Do you sense the irony of Advent? We are to begin our personal preparation for everything the coming of the Lord means, as somehow we recover from the season of Thanksgiving, only to be Black Friday-ed to Christmas.
We are preparing all right. We are trying to figure out how we will get the family together this year. We are needing to know what is on everyone’s Christmas list. We are worried how we will find time to clean the house and cook cinnamon breads and pecan tassies, or whatever it is we make just for Christmas. The sheer weight of the preparation directed at Thanksgiving and now to Christmas leaves little, if any, time for preparing for the coming of the Lord. Or, is it just me.
In the midst of our hectic holiday preparation Marks gospel message to us is this, ‘keep awake.’ Keep awake. Seriously. We are so tired we fall into bed and cannot will ourselves to fall asleep. So, here we are this morning. Tired and just a little bit cranky. Or, is it just me.
Mark really does paint a pretty harsh picture of our coming future. The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give us light, the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken. The Son of Man comes in the clouds with great power and glory and the angels begin to gather his elect from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. I would say from these accounts creation is pretty well done and only our judgment awaits us.
It sounds like Mark is wedging into these holidays has story of the coming of the end of the world and of human history. The Greek word for this is apocalypse. It’s translated as an uncovering or revealing of the end of the world.
On the other hand, Mark’s gospel insists the message to us is one of comfort and hope. When we see these things, we need to know a rebirth is coming. A transformation is on the way. A change to fulfill the words of the Lord is upon us. This rebirth foretells the second coming of our Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.
We may wonder, why didn’t Mark just say so! Why all this end of the world as we know it stuff? We can breathe a little easier now. Better things are to come.
Of course, before we become too relaxed, Jesus tells us only the Father, God in heaven, knows the day or hour for Jesus’ return. And lest we forget, Jesus will return for the judgment and the gathering of his elect.
So, beware and keep alert is the gospel message this morning. Be aware and be alert. The doorkeeper for the Lord is commanded to be on watch. Therefore, keep awake, or we may be found asleep when Jesus comes. His coming will be sudden. And what is said to us is said to all: Keep awake.
We do sense there is more at play here. Jesus is calling us to be more than just awake. Being awake alone requires nothing more than just not being asleep. Instead, our state of wakefulness must be filled with living. Let us be careful, however, that the living we fill our life with is on the surface and in the depths more than rote, scripted meaningless formality. More than Thanksgiving gatherings and Black Fridays. If our joy is found only in the events, milestones, or miscellaneous trappings of our life, we may need this Advent season more than we realize.
We come into this world not knowing much. We spend our lifetime trying to figure out the facts of life, the meaning of life, trying to learn how to live in the real world. Early on, things are not too complicated for us. Food, clothing, shelter, a dry diaper, a full belly, a warm bed to sleep in.
Later, when we mature, we discover there are boundaries to what we call the facts, the truth, the world as it is. That is when complications arise. We discover our world view is limited. Limited to where and when and with whom we are raised.
This limit becomes obvious when we journey outside our boundaries. We no longer find ourselves to be like everyone we know. We discover a place or truth or awareness or person who could never fit in and be like everyone we know. This is when we have our first glimpse of the possibility of something else, something new, something different about life.
We should always wonder and never think we have known all there is to know. We should ask. What else is there? What is possible? What may be new and different about life? What other way is there to live?
If, like Jack, we climb up the beanstalk, and find a world ruled by a giant, good or evil, would we come down the beanstalk any different than when we went up? I dare say we would!
If we then wonder, why me Lord, consider instead, why NOT me Lord? Why do we think life can be filled with predictable and scripted living without regard for the possibility of something more?
The truth of this morning’s gospel is this, life cannot wait for us to discover or be discovered for something more. We know judgment is coming. During advent this message comes to us loud and clear. Someone new is coming into our lives.
In preparing us for the coming of God in human form, God calls out the major players to get our attention. And what a better, if unwelcome, wake-up call than Isaiah proclaiming in 64:6 that “we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” And then God sends us Jesus.
Advent means preparing ourselves to celebrate not only the birth of Jesus but his second coming too. Life cannot wait for us to come to terms with our un-righteous righteous deeds. We know not the hour or the day!
Think, therefore, of Advent as a glorious ‘in between’ time. A time between one event that has already happened, the first coming, the birth of the Messiah, and another event yet to happen, a second coming. A time for possibilities understood and real change. It is a time for transformation. For cleansing our filthy cloth. Advent wakes us to a rebirth, a rebirth through a life of change brought about by the Holy Spirit and our entrance into the eternal family of God in the judgment of the second coming.
How then do we, as the church and as followers and friends of Jesus, wait during this in-between time? I’m not sure. Clearly life does go on despite our questioning, our anxiety, or lack of preparedness. Do we just take it easy, kick back biding our time until judgment day? I think not.
The truth is it is hard to wait. The expected end time begins to dim in our minds, we loose the motivation, we do not feel the expectant excitement or worry that the time is near. We do not know the day or time like we did for Thanksgiving and like we do for Christmas.
In our waiting malaise we may even forget what we are waiting for. When we’ve been waiting for something a long while, it can be difficult to continue living with expectancy.
Expectancy of what, we wonder. We certainly have experienced reliving Jesus’ birth through the centuries. How then do we go from this known event, Jesus’ birth celebrated at Christmas, to an unknown event, his second coming and judgment? Again, I’m not sure.
We do not have first-hand experience of such a coming. Yet, how we wait is important. How we wait becomes our link with expectancy. It does matter what we do during the ‘in-between’ time. If not to us, then to Jesus.
Ruth Patterson sees this in-between time as a threshold time, a thin time, as if the veil between what we see and touch and know and the unseen world of wonder, of spiritual reality, is very fine and at any moment could be lifted. Perhaps knowing this, that the veil will be lifted at any moment, is just the thread we need to keep us guessing how we should live right now.
Patterson suggests we consider one of two waiting ways. One passively the other passionately. Passive waiting seems safest but there is something to consider in passionate living.
It is easy to know what we are passionate about. If we simply look at our life and be honest with ourselves about those things we do again and again, those things we cannot leave alone, those things we spend most of our time with, we will know our passion. Do we have routines, habits, hobbies, or past times that keep our interest day after day, that keep us feeling alive? There lies our passion.
The expected passion for us Christians is to live passionately for Jesus Christ. In our routines, habits, hobbies and past times are we known to be in a relationship with Jesus? If we are waiting passionately, living in Christ, then we are going to stay alert and keep watch, ready to pick up any sign of what God is doing, and to join in, to cooperate with God. If we have a passion for God, then that passion must translate itself into a shared compassion for others, a yearning and an aching to see a world where justice and right relationships prevail, and a willingness to become makers rather than simply lovers of peace.
The title of Eugene Peterson’s book, “Christ plays in ten thousand places,” comes from a poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins called, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.” It ends with these words:
For Christ plays in ten thousand
Places,
Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes
Not his
To the Father through the features
Of men’s faces.
In this poem we here that Christ plays through the limbs and the eyes of our faces. Christ plays through us. As we play, Christ plays. We have become Jesus’ passion.
Peterson’s book is about spiritual theology. Theology is the attention we give to God, knowing God is revealed in the Scriptures and in Jesus Christ. Spiritual is the insistence that everything that God reveals is capable of being lived by ordinary people passionately.
When we are living our Christian ‘in-between’ time we would benefit from joining our revealed knowledge of God with the practical knowledge that what God reveals is to be lived by each of us in Christ-like passion. For Peterson, spiritual theology is the attention we give to the details of living life in the way of Christ.
This is how we are to live during this time in-between Jesus’ first birth and his second coming. Living because of God, living in and with God, living to the glory of God.
Peterson says, “The end of all Christian belief and obedience, witness and teaching, marriage and family, leisure and work life, preaching and pastoral work is the living of everything we know about God.”
Christ, the God-revealing Christ, is always ‘playing’ in all of life. Christ plays in creation, in history, and in the continuing community of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord Jesus Christ’s desire is for you and me and everything around us to get in on the playfulness of living in relationship with Christ.
With this truth before us, every day is Advent. We are on the threshold of so much. God is pointing to countless doors of opportunity to share his good news. God has equipped us for these opportunities with every spiritual gift we need as we live and wait for the return of Jesus. So, there are no excuses for our malaise, our forgetfulness, our falling asleep or for giving up any hope of Christ’s return.
Jesus entreats us this morning, in his absence, to be on the watch. To be on the watch filled all the while with passionate living. A passionate living that helps us to truly be Advent people, to live as we have been called to live, to make special preparations to welcome the Beloved, for maybe, just maybe, he will come earlier than we expect. Maybe, just maybe Jesus will come to us today and reveal his love for us, looking for our passionate love in return.
Be therefore awake, dear ones, be awake.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit one God now and forever. Amen 112711.gpc
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