Warning signs

Repent & witness God's promised future

In Chicago more and more drivers speed through intersections after the light has turned red. The city is installing hidden cameras to catch violators. If you are caught on film, you receive a ticket in the mail.

But it is not only traffic warning lights we fail to heed. It is easy to disregard signs that our stressful living and hurried eating are taking a toll on our bodies. We ignore clear warnings that we are not tending our relationships. Emotional distance and absence of communication are a price many are willing to pay to maintain harried lives.

The Gospel readings for the Sundays in Advent call us to pay attention to the warning signs around us. In Luke 21, Jesus gives disturbing signs we would prefer not to ponder. "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding .... Then they will see the 'Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory" (Luke 21:25-27).

Advent's warning signs are not intended to immobilize us in fear. They become occasion for repentance. John the Baptist could not be clearer: "Bear fruits worthy of repentance" (Luke 3:7-8).

To repent is to put on the brakes and come to a full stop. To repent is to confess that the path of our lives has come to a dead end. To repent is to shout out, "I can't!" "We can't!" Because of sin-our curved-in-upon-self living-we cannot save ourselves, make our lives whole.

The railroad line came to an end in the small South Dakota town where my dad was raised. The town whistle blew when a train arrived. Men went to the rail yard, inserted long poles into a round platform, and together they turned the locomotive around so it could travel in the right direction. What a marvelous image of repentance. The Spirit, through the gospel, turns our lives from sin toward God's forgiveness in Christ Jesus. The Advent readings are clear: Warning signs are given so we might be turned toward God's promised future. When the Spirit turns us we not only receive God's promised future in faith but also respond to others with generosity and justice, fruits worthy of repentance.

May this season of Advent be a time of heeding warning signs, repenting, and bearing witness to signs of God's inbreaking reign of justice, mercy and peace-signs as astounding as the birth of the Savior in a Bethlehem barn.

Copyright Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Dec 2004
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