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December 2, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:11-14, Matthew 24:36-44
“A Waking, A Warning – the Dawning, the Twilight,
the Shadows of Life”
OK! That’s enough sleep! Especially before the sermon stars!! Time to
wake up! Wake all the way up! A very new time is at hand – a new church
year – the Advent adventure – first day of the rest of our lives! God is coming
– though we do not know yet when or where or how. And we are going – on a
spiritual journey through darkness and through light – for both are alike to our
God! Advent invites us to start again – embracing the whole of our lives in
the life of Jesus – whom we now await without knowing how.
There’s a Bible verse for each day of Advent starting today. Please read the
verse. Cut out the star, fix it to a window, a wall, a mirror, a mantle, a refrigerator!
Take part in the “Yellow Star Underground Conspiracy to Wait for Jesus.” We
are invited to find our own ways of waiting and watching for the real Jesus to be
born -- without all the distortions and distractions of the cultural Christmas crush
all around us! We identify and join ourselves with all who long and look for
signs of new life and light in whatever our darkness. We identify and join
ourselves as well with those on whom sudden darkness falls in the midst of everyday
life.
We hear in this gospel text’s waking and warning that no one – not even the angels,
not even Jesus himself! – no one knows the hour of God’s arrival to end the
world as we know it – the world as we have assumed it always was, and is, and will
be forever. We have lived through 9/11 and other acts of terror as random
and arbitrary as this flood in Noah’s time – plus tsunamis and Katrinas, earthquakes
and fires. Each one of us faces sudden, abrupt, unexpected and unintended
changes in our own lives and the lives of those we know and love.
We are, in the words of the text, almost literally in such times, “eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,” going about every kind of business as usual.
As with everyone else on the day that Noah entered the ark, we knew nothing of 9/11until
the planes struck and “swept them all away.” Any two of them might have been
workers together, side by side, one “taken,” one “left” – as workers
in Jesus’ text. “They” are such a cross-section of “us!” They are rich
and poor, gay and straight, younger and older – of all colors, languages, nations,
and creeds – bottom-floor workers and top-floor workers – those who work for huge
corporations and those who work for us, for the public. What an awesome and
absolute equality of all our possible “presences” before God – all trapped in the
very same darkness and light -- in the dawn, the twilight, the shadows of life.
Advent clearly means to wake us and warn us: God is no respecter of persons!
For all our pretenses to stand “over” one another, in whatever ways we can, either
we stand together, or we do not stand at all. No one of us is worth
more than any other. No one of us is worth less. Disaster is an equal
opportunity deployer of loss and grief. Yet, in all disbelief and denial,
all violation and vulnerability, we read to the end of the text. We ask, we
pray, we beg to be kept open, in faith, to the ever-promised, ever-present, ever-powerful
possibility that some assurance of new life, new living and new loving, is coming
– even now! In least expected of ways, least expected of times and places,
among least expected of peoples. Let there be lights! Light of the World!
Light within us.
A poet named Patrick Moran called 9/11 “the collapse of meaning / The assault on
symbols that cannot save us.” He wrote of moving from 9/11 “To the colder
season where darkness begs for light” and “When only altars can bear the ache and
longing / That permeate our waking hours and sleepless nights. / As days grow shorter,
it is then that people gather / In every tongue and race huddle to rekindle hope
/ The ancient songs and common symbols shared / Rekindle and return, whispered words
that reassert / God still dwells in or damaged circle / And love is still stronger
than death.” God still dwells in our damaged circle, and love is still
stronger than death.
Advent says purely, simply, God is not done with us yet! “The Son of Man,
that stunning future we resisted / Is coming then and now and once again,” adds
the poet. Thanks be to God! Yet another chance to become who we already
are! Again, as if for the very first time! To be the fully human species.
To be Christ-like when we are true to the Jesus whose life is about to start over
again in that same old story of unlikely light above so motley a manger. To
be no more, no less, than all other species need us to be! Swords into plowshares,
spears into pruning hooks, no longer lifting up weapons, no longer learning war
any more!
The poet calls this Advent moment “the surprising / Inevitability of his promised
presence in our time of need.” (Hear the return of this gospel text now!)
“’Like a thief in the night’ / Who breaks in upon our normalcy, the illusion we
are safe / And steals the ground beneath our feet.” Can I get a witness?
Jesus steals the very ground we always have stood on! No matter how many times
we’ve begun new church years! For as Paul reminds us, Salvation is even nearer
to us now (in all our struggle-seasoned cynicism!) than when we first believed (and
we so young and foolish!). Thank God, we are called to set aside at last,
in the freedom of all we’ve endured, anything that still makes us ashamed to be
fully revealed. We do not have to hide all the lights of our lives under bushels
or anywhere else! Thank God, we are called to put on the full armor of light,
of transparency --this very real life of the real Jesus whom we await all over again
on this day.
The very ground we have always stood on is gone! There is no “there” there
any more! We stand on new ground this Advent, or we do not stand at all.
Jesus instructs us on seeing beyond the obvious to the oblivious! To that
which seems so idealistic, abstract, irrelevant and unrelated to the harsh and painful
realities of ordinary everyday life. Jesus teaches us to live what we might
call “the everyday unexpected.” For the “ends” of our lives, our hopes, our
dreams, take disciplined effort to learn and discern. They take such time
and space as weekly worship and daily devotion mean to provide. I urge us
to practice both in these season. Give God a real chance to break into our
lives in new ways of living and loving. Stop! Look! Listen!
Wait! Hurry up and wait! Come together! Take time! Find
space! Center ourselves! Collect ourselves! Connect ourselves!
Break bread together! Be as a family together! But wait! Watch
for the signs of the light . . .
Hear the distinguished theologian Dr. Seuss in The Places We Go – from a
section about “the Waiting Place . . . for people just waiting” – like you and me!
Waiting for a train to go, or a bus to come,
or a plane to go, or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow, o waiting around
for a Yes or No, or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the dish to bite, or waiting for wind to fly a kite,
or waiting around for Friday night, or waiting, perhaps,
for their Uncle Jake, or a pot to boil, or a Better Break,
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants, or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
The poet calls us to Advent, to this “colder season where darkness begs for light.”
In fact, just before we get to “the Waiting Place,” Dr. Seuss says, “You will come
to a place where the streets are not marked. / Some window are lighted. But
mostly they’re darked.” Sounds like an Advent kind of a place to me!
Amen.
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