November 27, 2005 Keep Awake !
Sylvia W. Crouter Advent I 2005
Does this feel like New Year=s Day to you? Probably not !
You were probably not out last night celebratingY
out with the old year, in with the new.
It seems more like the countdown to Christmas.
But it is both.
The old Church year has ended
and today begins the new one.
It=s also the first of four Sundays leading up to
the coming of Christ among us
in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
Advent is also a time of self-examinationYsometimes called The Little Lent.
We look into our hearts, our minds, our lives,
preparing a manger for the Christ to enter in.
Where have we grown spiritually since Advent 2004?
Where have we been spiritually asleep, unaware, closed?
Both the Isaiah reading and the gospel reading from Mark
play into the theme of self-examination and awakening.
The Isaiah of chapter 64 is the last of several Isaiahs going by that name.
The first Isaiah, or the so-called Jerusalem Isaiah,
prophesied before defeat of the Jews and their deportation
to BabylonYthe Babylonian exile.
Isaiah warned of the catastrophe to come.
Our Isaiah of the 64th chapter has lived through the exile.
Like his fellow Jews he looks on their plight
as God=s punishment for their disobedience to God.
(Isa 64:5ff) He preaches, A But you [God] were angry and we sinned
Ywe have all become as one who is uncleanY
we fade like the leaf
and our iniquities like the wind take us away.@
This sense of guilt, of separation from God, of disaster deserved,
is very important in Jewish thinking 500 years before the birth of Jesus.
This post-exilic Isaiah begs God to hold back his anger,
AYou are our father; we are the clay and you are our potterY
do not be exceeding angry, O LordY
Now consider we are all your people@.
Five hundred years later, Jesus, sensing that the end is coming
for his life and ministry on Earth
speaks earnestly with his disciples.
He warns them of persecution to come,
and, speaking in apocalyptic images
he warns that nature itself will go berserk:
sun and moon darkened,
heaven itself shaken,
and it will be then when all is chaos,
when everything that anchors us to reality, to securityY
it will be then that the Son of Man will come in glory
gathering the people from the ends of the earth.
We understand this as that at the worst possible moment in our lives
that is when God will rush in and be all in all,
as Lynn preached some weeks ago,
we will know then the Afullness@ of God.
Can we 21th century people relate to the images of apocalyptic scripture?
The word, apocalypse, comes from the Greek apocalyptein, to uncover.
So apocalyptic writings show hidden truths
truths about the human condition and truths about the end times.
are poetic images that describe both our experience of the power of nature
and also our emotional life when chaos hits,
when we are in extremis.
And these images are not so long ago and far away or unreal, are they?
Think back over the last year:
Tsunami images of gigantic waves sweeping away hotels,
people, whole islands;
earthquakes burying whole communities,
over 70,000 deaths in the Kashmiri-Pakistan mtns;
war in the Middle East, suicide bombers,
an ancient religion, Islam, a sister religion springing from Abraham,
that religion highjacked by Islamo-fascists.
Shall I go on?
Deficits threatening our future,
avian flu on the horizon,
a polarized Congress unable to act in our interests,
a polarized red/blue nation unable to agree.
And yetYand yetYit can be at such times when we are fearful, cracked open,
that the Spirit of God can rush in.
AYou are our fatherYwe the clayYyou the potterY
we are the work of your handYwe are your people.@
Just as the people in the first Isaiah=s time were half asleep to events rushing towards them
so are we often unaware of movements in the world around us.
The tsunamis , the earthquakes, the unexpected,
come when we are lulled by the every-dayness of our lives,
dulled by comfortable routine when our minds are on auto pilot.
Spiritually we are asleep.
You know, animals are much more attuned to natural disasters than we are.
Sheila, our dog, senses approaching storms
long before the thunder hits our hearing.
They tell us that the animals fled to higher ground
well before the human holiday makers on the beaches
realized that the ocean was about to overpower them
in last December=s tsunami.
The animals were more awake , more aware.
In human beings, us, it is easy to be on spiritual auto pilot,
even if one is sensitive to warnings of natural disasters.
We go about our day asleep,
closed to God=s spirit.
We are un-attuned to the subtle signals
of another person=s sorrows and needs.
We don=t see the glory of God in a spectacular sunrise
or the power of God in a swirling snow shower.
We don=t hear the silent voice of God within us
inviting us to be more compassionate,
less centered on our own needsYmore embracing of the bigger picture
of God=s hopes for the whole world,
the human community, the natural order.
Sometimes it takes getting away to have our dulled consciousness awakened.
A trip to Riverton with no one else in the car
can quiet the busy-ness of our minds
and allow our spirits to wake up.
An airplane journey can do the same thing (if you aren=t a nervous flyer).
If you are trusting and relaxed the view above the clouds,
the thrum of the engines
may awaken free flowing contemplation.
It is at such times that God can speak to us,
a silent kind of thought transference.
We find ourselves solving problems,
understanding relationships,
charting new directions for our lives.
When I was in college, getting there involved train travel.
The clackety clack of the rails,
soon put me into a meditative state,
a more awakened consciousness,
more attuned to eternal life.
Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner, that lovely man,
writes in Wishful Thinking [ page 22] ,
AThis side of Paradise people are with God in such a remote
and spotty way
that their experience of eternal life is at best
like the experience you get of a place
approaching it at night in a fast train.
Even the saints see only an occasional light go whipping by,
hear only a sound or two over the clatter of the rails.
Ybut the day will break and the train will pull into the station,
and the ones who have managed to stay with it will alight.@
He continues, AWe think of eternal life, if we think of it at all, as what happens when life ends.
We would do better to think of it as what happens as life begins.@
(Or all through continuing life.)
Expanding Buechner=s train metaphor, eternal life is when we are awake,
awake to the lights beyond the darkness,
and the hidden sounds of God beyond the clatter of the rails,
the clatter of everyday life.
Being truly awake is when the tsunami of personal crisis
can be sensed with an animal=s heightened perception
long before those traumas can sweep us away.
Being truly awake is when we can see and hear beneath and beyond
red/blue political wrangling to the hopes God has for this lovely planet.
Being truly awake is to have the eyes of our heart, the eyes of our mind,
receptive to the sunrise over the red hills,
and to the power of God=s creation in the swirling snow shower
sweeping down from the west.
Being truly awake is being able to open one=s life
to the miracle of Christ=s coming among us so long ago on that first Christmas.
This Advent 2005 Jesus says to us yet again
AKeep awake for you do not know
when the master of the house will comeY
or else he may find you asleepY
I say to all: keep awake.@
Amen