Stand up and raise your heads

The following is a sermon preached by Vicar Rhonda Lee on the first Sunday in Advent, 29 November 2009.

Luke 21:25-36

As a transplanted Canadian, I have a long history of complaining to anyone who will listen—admittedly, not very many people—about the timing of American Thanksgiving. For me, it’s clear that Thanksgiving should fall on the second Monday in October—what Americans call Columbus Day, or in some parts of the country, El Día de la Raza. Celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November, only a month before Christmas, creates far too long a wait for a holiday after the Labor Day long weekend.

Now that I’m ordained, my grudge against U.S. Thanksgiving has intensified. Too often, like this year, the holiday falls just before the first Sunday in Advent. Clergy expect smaller congregations than usual on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, as people straggle—and struggle—back to town after visiting family across the country.

Those who do make it to church may be surprised not only by the news that it’s already Advent, but by the urgency of Jesus’ tone: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness…Be alert at all times…”

Be alert? Hasn’t our Lord heard about tryptophan?

Avoid dissipation and drunkenness? Does he make exceptions for crucial football games?

If we needed further evidence that the church calendar is out of step with secular festivals, this year’s juxtaposition of Thanksgiving and Advent is it.

While the secular year drags—or rushes, depending on your perspective—to a close, the first Sunday in Advent ushers in a new church year. While advertisers clamor for our attention and our money, urging us to buy things that provide at best a fleeting sense of satisfaction, the Advent season draws our eyes and our hearts toward eternity. We’re all looking forward to welcoming the Christ child on Christmas Eve, but that night’s still four weeks away, and this morning’s Gospel reading contains a sobering reminder about him.

In it, the baby is all grown up, and he’s headed for the cross.

Jesus is in Jerusalem, teaching and gathering larger and larger crowds around him as the feast of Passover, and his arrest, draw closer. His teaching is becoming increasingly urgent until, in today’s passage, he echoes the biblical prophets to turn his listeners’ attention to the only things that endure. Sounding like Isaiah, Joel, and Zephaniah, Jesus speaks, not of the end of his own life, but of the end of the age and the dawning of the reign of God. His language is terrifying: “There will be…on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.”

Immediately, however, Jesus offers comfort in the form of a strange command: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

How can Jesus ask these things of us? Daring to stand, heads held high, before God, who’s coming among us “with power and great glory”? Living without fear in a world that seems to be teetering on the brink of apocalypse?

His words make sense only when we interpret them through the cross: the life that led him to it, the death he died there, and the resurrection that transformed it from a symbol of death to a sign of unquenchable life.

His life makes sense only in light of salvation history. He’s the One who fed, healed, and loved everyone as God does, telling them the truth that would make them whole and set them free. The One who gave up everything he had for the sake of everyone but himself. Who wandered homeless as his ancestors the Israelites did, in order to lead us all into the promised land.

His death is inseparable from his life—a final act of self-giving in the face of the world’s brutality. And his resurrection is inseparable from his death—witness to the immeasurable power of God’s love, and the first sign that the new age of God’s reign had begun. That sign was far more dramatic on a cosmic scale than an eclipse, meteor shower, tidal wave, or any of the other signs human beings take as evidence that an era of history is coming to its end, and another preparing to be born.

For most people, the signs of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection went unnoticed, their import not understood. But his disciples saw, heard, and slowly realized that the new age had begun, and they shared that conviction with anyone who would listen—and many who wouldn’t. The resurrected Christ gave them grace to speak and to write the record of his life, and those are the words that will not pass away.

The words of Scripture point to the living Word that is Jesus Christ, and he is the lens through which we look at everything that is, and see it transformed. When we see the world through that lens, we become alert to signs that the old—the order that put Jesus to death on the cross—is passing away, and the new—fresh life—is coming into being.

Here at St. Joseph’s, we see that new life in the fellowship meals that follow prayer services and Eucharists.

