a Sermon for Advent 1C
Text: Luke 21:25-36
We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
So here we are, at the end of Jesus’s ministry. On the first day of Advent. New Year’s Day in the Christian Calendar. New year, new gospel, so we dive into Luke; and in the gospel, we’re starting toward the end in chapter 21. This is one of the strange components of a Lectionary in which we don’t actually tell the story in order. We begin the year with Jesus telling us how it’s all going to end, and then we jump back to the beginning. And in the Spring, we have Lent, which hits the Temptations, and then jumps to Jesus’s final days. Then there’s Easter and Pentecost, which are chronologically sound, following Jesus’s death and resurrection, but then we get into the Season of Pentecost, where we rewind and go through Jesus’s actual teachings. All of which lead up to this one. At the beginning.
The teaching itself is a prophecy, not unlike the one from two weeks ago about the Temple. This one is bigger, though. This involves not just human stuff, but cosmological stuff: “the sun, the moon, and the stars”. And the global human response is distress—everywhere. The phrasing is truly appropriate for us as we deal with current warming trends in the oceans and news reports of icebergs that broke from the Antarctic ice shelf and are now drifting north toward New Zealand, while our region is still recovering from hurricanes and flooding: “The roaring of the sea and the waves” indeed!
I’m mindful of the fact that we don’t really know how we ought to take this type of talk. Some look at the Scriptures as something to decode. As if the secret to the end times is hidden within the text even though Jesus himself tells us that we won’t know “when the master of the house will come”. This is a cottage industry within Christianity, peaking of course with the Left Behind books. But this thinking has been with us for a long time—each time disproven by the world’s existence past the predicted date.
Another response that many have taken is to ignore this talk, either confining it to its time and place or by ignoring the graphic imagery. In either case, the purpose is to desensitize the scripture to something more palatable and less strident; depriving it of its power to affect us and make us feel a certain way. This seems just as harmful to the Scripture.
We seem to be less afraid of the details of the Scripture itself than we are about discussing what the end actually looks like. About what it means to stop being…us.
It is said that we have an obsession in our culture with youth. I think a more accurate expression of this is that we have an obsession with avoiding aging. We don’t want to be young, we just don’t want to be old. The now common practices of cosmetic surgery and taking pills to stave off the outward effects of aging serve as obvious proof of this. The issue isn’t about becoming children again (though for some, that may actually be the case), but something more elemental: our understanding of youth is that in youth, our sites are set on tomorrow. Youth is about promise and expectation and hope and anticipation. It is about what is coming in the future.
Middle age, then, comes to represent the potential realization of those dreams and hopes and expectations. It is the time in which we embody the future in a present. We then take on a caretaker roll—maintaining the world, the institutions, the practices of a person of a certain age. Our prescription for middle age is to live in the present.
This leaves our senior time as representing the past. Our bodies prevent us from doing the things that we did when we were younger and our appearance changes.
But the truth is that we prefer to think about what could be to what is and certainly prefer it to what was. We catalog aging as a process of losing hope and optimism, as we are overtaken by pessimism and “realistic” thinking. We fight idealism because our own lives have seen things that have brought anger into our hearts and tears to our eyes.
In the middle of this talk of destruction, confusion, and conflict, Jesus tells his disciples this: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Jesus talks about the end of things, not as a source of destruction and devastation, but of fulfillment of expectations, of hopes, and of dreams. A time of the old becoming new. In death, we are born anew. We talked about this two weeks ago when we tackled the “mini apocalypse” in Mark—the destruction of the Temple and the birthpangs—but in this one, Jesus gives his disciples instructions: to hold up their heads and stand tall.
This isn’t about arrogance, indignation, or confrontation. This isn’t about feeling special or chosen. This isn’t even about feeling righteous. This is about believing. Believing that hardship leads to reward. Believing that we have somebody that is there for us when we feel all alone. Believing that, in spite of today, tomorrow will be better.
When Jesus tells his disciples to be ready, he doesn’t couple that with “because tomorrow the world will end,” but with “so that your hearts may not be weighed down”.
As is often the case, Jesus may as well be speaking right to us. This may as well be a direct line to our own time. Because sometimes we feel bad, our hearts feel pretty heavy. We look at tomorrow, not with hope and optimism, but with anxiety: because we fear loss; that something will be stripped from us. For some, this is the fear of having the car keys taken by a son or daughter—that tomorrow might be the day.
