Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Luke 21:25-36 "Alternative Reality"


You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
         We are all on the treadmill to Christmas now, right?  I mean, Thanksgiving is over, and Black Friday is in the past.  The Salvation Army bell ringers are outside of the places where shoppers flock – Christmas Tree Shops, Walmart, Maine Mall. 
         At every turn, we find a life size sparkling smiling angel or mechanized nodding Santa Claus. Red and green cascades outward everywhere we look.  
         Giant inflated reindeer bedeck our neighbor’s lawn, our houses are ablaze with lights and good cheer, and, if not now then soon, very soon, if we hear Bing Crosby, Perry Como, or even Johnny Mathis sing “It’s Beginning to Look A lot Like Christmas” one more time, well, who knows what we will do. 
         What we might have pledged to pace as a walk, if it has not already, will soon turn into a desperate run.  Actually, I think of these upcoming weeks less as a treadmill and more as a giant funnel into which we are sucked in late November, swirled round and round and tossed about throughout December and finally spit out after the last dish is washed and put away following Christmas dinner. 
Choose whatever imagery you want, there is no doubt about it.  The Christmas orgy has begun.
         Yet, for all of us, I think, whether we go to church or not, beneath all the trappings of Christmas – the decorations that are designed to make us happy, the eggnog laced with nostalgia, the snow that is supposed to make it be a real Norman Rockwell holiday, beneath all those trappings, there is a deep longing, a spiritual anxiety, a gnawing hunger for something that even the best of the Christmas cookies can not assuage. 
         And so we in the church set aside these four weeks before Christmas as a sort of alternative world.  We call it Advent, which means coming, Jesus’ coming – not only as a one time commemorative event in the past but also coming again when God’s Kingdom is fully established, and maybe even coming now, even now.  And if we enter this world of Advent and immerse ourselves in it with half an ounce of sincerity and seriousness, we will find it oddly comforting. 
         Rather than red or green, we use deep purple or sometimes royal blue – not bright flashy colors but cooler, more meditative ones.  Rather than the gay tunes of Christmas (there will be time enough for those), we sing the more somber, sometimes minor key, carols that cannot help but nudge us toward an attitude of reflection and quietude.  Rather than beginning with the Light of the World that comes in the form of a newborn baby, we begin in darkness, holy darkness.
         It is quite bizarre when you think about it.  Here in church we listen to our strange apocalyptic scripture readings, do as much as we can using candlelight, and participate in our sometimes melancholy liturgies while outside these doors we are beckoned to enter the world of glitter and glitz and buy, buy, buy, the razzle dazzle of the season. 
         However, maybe because of that incongruity, we are ever more mindful of who we are.  We are followers of Jesus – followers of that Bethlehem baby grown into renegade man.  We, like him, do not always conform to the world, but instead have within us the capacity to transform it.
         So – let us, for once, be true to who we are and to what we feel.  Let us own our deep longings, our spiritual anxiety, our gnawing hunger for something that maybe we cannot quite put our finger on.  Let us own the holy darkness that is Advent – and see where it leads us as we look at our Scripture reading, which is often referred to as the Little Apocalypse because it is written in a style frequently used in difficult times – and the times in which it was written and the times in which we read it were (and are) no exception.  The ancients lived then and we live now in difficult, in fearful times.
         It is “little’ because it is only a few verses and not an entire chunk of the Bible like the Book of Revelation is.  It is an “apocalypse” because, through the words he puts into Jesus’ mouth, the Gospel writer talks about the so-called end times when the Kingdom of God will be established on earth.  He is writing at a time of unprecedented chaos and uncertainty in Palestine among the Jewish people.  It is about 70 years after the time that Jesus was teaching and healing.  The end of the Jewish wars with Rome was a disastrous defeat.   For all intents and purposes, the world was ending for this ancient people. 
         Even the Temple, the place where Yahweh/God was said to reside was gone.  Methodist pastor Jeremy Troxler imagines it this way:  “The disciples are sitting there opposite the massive megachurch, St.-Peter’s-Cathedral-sized, Mall-of-America-looking Temple, gaping at the shining stones and dazzling jewels, perhaps thinking silently that the Temple building, the central pivot point of Judaism, is what connects them to God.
         Then Jesus, unimpressed, tells them, ‘All of that is going to be nothing more than a pile of rubble.’
         The disciples, shocked, ask, ‘Teacher, when will this be?’”
         And Jesus spouts off a flurry of apocalyptic jargon, the likes of which neither we nor the disciples had probably ever heard:  “It will seem like all hell has broken loose—sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.”  And Paris rocks from the detonation of explosions and the world is shocked by acts of terrorism.  And Russia shows her muscles.  And borders are closed to refugees.  And then—then!—they’ll see the Son of Man welcomed in grand style—a glorious welcome!”
