God, Grant Us a Sense of Your Timing
A sermon preached by the Reverend Stephanie J. Nagley at St. Luke’s Bethesda , Maryland
The dogs and I go out the back door and down Rock Creek Trail nearly every morning. I walk with them and with the news of the day. I walk with frustration thinking about the worldwide financial mess. I walk with the news of a government so dysfunctional that the only hope seems to be in loosely organized occupy movement across the country. I see the picture of protesters being peppered sprayed in California
Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful fall day and soon my attention goes to the leaves that crunch underfoot, old trees nearly barren with a few leaves hanging on. Other trees have fallen and are finding a new way into the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Young saplings refuse to surrender to the approaching winter. They are still green as if the sap is rising. What was, what is and what is to come. I hear the birds, each calling out in its own particular and distinct language.
The dogs lift their noses. There are four deer grazing, three doe and a fawn. They could care less. They look at the three of us and chew away. Jackson Jackson
Off in the distance I hear the traffic on Beach Drive. Did ever notice how traffic unseen sounds like the ocean? Then a siren and a train whistle.
The train whistle takes me back. I’m a child standing on the corner of Main Street
next to the bank. Charlie Freeberg sets out for me fom his gas station across the street. Mr. Freeberg is a grizzled stump of a man, his khakis stained with oil and grease. He’s coming to help me cross the street safely even though there hasn’t been a car for at least a half hour, not since Bob Gordon pulled his red pickup into the gas station so his dog could get an ice cream bar. The dog had a charge account at Freeberg’s gas station. Standing on the corner of memory I hear the words of my childhood: “Stop, look and listen”.
next to the bank. Charlie Freeberg sets out for me fom his gas station across the street. Mr. Freeberg is a grizzled stump of a man, his khakis stained with oil and grease. He’s coming to help me cross the street safely even though there hasn’t been a car for at least a half hour, not since Bob Gordon pulled his red pickup into the gas station so his dog could get an ice cream bar. The dog had a charge account at Freeberg’s gas station. Standing on the corner of memory I hear the words of my childhood: “Stop, look and listen”.
It's breathtaking the way the present reaches back to the past and brings forward the very nature of our journey. We’re here to “stop, look and listen”. We’re meant to stop, look and listen for what was, what is and what is to come. There’s no better time to practice that spiritual discipline than in Advent.
Advent is a time when time has no boundaries, when past and present and future is one. It’s like the walk down Rock Creek Park
Advent is God’s redemption of time and allowing us some space in our days to remember what really matters. There is very little selvage in our days to roll around a problem or pain until it is rendered a blessing. The calendar is too full, the hours too claimed by other pressures and plans to allow God’s claim on our lives. We live in a culture where busyness is worn like haute couture. We live in a culture that bows at the altar of fast solutions and temporary fixes.
The first Sunday of Advent the church calendar turns over while the calendar in our kitchen waits to change. The church is out of sync with the secular world and yet strangely in sync with how our hearts are meant to be tuned to God. Over these next few weeks the secular world is going to try to seduce us in believing we can buy happiness. None of this is to say that shopping and gift giving, and singing “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” and “Santa Baby” is a bad thing. The church and commerce are both trying to prepare us for Christmas.[1] The difference is that commerce isn’t interested in getting us closer to God even though the after Christmas bills lead many to prayer.
As with every other day and every other season Christians bring a little something extra to this time of year. We bring our awareness that God is part of what this time is about. So we can have the annual Christmas party on December 10th, go to the mall, hear the Christmas songs and see God through it all. We can see and hear what was, what is and what is to come.
If you think about it, most of the Christmas songs are a prayer – a prayer for today, a longing for an idealized past, a hope for tomorrow. “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” is a religious song. He’s the outcast reindeer. He’s the one everyone else laughs and scorns. He’s the orphaned and the widowed, the lame and the blind that Jesus cared so much about. Rudolph is a 99%er. He’s the beggar on the corner of Rockville Pike. He’s the kid needing school supplies, the woman hoping for something from the giving tree. Rudolph is the immigrant waiting for a job at some parking lot somewhere hoping he’ll get a chance. And then he does get that chance.
You want to sing along with Bing Crosby on “White Christmas”? Go ahead. That song is about Christmas past written when all the world was at war. It now floats over the mall shoppers when much of the world is still at war and we’re still dreaming of a day when there is peace on the earth. What was, what is and what is to come…
This is our time to stop look and listen, to sink deeply into this luxury of Advent and hear about the Second Coming of Christ. The scenes of that coming won't be peaceful winter wonderlands and a quaint little town of Bethlehem
I’ve never been sure what to make of the Second Coming as a one time event. Maybe it will indeed happen one day that there will be blast and blare from on high and we’ll see Jesus floating down. Who knows for sure? But the dark and dissonant cords of second comings have fallen on every generation. For the early Christians the story of the Son of Man coming in the clouds may have sounded like the resurrection. And for Mark’s readers in the year 70 those dark and troubling times seemed to happen with the Jewish revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem Hiroshima
For each and every generation there are times that look like the end is near. Apocalyptic visions and warnings of the Second Coming recycle. Their function is to rattle us into attention to God’s presence, to keep awake and alert and aware that as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.
The Son of Man comes. He most often looks different than we thought and appears unexpectedly, but he comes. On Rock Creek Trail he is a grizzled and stained stump of a man coming to help me cross the street and a reminder to stop, look and listen. He’s the woman putting a present under the giving tree in the church foyer and the teenager passing out turkeys in the parking lot at the food bank. He’s beggar on the street, and the schizophrenic woman sitting next to you in the airport. He’s the store clerk and the girl moving to her iTunes on the train. He’s there when we are jostled and awakened to the vastness of our existence with God that stretches us beyond the limits of our imagination.
We’re made to take this journey, alive, awake, and expectant. We’re meant to stop, look and listen to our lives and for the way in which God is bringing all of time together, for how God in this Advent season and in every season is calling us to a new ways of seeing and a new sense of being the very presence of Christ.
Let us pray:
“O God of all seasons and senses, grant us a sense of your timing…
In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold; teach us the lessons of waiting…
In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold; teach us the lessons of endings….
In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold, teach us the lessons of beginnings…
O God, grant us a sense of your timing. (Guerillas of Grace, Ted Loader)
Perhaps the Second coming is always happening. Internally & personally each of us has experiences that we need to have the 2nd Coming in our lives.
ReplyDeleteI heard on twitter some say, "not to brag or anything but, I've survived the rapture 5 times this year." pretty good statistics that either the rapture isn't here or that guy is a big sinner. We have to be looking for something else. We cannot hold one man/god/deity (or for that matter a singular moment) responsible for saving our hairy, smelly behinds. It is more than that. Gradual thoughts, awakenings, movements, both individually and collectively. Miracles are like artists, your don't always recognize them until they are gone. So we need to stop looking for them and enjoy the artfulness of collective humanity as it can be in the present moment. Just like Stephanie's walk in the words. Even more so, like Jackson, the big dog, and his sense of acknowledging his world, participating in it, and making it his own.