But Jesus tells us not to fear: not to be afraid of tomorrow. That we must hold our heads up to the light and see the world as it truly is. What we long for about youth is that freedom to not fear tomorrow, to not worry about what will happen this time next year or the year after that, and to not worry about loss. But who says that we don’t all have that freedom? Who says that we have to look at tomorrow with death-colored glasses? Who says that we can’t be hopeful dreamers?
We have a promise that God is with us, that we have a teacher and a guide. We have a promise that dreams can be fulfilled and that tomorrow can and will be a better place. We have opportunity and responsibility in our hands. We have the time and the place for this action: today, right here: to prepare ourselves. And we have one instruction: “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Lack of updates
There has been an obvious lack of updates on this page. For that, I'm truly sorry. I have preached since March, and plan on putting more up here, but that'll have to wait. Since the transition to St. Paul's, I am now using a different computer. Old sermons are on my laptop. Ah, technology! They might show up eventually. Until then, take a look at the last few that I have that are newly posted!
Drew+
Drew+
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Expectation
a Sermon for Proper 28B
Text: Mark 13:1-8
Growing up in a pretty small town in northern Michigan of about ten thousand and going to a liberal arts college of 1,300, it wasn’t until I moved to the Boston area that I could appreciate the size and scope of civilization. The way you have to crane your neck up to see the middle of buildings, and then hitch it again to see the tops. The small feeling you get walking between skyscrapers—like a mouse or an ant, scurrying to find what you need or marching into your place in the system. The enormity of our creations is incredible. We need drive 30 or 40 minutes to get that feeling here. Incredible.
Many of us have had this experience. This is the same feeling the disciples no doubt felt entering Jerusalem. They’re villagers, not city folk. Fishermen and laborers. Small town people, coming to the big city. It must have been an overwhelming experience. Like the times we entered the big city for the first time, that sense of confusion takes over. “Everyone moves so fast, and they know where they’re going! I’m just in their way,” we think. The size and scope of the city stops us and keeps us stuck; our feet stick to the pavement. We couldn’t feel more different. At the same time, there’s also an energy—an excitement in the city. You start to move and go where the people are going, adapting to the pace and so quickly learn to go with the flow—naturally. The first time in the big city can be a transformative experience.
Now imagine this moment. The disciples walk up to the Temple Mount, walls that go up several stories in some places, but it’s the vastness that’s most impressive: they extend 488 m along the western side and 470 m along the eastern side. And 315 m along the northern side and 280 m along the south side. In relative terms, 5 football fields by 3. 1,500 feet long. The disciples have never seen anything like this. And on top of that, the site means something to them. This is the center of their worship. We can only begin to understand this sensation when we walk into the National Cathedral in Washington DC. Huge place of worship—major connections with our faith. Awesome. And they are there with Jesus, preaching and teaching. They must have been on such a high from this. This is the big time. Like a violinist playing Carnegie Hall or a rookie walking into Yankee Stadium. Big time.
So imagine the world-shattering experience they get as they leave. They’re jumping up and down, they can hardly contain themselves. “Jesus preached at the Temple! This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for, this is what we’ve been building this ministry toward, we have finally arrived. We’ve made it. Aren’t you excited Jesus?” Calmly, Jesus responds “Yeah, it will call come down. Every last brick.”
The Disciples are left with this tremendous gut check. “Really? All of this?” The skyscrapers that are so incredible, testaments to human innovation, will be so utterly devastated that not one piece will be left in its original place. Everything will be upturned. The disciples are left to process this as Jesus continues walking. They essentially cross the street to the Mount of Olives and sit down. And the four most prominent disciples (Peter, James, John, and Andrew) sort of check on Jesus. They want to know if he really meant what he said. So they ask: “So, this destruction you were talking about, when does it happen?” What Jesus proceeds to say is troubling. He gives markers that are so vague, that they are perpetually present—they are always in the “right now”. And this talk goes on for many more verses after our reading for today. Many scholars refer to this as the “Mini Apocalypse”. For readers of Mark, including us, as we’ve been working through this whole gospel, we are all thrown by this sequence as much as the disciples were about the Temple. It feels different, scary even. This is a hard pill to swallow as it is, let alone when we compare it to what we’ve read so far. Jesus is telling us some pretty bad news. It doesn’t seem like “good news” at all!