         Yikes!  Those are pretty scary and foreboding words for the first Sunday in Advent, the start of a new church year!  Cosmic signs!  Danger!  Watch out, everyone!  Because of our strange attraction to all things doomsday, these verses are certainly enough to make us worry, if not crawl into a cave and hide.  Given this apocalypse as an alternative, maybe Walmart the day after Thanksgiving is not so bad after all. 
         But Jesus says, “No!  This is not the time to run and hide.  This is not the time to duck and cover.  This is not even the time to take sanctuary in a sanctuary, like this one.  This is not the time to surround oneself with cheery Christmas carols and inflatable reindeer and insulate oneself from the darkness that is encroaching. 
         This is the time to own your longings, to own your anxiety, to own your fears for the world you are leaving your children and grandchildren.  This is the time, as Jesus said, to get “up on your feet. Stand tall with your heads high. Help is on the way!”
         Contrary to popular belief, and much to the dismay of folks who make their living as doomsday theorists, this is not the time to retreat into freaky end-of-the-world scenarios.  And besides, if this world ended and a better one arose like a phoenix from its ashes, would it really be that bad? 
        How bad would a world be that was normed by love rather than wealth, where great human migrations did not occur because swords had actually been forged into plowshares, where planes shot down over airspace disputes and people gunned down in market squares were only modern day fairy tales and fables, where everyone had a place to call home – with a fig tree to watch for when its leaves begin to appear?  How bad would a world like that be?
         You see, I think that is what God intends for the world – and to proclaim and model this certainty was the foundation of Jesus’ ministry.  This is what Advent is all about – waiting in holy darkness, waiting for God’s intentions to come to fruition, understanding that we are living in a time of pregnant possibility. 
         This is the time to throw yourself into Advent – because, if Advent is nothing else for you, it needs to be a time of hope, fearful hope perhaps, but great high hope nonetheless.  Great high hope because God is not finished yet – with your life or with the world. 
         When I was at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico last year, I did a really stupid thing.  I hiked alone.  I actually did not go alone.  However, the person I went with was fishing while I was hiking.  Coming back down the trail, it got foggy, and I could not find the next set of markers.  I knew enough not to wander around too much and so made my way back up to the end of the trail where I settled into an ancient and decrepit door-less, derelict ranger cabin.  It got dark, and I was convincing myself that I would be spending the night there when I saw the flashlights of a couple of forest rangers sent to retrieve me.  And all was well.
         Sometimes I get a little freaked thinking back on what might have happened, how a mountain lion could have sniffed (or snuffed) me out.  And when I do begin to wander off in those imaginings, I remember that there is a reason – a sacred reason - for me being here.  I remember that, like the disciples and those who first listened to this Gospel, I am challenged to not retreat into fear but rather to stand up, raise my head, look upward, look around me at the fig trees (or maple trees here in Maine), and wait in hope for all that God has in mind for me to happen.
         That is what Advent is all about.  It is about what is coming.  It is about living expectantly.  It is about living in the hope of God’s future as if it has already arrived. 
         As theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “I think we are waiting. That is what is at the heart of it. Even when we don't know that we are waiting, I think we are waiting. Even when we can't find words for what we are waiting for, I think we are waiting….We who live much of the time in the darkness are waiting… for the advent of light, that ultimate light that is redemptive and terrifying at the same time. It is redemptive because it puts an end to the darkness, and that is also why it is terrifying, because for so long, for all our lives, the darkness has been home, and because to leave home is always cause for terror.”
         Buechner goes on to say: “To wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ's stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ's healing and hope.”
         Advent is about owning all that is not right with the world.  It is about trusting that this is not the world that God intends. It is about seeing the need for us to be Christ’s passionate presence in the world.  Advent is also about standing tall with your head held high and consciously living in that alternative world of Advent– a world where no matter what happens, no matter how bad things may get, the Gospel message of justice and compassion, reconciliation and love, will continue to be whispered and someday that whisper will become a shout because Jesus’ words will never die away.  We live in a world of deep longing and sometimes deep fear, but we also live in a world of profound hope, a world to which we are all called to be a part of because there is a reason – a sacred reason – that we are here in the first place, here connected to something – to someone – greater than ourselves.
         One blogger I read this week wrote about a street preacher he had seen: His exhortations were to get right with God because Jesus was coming soon.  An old man was walking by about this time, moving slowly with a cane.  When he heard the message of the street preacher, he straightened up, opened wide his arms, and said, "What in blazes are you talking about?  He's already here."
        As the blogger wrote, “indeed, Jesus is here, and he has always been here.  He didn't go drifting off into space waiting for some future day to come back, like some alien from outer space.  In his incarnation, Christ is interior to the world, intimately connected with it, never to let it go.”
         And if that is not reason to hope, to live in the alternative world of Advent, then I am not sure what is.  So come, don’t jump on the treadmill or get sucked into the Christmas funnel, come and wait for what is to come, come and wait in holy darkness.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine