First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
28 November 2004
Wake Up From Sleep
As many of you know, the season of Advent was originally observed as a time to focus on the ancient Christian hope that Jesus will "come again in glory to judge the living and the dead," as the old creeds says. It was not until the 6th century that Advent gradually became a time more oriented towards preparing Christians to commemorate the historical event of the "first coming," Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.
But even with that new focus, Advent (as we can tell from our Gospel reading today) never completely lost its orientation towards the future, towards that longed-for-day when Christ would come again, the kingdom would come on earth, and God would set about righting every wrong.
Precisely when and how this second coming might occur has always sent the Christian imagination into overdrive. In our own day, some of our more enthusiastic sisters and brothers have popularized an idea about the end of history called "The Rapture," based on the mysterious thing Jesus says in this passage—"Two will be in the field and one will be taken..." or "raptured" into heaven. Rapture books, rapture movies and rapture bumper stickers inform us that any day now, godly people will begin vanishing from car washes, nursing homes, and college dorms. They'll be snatched up to God and thus spared the wrath that will be unleashed on the ungodly who are "left behind."
The Rapture is serious business to many fundamentalists and evangelicals. But it is funny business to many other Christians and to the culture at large. The writers of the quirky (and, some would say, bizarre) HBO series, Six Feet Under, weighed in on the subject last season. You may know that each episode of that show opens with the death of some individual who then ends up on the Fisher & Diaz Funeral Home embalming table.
The opening bit of the episode in question featured a woman driving along a city street, listening to Christian music. She glances up and notices what looks like people floating into the clouds. What she doesn't know is that a truck carrying helium-inflated rubber dolls has just skidded, trying to avoid hitting a kid on a skateboard, and it is losing its cargo to the skies. She is overcome with emotion, believing that The Rapture has finally begun and, praising Jesus, she leaps from the car, runs headlong into oncoming traffic, and is, well, not left behind.
As you may have surmised, I don't take The Rapture very seriously myself. I don't mean to be disrespectful to those who do, but it's hard to take it seriously when you think about people shooting up to heaven like pop tarts launched from a toaster (as preacher Lillian Daniel once wrote) and of all the bad people left behind, writhing in flames, kicking themselves for not having given more to televangelists when they had the chance. Besides, I'm in good company with my skepticism—Jesus himself always discouraged prurient speculation about the end times.
I think Jesus knew that, left to our own devices, we'd get it all wrong. Maybe use the notion of his second coming to scare the living daylights out of each other a la John Ashcroft: "We have credible intelligence of a threat. It could be at any time or place, but we don't know when or where. Go about your regular business, but be alert. Report suspicious goings-on, anything out of the ordinary." (Hey, I live in Harvard Square, Mr. Ashcroft—what qualifies as "out of the ordinary"?)
Or maybe try to make money off it, or inflate our own sense of righteousness by it. Lillian Daniels also noted that back in the eighties, Oral Roberts (remember him?) opened a Christian theme park. There was a ride in the park called Noah's Ark. You climbed inside it, and all of a sudden, pre-recorded voices of scoffers surrounded you. "Hey, Noah, what an idiot you are! Stop building that contraption and come carousing with us! Let's eat, drink and be merry, and give away some women in marriage while we're at it!"
But then the ark started to rock and you heard the sound of rain and waves. Then through the loudspeaker the same people who had made fun of Noah started to scream, "Noah...We're sorry, Noah. We were wrong! Let us into the ark! Please....glug, glug, glug." You were supposed to picture all the wicked folks back in Biblical going down for the third time, but while you were at it, you could also slip in (glug, glug, glug) "your tax cheating boss, your wife-swapping neighbor, and the entire membership of the ACLU."
But if you read our Gospel story carefully, there's none of that sort of stuff in it. Jesus doesn't say that people in Noah's time missed the boat because they were evil scoffers. He describes them instead simply as people who were perhaps preoccupied and distracted with the ordinary things of daily life—eating, drinking, getting married.
He doesn't say that in any given pair the good one is snatched away and the bad one stays behind. He says that in the course of attending to their everyday labors in the field or in the kitchen, some people are responsive to the Lord's sudden presence while others are not, presumably because the ones who don't go along with the Lord when he comes are still too busy working, wrapped up in their earthly occupations, never noticing the invitation to go off with Jesus in the first place.
Jesus says that we need to wake up in order to be ready for his arrival. But it sure isn't the sleep of laziness or lack of productivity that he's talking about; the people he mentions were actively living their lives and plying their trades. It is rather a kind of unconsciousness that overtakes us when the business of daily life—this work of ours that was meant to be a pathway to God and a way of connecting with our neighbor—becomes an all-consuming end in itself, leaving no space for God or neighbor or the deepening our own hearts.
When Jesus tell us not to slumber, among other things he means us not to fall into a sleepwalking mode of existence, never really meeting, but passing each other like ships in the night, murmuring empty promises of lunch or coffee or maybe a quick email when things settle down. Things never do He means, among other things, the kind of unreality we move in when we can't or won't say no, but resent the heck out of nearly all our yesses.
I identify mightily with a story Martin Copenhaver tells about a group of people in his church who longed to celebrate Christmas differently. They realized that the season had a lot of its meaning. Too much commercialization, too much stress. Martin encouraged their efforts to organize a resistance. He heard it from so many so often that it began to have the feel of a movement. Only one thing stood in their way—they couldn't find a time to meet.