What he seems to be telling us, however, is not a ghost story designed to scare us, but a statement about change: that the Temple, this physical, enormous testament to human innovation, would be overturned so completely that every piece would be affected and the world would change forever. A world with a Temple ends and a world without one will begin. That the Temple was really destroyed forty years later is almost irrelevant, because the metaphor is so powerful. Jesus ushers in an age in which everything goes topsy-turvy, shattering that cozy image of imperial peace. Rome and the Temple authorities brought oppressive certainty and Jesus brought chaotic freedom: a true revolution.
A second useful image comes to us in the final verse: “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” That this scary, and frightening time is difficult, but allows for something miraculous to happen: childbirth.
When Rose and I found out that we were going to have a baby, we joined natural childbirth classes. Our hope was that we could give Sophia the best opportunity for success. We wanted what was best for her, and we knew that might require some…sacrifice…on our part. Perhaps more on Rose’s part, but, you get my meaning.
What we learned from these classes was a whole lot more than what was about to happen; we also learned a bit about why.
I know that there will be at least one woman in this room that will say “He’s not going to talk about pain, is he? What does he know?” And there are a few more that are about to cross their arms and lean back a little bit, eyes narrowing in anticipation. Yes, I am going to talk about the pain of childbirth. But this is the root of it. Pain isn’t bad. It isn’t evil. It hurts, of course. But pain itself isn’t bad. Our Registered Nurse Midwives talked about pain as our bodies’ communication system. Just as the pain you feel when you touch something hot warns you of danger, the pain of childbirth communicates to the expectant mother what stage she’s in. It tells her what is about to happen.
Our tendency is to eliminate pain, and therefore, ignore its message. Medically, childbirth is approached as a problem—as a disease—that must be fixed. That a mother must be rescued from her condition. But what happens when a child is born? The pain disappears as hormones rush through the new mother’s body. And as her eyes see the new baby, and hold her in her arms, everything has changed. The world is made new.
This is the story of new creation. Of a time when the old transitions into something new. When out of the past, we claim a new future.
Jesus gives us this fearful vision today, not to frighten us, or get us to think bad thoughts. He doesn’t hope to scare us into salvation or condemning our neighbors for not seeing the signs. But instead to see the present age as the preparation for a better tomorrow. That we are laboring for the coming birth. That all of this that we are doing may be difficult and may take every ounce of strength and courage that we have, but in the end, a beautiful baby is born. Born into a world that is ready to nurture this new creation into childhood and then adulthood.
And for St. Paul’s as it approaches the end of another year and the start of a new one in two weeks, with Advent, may we do so with excitement, anticipation, and the awesome realization that we are active participants in miracles.
Text: Mark 13:1-8
God of Hope and Wonder, you share with us your miracles and allow us to participate in your miraculous incarnations. Help us to behold them in the world around us and in one another. Amen.
Growing up in a pretty small town in northern Michigan of about ten thousand and going to a liberal arts college of 1,300, it wasn’t until I moved to the Boston area that I could appreciate the size and scope of civilization. The way you have to crane your neck up to see the middle of buildings, and then hitch it again to see the tops. The small feeling you get walking between skyscrapers—like a mouse or an ant, scurrying to find what you need or marching into your place in the system. The enormity of our creations is incredible. We need drive 30 or 40 minutes to get that feeling here. Incredible.
Many of us have had this experience. This is the same feeling the disciples no doubt felt entering Jerusalem. They’re villagers, not city folk. Fishermen and laborers. Small town people, coming to the big city. It must have been an overwhelming experience. Like the times we entered the big city for the first time, that sense of confusion takes over. “Everyone moves so fast, and they know where they’re going! I’m just in their way,” we think. The size and scope of the city stops us and keeps us stuck; our feet stick to the pavement. We couldn’t feel more different. At the same time, there’s also an energy—an excitement in the city. You start to move and go where the people are going, adapting to the pace and so quickly learn to go with the flow—naturally. The first time in the big city can be a transformative experience.
Now imagine this moment. The disciples walk up to the Temple Mount, walls that go up several stories in some places, but it’s the vastness that’s most impressive: they extend 488 m along the western side and 470 m along the eastern side. And 315 m along the northern side and 280 m along the south side. In relative terms, 5 football fields by 3. 1,500 feet long. The disciples have never seen anything like this. And on top of that, the site means something to them. This is the center of their worship. We can only begin to understand this sensation when we walk into the National Cathedral in Washington DC. Huge place of worship—major connections with our faith. Awesome. And they are there with Jesus, preaching and teaching. They must have been on such a high from this. This is the big time. Like a violinist playing Carnegie Hall or a rookie walking into Yankee Stadium. Big time.
