Start with an earthquake, then build to a climax… Cecil B. DeMille

When the shrill alarm of Advent Sunday texts sounds each year, drop-kicking us through Advent dread along the long road to Advent expectation, I think of stories like this one:

It seemed like a good idea at the time: to turn out the friendly lights that shine from the peak of our cabin into the night, to go out through the darkness of our woods, to stand in the meadow and look, unfettered by light, at the beauty of the stars. And so we went, the girl and I hand in hand, down the path from our door into the great open space…and when the memory of light had faded from our eyes, there they were: Stars, so many more than we had imagined, so piercing in their beauty, so vast. We stood for a moment thus: awed, rejoicing. And then it seemed we heard breathing in the night. Not our own, we understood at once, but something larger, more menacing, invisible in the night yet closer than nightmare, waiting with sharp teeth and curved claws in the hungering dark. As one, we turned: the stars faded, our feet hammered like drumbeats in the dark as we fled, hand in hand, back up the path and home into the Light.

I told this story once, years ago, and when I tell it again I can still feel the terror, the absolute shattering knowledge that Something was there, behind me, ready to kill us in the dark. What I cannot remember—with the knowledge of my heart—is the beauty of the stars in the crisp, clear night, the feel of my daughter’s hand in mine, the peace of knowing I was safe, and loved, and Home. Why? Warren calls this penchant of mine to experience disaster without the filter of hope as “catastrophizing” My dad calls it “going into the Locks.” And when I start feeling a little abashed that there is a category for an entire genre of my life-cycle stories, I remember that there is also a theological word for this kind of literature: apocalyptic.

Apocalyptic, which can be roughly translated from the Greek as “uncovering” or “revelation,” is a kind of literature found in the bible that commonly is understood to be dealing with what is to be revealed at the end of human history. The book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, and a chapter or so each in the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark, take the context of present-day suffering and use it as a lens to point to the revealing of God’s reign at the end of time. Its wisdom is secretive, its context, catastrophic. What is revealed about God in the end is nearly always learned at the point of the sword, in great peril. And each new year, (as Advent Sunday is New Year’s Day for the Christian calendar) texts that come from the apocalyptic tradition issue a sharp rebuke to the happy holidays! I heard from the clerk at Home Depot on Saturday, reminding me that for the faithful, it is a long way until Christmas.

My friend Eddie Goldberg, the rabbi at Temple Judea up the road, was needling me on Thanksgiving Eve before the community interfaith service—you Christians have it wrong, he said, you wait until the world is turning toward Light again before you celebrate Christmas…we Jews light candles, and make our festival during the season of greatest darkness. You’re right, I said…because we borrowed Christmas from the pagans—though they seem to have taken it back, and given it to the gods of consumerism—but Advent is all ours….and it, like Chanukah, is a festival of light in the season of darkness.

It is Advent again. Longing for the comfort of the womb where the Christ has been born to save the world, we read the bible and are future-shocked by its grim assertion that Christ’s coming has not trumped the powers and principalities of evil, abroad in the world. The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light… we are still afraid of the Dark, and for good reason, for each day’s headline and every night’s anxieties add the burden of years to our souls.

For things have not much changed in the world since the author of the gospel of Mark recorded how Jesus’ disciples sat him down in the courtyard of the Jerusalem Temple a few days before his arrest and death and asked him, what are the signs for when all this shall be accomplished? Jesus, anticipating his own impending death, described for his closest friends a world in which even the established flow of times and seasons would be catastrophically shaken. Mark, writing some thirty years later, told that story through the eyes of one who saw an occupied Palestine besieged into exile by a punishing and powerful Roman army. And we tell it now, as we keep praying for families who mourn their children and sift through the mud and wreckage of a school in Haiti, for the roller coaster stock market and economic and jobs indicators that worsen practically day by day. All week long, we have watched and worried as young men armed with almonds and guns, brought the city of Mumbai to its knees, killing hundreds and terrorizing the world. Friday, a Walmart worker on Long Island was trampled to death when the doors opened to holiday shoppers desperate for hope and settling for a cheap bargain.

Start with an earthquake and build to a climax? This is great theater, and better apocalyptic, but in the end, it is bad Advent Theology.

In Preaching Mark in Two Voices, Brian Blount, who teaches NT at Princeton Theological Seminary, draws our attention to the two different words used by the author of the gospel for the phrase we translate keep awake!

The first word, blepo, is used throughout the early part of chapter thirteen. Jesus tells his followers—pay attention! Watch carefully! He asks us to use spiritual perception, to engage our prayerful discernment, to understand what is happening around us, and to see where God is in it. And that is good advice for Advent, as it is for everyday.

If we use that kind of perception when we read the stories in Mark 13 or tell the stories of our lives, we might understand that there is more going on than meets the eye, a denoument, if you will, that tells a different tale than earthquake and climax.

The thing is, Jesus changes the ending of the apocalypse, which by tradition concludes with judgment and woe. Apocalypse blames destruction on a cosmic battle between God and Evil. Jesus tells them no, it is human hands that wreak havoc, not God’s: pay attention. From the fig tree learn its lesson, he says, and, of course, the disciples immediately remember the fig tree he cursed, so that it withered and died…but he goes on: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So when these things take place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Pay attention! Keep awake! You thought you knew the meaning and the ending of this story, but you don’t. In the midst of catastrophe, when we believe we hear breathing in the dark and know we are about to be destroyed, the dead tree comes back to life, the cosmic battle is reduced to the actions of frightened but mortal men. And what has been built once, can be built again. Every sad story has a “nevertheless,” and God is just around the corner, a householder finding her way home from a journey.

In the middle of his discourse, Jesus suddenly switches words for “seeing” and “watching out.” The new word, gregoreo, means more than developing correct spiritual discernment so that we will not be misled by external appearances. Gregoreo tells us: don’t just stand there, do something. It is not just correct discernment we are called to practice; we are called to practice. That is, the correct stance for Advent is not watchful waiting, but watchful action while we wait.

There is a way in which we are tempted to see Advent as practice time for hunkering down, barricading the doors, and surviving until things change for the better, Someday. But: throughout the siege of Mumbai, many hundreds of people barricaded their doors, and listened in the darkness, chaos and smoke to see when their salvation might come. And, understandably, they did nothing, because they were afraid. And that can be seen as blepo, to stay awake and watch with spiritual discernment. But on Thanksgiving Day, in Mumbai, a boy named Moshe was heard crying in the small orthodox synagogue run by his parents, killed in the attack. A woman, hearing, unbolted the door behind which she had been cowering for twelve hours, made a basket for little Moses with her arms, and carried him through the waters of chaos to safety. That is gregoreo: keeping awake and using spiritual discernment to practice faithfulness in anticipation of the coming of salvation.

