12-7-08

"And what I say to you I say to all: keep awake!" Mark must have been writing this for the benefit of preachers. "Keep awake!" Actually, this is Jesus speaking in his last days. Yet this theme, and therefore this reading in Mark, is standard liturgical text for the early days of Advent, the season in which we await Jesus' coming again. "Keep awake!"

Lest we sleep, Jesus answers two questions for us in this text, which is your reward for being in church on this second Sunday of Advent. So "keep awake!"

(1) The first question is: WHEN WILL JESUS RETURN?

During Advent we sing, "O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel." So it is natural enough to ask, when, pray tell, might this be? When will our finest expectations be fulfilled?

When, inasmuch as... the first Christmas is history and the Herods still rule the world? There is still no room in the inn or place for the poor for too many on our planet. We continue to make war and not peace on earth. Suffering and sorrow abound, pain and disease persists, and purpose proves illusive?

The question is just WHEN WILL JESUS RETURN? For, you see, during Advent, perhaps more than any time of year, we recognize the gap between what has been promised and what is. And we want to know when is Jesus going to return and collapse the gap, conclude the job, "Thy kingdom come," as we pray.

There is no paucity of predictions as to when this will be. From biblical times to today false prophets feed our desire to know with calculations and dates. All wrong, but even in this post-millennium period we still ask for more, buy their books and pack our bags for Iowa or Oregon or Jerusalem, or wherever one is supposed to be when it all ends.

If you are itching, go to RaptureReady.com (I kid you not), and you can catch up on the latest speculations, which includes the time being very soon, as it always is, for the latest to be named the Anti-Christ of the Book of Revelation is President-elect Barack Obama, the sign being when a black man inhabits the White House.

It seems a recent winning lottery number in Illinois was 666, which I find doubtful, but anyway as we all know Illinois is Obama's adopted home state. Therefore he is the Anti-Christ. You connect the dots. Or read your racist e-mail, no doubt brought to you be the same authors who propagated Obama as a Muslim terrorist.

When will Jesus return? This scripture lesson answers the question. It is really quite clear. When will Jesus return? "...about that day or hour no one knows..."

And in case we are slow to be convinced, Jesus repeats it again: "you do not know when the time will come...not the angels in heaven, nor the Son...no one knows..."

And yet again, Jesus tells a brief parable, the conclusion of which is, "for you do not know when the master of the house will come..."

Three times in four verses, the same message, "Read my lips: we do not know when the Lord will return."

But apparently we don't read the Bible too clearly, for as I've said, bookstores have long been full of this apocalyptic babble, and now cyberspace is starting to stink of this stuff. It seems as consumers we cater to catastrophe, perhaps as a way to beat boredom or escape personal problems. I mean, who cares if my personal portfolio is plummeting if the world is going to explode on Thursday. In fact, it probably won't even matter if I cheat on my taxes, or my spouse.

But it is not that easy. The End Time is not around the corner to obliterate our bad behavior and save us from our sins. No, we are going to have to live with the consequences of our actions. Talk about justice. We are going to have to live with our mess.

"But about that day or hour no one knows." We live with uncertainty. Ever since Abraham we have marched into an unknown future with faith as our guide. Not certitude.

Paul addresses this when he writes in his famous "love chapter" in First Corinthians (I Corinthians 13), "Prophecy passes away, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass away," meaning these three signs of certainty will not last.

Prophecy, Paul says, does not make it. It is about as accurate as the weatherman, say 60% on a good week. When I was in school 60% was a D. Tongues as a sign of sure salvation? Tongues are non-sense, Paul writes. Knowledge as the means to secure our future? Hardly. Knowledge turns over quickly. For example, the earth is not flat.

Paul's point: our handrails into the future are not in the form of prophecy, tongues or even knowledge, but in the gifts of faith, hope and love. These are the provisions God provides to make the journey. Life will prove uncertain, but with faith, hope and love, we will not get lost along the way.

You see, when it comes to knowing the future, it is like the advice on becoming a success: "It is not what you know, but who you know." When will Jesus return? We do not know. God only knows. We only need to know Jesus.

