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The Rev. Frank Logue
No One
Knows This week terror turned up a notch as attackers stormed luxury hotels and a Jewish Center in India. Nearly two hundred are reported dead and hundreds more are injured. Unlike previous incidents of terror in India, the attacks in Mumbai were not faceless. The terrorists asked for nationalities and occupations before they took the lives of their intended victims. We’ve seen an ongoing assault of images revealing a slowly and deliberately executed plan to kill certain types of people, while letting others go as long as they didn’t stand in the way. A vicious precision marked the assault as a new look to the ever-evolving face of terror. News reports this Thanksgiving weekend also shared a smaller tragedy. It was the impossibly pointless death of a Wal-Mart employee trampled to death by a mob rushing the store in search of day-after-Thanksgiving bargains. One tragedy, large-scale suffering carefully planned and carried out; the other an accident created by a mob. And as families and friends of the victims of these and other tragedies of the past week cry out with questions of why and how these things happened, Advent breaks upon us. This day, we begin a new church year. The season of Advent is the name given to the four Sundays before our Christmas celebration of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Advent means “coming” and we remember Jesus coming as a babe in the manger in the first advent even as we await his return in glory in the second advent, which marks the end of time. Advent has that duel purpose of preparing us for the Christmas celebration as well as preparing us for the end of the age. Episcopalians are never good at the End Times stuff. We aren’t known for apocalyptic sermons or naming timetables for Christ’s return or anything else strongly connected to the second coming. Advent is for us then more about the build up toward Christmas. In past years, I have thought of Advent as something of a game we play with ourselves. Unlike neighboring churches, we and other liturgical churches hold off on Christmas carols until the Christmas Eve service. We lock ourselves in the limbo of Advent just as the rest of the culture begins a made dash to Christmas. We play a pretend game of waiting for the one who has already come, as if we don’t know that December 24 will once again be marked by a candlelight communion service and the ringing sounds of carols as we end going out into the night singing Joy to the World. But the tragedies of this week have shown that Advent is no mere game. It is clear from the headlines to our day-to-day lives that Christ has not fully come into this world. Yes, our Lord is present, but no he is not present in the fullness for which the whole creation longs. In Advent, we pause and wait, not as a game, or to play pretend. We wait and watch in acknowledgement that we are always waiting and watching. It is not that we come to church and pretend that what’s happening in the world isn’t so. Instead we gather on these ever shortening days of December and each week we light more candles. This week we light one and next week two and so on. The days grow darker sooner and we run against the grain lighting more candles until on Christmas we light the biggest candle in the Advent wreath, the Christ candle. The advent wreath may be a somewhat quaint and fairly recent custom being just a couple of hundred years or so old within ancient faith. But this is no game. We show ourselves visually what we know in our hearts to be true—the world grows ever darker and our need for the light that comes from Christ alone grows greater. Our Gospel reading for today comes from the 13th chapter of Mark’s Gospel. This chapter is sometimes called The Little Apocalypse as Jesus sounds like an apocalyptic preacher as he warns of the End Times. In the part before our reading, Jesus has warned of nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom. He tells of earthquakes and famine which are all the beginning of the birth pangs of something new. He tells us that in the end there will be suffering, such has not been seen from the beginning of creation until now. Then we get to our reading for this first day of the church year. We begin with the end in mind. Jesus uses the images of apocalyptic writings to capture the cataclysmic end saying that “In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven.” This is the ultimate use of light and darkness imagery. Darkness will envelope the earth and then the light of Christ will dawn anew is the truth Jesus conveys. Darkness will be defeated. Light wins out in the end. But the victory of Good over Evil of Light against Darkness is a promised future. In the here and now we still see lots of tragedy: some planned and deliberate; some accidental and all the more pointless for that. These tragedies of the Mumbai attacks and the senseless death of a Wal-Mart employee are just the latest in a centuries long line of suffering. It was in the wake of other such tragedies that the prophet Isaiah cried out in the words of today’s Old Testament reading, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that nations might tremble at your presence. Isaiah wanted God to come breaking in to history to wipe out the bad guys, declare victory for the good guys and clean up all the junk in the world with fire. This desire for God to come swiftly to wreak vengeance in the wake of tragedy is natural. But God holds back. And we can be glad God does as if God brought swift justice after every offense, we would have been burned up long ago for the hurts we have caused others. But instead, God withholds the ultimate judgment until the end of time. When will the end come? In answer to that, Jesus replies, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” He goes on to say, “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” Tongue in cheek, I often say that the reason that Jesus has yet to return is that all the dates are taken. Someone is always predicting that he’ll return on some given day or given year and since no one knows that day or hour of his return, he can’t come back on that day. Jesus couldn’t possibly have returned for Y2K as too many people thought the Year 2000 would be the time for his return. This passage from Mark’s Gospel tells us that we can know the season alone. We can see the birth pangs of a new age and know that the end is near. Many saw this in Rome’s destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem just before the year 70. Many others saw the end coming in the fall of the Roman Empire. Others saw the turn of the year 1,000 as significant or the rise of Hitler in Europe and so on. We have proven over the centuries that it is too easy to see birth pangs of a new age in any given time. We have been wrong again and again. Jesus own first followers read these words about the generation not passing away before Jesus would return and they assumed that before all of Jesus original disciples were dead, Jesus would return in glory. They have long since gone on to glory and we are still waiting. It turns out Jesus was telling the truth when he said no one knows the day or the hour, not even him, but only the Father. From my rather finite perspective, I hear of tragedies great and small and I wish they hadn’t happened. I feel like if I had the power to do something about them, I would. Yet, God has the power to stop suffering and doesn’t. The problem is that to stop suffering, God has to stop the whole human project. As long as we have free will to do what we want, some group can decide it wants to wipe out travelers at a luxury hotel and a Jewish center and they will be able to do so. Yes, we always find small rays of light. There was the nanny who was able to get the 2-year old child of the Jewish Center’s director away before everyone was killed. There will be other similar stories to surface of suffering avoided even in the midst of such great loss. We count on God being present on both sides of the suffering. God is with those who died in the attacks even now. And in the midst of the tragedy, God was there as well. Whether they lived or died, God was present with them. The tragedy is not in death, for God is present with us after we die. The tragedy comes in dying suddenly and unprepared. This is why Jesus’ words ring out so clearly in the wake of tragedy. He says, “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” These are words that could have been said with urgency just before the terrorists entered the hotel or just before opening time for Wal-Mart. But no one knew to call them out. No one knew it was time for the warning. And so we gather now, in this place, to do something that is not play acting or a game or anything trivial. Right here, right now is the time to stake our future on the light. The days are getting shorter as they do each December. And in the waning light we burn more candles. We wait with expectation for the lighting of the Christ candle. Not because we are acting as if Jesus has not come. We do this knowing that he has come and that he is coming back. And in the meantime, the end of time could come for any of us at any time. Our own deaths may well arrive at an unexpected hour. Jesus words break into our day-to-day rush of dealing with other things to say that now is the time to make ready for the end. Now is the time to prepare for the unexpected. No one knows the day or the hour, but we know that though Christ has come into the world, what we need now as ever is to make room for Christ to come more fully into our hearts. We need to make room in our personal calendar of events for him to come into our every day. And for this we can use Advent as a time to prepare for the light of Christ to come more fully into our hearts. Amen.
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