When I was a little girl, watching the cat move through the shadowed yard after the house was dark and quiet,, I wondered what it would be like to have night vision; to roam as I wished, fearless and free in the darkness that sent every else in the world behind locked doors to wait for the dawn. We have been taught to fear the darkness; not to find our way in it. To use our eyes alone, and to wait, watchful, until dawn comes. But this is not enough for Advent people, who must do more than wait and hope. Our work is begun in darkness, and grown there. A seed takes root, and grows. A child grows in the womb, sheltered in shadows, safe and warm. Candles are lit, week by week: as the night grows longer, our careful attention to the works of the day and the bearing of light grows greater. Keep awake, said Jesus. The world’s not changing, but you can change the way you live in it. Every circumstance is an opportunity for redemption.

The dark is not going anywhere soon. And neither are we. And that is why it must be Advent again: because we can’t just go at the kindom once in a while, bumping in the backfield and praying for better days, if we ever hope to be proficient at being Christ’s light in the world. We need to practice, to be wary of the worry and the yielding to whatever catastrophizing entices us. We need to get out into the dark and watch and be involved, if Christ is to be born among us now and again.

And he will be. Lift up your hearts, lift up your heads, tell the story a different way, practice Advent, see in the dark. You are a city set on a hill, whose light cannot be hid. said Jesus, and he believed it. It is the breath of God surrounding you in the dark, breathing a blessing of life over our fear: be not afraid. From the fig tree learn its lesson, said Jesus. When you see these things taking place, you know he is near, at the very gates.

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 2^nd 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 15^th, 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.

Mom was a tree fanatic, wielding strict control over the color, type, placement, and spacing of our family ornaments.

Tinsel was — well, let’s just say it was years before I was deemed trustworthy enough to follow my mother’s careful guidance and hang not one nor three, but exactly two tinsel strands on each carefully chosen branch.  My grandfather’s particular arena for expressing the meaning of Christmas was in assuring that gifts my brother and I received were exactly equal in value.

If my guitar cost more than his bike; or his telescope, more than my stereo, you knew that before the last shred of wrapping paper was swept away, one of us would be called to the back yard for a benediction:  your brother’s present cost more than yours.

Here’s the difference.

Merry Christmas.   We kids never forgot the obligation our oft-absent father had placed on us, to make things easy for your mother while I am away. Constrained by love, we all tried, but still, the disappointment we felt when we failed to achieve the mark (or maybe, the Hall-mark?) was genuine.

The passing of years has softened memories, and love makes us gentle when recalling the way we were.  I have come to believe that the mystery of Christmas is how divine grace, despite all evidence to the contrary, somehow sinks into our messy lives, not perfecting us, but honoring us, hallowing our becoming. And the gift we received once from the Child I now have been given by my own daughter.

Just before Christmas break, I drove my daughter over to the middle school so she could set up her harp for the holiday concert—her first performance as a member of the school orchestra.

Featured that evening were two bands, a chorus, a jazz brass ensemble, the advanced orchestra, and the beginning orchestra — fourteen violins, three violas , two cellos and one harp — all tuned to a different concert “A.”

From my place in the bleachers, I saw the orchestra conductor lean over and whisper something to my daughter, who shrugged, and then nodded.   An hour and a half later, the announcement came:  we have a special treat this evening.  For the first time, our middle school orchestra features a harpist. Before the final number, she will play a Christmas solo.

The room, filled with hundreds of young musicians and their families, fell silent.  The girl set her hands to the strings and began to play:  silent night, holy night.

My eyes filled with tears as she moved through the song.

Holy infant so tender and mild.  At the phrase sleep in heavenly peace, her hand, slick with nerves, slipped on the strings and struck the wrong chord.  Imperceptibly to anyone but me, her hands shook, as if to throw off the bad notes.  She tried again—once, twice, and finally, eons later, finished the song.

Straight backed, she sat through the final all-orchestra finale, and then, the concert was over.  I went down to the floor of the gym where she was packing up her instrument.

Her eyes were full of unshed tears.

Lifting her chin, she glared at me and said, if you say I played well, I will never speak to you again. Words of congratulation died on my lips as I understood that my child required of me the gift of truth, not the illusion of perfection. I swallowed hard.

Next time you’ll do better, I said, and the tears spilled over.

I opened my arms, and she laid her head on my shoulder and cried.  The sounds of excited voices and shouted Christmas greetings faded around us, and we were alone in a wilderness of painful truth, potent love, and the fragile possibility of beginning again.

Together, we walked out into the purple darkness, put her instrument into the trunk of the car, and drove home.

The gaudy pink lights of the mall winked and flared beside us, promising all manner of store-bought happiness — but around us, the night was dark and still, and the promise of Christmas was real.

Catastrophe or miracle, that’s what we think of, what we pray for or fear, when we listen, when we hear the word Sign. But God doesn’t seem to be so much in the sign business these days—or, if God is, he’s gone off-message somehow—because the signs of our times are confusing, ambiguous, obscure. Thursday night, in California, a man named Johnnie Carl had an argument with a colleague, barricaded himself in his office, and committed suicide. Carl was the conductor of the Crystal Cathedral orchestra, and Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power, a respected and successful man who had been an integral leader of the ministry of the Cathedral of Hope for nearly thirty years… he struggled with depression, and tragically ended his life just before the congregation’s televised annual Christmas pageant. Look around you, and listen carefully: tidings of comfort and joy are just not that readily apparent to everyone, even those who willingly faces the signs of Christmas.

Is Christmas is the season of signs—of stars and portents, of dreams and whispered words of courage; of the mingling of men and angels, of strange goings-on in the places we had least expected? Do we imagine that the time in which we live is unique—more distressed, more imperiled, more confused and confusing than any time before (or even since)? —well, others have felt the same.

In the days of Ahaz the king, after good King Uzziah died and the world had gone to hell in a handbasket, the nation of Judah was surrounded by enemies and sure to be overrun. On the east, the rising superpower of Assyria. On the north, the bitter enmity of brothers. To the south, restless, mighty Egypt. Huddled against the edge of the Mediterranean Sea like a cowering child, Ahaz looked at his options and saw, he had no options. It was the end of the world he knew, the beginning of despair…and, not coincidentally, the season of the prophet Isaiah.