(2) The second question is: WHAT ARE WE TO DO WHILE WE WAIT?

Here we are, 2000 Advents later, still waiting for the return. How are we to fill in this time in which we live, this time in between the promise given back then and our expectant fulfillment of the promise at some time in the future "we know not"?

Well, there have been different answers to this question over the centuries, none of them too original. For instance, the Corinthians thought this meant "party time." Hey, the time is short, might as well eat, drink and be merry. We certainly have our contemporary Corinthians, many of whom can be found on college campuses, God love ?em. I mean, we all need a party now and then, but this is not the whole answer to a college education.

What to do while we wait? Grab and get all we can get? Win, win, win. No, no, no.

Again Jesus answers us in this morning's lesson from Mark. And again Jesus answer is in triplicate - he really wants us to get this one, too.

Three times in these few verses Jesus says we are to "watch." What to do while we wait? Watch, watch and watch!

Now let me quickly say this is not watch as in, duh, vegetate, spread out on the sofa and spectate. This is watch as in "Keep awake!" as Jesus puts it. "Keep alert!"

It is like the student who says to his master, "What can I do to attain God?" Answers the master, with a question, "Well, what can you do to make the sun rise?" Realizing the short answer is "not a thing," the student com- plains, "Why then are we spending all this time in prayer?" Answers the master, "To make sure you are awake when the sun does rise."

Jesus says, "Keep awake! Be alert! Don't miss the message." And then to get his point across, he shares a one sentence story. A master goes away on a journey and leaves his servants in charge. Before leaving the master tells each servant what to do. While gone the servants are to continue to do their chores, as if the Master never left.

Watch, the master says to the doorkeeper, because this is what doorkeepers do. They watch. The doorkeeper is to do his job as he always does. He is to watch.

This is what we are supposed to do while we wait. We are to work as we have always done, doing what Jesus calls us to do.

We are to be keepers of the kingdom even while we wait for the Kingdom to come. It's confusing, I know, we're doing theology here, but Jesus tries to make it simple. He does not want us to miss it.

Which reminds me of the story of the fellow who goes to the bus station in Athens, Georgia, to buy a ticket for Greenville, South Carolina. The ticket clerk informs him the bus will be a little late. So to kill time he wanders around the station. He comes upon a machine that advertises, "I will tell you your name, your age, your hometown, and other pertinent information."

Curious, the man bites and puts a quarter in the machine, which prints out a card in return, which reads, "Your name is Bob Jones. You are thirty-five years of age. You live in Athens, Georgia. You are waiting for a bus to Greenville, South Carolina, which is late."

Wow! Mystified, the man puts in another quarter, and again in response receives a card, "Your name is Bob Jones. You are thirty-five years of age. You live in Athens, GA., and you are still waiting for a bus to Greenville, SC, which will be delayed even longer."

Now Bob is really intrigued. He thinks, "I'm going to stump this stupid machine." So he goes across the street to a five-and-dime store, buys one of those Groucho Marx masks, you know with the glasses & brows, nose & stache, along with a wig & cane. He limps back over to the station, and puts another quarter in the machine.

Out comes the card, "Your name is Bob Jones. You are 35 years of age. You live in Athens, GA. You are waiting for a bus to Greenville, SC, which you just missed while you were clowning around."

We are to work while we wait, not clown around. I think we know very well what this means. We are to feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, befriend the stranger, forgive a friend, love our neighbor, pray for peace...we know the teachings, because we know the Lord.

We do NOT know when the Lord will return. Nobody does: to date, all the predictions have been wrong. But we do know what to do while we wait.

We can pick an angel off the tree or throw a stuffed animal in the crib. We can ring bells for the Salvation Army, as many of you did yesterday, or serve Fish or St. Anne's kitchen, as others of you did the week before.

Who knows, maybe Christmas will get here earlier for somebody because of your witness while we wait. And the world, instead of ending, will be made better.

So, "keep awake!" AMEN