December 2, 2007 Advent 1 Psalm 122
Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44
The other evening, finding myself unexpectedly alone and with nothing pressing to do, I was idly flipping through television channels when I happened upon a show my daughter told me I should watch sometime: House. During the moments I was watching, a young doctor agonized over his misdiagnosis of a middle aged man whom he believed had a terminal adenocarcinoma. A three month check up had revealed that the man was not sick at all: the apparent tumors were harmless lesions. When the young doctor told the good news to the man, he was aghast. But my house is under contract to sell, he shouted, I’ve made arrangements, this will cost me money. He stormed out. Feeling responsible, the young doctor wrote a personal check to the man for six thousand dollars, the penalty on the house, and called his patient back in. Six thousand dollars?!! the man exclaimed, enraged, this doesn’t begin to cover it. He tore up the check as the doctor stammered, but I don’t understand. This is all the money you lost, I’ve given it back, and besides you have your life back. I don’t understand. And the man said bitterly, no, you don’t. When you diagnosed me with terminal cancer, you gave me today. For the first time I have really lived for the present moment, believing I had nothing except now. But you have stolen that meaning from me, taken away my life . . . and now I will go on living, but my life is over.
Listen, now, for a word from God in the gospel of Matthew:
But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the son, but only the father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be preparing food together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this : if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
What we know the most is: we don’t know anything. No one knows, says Matthew’s Jesus, they knew nothing. You do not know….
Matthew’s people, waiting for the return of Christ and living instead through the Roman Wars and the destruction of the 2nd Temple, learned what they didn’t know the hard way, and so, sometimes, do we. Being God’s people was no insurance policy, then or now. We do not know the day, the hour or the way that caution or catastrophe may visit us. We do not know how God will show up at such times either.
We can’t prepare for it. We can’t predict it. If we had known at what hour the thief would break into our house, we would have been ready, but who can know such things? Even the security system isn’t foolproof. There is something impersonal in a raging wildfire; a hurricane, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, of cancer. Something impersonal, and unfair, and frighteningly random. It could happen to us, as easily as it happened to Sean Taylor, or a villager in Mexico and a family of four in Santa Monica. It does happen to us. Two women are working: one gets sick, the other doesn’t. Two men are walking down the same street: one has a heart attack and dies, the other lives to a ripe old age, seeing his children’s children.
Things happen, and there’s nothing we can do about it, except, maybe, to attend seriously the words of Jesus, the words that are, disconcertingly, always the first words of the Church year and the season of Advent: you do not know when the Son of Man is coming, therefore you must be ready.
Here on Advent Sunday, at this newly constructed in the beginning of the church year, I think part of our problem is that we focus too much on Christmas, as though the season of Advent were merely what the market place would have us believe: so many shopping, or even praying, days before Christmas. The fact is, the coming of Jesus at Christmas was only a beginning. Christmas is not what we are aiming ourselves toward; we who are the Christ’s followers are not at the starting line of a four week sprint towards spiritual fulfillment.
There is a reason Advent begins with a warning, and with texts that are drawn from the end of Jesus’ life and from the end of the early church’s failed expectation in the rapid return of the messiah. The reason is, we do not expect to find our meaning in the meantime, but rather, taking the long view, in the end time. At the beginning of Advent we are not beginning a headlong rush to the baby in the manger; we are attempting once again to set our feet on the path the man Jesus walked as the light of Christ: a path marked by learning, loving, and listening. A path shaped by sacrifice, sorrow, and satisfaction. A path that is at the same time solitary and crowded with communities that need our careful attention to acts of love, justice, and mercy towards others and no less, to ourselves. By entering Advent, we are setting our feet on the long road toward home.
And to do that, paradoxically, we must find a way to live in the present, in the present moment, as Jesus told his followers, paying attention and practicing being ready. To live intentionally, attentively, as though we were living in doom. One may be taken, another left behind. It may be you, it may be your next door neighbor, or your best friend. Did they make the best use of the time they had, honoring the days God gave them upon the earth? Did you learn anything from the suddenness of their passing? Wish you were living your own life differently? Wonder whether you can do better, now that you have been reminded of the fragility and the preciousness of life?
Keep awake, be ready.
The way we live, it’s far too easy to miss the Presence, the presence of God, but even our own presence in the present moment. To be with ourselves, and those we love, and those we ought to love, right now. We are not sprinting toward the manger; we are on the long road, seeking to understand where, if anywhere, the divine presence is finding room among us, and within us.
I hope that the way we have planned the Advent season here at the church this year will help you and those you love to do this. You will notice: we are not having any book studies, few meetings, no Advent mid-week nights around which to juggle your family’s schedule. We are making room, room in the inns of our lives. Today, we are presenting an Advent Alternative Gift Fair following worship. We hope you can practice love and mercy by supporting fairly traded crafts available in the SERRV shop, with alternative giving for the Light Project for the students without electricity in our partner community in Kenya, by supporting Heifer Project. If you shop here, you don’t have to buy into mall madness, and can know that your giving is supporting people in need, not the best commercial retail season in the past five years.
Next week, we are celebrating our Christmas dinner following worship, and right after, an hour of Christmas and Advent music on organ, piano, and voice. Bring your friends, and make time for community and quiet celebration through the arts.
Midway through Advent, on Saturday the 15th, a two hour morning retreat will use prayer, fellowship, and the labyrinth to remind us that we are in God’s time, taking the long but sure road home. Sunday the choir will lead worship with the cantata “Nativity,” and we will continue to wonder at the ways the world sees the Prince of Peace through our collection of Nativities from Asia and Europe displayed throughout the sanctuary this season. And we will pause for the refreshment of the Lord’s Supper, today and again at the end of Advent, before we welcome the child on Christmas Eve.
We hope you can make time for some or most of these few and quiet Advent moments: that you can enter them as an antidote to the blaring carols, the hideous traffic, the anxious buying and partying that so easily draw us in and distract us from reflecting the Light of Christ in a darkening world.
Last year about this time, RoseMaree Curtis came to me after worship on Sunday and said, Laurie, do you think it would be wrong for me to not be in treatment this month? Not to focus on the future, having chemo and radiation and being sick and tired? Would it be okay for me to just have the Advent season, and Christmas one more time? I’m ashamed to say that it was hard for me to hear her, and that I was so fixated on what I thought could be her future, that I cajoled and pleaded with Rose that she should give up her present in the service of an unknown future. But, she was as adamant as she could be; and as many of you know, that was pretty adamant indeed. She set fear and the unknown future aside, and took her Advent, and her Christmas, and she reveled in being alive and present. And several months later, one was taken, and we were left behind, and all the time she was ready, and I was not paying attention.
There are many prayers for Advent, and more for Christmas. But the prayer in my heart this morning is for another time, and for light on the long road toward Home:
O Lord, support us all the day long, while the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in Thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.