Ask for a sign, the prophet urged, compassion flooding his voice with conviction and warming his far-seeing eyes. Ask for a sign—any sign. Make it as high as heaven, or as low as hell. Let God speak—only ask, and a sign will be yours, something to hold on to in the midst of this spiraling uncertainty. Things may not be as bad as you think. But Ahaz—almost a modern man, when you think about it, in the matter of signs and dreams and portents—Ahaz said no. No, I am not signing on to this god-game of hope and possibility. I will not ask for a sign, I will not put the Lord to the test. Ahaz put his faith where any sensible, clear thinking person would—in the strength of his military, in the possibility of the survival of the canniest, and the best prepared.

Maybe there are times in our lives when the risk of a sign is too much to be borne…the fear of what might be, more hideous than the reality of the hopeless and barren present. Maybe we have made our peace with disillusionment, with disappointment, with despair, learned to moderate our expectations, compromised. Better the hell we know, we reason, than a sign in the sky or a dream in the darkness that adds possibility and uncertainty to the already overbalanced burden we are reluctantly bearing. We will not ask for a sign, we will just take life as it comes.

But prophets see the world through different eyes. When you look at them, you suspect that their minds and hearts are elsewhere, their vision turned inward, their souls making sense of your world in a way you cannot hope to comprehend. Their Signs are neither miracles nor catastrophes: they are evidence, however subtle, that against all odds, God is in the picture. Emmanuel. It means: God is with us. And whatever it means, there is hope there, and the whiff of incense, and the rustling sound of angels’ wings passing by. Ask for a sign.

Ask for a sign, the prophet said, and you can almost hear the eagerness in his voice, ringing down over some twenty-six centuries, ask. Who knows what God will do? Who can tell what the people of God may become? If you don’t ask, if you won’t ask, then the possibility dies unborn, and the hope of the future dissipates like a forgotten dream.

Oh, ask for a sign, so that God has room to grow; so that the barren present can be put in its place, so that light may shine forth in the darkness. But Ahaz would not ask.

Some centuries later, another man stood at the brink of personal disaster, and who knows? Maybe he, too, believed, it’s better not to ask. In his case, what he didn’t want to know was personal. Humiliating. Devastating. His fiancee was pregnant. The child wasn’t his. There was some wild tale of angels, and the Spirit of God walking abroad amongst the souls of people. Coincidentally (or maybe not), it was the same sign Ahaz had had, generations before. A pregnant girl, another tawdry story, an excuse, a family’s disaster.What had that to do with God? A young woman with child is not always good news.

Have you ever noticed where Joseph stands in many manger scenes? Behind Mary, a way back from the baby upon whom every eye is fixed except his. He is outside the circle of light, waiting in the dark, his gaze turned inward. Not quite adoring, not a bit sure of his role in this gauzy tale of God and angels and miracles; barely accepting the “sign” that has shattered the life he once thought would be his. In most nativity sets, Joseph stands alone, his arms folded across his chest—and, as a minister colleague of mine pointed out recently, you can scarcely tell him from the shepherds…leaving us to wonder, did I choose the right father? Which one is he? Which was, of course, precisely Joseph’s dilemma.

Joseph, seeking order in a world turned suddenly upside down, appealed (as most of us will) to the rule of law. Hoping, as we do, that by so doing he could find again a world that made sense and his place in it. He did not ask for a sign. He merely considered—what is the right thing to do? The legal thing? To stay? To go? To punish? To forgive? In time, he determined an appropriate course of action. Legal, but not devoid of compassion. Right, but not self-righteous. He did not ask for a sign, he decided not to sign up. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, but he would remove himself from the nativity scene, he would step out of the circle of light and get on with his life.

He resolved to dismiss her quietly, and spare her public disgrace. And that might have been the end of it—for Joseph, at least, but perhaps for Mary and her unborn son, just another impoverished, disgraced, single mother, trying to fend for herself in a harsh and unforgiving world. But then there was a sign. Or, to be more precise, a dream. And the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary for your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” And when he had dreamed, he woke up to a world that was changed. He had not asked for a sign, but a sign had been given anyway, because when God wants to be with us, Emmanuel, God is like that. And Joseph, who turned out to be more of a dreamer than he thought, let it be. He laid aside the proper thing, the tidy thing, the legal thing, and, letting disorder stand, he made Mary a home. And in the midst of that brave act of disorder; in that quiet act of defiance against the rule of law; in that hopeful investment in the new world of dreams and signs, suddenly, there was Emmanuel: God with Joseph, God with Mary, God in Jesus the Christ, God with us.

I know a young woman, a newlywed, whose beloved is about to go to war in Iraq. She knows that the conventional wisdom that says, wait for a child. Don’t’ burden a young marriage, a marriage at risk, with the responsibility of parenting. But, two weeks ago, a close friend was blown up when he stepped on an IED, an improvised explosive device. And the young woman says, I know what’s prudent, but I want to be open. I’m not afraid, but anything could happen, and if it does, I don’t want to have been careful, to have said “not yet” to the sign of the love we share, and the life we want to live together.

The prophet said, a young woman shall be with child, and bear a son, and his name will be: God-is-with-us, Emmanuel. Ahaz wouldn’t trust it, but against all odds, Joseph did.

Asking for a sign—and believing one will be granted—is the work of Hope, and the work of people who claim that once upon a time, hope was born in a dark stable and lived to make a world of difference, against all odds. This kind of hope-work is not optimism—it is as far from optimism, the-sun-will-come-out-tomorrow kind of belief that everything always works out for the best—as it is possible to get. It is believing God is with us—despite circumstances, indeed, sometimes, precisely because circumstances are dark and dangerous and almost entirely without the possibility of an optimistic resolution. It is choosing to make a space in the dark emptiness for God to visit us, to visit our world. It is waiting for something to be born…waiting with hope and attentiveness…sometimes, for a long time.

Waiting for miracles or catastrophes to speak to us of God is like the accident of being a brilliant inventor: a flash of genius, a frenzy of creativity, good luck, with an astonishing new creation at the end of it all. But the hope that waits for a sign, Isaiah-hope, Joseph-hope, is something else altogether. It is more like an assembly line, where we take our place, building on the work of those who have gone before us, doing our part as competently as we can, doing it over and over without losing interest or flagging in our consistency, and then passing on what we have done to the next person on the line. It is the Design that holds us together, and keeps us working and listening and waiting. That which we are building is being completed on down the line, and we will have a share in it. We live, I know, in a hard world. A world where disorder reigns, and the light shining in the darkness is too often, it seems, overcome.

