When you turn sixteen, what’s the most important thing in the world? Any 16-year-olds here? Anyone want to take on that question?

That’s right. Getting your driver’s license. In most states, if you are under the age of eighteen, you now need to take “Driver’s Ed” before you can qualify for a driver’s license. That means students have already had to learn all the “rules of the road,” those traffic signs and signals that foretell and forewarn about what lies ahead on the highway.

Reading the signs — those written on walls and windows, and those written upon the winds of a changing world is a hard-earned skill to some and a gift to others. One of the 12 tribes of Israel, the Tribe of Issachar, was known as the tribe that “knows the signs and knows what to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). Jesus also instructed his disciples to learn how to “read the signs.” Or in his words, “You know how to read the signs of the sky. I want you to learn how to read the signs of the times” (Luke 12:56).

There have always been some people who just seem to “know” what is coming next for our future.

Commodore Vanderbilt saw the railroad as a game-changing mode of transportation for people, goods, and services. He made millions.

Erle Halliburton and his son Richard saw that the lucrative business of communications between individual industrial entrepreneurs and the US military was a potential goldmine. They made millions. Scratch that. Billions.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg saw that the micro-processing, personal computing, on-line networking possibilities made possible by personal computers would transform society. And they made millions. Scratch that. Billions. Scratch that. Trillions (at least collectively).

But whether we know it, or not, all of us are sign-readers. Every time you watch a stock report you are “reading the signs.” We all hit the malls on “Black Friday,” websites on “Cyber Monday,” and drive to Big Box stores on “super special sales” days during the holidays because we “read” the signs of the times, or at least “read” the ads and clip the coupons.

If you have ever lived in the mid-west, or visited the plains during “tornado season,” you know that one of the most important “signs” you can keep your eyes peeled for is that little funnel cloud that appears in the corner of the TV screen. If the funnel cloud is yellow it means there is in effect a tornado “watch.” A storm “watch” means that the atmospheric conditions are right and ripe for a tornado to form. A yellow funnel cloud “watch” means it is time to go on “high alert,” to be prepared, to keep vigilant, because the chance of a big, scary storm heading your way is high.

If the funnel cloud indicator on the screen turns red, it is time to “duck and cover.” That color change is an indication that your area is no longer under just a “storm watch.” You are now officially receiving a “storm warning.” A storm warning is only issued after someone has actually sighted a whirling wind tunnel in the sky. Only after someone has put actual eyes on the actual storm, is a “warning” posted. When the forces of change are documented, shared, and on the move — that is when a “warning” is issued to the world. That is when a “watch” becomes a “warning.”

Today we celebrate the final Sunday of Advent. We are in the final moments of a “storm watch.” In three days, a “storm warning” will be declared. The Advent Watch turns into Christmas warning.

You mean “Christmas morning.”

No, I mean “Christmas warning.”

Yes, that may seem contrary to all the messages of love and good will that are rightly proclaimed and sung during this time of year. But Christmas, the birth of Christ, the Messiah, is also a time of “warning.” On that “Silent Night, Holy Night,” our Advent Watch turns into a Christmas Warning.

The angelic message of the coming of the Prince of Peace, the Son of God, the one who brings “glad tidings of great joy to all peoples,” is also a warning message: a message warning us that everything is now about to change. Life can no longer be the same again. Jesus changes everything. With Jesus, the story of God went from being carved in stone to being carved in the heart. And that changes everything.

Life as usual is no longer. It is now life as unusual. The kingdom is come. The status is no longer quo. In the words Faith Hill made famous, “A baby changes everything/A baby changes everything.” The world, broken-down and sin-steeped since the exile from Eden, is no longer condemned to wallow about in its waywardness and wickedness. God has stepped up and stepped in, with nothing less than a personal appearance of the divine expressly to relieve the sting and shame of sin and death from this world.

There is a new way of living and being in the world. The winds of change are going to blow. A truth tornado has touched down. Kingdom come is a tornado touchdown of beauty, truth and goodness.

The coming of the Prince of Peace is the long awaited, closely watched main event of Advent. But Jesus’ arrival on earth, his birth in Bethlehem, his childhood in Nazareth, his ministry, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, totally transform all of life.

Jesus is proclaimed the “Prince of Peace” at his birth. But this “Prince of Peace,” as Jesus himself warned, came “bringing a sword.” This is a Prince of Peace who will be cutting through the protective layers of politics and power and polemics that we shroud ourselves in and use to proclaim our own righteousness. Jesus warned he was bringing “My peace . . . but not as the world gives to you.”

