Advent I A_RCL Nov 28, 2010 St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh
Isaiah 2: 1-5 Ps 122 Romans 13: 11-14 Matthew 24: 36-44
There is an old rabbinical saying which says: “Three things come unexpectedly: Messiah, the discovery of a treasure, and a scorpion”. That, I think, sets the stage perfectly for the season of Advent, and for what our Advent “inner work” is as we begin our liturgical year. The message of Advent is, to me, clear: if we don’t do the inner work of Advent, the rest of the liturgical year is very likely to be a waste of time and to bear little fruit. Though, to be fair, there is also the other side of the coin: Like it or not, having prepared for it or not, Life can and will surprise us. But often, as the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins teaches, if our hearts and minds aren’t at least trained to be opened to the Expected as well as the Unexpected - something we often call Divine Grace - we can be roughly shut out from the metaphorical Wedding Banquet.
The issues of Advent are, to me, clear: Who are you and I as a person?; Who do you and I want to be as a person?; Who do you and I feel invited or called to be as a person - in our case as Christians, by God in Jesus? What vision of the human community do we hold?
Now, I am what has been called an Eighth Day Christian. That is a “mystical” way of justifying many of my odd views ….. and you are all used to my “odd” views! ! Essentially what it means is that, post-Resurrection, everything of Time and Space and Being has “collapsed” into the Now. How’s that for mystical weirdness?? It’s like there’s a Sacred Black Hole into which all Reality has been sucked ….. and our lives are what pop out at the mysterious other end!
I happen to believe that the Eighth Day is the “norm” for Christians. It is he context in which we strive to live each moment. This is reflected liturgically in the Acclamation we all “shout” in the middle of Eucharistic Prayer I: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Most people think this is linear: the Past, the Present, the Future, following one another. I think it is the only way we know how to say in words that the Life-giving power of the birth, life, death, resurrection, and eternal presence of the Holy One are all simultaneously present and part of our own lives and of the Life of all living things. In it’s own limping way, the Collect for Advent Sunday tries to say the same thing, calling us “now in the time of this mortal life” to live fully Christ’s Incarnation and His Second Coming. It is all our Now.
The Biblical story presents the Incarnation and the Second Coming of Christ as if they are single events in Time. I do not understand them in this way. Advent asks us to be centered in the great Mystery that you and I and all that exists do so through the inpouring and indwelling of the Divine Life. We immerse ourselves in this Divine Life again and again in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, eating Christ’s Body and drinking Christ’s Blood, merging flesh and spirit. And Advent asks us to be centered at the same time in the expected or unexpected moment by moment “coming” of the Giver of Life into us. I think of the lovely hopeful words of the Psalm: “I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where will my help come?” And in the Psalm appointed for today (psalm 122), there is the beautiful image of Jerusalem, shining on the hill, “to which the tribes go up”. Jerusalem – that place where God “dwells” in His Temple, is “at unity in itself”, a symbol of the unity of God and Humankind, in which we are called to live and daily “to go up”.
Now, I have said many times that, being Episcopalians, we have a wide context for belief! You can go from the rigid so-called “literal” on one end to the verging-on-the-heretical-if-not-wild-eyed mystical-or-metaphorical on the other. I believe that the meaning of the wonderful myths of the Nativity of Jesus (the First Coming) and of the end-time coming of the Christ in judgment (the Second Coming) are not found in chronos, linear time, but in chairos, the “in-between” time where Mystery is revealed. They are both part of the One Reality. What is that One Reality? That God dwells at the core of our Being, and that we are being shaped moment by moment by Divine Love and Mercy and Justice and Forgiveness.
Advent gives us only four weeks to regroup ourselves - to resettle ourselves and to cultivate an openness to the “daily visitation” of the Divine, after forty-eight weeks of dealing with the ups and downs of our crazy lives, and liturgically pondering what we call the Holy Mysteries: Incarnation; Epiphany; Passion and Death; Resurrection; Ascension; the Descent of the Holy Spirit. I think we need more of Advent! If I had my way, I’d reorganize the liturgical year, with at least two mini-Advents through the long Pentecost Season, pulling us back to the center from which we so easily stray. Of course, the Holy Eucharist provides this anchor each Sunday.
So: our work as followers of the Gospel path is to be awake and nurturing of and expectant of the Holy Presence. My colleague Suzanne Guthrie eloquently voices what often is our state:
My soul wallows in its long habit of sleep: of disregard, of thoughtlessness, heartlessness, a psychic hibernation against feeling and against knowing for fear of pain. My soul reclines, suspended in a torpor of uncaring. I'm not ready to greet either the horrors or wonders of the dawning of the Great Day. My body stands dumbly looking at the sky, but my soul lies dormant like a rodent deeply buried in its underground nest in darkest winter, far from my heart.[1]
St. Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Romans today: “make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God.[2] The Collect proposes the simple answer: “give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light”.
In other words, the answer is the path of Repentance. But Repentance is not just the rejection of Sin, of the unloving. Repentance is the art of learning to call out our rodent souls from their buried nest in darkest winter and stand before the bright Jerusalem, before the moment by moment power of all that God in Christ – and Life! - eternally is: Incarnation, Epiphany, Dying and Rising, Ascending into God, living in the Spirit of Truth.
St. Andrew of Crete (650) speaks to the urgency – as does the apocalyptic language of Advent: The end draws near, my soul, the end draws near; Yet you do not care or make ready. The time grows short, rise up: the Judge is at the door. The days of our life pass swiftly, as a dream, as a flower. Why do we trouble ourselves over what is all in vain?
Advent calls us to Awaken – to awaken to our Reality as a “child of God”. To awaken to the reality of our Sin, but also to our capacity to love. We don’t have to become instantly “perfect in Love”; just each day to face into truth and into the face of God. The mystery of Grace will lead us on.
In his Advent Poem, the 18th C English priest John Keble writes:
But what are Heaven's alarms to hearts that cower / In willful slumber, deepening every hour,
That draw their curtains closer round, The nearer swells the trumpet's sound?
Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die,
Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh.
“Three things come unexpectedly: Messiah, the discovery of a treasure, and a scorpion”.
Our hearts do not cower. In Advent, we boldly face the “scorpions” and cast out all delusions. We seek the treasure that is “the Lord, the Christ” in our “earthen vessels”. We welcome the Messiah Who eternally, moment by moment, forever comes among us.
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