A world in which the commitment to be a seeker after signs and a dreamer of dreams is a brave, tedious, and foolhardy calling. But—and this is very important—it is our calling, our heritage and birthright, what we were born and baptized to do…and if we do not believe Emmanuel—that in all things, God is with us—who will? It is not, after all, such a very hard thing to do—just to ask, to ask for a sign. And then, to see in whatever comes, God with us. Emmanuel. God be with you—God be with us all.

Amen.

Are you the one who is to come? Or should we look for another?

Though these words were placed on the lips of a disillusioned and fatalistic John the Baptist some two thousand years ago, I think it is still a very good question. Are you the one we have been waiting for? Or should we keep looking? There is, in fact, more than a little evidence to suggest that the Jesus we were sent once upon a time has proven to be somewhat unsatisfactory to the church who bears his name…even, if we were honest, something of an awkward encumbrance. Those of us like John, who wanted, who expected, Jesus to come and set things right in and among the kingdoms of this world have been sorely disappointed. There is no peace on earth. The churches of Jesus use his name to justify intolerance, oppression, wars of aggression, even genocide.

The ones who wanted Jesus to reign, his religion to conquer triumphant have watched while other faiths, younger and more aggressive, have grown faster, more brilliantly, while the market share of Christianity seems to shrink year by year. Others, who trot out the baby in the manger year after year as an icon of hope, sentimentality, and commercial possibility find themselves confounded when, now and again, the real Jesus shakes off the straw and strides out of the stable to preach his message of wild, extravagant welcome and pointed, inescapable challenge.

The United Church of Christ found this out the hard way when they, like many other denominations and countless retailing outlets, tried to buy time from the major networks to communicate their image of Jesus of Nazareth and his church. The ad built on the United Church of Christ’s new identity campaign: God is Still Speaking, and said, fairly simply: Jesus welcomes all. The ad featured Christians, including minorities of color and culture, and a homosexual couple, at church together. CBS, UPN and NBC rejected the ad as “too controversial.” Said CBS’s explanation: because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by individuals and organizations, and the fact that the Executive Branch has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable to broadcast on the networks. To paraphrase the disciples of John, if you are the one who is to come, we pass. Let’s wait for another. Let Jesus out of that manger and nothing but trouble follows.

As Jesus said to those who stood by while John’s disciples stuttered through their sad question, what did you come out to see? Silk pajamas? Slick messages? Who did you come to see? And what in heaven are you waiting for?

John thought he was waiting for kingdom come. For the One to change the politics, change the power, get God back into the picture, make things right for the people, the poor, the ones outside. He gave his youth, his passion, and his time to making that dream a reality. And John was one of the fortunate few to realize his entire life’s work when Jesus walked into the picture. John was one of the wise, so he stood aside when the future came, and he said, in essence: Jesus, do it! Bring in the kingdom! Out with the old and on with the new! And then he waited for Jesus to do what he wanted him to do, what he knew God was supposed to do, and nothing happened. Jesus’ way, and the work of God in the world, turned out nothing like John expected or hoped for …and at the end of it all, there he was: waiting for death, and wondering, had he lived his life, and given his passion, for nothing? In despair, he sends to the Teacher and asks:

Are you the one who was to come, or should we keep on waiting?

Did God come among us in Jesus of Nazareth? Did it make any difference? Is God among us at all? The people who pray for peace on earth are binding up the wounds and burying the dead that others, less ambivalent about the politics of piety, have piled up in the name of God’s freedoms. The churches of the Prince of Peace are struggling to make ends meet, working quietly in the corners, lighting our small candles against a rising darkness and wondering if anything we do can ever be enough to make a difference. It’s hard to change even one life for the better. Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for someone else?

We have come seeking peace in our hearts—what the author Nora Gallagher described as “comfort,” and find that allegiance to Jesus’ teaching leaves us less comforted than irritated, edgy, and confused. An old Irish hymn says: the peace of God, it is no peace.[1]

Some of us are teetering on the edge of terminal disappointment, every day. Our relationships have not turned out like we expected. We were educated for jobs that no longer exist in a world that is nothing like the world we grew up in. Our work is not as satisfying as we dreamed it would be, the things that we have do not make us happy. Would that, like John, we had someone to send to with the question that keeps us awake at night: Is that all there is? Is this what we have been waiting and working for, or should we look for something else?

It would be nice to be able to look at the conclusion of this story and know that John died a confident and satisfied man, that Jesus’ oblique answer was proof enough for him:. Look at what you see and hear. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. But we don’t know. Because God, unfortunately for us, isn’t in the proof business.

Even worse: according to this “answer” of Jesus, God expects the proof to be our business—what we are looking for; what we see; what we hear; what we do.

You figure it out. Things are happening, but do YOU see them? It isn’t about what I think. It isn’t about what I know. It isn’t about me at all, in a way. It’s about you. What do you think? What do you want? What do you see? What do you believe?

And Jesus said: Blessed are those who take no offense at me. The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor paraphrases this statement of Jesus in this way: “Blessed is he who does not get tripped up on me. Don’t get tripped up on me….and do look for another.”

Oh, don’t look for another Messiah—because if the one you have isn’t doing the trick, chances are the next one down the line will be a disappointment, too. Do look for another, however, in whom to see the work of God passed on, the light of Christ reflected, the hope of a dawning kingdom born. As the United Church of Christ puts it: God is still speaking. Never put a period where God has placed a comma. So go: Look for another, and look at yourself, and don’t be asking Jesus who he is…ask yourself what you hear and see—and light your little candles and go out into the world, and change it, one person at a time, starting with yourself.

Little lights make a difference, courage and conviction and possibility flickering in the night. The networks’ refusal to show the UCC ad started a furor that raised far more awareness of their message of Jesus’ welcome and inclusion than the little ad ever could have done. Ariel Sharon, after years of hard-line entrenchment, has invited his old enemies, the peace committed Labor party, into the coalition government of Israel, to accomplish what he cannot do alone, withdraw settlers from the territories. Eugene Florence, 100 years old, was awarded a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, 53 years after he had earned it, together with this apology from the seminary’s president, who admitted that the race policy which prevented black students from receiving master’s degrees was unbiblical and unchristian and “ungodly in every way”: there’s no way the seminary could go back and atone for all of its mistakes, but we could do at least one thing to say… we’re sorry for where we got it wrong. The first woman from Africa to receive a Nobel Prize, Wangari Maathai, stood up before the old royalty and the people of power, affluence and influence and told them, told us all: we are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds, and in the process heal our own, indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder.

