Keep Awake!

Keep awake! 

A Sermon on Facebook Live Broadcast Sirach 

26:10 The Headstrong Daughter 

 Advent I - Year B - November 29, 2020 

 It’s Advent I. Already. How did this happen so quickly? Weren’t we just grinching about the unthinkable – that we wouldn’t be able to celebrate Easter in our beautiful church buildings? 

And now, in the midst of a surge or spike in the number of cases of COVID, and while dire warnings swirl around regarding how our Thanksgiving gatherings might become a super-spreader event, many of us are trying to prepare for what our beloved and treasured Christmas services will look like outside of our church buildings. 

Or – gasp! – on Zoom or a Facebook Live broadcast! This time last year, many of us didn't even know that there was even a thing called Zoom. 

I’ve been having a reoccurring dream. I am standing at my dining room table which has been beautifully set with my good china and silver and stemware and a lovely floral arrangement in the center. Someone appears – I can’t tell who it is but I somehow know that it’s a magician. 

I hear a voice say, “And now, for my next trick” as I see white gloved hands grip the end of the tablecloth. “I’ve been practicing a lot lately and I think this time it will work.” 

There is a weighted, heavy, momentary pause and the next thing I know, the tablecloth is being pulled down and with it, all of my silver and china and stemware clinking and crashing and breaking into pieces on each other and then onto the floor. 

I am horrified. All my best stuff is on that table and this amateur has ruined everything for the promise of a cheap dazzling parlor trick. 

The dream ends there, there’s a bit of a pause, and just like a scene from Groundhog Day, the dream repeats itself. Over and over again. Until I wake up yelling, “Stop”. 

Anything in my dream seem familiar to you? Does this past year feel to you like it does to me? Does it feel like we’ve been caught in one continual pull-the-table-cloth-off-the-table trick that’s being held in a beginner’s class for new magicians? 

I don’t think I have to rehearse a litany of the horror show that has been the year 2020. Let’s just say that I agree with a friend of mine who said that this year, for the first time in years, she’s going to stay up to watch the ball drop in Times Square on New Years Eve, not so much to welcome in 2021, but to make sure 2020 is really gone. 

And here we are, ready to get a head start on the New Year with the new liturgical year in the church. I don’t know about you but I’m ready for a clean start, leaving the doom and gloom of Matthew for the immediacy of the year of Mark. 

Except, we seem to have caught Mark at a bad time. The image of God in this 13th Chapter of Mark is one of anger and vengeance. Added to the doom and gloom is an unhealthy serving of anxiety, and we are told to “keep watch” and “keep awake”. 

So, before I go any further, please give me just a minute to put Mark’s gospel into context for you. Mark was writing his gospel in the late 60s of the first century – about 40 years after the crucifixion and resurrection. At that time, the city of Jerusalem was under constant siege by the Romans and the early church that had been forming there was a target for persecution by Romans and Jews. 

If you recall, Rome burned in the year 64, taking with it the Temple. The two founders of the early Christian church, Peter and Paul, had long since died and Christians were feeling a sense of urgency to tell their stories about Jesus – to have a record of them for future generations. 

It fell to Mark, then, to build on the teachings of Peter and Paul to spread the good news to the early church which was suffering oppression and persecution and loss. It’s no surprise, that suffering is the focus of his gospel. Some scholars say that Mark may even have witnessed the suffering of Jesus during his trial and crucifixion - which must have been very traumatic. 

So, it's no surprise that, for Mark, everything – everything, even the resurrection and the second coming – stands in the shadow of the crucifixion. 

I hope that by knowing the context in which Mark was writing will help to put this particular gospel into clearer perspective over the next liturgical year. 

That said, it seems a heck of a way to start the season of Advent hearing about a violent, angry God. Haven’t we had enough, thank you very much? These days, it seems that whoever it is who is tormenting us by causing us to wait for another shoe to drop must be a centipede. 

 If we had our druthers, right now would be a good time to talk about “sweet baby Jesus meek and mild,” wouldn’t it? What’s wrong with just a little Hallmark Holiday schlock? Don’t we all ‘need a little Christmas, right this very minute’? I know I do. 

Except . . . . . . .  I’m remembering a young man I knew, way back when I was a College Chaplain at the University of Lowell in Lowell, MA. I was a brand new priest. This was my first call. I think I remember his name was David. He was referred to me by one of his professors because 

David seemed to be having a hard time controlling his temper. His professor thought that maybe talking with me would help David sort out the jumble of thoughts in his head so he could find a way to focus on his studies. 

When I first met him, David seemed very uncomfortable in my office so I suggested we walk while we talk. That developed into a pattern for our conversations. We’d walk for, oh, maybe a mile to what became “our bench” near the waterfall that ran through that old mill town of Lowell. And there, we’d sit and talk for maybe 20 minutes or so before we talked more on our way back to my office. 

David was very bright but his childhood was marred by alcoholic parents who were very abusive. A string of foster care homes provided the basic necessities of life but not much else. How he stayed motivated to excel in school and earn a full scholarship to college - especially on of the caliber of ULowell with a focus on engineering - was nothing short of a miracle. 

