Keep Awake

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
     so that the mountains would quake at your presence. (Isaiah 64:1, NRSV)

And so we begin Advent once again. With the prophet Isaiah, we cry out for God to come to our aid. The human longing for God to be with us is as old as the hills and as new as this moment.

And for good reason. Our world seems such a mixed bag.

On the one hand, we have just shared our annual feast of plenty with family and friends. My social media streams were filled with expressions of joy and gratitude, and photographs of gathered clans.

I was personally blessed and renewed by participating in prayers, song and Holy Communion at our first-ever joint Episcopal Thanksgiving Eve service here at Grace. The Kingdom of God was definitely at hand!

But I trust I am not the only one whose Thanksgiving was marred by reminders that the Kingdom of God is also not yet fully here.

Ferguson, Missouri, comes to mind. Much in this world remains in desperate need of God’s justice… and reconciling love. 

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down… 

But our call for and anticipation of Divine Presence is also a bit of a mixed bag. The words of today’s Gospel lesson (Mark 13:24-37, NRSV) are not entirely comforting.

At one and the same time, we long for the peace and unending joy we expect when all the world is finally and fully reconciled to God. Yet we quail at the thought of the suffering that precedes.. and the judgment that comes with.. the Son of Man on clouds at the end of time.

Advent is the ultimate in-between time for an in-between people. By in-between people, I mean those people of God who view the historic birth of a Palestinian babe laid in a manger some 2000 years ago, and a triumphant return of Jesus the Christ at some unknown point in the future.. as bookends of our faith.

In Advent, we prepare to celebrate once again that historic birth. But we do so in part by looking past the birth to the second coming of Christ, with its mixed bag of judgment and triumph.

Advent is a not merely a time of preparation for the joy of Christmas but a penitential season. Here we are in purple this morning!

Advent, the in-between time, should direct our attention to how we—individually and corporately—are spending our in-between time. And I say “should” because the society at large seems to do everything in its power to distract us from doing it!

For the past few years, many Christians have been quick to complain of a so-called “attack on Christmas.” I am far more likely to bemoan the attack on Advent! The first Christmas tree I saw this year appeared in Sam’s Club… before Halloween! I was stunned and dismayed.

My son and I and his fiancé will put up our tree Christmas Eve, between early and midnight masses!

But I am concerned today with far more than when you put up your Christmas Tree. I am concerned with how we spend our in-between time, individually and corporately. I am concerned with how we use Advent as a time of reflection and self-examination.

As many of you know, I teach at ULM. On the very first day of my advanced writing class, I give the students a choice of three topics and require them to sit down at a computer and write 300 words on the spot.

One of their choices is to write their “last speech.” That is, they are to imagine they have been given six months to live, and they are to write the farewell speech they would give to their family, friends and the world.

Quite a few choose this option, and I am usually charmed and even a bit amused at their earnest insistence, in their last speeches, that they have lived well and accomplished much, and that they depart this life with no regrets.

I cannot say the same. It’s not that I have not lived well, for I have. It's not that I fear dying; I don't. It's not that I regret anything more serious than that huge piece of leftover pecan pie I snacked on last night.

It is that every passing day teaches me more about both the breathtaking beauty.. and the utter woundedness.. of this world and everything in it. Every day shows me more that I can and want to do—out of my own imperfect, broken but beloved-of-God humanness—to share God’s love in a hurting world.

One day a few years ago, I went to Waterproof, La., to take pictures and interview for an article for ALIVE! about a ministry of this diocese in that community. It was a medical clinic run by a nurse practitioner with the help of a retired doctor and his wife. And in that community, where so many lack reliable transportation, it was the only medical care readily available to the many who suffer from the diseases of poverty—like diabetes.

Late afternoon, headed home, I passed one of many rundown dwellings on the edge of town. Out front, on the side of the narrow road, an old car had been jacked up and perched on various objects—a cross-section of tree trunk, a couple of cements blocks, and so forth.

 

iPhone Diary: 23 May 2012 (God Play) by Bette J. Kauffman

It looked not at all safe. I wouldn’t have lived in that house or crawled under that car for love nor money. But there was a man, lying on his back on the ground underneath the car, working on it.

I had barely passed that scene when the sky changed dramatically. It had been clouding over and threatening a storm for some time. Now, suddenly, the sun punched holes in the cloud cover and rays of light streamed through, in glorious contrast to the thundercloud backdrop.

Within moments, along a country road near Waterproof, La., I had gone from the heartbreak of human poverty to the glory of God at play. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

As I sat in my car on the side of the road gazing at the sky, one thought flooded my mind: So much to do. Oh, my God, we have so much to do.

My friends, I invite you to a watchful Advent, an Advent of looking for God in everyone and in all that happens, in the breathtaking beauty and the utter woundedness.. of all humankind and the world we live in.

[W]hat I say to you I say to all: Keep awake (Mark 13:37, NRSV). Be not surprised to find God already here.