Are you the one who is to come, or should we keep looking? Go, tell what you see and what you hear: and don’t get tripped up on what you thought you were waiting for.

I overheard some children talking the other day about their Christmas lists—what they wanted and expected to get for Christmas. One of the children was quiet, and a listening adult asked curiously, what do you want for Christmas? Here is the answer. When you get older, the child said, you don’t want things for Christmas anymore. You don’t want to make a list, because it’s better to be surprised. If I ask for what I want, then that’s all I’ll get. If I’m ready to receive anything, then I’ll be surprised and happy and that will be what I really need. So I don’t make lists for Christmas anymore.

Is that all there is to it? This year, may we be younger, and wiser, for Christmas.

[1] This image is borrowed from Nora Gallagher, A Year Lived in Faith, p. 11.

Scripture: Psalm 122 and Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:36-44

There’s a certain exotic comfort in imagining what it might be like to see the Second Coming of Christ, and I appreciate the opportunity the lectionary affords us each Advent to dabble in that esoterica of doomsday, Armageddon scenarios. One of our Wednesday morning bible study fellows and her sister said they have a relative like this: they say, whatever the reality of her life at the moment, she is living in doom. Garrison Keillor said last night on his radio show A Prairie Home Companion that Advent was for his family, never a time of hope and expectation connected to the cradle and the manger; but a chance to anticipate the terror and cataclysm of the Rapture (that is, rapture for ME and cataclysm for YOU) and the Last Days of the Second Coming of Christ. Many, I suspect, hold a conviction that Christ will come again…but how or why or when, is of little or no concern to the day to day business of being a person of faith in a complicated and chaotic world. Whether you believe in it or not, I will say this: the notion that the Second Coming of Christ will be a sudden, cataclysmic, and global event—whether impossible to predict or as sure as the turning of the century—lets church of Jesus Christ off the hook –freed from the responsibility for expectation implied in the teaching of Jesus in the twenty-fourth chapter of the gospel of Matthew, when he says, therefore you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Doomsday scenarios aside, manufacturing a sense of expectation in the coming presence of God is not an easy matter, in the season of Advent or anytime. We’re used to life the way it is. God is less an unexpected visitor—or even invader—than a familiar part of our spiritual scenery, a spiritual safety net under our ordinary days, reserved for extraordinary moments of need. Advent seems less a time of spiritual preparation than the onset of a frantic season of partying and shopping, accompanied by a dull sense of dissatisfaction—that somehow we have been missing the point all along. For what are we supposed to be getting ready? And why should we bother? Yesterday morning, working on the roof of a church in Ft. Pierce with others from our congregation, I pounded nails and wondered aloud—what do you think all this might have to do with Advent. One looked up at me and said—when’s Advent? Another, more practically than I might have imagined, said: Advent is like wondering when we’re ever going to get off this roof, pulling tiles, and go have lunch. That was a new metaphoric possibility for me, and I fleshed it out, incarnate, as I continued to pull nails: Advent as a season of tedious expectation; boring, repetitive work followed by a brief, quickly digested payoff, the timing of the whole mess dictated by the whims of an obsessive, but not necessarily too attentive, pastor. Ouch. I decided it was time for Christmas—I mean, lunch.

I want you to try an experiment with me for the next few moments. Close your eyes, and, just for the next few minutes, empty your mind and spirit of any distractions.

Forget what you think you know about this passage of scripture, dismiss what you believe or don’t believe about the Second Coming of Christ, set aside what you believe it is trying to teach you, and just listen…listen with an open mind, receiving whatever images come to you as the words wash over your ears, and through your spirit. Breathe deeply, and let the wind of God flow through your body as you breathe slowly in and out. Listen:

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 did you notice? What did you feel? What images came to you? Here is what I noticed: how did Noah get into a story about the Second Coming of Christ? What are his people doing here, eating and drinking and going about their business until the flood came and washed them all away? I thought about Noah, and here is what I saw: a flood, sweeping mud and debris and raging water through the villages of Haiti, shell-shocked survivors wading through the wreckage of Gonaives. Teenagers, shot to death in their dorm room in China. Statistics in the pages of the Miami Herald earlier this week: the death tolls from hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne. You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

We would like to believe that we are ready: living buffered by the affluence of the first world, covered by insurance, secure in our gated neighborhoods, on the receiving end of a regular paycheck, surrounded by family and friends, people of faith. But the world is closer than it used to be, and it grows harder and harder to believe that we will always be safe. We do not know the day, the hour, or the way that God will visit us, or perhaps someone, or something else. 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 hurricane, a mudslide, a volcanic eruption, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, or cancer. Something impersonal, and unfair, and disturbingly random. It could happen to us, as easily as it happened to a family in Haiti. It does happen to us. Two women are working: one gets sick, the other doesn’t. Two men show up every day, do their work as competent professionals: one gets laid off, the other, promoted.

We hear the words of Jesus in a new way, don’t we, surrounded by these strong and immediate images? Suddenly we can see it: this is not about the “Second Coming,” far off and apocalyptic–no, not at all. It is about life, the way life is for us and for others, and about what, if anything we can do about it. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know the day or the hour. Trying to master the formula for the End Times won’t do it. Eating broccoli and cutting down on saturated fats won’t do it. Stuff happens, and there’s nothing to do about it, except to attend seriously the words of Jesus: be ready.

What does it mean for us to be ready? To stay awake, anticipating the knock at the door, the phone call at two a.m., the breaking of glass, the roaring of wind, the doctor’s words, I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do.

I know my first response is truly to keep awake—that is, to lie awake at night, worrying about what might happen, wishing there was something I could do to protect myself and those I love more fully. There are times I have lain awake at night, and times that you have, as well. Maybe if I had done this—what if I tried that—if only I had known…what if… But that is not what Jesus meant. More anxiety will not make us ready. Fear is not preparation. Lying awake is not the same as keeping awake.

To live as those who are ready for the coming of the Son of Man means, in the season of Advent and in every season, to live as those who are paying attention. To live intentionally, attentively. 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? Was all the time you put into your work, your worrying, your exercising, your arguing, your wishing, worthwhile? Could that time have been used more happily? More usefully? Wonder whether you can do better, now that you have been reminded of the fragility and the preciousness of life? What about the time you have here, now? Keep awake, be ready.