In toilet paper and diapers offered at the altar along with the bread, wine, and money, to be blessed and taken back out into the world as a sign of God’s compassionate love.

In a house that’s a home for friends, supported by a larger network of friends.

In a church economy based on gift-giving and mutual sharing, rather than commerce and calculation; where people are welcomed for their inherent worth as children of God, and offered what they need, not judged by how deserving, or grateful, they—we—appear to be.

The value of the relationships that the Holy Spirit weaves among us can’t be measured. They can only be marveled at, for their incarnation of generous, even reckless love. That love is the reality that will endure, and deepen endlessly, after everything else has faded away.

Relationships grounded in God’s love are the place where we stand, heads raised and hands outstretched, in the expectation of Jesus Christ’s return; and when we stand in them, he has already returned. Amen.

I am not generally a big fan of Martin Luther, but this week the German Reformer’s definition of sin struck me as perceptive. Sin, he said, is “a person turned in on oneself” (homo incurvatus in se). And lately I’m impressed with just how much of my life I spend protecting and pampering me.

I think about me. What’s the next step in my life? How can I get the most out of my opportunities? I hope that person likes me. I can’t believe what that person said to me. Am I happy? Do I think about myself too much?

I decorate myself. I worry about being over-dressed, or under-dressed. Or wearing the right colors, or the right things for the season. And certainly I can’t wear the same outfit twice in one week!

I talk about me. I hate it when people just want to talk about themselves!

I am self-centered, and so I avoid dependence on others: independence gives me the time to do what I need to do for me.

So I secure myself. I spend most of my time running far away from anything that might control me, that might limit my freedom and self-expression. But perhaps most of all, I am running away from anything that might make me dependent upon others. For utter dependence is humiliating.

Worst of all, I separate myself from other members of the church and from God, assuring myself that I don’t really need those other messed up people. Surely these are not the people Jesus prayed for me to be one with!

But I am also self-centered because I avoid dependence. After all, I rationalize, its only the responsible thing to do to spend all my time making sure I am maximizing the potential God has given me.

I spend my time making sure that I am self-sustaining so that I need charity from neither others nor from God nor, heaven forbid, from others in the name of God. I will not be a charity case! I will be a self-made man.

So I avoid dependence because I am self-centered, and I am self-centered because I avoid dependence.

Locked in a cage of narcissism and unable to get free, I realize that I am obsessed with myself!

But then the Gospel is read: Do not worry. Look at the birds and the lilies. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you.

Jesus paints for us here one moment in his stunning vision of a life of mutual, worry free, dependence for those who seek God’s kingdom before all things. While we do this Jesus promises that God will clothe us, feed us and give us to drink. I don’t think we should hear Jesus saying that, if the - for us - unthinkable happens and we run out of food, God will deliver food from the sky. Rather, Jesus hits much closer to home. As we seek the Kingdom, he says, God will feed us with all that we need by means of one another. This mutual dependence is confirmed by what Jesus says in the immediate context of our passage:

Give to him who begs. Don’t refuse one who wants to borrow.

Ask and it will be given to you; knock and the door will be opened; seek and you shall find.

If a child begs bread or fish he will not be given a stone or snake.

So don’t worry, if God knows how to take care of the lilies and the birds, he surely knows how to take care of us.

And he will feed us, clothe us, and give us to drink, I dare say, both literally and metaphorically.

For God takes care of us not just by people’s gifts, but by the gifts of people. God makes us dependent upon others and others upon us in order to redeem us, in order to shape within us the virtues of his Son. For how can we learn to go the second mile, if we’ve run far from anyone who might ask us to bear her burden in the first place? And how will we learn to turn the other cheek, if we are never in danger of being struck?

As Mother Rhonda said to me this week, "we are each other’s spiritual disciplines." We are each other’s hope of becoming Christ-like.

Only if we realize and live into our deep dependence on one another, will we give thanks the way we should – now, and each time bread is broken and wine poured out.

--Colin