AMEN

            

Doing Thanks

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Mer Rouge, La.

I grew up in a distinctly protestant religious tradition—Mennonite, to be exact. And in that tradition, all things liturgical, especially things like crucifixes bearing the tortured body of Christ, were anathema. They emphasized Christ’s death over his resurrection at the least, and were akin to idols at worst.

I have long since laid aside many of those teachings and find great joy in our Episcopal liturgy and its adornments. Yet, I have a special fondness for Christ the King Sunday and its representation of Jesus as king, in kingly robes and crown, superimposed on the cross but clearly alive and triumphant over it.

Today we are combining celebrations of Christ the King and Thanksgiving, which turns out to be quite doable from a preaching standpoint. What better way to celebrate Christ the King than to give thanks!

The lessons we read this morning are for Christ the King Sunday. And reading them afresh with Thanksgiving in mind, I was totally struck by the relationship between the Ezekiel (34:11-16, NRSV) reading and the Matthew (25:31-46, NRSV) reading.             
 
Look again at Ezekiel. What does God promise God’s people in this passage? 

I myself will search for my sheep… I will rescue them… I will gather them and will feed them with good pasture, rich pasture! I myself will be the shepherd, I will seek the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the injured, and strengthen the weak. I, the Lord, have spoken. 

Wow! What more could a sheep of God ask for?! Of course, Ezekiel does put some judgment in the mouth of God, but I will take my chances with the loving and merciful God portrayed throughout Scripture… over the casual cruelty we humans are so capable of in judging each other.

Fast forward to the Gospel lesson. Here Jesus is speaking, and this is more explicitly a judgment scene. Christ the King is on his throne of glory, separating sheep from goats.

Again, to me, that’s good news. I’ll take Jesus, with his impeccable track record of justice, mercy and love, over human meanness, which is often, sadly, carried out in the name of Jesus.

A saying I’ve seen circulate on the Internet goes like this: “Most humans are capable of being mean from time to time under some conditions, but nobody is meaner than the ones being mean for Jesus!” I couldn’t agree more.

But today, in the context of Ezekiel, and glorious thanks giving by Paul for the faith and love of the Ephesians (1:15-23), I see the main point of this passage as Jesus teaching us how to give thanks.

Come you that are blessed, Jesus says, and inherit the kingdom.., for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was a prisoner and you visited me. 

As the passage continues, it becomes clear that the righteous who had done these things did not even realize what they had done. Clearly, they had not done them to earn or merit inheriting the kingdom.

People who do things for a reward would never be surprised to hear that they had earned the reward! Indeed, when we are working for pay, we are likely to keep very close track of what we have done and what we expect to receive in exchange for what we have done.

But the sheep Jesus invites into the kingdom must ask, When did we do these things? And Jesus explains, When you shared the love you have received from me with all of my people. You might not have recognized me, but I was there. That homeless person, that immigrant, that prisoner, that sick person…, that was me you loved, as I have loved you.

You see, the only possible response to accepting God’s loving care of us is to give it away. The only way to be a sheep of God’s rich pasture is to share it with the entire flock! The only way to be part of God’s family is to, well… be part of God’s… entire family…

And in both Ezekiel and Matthew it is eminently clear that we don’t define the boundaries of God’s family! That job belongs to Jesus, thanks be to God.

As a user of social media, I sometimes get roped into various fads that sweep the Internet. A few months ago, one such fad that made the rounds on Facebook was a call to post for seven days straight a list of what you were thankful for each day.

A well-intended exercise, and, indeed, I took my turn when I was tagged by a friend to do so. And doing it did make me think about—and sometimes really have to reflect on—what had happened that day that I could be thankful for.

But listing the things you are thankful for is not exactly what Jesus had in mind! I would even say, spoken prayers of thanksgiving—albeit lovely things and in themselves harmless—are not what Jesus had in mind.

What Jesus had in mind was action. No empty piety here! “Get to work,” is the message.

Notice the verbs Jesus uses throughout: you gave, you welcomed, you took care, you visited, you gave, you gave, you gave.

Not once does he mention what anyone believed! Not once does he mention whom anyone worshiped! Not once does he mention what anyone prayed!

The righteous are those who DO, without realizing what they are doing and without expecting a reward for it. To do anything else is unthinkable to those who understand themselves as God’s beloved and heir’s of God’s kingdom.

Friday afternoon I answered the doorbell to find two young women from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints standing in the carport. They introduced themselves as missionaries; I introduced myself as a deacon in the Episcopal Church.

My job as deacon, I hastened to explain, was to help people in the church find ministries and to aid and support them in being ministers in the world. Their faces brightened. Oh, the confident one said, you mean to be missionaries! 

Sort of, I replied. It depends on how you define missionary. I mean to feed the hungry, care for the sick, welcome the immigrant. 

Whether they understood the distinction or not, I can’t be certain. But you do. Of that I am certain. How will you do thanks, not just today but every day, for God’s love bestowed on you?                                                                                                                                               AMEN