To experience Advent is to know that the presence of God is just around the corner, and in our midst. To know that the spirit of God is available to help you live every moment with your eyes opened wide, intentionally, fully. We are not always gifted with knowing how and when. We do not always have more time to get ready. We do have right now, and that is all we have—all any of us has, really. To be an Advent people is to make now count: to be ready, to be awake, to live.

These past few weeks, I have been gifted with a rare opportunity to see what it might be like to try to pay better attention, to be ready for the ways God is trying to come to me. I have been trying to attend to the preciousness of life, attempting to stay awake in case it becomes necessary that I should be ready. There have been catastrophes and hurts and sudden endings in some of our lives. Others of us have faced bad news, and are waiting for outcomes…diagnoses, treatments, relapse, recovery. Let me tell you that you are amazing people. Honest. Faithful, in acknowledging that such things happen to some of us, to each of us, now and again: noting: I have not been unfairly singled out. Things happen, and this time, it happened to me. Resilient, and willing, for the most part, to share with the community, with this community, what is happening and what they need to get through it. Not all people “live in doom” in these ways, trusting each other, being honest with themselves and God. Witnessing these moments, I realize how much I want to be awake in every moment to the deep significance of how we live our days. I am continually amazed how they, how you, have been awake. And I have been thinking how easy it is to take our lives as baptized Christians for granted, and our families, and our God, and ourselves. When, if we are ready, if we are awake, life is an advent, an unfolding, a gift. Let us pray. O God, who yearly maketh us glad with the remembrance of thy son, so help us that, as we willingly receive him at his Advent, we may also joyfully welcome him when he shall come to be our judge. Amen

Note for Christ the King Sunday:

In response to recent headlines in the Miami Herald and the NY Times that detail actions of the Presbyterian Church, USA and suggest, not without reason, that Presbyterian Christians, responding to events in the Middle East with somewhat careless disregard for our status as neighbors and strangers in a conflict not our own; and supporting ”Messianic Jewish” congregations here at home a question was referred by the local head of the NCCJ regarding the concern of Jewish colleagues that Presbyterian Christians might be anti-Semitic. Would I, a Presbyterian Christian community leader and clergy, be willing to take the risk to dialogue with my colleagues on these matters? He would try to find someone to speak with me who would be gentle and respectful in dialogue….as if I might be affronted, or anxious, at the possibility of sharing hard conversation with a neighboring religious tradition.

It reminded me of the comment of a rabbi friend, when asked by some interns, what is the NCCJ? It used to be a Christian-Jewish dialogue group, but they changed the name because we don’t really have dialogue anymore—

Next, a sermon heard at a local Presbyterian gathering, by a respected colleague who is “coming out” as an evangelical, and shared his unapologetic perspective: “we take a cautious view of interfaith relationships. We do not affirm that other paths are equally valid ways to God.”

Thus we come to the final Sunday of the church year, the conclusion of the story which began with Advent, the season of anticipation of the coming of Jesus: the Sunday called Christ the King.  Christ the King? Oh, we’ve just done away with that, averred a most progressive clergy friend of mine when we spoke on the phone yesterday, I just can’t believe in it anymore. My friend is not alone, I think: indeed, the Church itself, sensing this discomfort with the notion of absolute power that rides piggyback on the shoulders of the word “King,” has with immense sensitivity and political correctness renamed this Sunday The Reign of Christ. Which, I guess, is supposed to make us look less supremacist when we celebrate what is, baldly put, a Sunday designed to celebrate the eventual triumph of the Christian faith over the entire world. A quick survey of the hymns penned for this illustrious occasion remind us what it’s still, really, all about: Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne: hark, how the heavenly anthem drowns all music but its own. All hail the power of Jesus’ name, let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown him Lord of All. Jesus shall reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run. Hail to the Lord’s anointed. Rejoice, the Lord is king…Christ the King? The Reign of Christ? By any other name, it still says this: we don’t want to end up losers, footnotes in a history book, a forgotten dream, crumbling into dust and ruins.

Christ the King. I get why my friend wants to pretend it doesn’t exist…but the fact is, it does. Like the elephant in the living room we politely ignore, the idea of Christ the King has dominated the church’s silent reveries, sustained its will in times of oppression , undergirded its self-justification in countless wars of religion—and in the end, shaped and distorted our believing and the practice of our faith in ways we can only hope to address if we begin to admit how much we really want to be God’s winners.

Each year, the scripture texts dished up for the Sunday of Christ the King trot out a smorgasbord of images designed to remind the church that, although the church of Jesus may be weak now, someday, we’ll get ours, and everybody will see things our way. Readings from the Hebrew Scriptures caress the royal ideology of the dynasty of David: the dream that it was God, not human beings, who selected the boy David, put him on the throne, and perpetuated the dynasty founded in his blood. Pairing these texts with scriptures from the gospels, we are meant to understand that the reign of the risen Christ is the true successor to David’s divinely mandated rule. We are intended to see that although Jesus himself said my kingdom is not of this world, (and refused to entertain the notion that he was in any way to be considered a king) that God himself will, in the end, subject everything and everyone in the world to the Lordship of this long-dead Palestinian Jewish teacher whom we call Jesus the Christ.

From such theologies—unexamined and unremarked—come the questions I still receive from every confirmation class, even in this pluralistic, post-Christian place and time: will people who have never heard of Christ still go to hell? Are Jews going to get to heaven? What about Buddhists? Muslims? Pagans? Does God love them? Or just us?

From such theologies comes the Holocaust. The endless, hurtful stumbling among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim middle eastern neighbors over whose ideology, whose God, claims the right to dominate the destiny of the others’, and their worshippers. The smug assurances that Christmas, Easter, even Sunday—ought to be protected holidays, sacrosanct, because they’re our holy days.

What we want to believe about our faith, about our lives, about our people—shapes the way we look at others, and the way we live in the world. A man I respected as a great amateur historian specializing in the period of the United States’ westward expansion shocked me one day with his impassioned defense of Manifest Destiny and the American Way of Life which, as he said, made our decimation of the Native American population of this country justifiable: we offered them a better way of life, and they refused to accept it. Christ the King.

Our vision of ourselves—however idealized—determines our relationships, and controls what we do, what we see, and how much we are able to change and grow. If you’ll pardon the militaristic metaphor, our faith in Christ the King is a double-edged sword. If our comprehension that Christ—and his Way—is OUR way, we might live in a manner that causes us to be in the world reflecting the path of Christ: the path of loving neighbors and enemies, seeking justice and mercy, following the teachings of Jesus and a way that recognizes God’s interest and God’s judgment and mercy over the world and the world’s creatures. We might enact a faith practice that believes in engagement, not withdrawal, from the worries and the ways of the world: and our faith, thus practiced, might genuinely cause the name of Christ to be a Light to all peoples…as we reflect it, not dominating, but serving the human family. But the opposite edge of that sword is a way of believing in Christ, the Only Way, that blinds us to the possibility that there are other ways besides ours, other answers; and that our way of walking in the world with others is not to be triumphal, but rather, neighborly. From these assumptions of a Triumphant Global Savior come political ideologies that propel a people, even a nation, into wars of cultural dominance; presumptions of pre-emptive engagement in the affairs of nations that assume, that presume without question that our way, our God, should be and must be everyone’s way.  We are seeing the tragic payoff of this way of believing not only in the subtle assumptions that undergird our own engagement in the world’s affairs, but in the mighty struggles between like religious ideologies of all three of the worlds’ great monotheistic traditions, traditions that should be brother and sister expressions, but are increasingly manifesting as deadly opponents. We who see the crucified One as yielded King, whose kingdom is not of this world, must begin to find ways to open a conversation, speak a different way, articulate a faith that lives in communion, not in conflict, with others.

How many of you have been to a funeral where the officiating clergy and eulogists described a person so perfect, so astounding in every way that the image being created of the dearly departed bore no resemblance whatsoever to the living, breathing, deeply flawed human being whose life you had come to honor? Hearing such a eulogy, did you feel surprised? Cheated of your more complicated, nuanced memories?  Robbed of the chance to grieve what had been left unfinished, unsaid, and imperfect, and feeling slightly guilty that your own view was so, well, ambivalent? Christ the King thinking wants us to practice a faith that is wrapped up, finished, triumphant—if not now, then, well, someday soon, darn it.

Christ the King thinking doesn’t want us to remember that Jesus died, a criminal on a Roman cross, and his followers all ran away and hid, because they were terrified. Christ the King thinking doesn’t want us to look too closely at the Jesus who made a vocation of his association with losers, whores, dishonest professionals, invisible people and failures. And who demanded that his followers do the same. Christ the King thinking would have us believe that a little sacrifice, a tiny bit of time in the trenches, a nod and a wink at the cross, will entitle us to glory evermore in the sweet by-and-by.

Would have us believe that it will all turn out for our side in the end…when we have no reason, really, to believe that that’s the way God will write it. Christ the King presumes the triumphant ending of a story that we have scarcely begun, ourselves, to write with our hearts and our lives. We need to remember the Sunday of Christ the King, if only to admit to ourselves once in a while, that we are ever prone to want our ends neatly tied up, our answers firmly in place, and the successful end of the story understood before we undertake to write it with our lives.

I read a book recently—a story set near the turn of the last century featuring a strong, educated, unmarried woman as its central character. As the story unwound itself, she held romantic interest in two intelligent, successful, professional men. Women of that era were supposed to get married. She was a strong, a likeable, a desirable woman. Whom would she choose? Which one would make her happy? First one man, then the other loomed preeminent. As the final pages turned, the murder was resolved, the supporting characters took their hats and handbags and departed the scene—and still we were not told: where would Louisa’s heart find a home? Astonished, I learned of the departure of her beaux and their continued unmarried status—turned the final pages of the book and read: one last time I breathe deep the sweet scents of fresh-cut grass and thickly laden trees. Then I turn toward home and school—an unassuming, unremarkable woman in a high-collared navy blue dress, a blank slate upon which anyone might write anything whatsoever. ^[1] How much of her “blank slate” had I overwritten with my unexamined expectation that this love story must end with a formula? How much character, what intricate details, what fascinating pathways did I skim right past, because of the formulaic assumptions I made?

It is Christ the King. How many assumptions does our faith in the stories of Jesus cause us to make about the way things will all come out, in the end? How many opportunities are we missing, hurtling past chances with our eyes firmly fixed on a predetermined, glorious destination? How much are we willing to lose of ourselves, in our relationships, by relying on what we know to be true about them, about us, using all our energy to ignore or explain away evidence that does not support our presumed verdict?

How much more satisfying, in the end, to view our lives as an Advent—a time of coming and becoming—in which, in company with the humble mystery that was Jesus of Nazareth, we walk a path toward God as blank slates upon which the Spirit of God, and we, God’s children, might write anything whatsoever. Amen.

^[1] City of Lights

It seemed like a good idea at the time: to turn out the friendly lights that shine from the peak of our cabin into the night, to go out through the darkness of our woods, to stand in the meadow and look, unfettered by light, at the beauty of the stars. And so we went, the girl and I hand in hand, down the path from our door into the great open space… and when the memory of light had faded from our eyes, there they were: Stars, so many more than we had imagined, so piercing in their beauty, so vast.

It seemed like a good idea at the time: to turn out the friendly lights that shine from the peak of our cabin into the night, to go out through the darkness of our woods, to stand in the meadow and look, unfettered by light, at the beauty of the stars. And so we went, the girl and I hand in hand, down the path from our door into the great open space… and when the memory of light had faded from our eyes, there they were: Stars, so many more than we had imagined, so piercing in their beauty, so vast. We stood for a moment thus: awed, rejoicing. And then it seemed we heard breathing in the night. Not our own, we understood at once, but something larger, more menacing, invisible in the night yet closer than nightmare, waiting with sharp teeth and curved claws in the hungering dark. As one, we turned: the stars faded, our feet hammered like drumbeats in the dark as we fled, hand in hand, back up the path and home into the Light.

We are still afraid of the Dark. Sirens howl in the night, and we come awake, startled, wondering—whose turn is it now? Another embassy is blown up, the smoking ruins a too-familiar sign of the times. Thanksgiving afternoon at dusk, 16 year old Denzel Smith of North Miami Beach, turned at the top of a stairwell, a BB gun in his hand. In the hungering dark, fear rose between the boy and the men who had been called; a shot rang out, and the boy fell. Everybody loved him, his brother said, he always knew how to make people laugh. A friend added, hethought he was going to be a kid forever. But Denzel didn’t get to, and neither did we… for each day’s headline and every night’s anxieties add the burden of years to our souls.

