Waking Up to Hope
DATE: November 30, 2008
SCRIPTURE:
Mark 13:24‐37
When you’re a pastor, people often forward you religiously themed e‐mails. Some of them get quickly deleted. Some of them are quite good. And occasionally they are even funny. I got one of the later this week.
It seems a Church School teacher is preparing her class to go into the sanctuary for worship. On the way she instructs them in appropriate behavior. At one point she asks: “And why is it important to be quiet in church?”
The class looks stumped, that is until one youngster’s face suddenly lights up. “I know,” he says, “It’s because people are sleeping!”
Of course folks falling asleep in church isn’t just the stuff of jokes.
Years ago when I served a parish in Maine, one of our Trustees was an older man named Jim. He was a dairy farmer who got up seven mornings a week at 3:30 to milk his herd.
Jim was a very faithful church attender. He always took one of the back pews by a window, where the sun came pouring in, warming the space even in the middle of winter. And every week, about halfway through the service, he fell asleep. Not of disrespect. Not out of lack of interest. He was simply exhausted—and church was the one time each week when he slowed down enough to rest.
While folks do occasionally fall asleep here at Saugatuck, no one is as regular about that as old Jim was. In fact, I suspect Lillian Daniel is right when she notes: “Most congregations do not need to be told to ‘keep awake’ during Advent… With all there is to get ready for the holidays nobody needs to us [that]… [T]his may instead be the season to pass out the sleeping pills or the chamomile tea, to a revved up, over caffeinated culture of busy‐ness.” (Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume I, 20)
But over caffeinated or not, every year, this reading from Mark, or one much like it, shows up on the First Sunday in Advent, urging us not to sleep, but rather to “Keep awake!”
So how are we to understand this passage? How is it that we should stay alert? What does it mean to keep awake?
One of my favorite comic strips is Lynn Johnston’s “For Better or For Worse.” It chronicles the life of a very typical family. In one strip from a number of years back, we see the mother, Elly, walking down the street at Christmas time with her young daughter, Elizabeth. They pass two or three store fronts: one with elves working away building toys, another with a sign that shouts “Santa’s Super Savings.” Little Elizabeth looks up at her mother and asks, “If Christmas is more about God than Santa… how come people talk more about Santa than God?” Her weary mother replies: “God does less advertising.”
She’s right. God does do less advertising. In fact, rather than trying to lure us with flash and glitter, God calls us to pay attention. To be alert. To keep awake. God calls us to use this time before Christmas that we call the Advent season for more than just baking and wrapping and looking for the best deal. God calls us to use this season to watch—to wait—to listen. Watch, wait and listen for the coming Messiah, the coming Christ.
You’d never guess that of course if you built your understanding of the season on the Sunday paper or a walk down Main Street. As Benedictine nun Joan Chittister notes; “The prominent Christmas message… the one that glitters from billboards and oozes out of Christmas advertising… is hardly that I must keep my eye out for the Coming of Christ. No the ads want me to keep my eye on me. I’m to spend the season deciding what things I’ll give and hinting at what things I’d like to get.” (Alternatives: 1989, 5) Even this year, when folks are being more frugal than ever, the emphasis is on ourselves. How can I save a buck? How can I make the most out of my shopping dollar? One shop window on Post Road, offering gift cards with purchases totaling a certain amount, even tries to sound biblical:. “Give” it says, “and You Shall Receive.”
Friends, the question we need to ask on this first Sunday of Advent is really quite simple. It is the same question we must ask ourselves each and every year at this time. Will we allow the glitz and the glitter of the season to blind us? Will we allow the muzak in the malls to lull us asleep? Or, will we struggle to keep our eyes open so that we can see the coming Christ?
Our scripture lesson from Mark urges us to do the latter. No human being, says Jesus, knows when Christ will appear. You must be like the servant who is made the doorkeeper. Your job is to be ever alert, ever watchful, because you don’t know when Christ will appear “in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn…” (Mark 13:35b)
The point is simple: we never know when we might encounter Christ, so we must always be on the lookout, always ready. We must be ever vigilant. That is what Advent is all about: watching and waiting and listening for the Christ. It is about living in hope that Christ will come; that love will be made manifest.
The day after Thanksgiving stores around the country begin their pre‐Christmas sales in real earnest. It’s known as Black Friday, because historically retailers move out of the red and into the black, and begin to make a profit for the year.
Thrifty folks set their alarm clocks for early, early wake‐up times so that they might be first in line for the bargains du jour. Some even camp out the night before. This year just as the doors opened one man was even trampled to death by the crowds at a Wal‐Mart in New York.
But this year there was another name for Black Friday. An organization called Story Corps goes around the country with recording equipment and encourages folks to record their personal stories. Moms and Dads, tell their children how it was growing up. Friends tell each other about mutual interests. Elderly grandparents tell their grandchildren about the good old days. Since so many families spend time together over this long weekend, the people at Story Corps suggested Friday be celebrated as National Listening Day.
Friends, instead of being caught up in the hype of the season a la Black Friday, what if we really spent this Advent listening, and watching and waiting for the coming of Christ. Because Christ’s showing up all the time, all around us! We just need to wake up and see it! For the second coming of Christ is happening all the time and every day!
Earlier this month, Christ came again, when I got an e‐mail from a parishioner who offered to pick up the cost of any left over angel tree gift tags. And Christ came to the Coleytown Middle School last Wednesday, when kids struggling with all the challenges of becoming teenagers, presented checks totaling thousands of dollars that they had raised themselves to organizations like Make‐a‐Wish, Interfaith Housing and our own Thanksgiving Feast. And Christ came again on Thursday, right here in our basement, as dozens and dozens of folks gave up part or all of their own Thanksgiving to help feed folks who really needed a good meal and some good company. And later in the day Thursday, Christ came again, when three women committed themselves to making sure the Christmas Feast happens here this year. And yet again on Friday, Christ came in the form of a charge nurse named Cindy at my mother‐in‐law’s nursing home who had the long weekend off, but who showed up any way just to check‐in on the patients in her care and to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.
Sisters and brothers, Christ is coming again and again and again, and love is made known all the time, but we never know the day or the hour. He can show up in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow or at dawn. We can be asleep when it happens, or we can wake up to the hope all around us, each every day.
Amen.
John H. Danner