Wide Awake

Text: Matthew 24:36-44

Thanksgiving is over and another Advent has arrived. I hope everyone has hung their apocalyptic Advent calendars. Be careful, though, when you ask your children or grandchildren to open up the little door for this first day of Advent. The door should be labeled with: “For Mature Adults Only.” And for good reason!

Despite the lovely crèches that will soon adorn our mantles and sanctuary, this first Sunday of Advent offers no lowly shepherds or choirs of angels, no babe in a manger and no Mary pondering all these things in her heart. On this first Sunday of Advent, we look far, far ahead to the fulfillment of God’s time when time will be no more. What does that even mean?! No wonder so many Christians skip Advent altogether and so many onlookers chalk up talk about Jesus coming for a second time as so much religious silliness.

I served on the Board of Trustees of Union Presbyterian Seminary for almost twenty years. Union is a training school for pastors and religious educators. It began on the campus of Hampton-Sydney College in the rural, southern Piedmont of Virginia in the early 19th century. Later that century, the school moved to Richmond, Virginia and it has now expanded with campuses in Richmond and Charlotte, North Carolina.

In Charlotte, we were first hosted by Queens College, but as both schools grew, it was time for Union to find a new North Carolina home. Tom Currie, the dean of Union in Charlotte at the time, tells about one of the visits for a new home. He writes: “One of the sites . . . was an Adventist Church. . . [we] were given a very thorough tour by one of the members of the church. . . . The last stop on the tour was the sanctuary, which, we thought, might serve as our chapel. In the foyer of the sanctuary was a not very well-executed painting of Christ returning to earth. This was an Adventist church, after all. I looked at it and thought it a bit shabby and even a bit creepy maybe. But the guy showing us around was proud of it . . . For him it represented the heart of his faith, the very real hope that Jesus was coming to reclaim his own and that was good news.

“My mental (Calvinist) snickerings silently objected to the notion that we should just sit around waiting for Jesus to come instead of getting busy and doing good while we could here on earth. But my smart-alecky thoughts were stopped in their collective snickerings by the sincerity and genuine hopefulness of this person’s faith. He really expected Jesus to show up. 

“I began to ask myself, ‘What about you, buddy? Where do you expect to see Jesus? Do you expect him to show up in your world?’ I was ashamed that I did not have a very good answer to that question . . .

  Tom goes on to say, “The last thing one might expect in all of that rush and holiday crush is that Jesus would show up. But might he not? . . . In my office is a print of a painting by Brueghel entitled, ‘The Numbering at Bethlehem’, depicting the Lukan account of the Christmas story, where ‘all the world should be registered’. The scene is Bethlehem (portrayed as a north Flemish town) and there is a large crowd lining up to be ‘registered’ in a temporary shed.

“The mass of folks are not paying any attention to the couple that has just arrived, she riding on a donkey, he carrying their worldly goods. In fact no one is paying much attention to them. It’s winter, the stream is iced over, people are going about their work, kids are playing, some ice skating, nobody expects that something special is about to take place in their world. But the child comes – amidst their busyness, their weariness, their silliness and games, their labors, their buying and selling and paying taxes . . . – almost sneaking into town, he comes, filling those faces with hope . . . redeeming their world from the hopelessness of sheer ‘busyness’ and ‘good works’, offering the quiet expectation that his coming is the one piece of good news worth stopping for, worth shutting up our oh so smart snickering, worth looking for in our world.”    

When I read the Matthew text for today, initially my eye is drawn to Jesus’ words when he speaks of the coming fulfillment of God’s time: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven or the Son, but only the Father.” If Jesus, then, does not know the timetable of God, you and I cannot know the timetable of God, so let’s set aside all of our Jesus gazing and move on with life.  The problem, though, is that as soon as Jesus says we cannot know the timetable of God, he warns us not to sleepwalk through life, expecting nothing new, hoping in even less.

Over the years Jennell and I have traveled to the small, troubled land of Haiti a number of times. On my first visit, I encountered a prevailing belief in zombies – corpses that have been animated by some magical spirit. I can remember snickering at the notion of zombies, but the older I get I think the laugh was on me.

For all appearances, you and I live in a zombie-free world, but more often than not, we live in a zombie-like world, a world that is asleep to the presence of the risen Christ. All too often, you and I are asleep to the work that God is doing and calling us to join in right here, right here, whether that “here” is La Gonave, Haiti or Gaza or Ukraine or at the Yellow Door or with the Innocence Project or in the darkest streets of our land where women and children and men have no place to sleep.  

In Chapter 24 of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus uses the most extreme language at his disposal to tell the zombies of his day to “Wake Up!” Then, in the next chapter, Jesus tells them why, because God would not have us sleeping when the least of these our sisters and brothers have so much need and need for us to care, right here, right now.

  The God we meet in Matthew’s Gospel would not have us pretend that hunger and inadequate health care and a justice system that tilts toward the monied and powerful are not our problems to confront, right here, right now. This God would not have us pretend that the more we gather the happier we will be, but just the opposite, the more we give, the more we follow in the ways of the One for whom we wait.

So, on this first Sunday of Advent, what if we set aside our zombie ways and come to this table with the great expectation that the host of this meal is right here, right now? What if Jesus awaits us in this bread not as a figment of our deluded religious imaginations but as a brother who walks with us where others fear to tread? What if Jesus awaits us in the cup, awaits not to dull our senses into zombie somnolence but to awaken us to God’s call to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God, right here, right now? 

My friend Tom Currie is an able guide into Advent as he writes: “Well, Jesus is coming. He may not be where we think he ought to be or where we would expect to find him, but he is coming. He must think this world is worth coming for, worth an Advent and even a Second Advent. Maybe we should be so hopeful about this world too.”

         As I look around at our nation today, as well as our world, I find it extremely hard to see causes for hope. And, yet, when I come to this table, I am reminded where hope is found and where despair is dismissed and where love finally triumphs. I am reminded that in my most zombie-like moments it is time, high time, and precisely the right time to: Wake Up!

         Welcome back, Advent. We’ve missed you.

                  AMEN