So imagine the world-shattering experience they get as they leave. They’re jumping up and down, they can hardly contain themselves. “Jesus preached at the Temple! This is it! This is what we’ve been waiting for, this is what we’ve been building this ministry toward, we have finally arrived. We’ve made it. Aren’t you excited Jesus?” Calmly, Jesus responds “Yeah, it will call come down. Every last brick.”
The Disciples are left with this tremendous gut check. “Really? All of this?” The skyscrapers that are so incredible, testaments to human innovation, will be so utterly devastated that not one piece will be left in its original place. Everything will be upturned. The disciples are left to process this as Jesus continues walking. They essentially cross the street to the Mount of Olives and sit down. And the four most prominent disciples (Peter, James, John, and Andrew) sort of check on Jesus. They want to know if he really meant what he said. So they ask: “So, this destruction you were talking about, when does it happen?” What Jesus proceeds to say is troubling. He gives markers that are so vague, that they are perpetually present—they are always in the “right now”. And this talk goes on for many more verses after our reading for today. Many scholars refer to this as the “Mini Apocalypse”. For readers of Mark, including us, as we’ve been working through this whole gospel, we are all thrown by this sequence as much as the disciples were about the Temple. It feels different, scary even. This is a hard pill to swallow as it is, let alone when we compare it to what we’ve read so far. Jesus is telling us some pretty bad news. It doesn’t seem like “good news” at all!
What he seems to be telling us, however, is not a ghost story designed to scare us, but a statement about change: that the Temple, this physical, enormous testament to human innovation, would be overturned so completely that every piece would be affected and the world would change forever. A world with a Temple ends and a world without one will begin. That the Temple was really destroyed forty years later is almost irrelevant, because the metaphor is so powerful. Jesus ushers in an age in which everything goes topsy-turvy, shattering that cozy image of imperial peace. Rome and the Temple authorities brought oppressive certainty and Jesus brought chaotic freedom: a true revolution.
A second useful image comes to us in the final verse: “This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” That this scary, and frightening time is difficult, but allows for something miraculous to happen: childbirth.
When Rose and I found out that we were going to have a baby, we joined natural childbirth classes. Our hope was that we could give Sophia the best opportunity for success. We wanted what was best for her, and we knew that might require some…sacrifice…on our part. Perhaps more on Rose’s part, but, you get my meaning.
What we learned from these classes was a whole lot more than what was about to happen; we also learned a bit about why.
I know that there will be at least one woman in this room that will say “He’s not going to talk about pain, is he? What does he know?” And there are a few more that are about to cross their arms and lean back a little bit, eyes narrowing in anticipation. Yes, I am going to talk about the pain of childbirth. But this is the root of it. Pain isn’t bad. It isn’t evil. It hurts, of course. But pain itself isn’t bad. Our Registered Nurse Midwives talked about pain as our bodies’ communication system. Just as the pain you feel when you touch something hot warns you of danger, the pain of childbirth communicates to the expectant mother what stage she’s in. It tells her what is about to happen.
Our tendency is to eliminate pain, and therefore, ignore its message. Medically, childbirth is approached as a problem—as a disease—that must be fixed. That a mother must be rescued from her condition. But what happens when a child is born? The pain disappears as hormones rush through the new mother’s body. And as her eyes see the new baby, and hold her in her arms, everything has changed. The world is made new.
This is the story of new creation. Of a time when the old transitions into something new. When out of the past, we claim a new future.
Jesus gives us this fearful vision today, not to frighten us, or get us to think bad thoughts. He doesn’t hope to scare us into salvation or condemning our neighbors for not seeing the signs. But instead to see the present age as the preparation for a better tomorrow. That we are laboring for the coming birth. That all of this that we are doing may be difficult and may take every ounce of strength and courage that we have, but in the end, a beautiful baby is born. Born into a world that is ready to nurture this new creation into childhood and then adulthood.
And for St. Paul’s as it approaches the end of another year and the start of a new one in two weeks, with Advent, may we do so with excitement, anticipation, and the awesome realization that we are active participants in miracles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
