passage, Jesus may have had in mind simply an indication of life's uncertainties. That's how life is lived prior to his return. Two people are out working, and one is taken - by illness, by accident, by death - and the other is not. It happens all the time … unexpectedly and without warning, but it happens. The human response naturally is to ask "Why?" Why was that person taken while the other one was not? And in response, often the only honest answer is that we do not know. Life is uncertain.

Jesus' final example, coming quickly once again, is that of the owner of a house. Jesus says that if that owner had known when the burglar was coming, he would have watched for him. And the message is to be ready for the return of the Son of man.

But, again, another message is possible as well. Notice that the house has already been robbed, in terms of time. The analogy which encourages readiness is put in these terms: "If the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming…" "If" - as we all know - is a word which covers a lot of ground. The householder did not know the time, and so, he was not ready. He was surprised.

Put in terms of our own lives, then, I suspect that we can try to be ready for whatever comes our way. Indeed, it is appropriate and important to be prepared. But at that task we cannot fully succeed. Life is uncertain. Its surprises will always surprise us.

And so, other than the countdown to Christmas, what is certain in these uncertain times? On what can we depend? We cannot rely on our jobs. There are too many cases in which circumstances change, and the existence of jobs is not reliable. Also, we cannot rely - ultimately at least - on our families. Divorce and alienation are sad but common characteristics of our age. Each one of us has idiosyncrasies that make us difficult to live with occasionally. Finally, we cannot rely on health - or, even, on living. Tragedy, accident, and unanticipated illness all indicate the frailty of health and live. Since September 11, our nation itself has lived with a new kind of uncertainty.

Life is uncertain. And so, on what do we rely? It is the great passage of St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans where the answer is put most eloquently, I believe: "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature" - that is, "nor any other part of this creation" - "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"(8:38-39).

There it is, my friends - the only thing on which we may ultimately rely - the love of God in Christ Jesus. And having the assurance of God's love, we may then cope with life's uncertainties. Those uncertainties are not removed from us, but we are enabled to deal with them. Indeed, having that assurance, we may rejoice that in the midst of every uncertainty, still we are loved by God in Christ. No matter what else happens, that is the best good news that we can ever imagine, in this Advent and in all Advents to come!

Copyright © 2007 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee