1 ADVENT, YEAR B

SERMON PREACHE3D AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY

30 NOVEMBER 2008

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Isaiah 64:1-9; Ps. 80:1-7, 16-18; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…!”

Isaiah’s cry to God. His people had suffered way too much in their exile.

Where are you, God? Why are you hiding when we need you? Look at us! “You have hidden your face from us.” Isaiah was living in terrible times as he pleaded as the voice of his people.

Jesus, in today’s gospel, was living in hard times, too, his own people oppressed by the Roman occupiers and their Jewish pals. Jesus had every reason to believe that things would soon come to a head, even that the Temple, the center of Jewish religious life, would fall, stone upon stone upon stone.

For the gospel writer, Mark, writing forty years after Jesus’ death, the terrible times Jesus had predicted were actually happening. The Temple WAS destroyed, Jerusalem and much of Israel was sacked and the people killed or scattered. It was a time of horrible suffering and darkness. Life as the Jews had known it was changed forever.

We, too, live in a hard time. Violence, world-wide economic chaos, and for individual families, ongoing or sudden struggles. You can name them……

“O God, would that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

There will be a day, of course, a day of a final coming. The New Testament is absolutely clear about that. We can count on it. Jesus himself talked about that day. But in today’s gospel reading, Jesus was also addressing his own particular historical situation, the ominous times which seemed like the end of time, but which, he said, were not the end but the beginning of a new age. Jesus admitted that he had no idea when that final day would come, although like most Jews of his day he no doubt thought it might be fairly soon. Jesus’ warning had to do with now, not a preoccupation with the end time. Keep going, by keeping awake, he said,  and paying attention.

Decades later, Mark the gospel writer was still waiting for the end time. And still that day hadn’t come. Meanwhile there was work to be done. Like Jesus, Mark warned about over-speculating about that last day. Look out for false prophets, false messiahs, says Mark as Jesus’ mouthpiece. Don’t fall in with them. Don’t go along with the popular mood of the day, the “generations,” which means the current culture.  Don’t side with the rebels to retaliate and prolong the war with the Romans. In fact, don’t make war. Instead, keep awake, pay attention. Keep going.

And what about ourselves, centuries and centuries later? What about our own struggles as we contemplate the end of time?

There’s a word for us, too, in Mark’s gospel. Jesus’ word, Mark’s word tells us, too, to pay attention and keep awake. Our hard times can also be a time of new beginning. A time to begin a new way of life, not over-contemplating and brooding about the end of history, and not getting sucked into the current culture around us but to begin paying attention to how we live right this minute. Our ongoing way of life. We are people of the Way, after all.  “Way” implies a journey, a process. How can we prepare ourselves for the “end” if we don’t first concentrate on “now?”  The Way, which we are called upon to follow?

In Advent we look to Jesus’ two comings, both at the end of time and at his birth. Both. What a strange thing we do as Christians! No wonder many Christians would rather pay attention at Advent merely on Jesus’ first coming, the Christmas story. (But you know, only two of the four gospels have accounts of that first coming. Mark and John don’t mention it at all.)

David and I are happily getting ready for Katherine’s and her husband Adrian’s visit at Christmas. We are shoveling out their room in preparation, clearing out the clutter that gets dumped in there in between visits. Some of it will get stored in the attic; but there’s a lot that can be cast aside. Making room for Katherine and Adrian is our project.

Making room. What a metaphor for Advent---not merely making room for Jesus at Christmas but making room within ourselves as a way of being attentive and watchful and mindful followers of the Way of Jesus in our lives!

Watching and waiting not simply for Jesus in the manger or Jesus the Christ at the end of time but Jesus the risen Christ in our lives even now. The One who is here in the midst of our chaos, who is here all along. Jesus, who doesn’t get rid of our despair and anxiety but who, rather, gives us the courage to face our despair and our anxiety. The One who encourages us to be alert and to pay attention to the signs that are all around us, even now, of his presence among us: in every glorious strain of music, in each smile that flashes our way, in the meals we share with friends and family, in every new day that we wake up to, in every act of forgiveness, in every birth, even in the passing of every human soul from this life into the arms of a welcoming God.

Pay attention to it all, says Jesus, be alert. Keep going. The signs of Jesus’ coming are all around us even now.

T.S. Eliot suggests that those signs are only hints and guesses, hints followed by guesses. The rest, for us, for our living right now, is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action…..a way of life pursued faithfully to the end.