It is Advent again. Longing for the comfort of the womb where the Christ has been born to save the world, we read the bible and are future-shocked by its grim assertion that Christ’s advent has not trumped the powers and principalities of evil, abroad in the world. That was then… and this is now. We are in the same story, the same recurring dream where everything starts out so well, yet turns out so badly. There will be distress among nations. There will be signs in the heavens. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming on the world…

The people of Luke’s time lived these words during the Roman siege of Jerusalem and Palestine. And we are living them now… not only sitting in church on a sunny morning in November, but huddled in a small house on the outskirts of Baghdad, or sweating in a tent in the desert, far from family and home. We are shivering under the interstate; reading the overdraft notice with dread; fingering a gas mask in a bunker somewhere; lighting a candle for another child, killed by mischance and fear. Week after week, as we lift our small voices in prayer for the victims of the AIDS pandemic in Africa, for wounded possibilities for peace in Israel and Palestine, the life of a friend with cancer, a way out of terrorism into a just peace. We know that our lives, and the lives of those we love, are shielded from the night by the thinnest of membranes, and sometimes, not at all… and we are still afraid. But… Jesus can see in the dark.

When you see these things,he said, you know, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, but be alert at all times. Stand up and raise your heads, for your redemption is drawing near.

Raiseyour heads? Honestly, this is not my first instinct, nor, I suspect, any of yours. When I was a child, I dreaded gym class, with its perky insistence that year by year, an hour a day could make us proficient in sports and healthy, productive American citizens. I particularly hated anything involving a ball and a ball field. Inevitably, I was chosen last by the cheerleader types who headed each team… and trudged, head down, into the outfield where my humiliation might be witnessed, hopefully, only by passing truckers or the other losers to the right and left of me. The course of the game would pass while I kicked at the dirt and grass, worrying and wishing it would all be over, longing for physics or English class where I could kick some cheerleader butt. On a good day, nothing came near. But there were other days, when the shouts of the teacher and the jeers—or was it the encouragement? — of my classmates urged me to lift up my head, and catch the stupid ball. I rarely did. But now I think I might have, if I had looked up a little more often, kept my mind on the game instead of weighing it down with worry, tried to work with my teammates instead of going it alone.

We have a choice. Above the fold of this past Friday’s paper is one — the choice Jesus described as being weighed down with dissipation and worry. ‘Ready! Set! Shop! “I’m spending more.” accompanies a picture of people hurrying to buy, fleeing the dark with the stuff of this world. We can dissipate our energies, distract ourselves, and when the bills come in next month, it will still be dark outside. Or — we can lift up our heads, and practice for the kingdom. In the same paper, though below the fold, in the small print, an article describes Deliver the Dream, a company that provides donated getaways for families struggling with serious illness; and pages in lesser sections invite us to consider our spirituality and our philanthropy during this holiday season. Lift up your heads, said Jesus. The world’s not changing, but you can change the way you live in it.

Every circumstance is an opportunity for redemption.

The dark is not going anywhere soon. And neither are we. And that is why it must be Advent again: because we can’t just go at the kindom once in a while, bumping in the backfield and praying for better days, if we ever hope to be proficient at being Christ’s light in the world. We need to practice, to tell the story, to keep our heads up, to be wary of the worry and the yielding to whatever dissipation dujour entices us, whether food or shopping or drink or sleep or cocooning in front of the tv. We need to get out into the dark and keep our heads up, if Christ is to be born among us now and again.

In Madeleine L’Engle’s classic book A Wrinkle in Time,two children and their friend embark on a search for their vanished scientist father. Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin are accompanied by three mysterious Beings, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Who. Preparing them for their search, a Medium shows them the way of the world in her crystal ball:

She seemed to see an enormous sweep of dark and empty space, and then galaxies swinging across it. “Your own Milky Way,” Mrs. Whatsit whispered to Meg.

For a moment there was the darkness of space, then another planet. The outlines of this planet were not clean and clear. It seemed to be covered with a smoky haze. Through the haze Meg thought she could make out the familiar outlines of continents like pictures in her Social Studies books. “Is it because of our atmosphere that we can’t see properly?” she asked anxiously. “No, Meg, yyou know thattt itt iss nnott tthee attmosspheeere,” Mrs. Which said. “Yyou mmusstt bee brrave.”

“It’s the Thing!” Charles Wallace cried. “It’s the Dark Thing we saw… when we were riding on Mrs. Whatsit’s back!” “Did it just come?” Meg asked in agony, unable to take her eyes from the sickness of the shadow which darkened the beauty of the earth. Mrs. Whatsit sighed. “No, Meg. It hasn’t just come. It has been there for a great many years. That is why your planet is such a troubled one.” “I hate it!” Charles Wallace cried passionately. “I hate the Dark Thing!” Mrs. Whatsit nodded. “Yes, Charles dear. We all do.” “But what is it?” Calvin demanded. “We know that it’s evil, but what is it?” “Yyouu hhave ssaidd itt!” Mrs. Which’s voice rang out. “Itt iss Eevill. Ittiss thee Ppowers of Ddarrkknessss!” “But what’s going to happen?” Meg’s voice trembled. “Oh, please, Mrs. Which, tell us what’s going to happen!” “We will continue tto ffight!” Something in Mrs. Which’s voice made all three of the children stand straighter, throwing back their shoulders with determination, looking at the glimmer that was Mrs. Which with pride and confidence. “And we’re not alone, you know, children,” came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. “All through the universe it’s being fought, all through the cosmos… and some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it’s a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy.

“Who have some of our fighters been?” Calvin asked. “Oh, you must know them dear,” Mrs. Whatsit said. Mrs. Who’s spectacles shone out at them triumphantly, “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” “Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why, of course, Jesus!” “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They’ve been lights for us to see by.” “Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?” “And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!” Now Calvin’s voice rang with confidence. “And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis!” “Watch!” the Medium told them. The earth with its fearful covering of dark shadow swam out of view and they moved rapidly through the Milky Way. And there was the Thing again. Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. “You see!” the Medium cried, smiling happily. “It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!”[1]

And it is. Lift up your hearts, lift up your heads, catch the ball, practice Advent, see in the dark. You are a city set on a hill, whose light cannot be hid. said Jesus, and he believed it. It is the breath of God surrounding you in the dark, breathing a blessing of life over our fear: be not afraid. liftup your heads, for your redemption is drawing near.

[1] Madeleine L’Engle, AWrinkle in Time, pp 86-92.