He also said that last year around this time, Diane Kessler, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, invited him to speak to an ecumenical group of church leaders about ways that they could encourage their faith communities and clergy to practice and keep a Sabbath. A few months later she called him back with apologies because no one could come to the meeting. They didn't have the time.
You've all seen the bumper sticker: "Jesus is coming! Look busy!" Funny, but so American! It's like saying that we'll be judged according to how many holy widgets we have managed to produce at the religious widget factory, that Christ wants us to do, do, do. But we of all people do not have to look busy. We are busy, we are busy-ness itself, and this busy-ness is surely one of the many kinds of sleep from which Jesus admonishes us to wake up or risk losing our souls.
And not just our own souls. Not having time to reflect, or listen to somebody, or pray, or make love, or receive gifts, or simply to sleep almost guarantees that sooner or later we will dry up emotionally, have no spare energy for social engagement, and be able to offer no lasting or meaningful resistance to the powers all around us that have invested much and ingeniously in distracting us from reality and purpose with little inanities of every conceivable kind.
And this soul-desiccation means that we sooner or later we will be of little use to others and to the world when it comes time to wake up from sleep in other ways—to rouse ourselves and act creatively, sacrificially and perseveringly for the sake of some great cause of justice. We will continue to be easy pickings for the perennial purveyors of the Empire's bread and circuses. These powers that be, economic and political, are wide awake. They are counting on us to continue in slumber so that they may continue to create a reality for us whose contours and ends are deeply opposed to the Gospel.
Have you been asleep? Have I? Oh, yes, I have. And meanwhile the deadening inanities multiply.
On November 11, Veterans day (do you remember?) there were 66 ABC media outlets across the country that refused to air Steven Spielberg's WWII film, Saving Private Ryan, citing concerns that—because of the movie's scenes of war violence and its liberal use of expletives, and in the aftermath of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and of the electorate's protective concern for our nation's moral values—they might be slapped with huge FCC indecency fines. In place of Private Ryan some of those outlets showed the made-for-TV movie, Return to Mayberry, a reunion of the cast of the old Andy Griffith Show.
In Iraq on that same day, November 11, Michael Downey, Peter Giannopoulos, Thomas Doerflinger, Sean Huey, Theodore Bowling, Theodore Holder, Kyle Burns and James Blecksmith, of various ranks in various branches of the US Armed Forces, were all shot and killed or blown to bits in separate incidents. None of them was older than 28, and therefore none of them ever saw the original Andy Griffith Show, unless they had watched it on TV Land on cable; but it is very likely that at some time during the day they died, all of them uttered at least one of the nasty little words that the FCC has banned on TV.
Have you been asleep? Have I? I have indeed.
On Thanksgiving Day, November 26, at Mickey Mantle's restaurant on Central Park South in New York City, petite 107-pound former Burger King manager, Sonya Thomas, wolfed down nearly 8 pounds of typical holiday food in a mere 12 minutes. In so doing she defeated a pair of 400-pound rivals and won the Thanksgiving Invitational Eating Contest. This according to a report by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the sponsor of this event, which is but one of hundreds of contests it sanctions annually for this, the fastest growing sport in the world. Competitive eating.
A leading offshore gaming company developed the official betting line for the event. The Chili Champion, Rich LeFevre was a 5/6 favorite, but did not win. He was followed by the Donut Champion Eric Booker at 1/1. Other competitive eating stars that vied for the Thanksgiving Invitational title included Ed Jarvis (Cannoli Champ) 3/1; Dale Boone (Russian Dumpling Champ) 5/1; Charles Hardy (Cabbage Champ) 5/1; Joe Menchetti (Corn Fritter Champ) 12/1; and Crazy Legs Conti (Pancake Champ) 12/1. Al Jazeera was among several international news organizations covering the event.
The day before Thanksgiving, here at home, Jim Stewart and Company served home-made Thanksgiving rations to a hundred fifty or so homeless women and men in the Great Hall of the Massachusetts Statehouse. Everybody got firsts. Not everyone got seconds. One of the State Cops on duty mumbled to me that we were "noble" to do this.
Are you sleeping? Am I? Oh, yes.
On the day after Thanksgiving, which is called Black Friday, because it is the start of the Christmas shopping season when retailers hope to get out of the red and into the black, people all across the country lined up at the doors of WalMart and other stores, forgoing a night's sleep in many cases, in order to be the first to run madly into the aisles at midnight or at five in the morning, or whenever the stores opened extra early, and fill shopping carts with stuff sporting sale prices of up to 50% , prices that could be had only that one day. There were reports of several serious injuries. One lawsuit has already been filed over which of two men who had their hands on it should get to purchase the last HD TV on sale at a Target Store somewhere in northern Wisconsin.
There were 13 million more people in stores buying things on Black Friday than there were at the polls on November 2 casting ballots in the national elections.
Have you been asleep? I have. And in my sleep I have feasted on the Empire's bread and enjoyed its many circuses. But it's Advent now, and time to wake up. To eat other Bread and seek other Delights—God's Word, God's justice, God's people and God's peace.
God (thank God!) is faithful. And even though I find that even when I am trying hard, I can still barely open my eyes, and although I will need a lot of help to get up and really look around, I do mean to wake up this year, this time, little by little, day by day. The Lord is, after all, very near.
You may need help too. Thank God we are in the church, we are in this together. Let's help each other have an Advent. An Advent awake.
© 2004, J Mary Luti