There were scars, however. Deep, painful scars which had not healed completely. I was young and newly ordained. Like a lot of young people in their 30s, I really thought that what the world had been waiting for to fix all of its problems was me! 

My default position was to try to talk to him about the unconditional love and boundless compassion of God. Worked for me, so of course I knew that it would work for others. 

Except that, with David, it didn’t. “Oh yeah,” I remember him saying to me one cold November afternoon on that park bench by the waterfall, “well if God is love and God is so powerful, why did all that bad stuff happen? Why would a loving God do that?” 

Good question, actually. We walked back to my office in silence. David’s question forced me to realize that I had been going about it all wrong, that I had been presenting a one-dimensional, cardboard image of God to him, and that, just as love was complex and complicated, so was God. Complex and complicated, both. 

This has lead the wise to proclaim that God is a mystery.  

The next time we met I told David that I had been thinking about his question and confessed that I hadn’t told him the whole truth. Yes, I said, I believe that God is a God of love and because of that- yes, because of that love - I believe God does get angry. 

In fact, I said I believe God had been pretty steamed about what had happened to David. I told him that I believed that God gets really angry at injustice and violence. 

And, I told David that I believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said that “unmerited suffering is redemptive.” 

In fact, I think unmerited suffering is sacramental in that it opens us to the kind of grace that allowed David to find a pathway out of his suffering through education and advancement. 

“You didn’t deserve the abuse you got, David,” I said. “And, I think it made God angry enough that God provided you a pathway out. And, the best part of the story is that you took it. You said ‘yes’.” 

David sat for a moment on the bench as we listened to the water rush over the waterfall. “So,” he smiled and said, “that full scholarship I got really did fall from heaven?” 

“Maybe so,” I said, “but you still earned it.” And then, David reached over took my gloved hand in his and held it for another silent moment.

 “So, when I get angry at things that happened to me, it’s not wrong?” 

 “Absolutely not,” I said. 

“You have every right to your anger. I’m thinking that maybe your parents did, too. The difference is in the choices you made about what to do with your anger. Taking it out on others is never a good choice. Harnessing it and using it for some good, some right, something just and important – which is what you are doing – is a much better choice.” 

Martin Luther King said that the greatest tragedy of his day wasn’t that bad people did terrible things. It was that good people did nothing in the face of grave injustices. 

I told David that God does not sit back and do nothing in the face of evil. God opposes all who harm other human beings or creation. God grows angry when children suffer, when people live in mansions while others are homeless, when corporations pollute God’s beautiful world. God’s anger at injustice inspires compassion in others who open themselves to be God’s vehicles of justice. 

When that happens we call that passion and passion is another name for sacrificial love and sacrificial love is another name for justice and justice, as Cornell West says, is the public face of love. 

David and I walked back to the office in silence again, but the air felt much lighter, more hopeful than the last time. David had come to know something about God and how his story – even the violent and angry parts – was part of the unfolding story of God’s love. 

And I had come to know something of how I might be a better priest and pastor by being unafraid to talk about the intricacies and complexities of God’s love and justice. 

All the way back to my office, David never stopped holding my hand. And, I never stopped holding his hand. After that, he would stop by my office from time to time – especially as he worked through the finer points of his story and his relationship with God. 

I don’t know if he ever realized how much more he helped me than I helped him. 

We are all going to come to those times in life which feels like an endless ground hog day of someone pulling the tablecloth and breaking all the dishes. It can make a body pretty angry. That’s not the point. The point is what we do with that anger. Do we turn it inward and let it depress us? Or, do we channel it for something good, something right, something just and allow ourselves to be passionate people of God? 

Advent is a time to focus on quiet contemplation, to prepare, to “keep watch” for the coming of Christ who will come to us in surprising and unexpected ways. The ancient people of Israel certainly did not expect their redemption to come wrapped in swaddling clothes, a wee babe asleep in a manger. What makes us think we won’t be in for a similar surprise? 

Perhaps God will come to you as God came to me as a young man struggling with anger at his past. Or, as a coworker or neighbor who displays every quality you detested in one of your siblings for which you’ve never forgiven them. 

Or a news story about a person in a place not anywhere near you who suffered a grave injustice that makes your blood do a slow boil and you find yourself wondering what you might be able to do about that. 

 Perhaps you’ll be able to see in those stories a surprising manifestation of a loving, caring God. 

 Or, perhaps God will come to you in a reoccurring dream about someone who pulls the tablecloth and shatters all your good stuff and you realize that you have to do something to change your life to channel your anxieties and frustration and anger into something positive so that you, yourself, don’t become that amateur magician – for yourself or someone else. 

Or, so, at the very least, you’ll get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. 

Advent is not the time to fall asleep in a winter’s hibernation. Mark tells us to keep watch. Keep awake! 

It's Advent. Something really important is about to happen. Can you feel it? 

Keep awake, then. You aren't going to want to miss it. 

 Amen.