The Prince of Peace is also a “disturber of the peace.” The Prince of Peace lived a life that no one would have called “peaceful.” Wherever he went, wherever he brought “peace on earth” and “good will” to all, controversy followed. This is partly because Jesus’ “peace” is not the world’s understanding of peace: a piece of the rock, peace of mind, a piece-of-cake existence, a big piece of the proverbial pie or bite out of the Big Apple.

The miracle in Bethlehem was not meant to make way for the “miracles” of Wall Street wizardry or the “miracle” of Best Buy gadgetry or even the Macy’s miracle on 34th street. The miracle of Christmas made way for the miracle of life and the miracle of love.

Urban monk and founder of Philadelphia’s community “The Simple Way” Shane Claiborne says in one of his books that he once had a conversation with a friend who asserted “Jesus never talked to a prostitute.” When Shane protested that Jesus spent a lot of time talking to prostitutes and other undesirables, his friend came back and said, “Listen, Shane, Jesus never talked to a prostitute because he didn’t see a prostitute when he talked to a prostitute. He just saw a child of God with whom he was madly in love.”

That’s why Jesus left behind him, not peace and quiet, but peace and disquiet, peace and upset, peace and conflict. Jesus’ birth, life and death changed the world. And change is never easy. If you have ever gone through a “renovation phase” at your home, you know that change brings about upheaval and a large amount of messiness.

The Advent presentation of the Christ child disturbed the peace. In Matthew’s gospel Joseph was engaged to Mary, a totally normal, everyday kind of contract. But suddenly something went terribly wrong. She became pregnant. Joseph had a visitation from an angel telling him about the pregnancy and how it came about.

Storm watch — stuff is happening and you should be taking notice.

Storm warning — everything is beginning to change.

A few decades ago a new team of scientists were born. They were meta-meteorologists — aka “storm-chasers.” Storm chasers literally put caution to the winds and “chased” around after storm cells that looked like they might generate a tornado. Tornados are notoriously dangerous because they are so unpredictable. Because of the (often fatal) work of these storm chasers, much more has been learned about violent storms, their appearances, their trajectories. Storm chasers have saved lives in dozens of communities.

Jesus was the original storm warning – a “good news” message from God that the world is being invited to participate in a new reality called the kingdom of God, a divinely altered reality because of a new redeeming presence of God in this world.

Now each of us, each new generation of Christians in this new kingdom reality made possible by the real presence of Christ in this world, are called to be “storm watchers” or “kingdom watchers.” At Advent the Church is “on the lookout” for the arrival of Christ in this world. At Christmas, at the birth of Jesus, the kingdom comes and we become “storm warners” or “kingdom warners.”

But the kingdom of God is something that is has come and yet is still coming… “Thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.” We are still “on the look-out.” So we become kingdom watchers, kingdom warners, and kingdom chasers…all at the same time. As “storm chasers” or “kingdom chasers,” we are running towards wherever and whenever Christ’s kingdom presence and power are playing out in this world today. Wherever the kingdom of God is being born, there is a tornado touchdown. And there the church needs to be.

One of the best signs of Christ’s kingdom is that the “stormy” presence of God always disturbs the status quo. Wherever the “life as usual,” “let’s just keep this up,” “we-never-did-it-that-way-before” mentality is in power, that is when the disruptive, disturbing, “unpeaceful” sword of the Spirit will be unsheathed and break forth. False peace is the bulls-eye target of the Prince of Peace.

Technologically empowered, weather-mapped storm-chasers used to be the only persons who ever encountered or recorded the giant storms of change. The visual recordings of tornados before ten years ago were fleeting and fortuitous. With the advent of “smart phones,” all that has changed. Now anyone with a smart phone who lives in “tornado alley” is a “storm chaser.” The video recordings we have seen in the past two years far outweigh any of the “storm chaser” recordings made in the previous ten years. Persons on the scene, personally confronting these storms with cell phones in hand, have provided more data for scientists than the previous generation of professional “storm chasers” ever could.

That is true of spiritual “storm chasing” or what we’re calling “kingdom chasing” in the twenty first century as well. We can see where Jesus is being born and the kingdom is coming at the push of a button. We know about those places where the “peace” that is being offered is a false “peace,” a brokered brokenness, at the mere touch of a “share” button.

We can be there. We can “share” the good news “Christ is born.” We can be a voice against the storm of sin and evil, for as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow put it in a verse buried in the bowels of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” – “And in despair I bowed my head: ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said: ‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men’.”

We can be, all at the same time, in a state of kingdom watch, kingdom warning, and kingdom chase, and offer our voices to join the chorus on the side of “peace on earth, good will to all.”

On this last Sunday of Advent, I implore you to

Keep Watching,

Keep Warning,

Keep Chasing.