Keep Awake

December 03, 2017

First Sunday of Advent

What I say to you, I say to all: Keep Awake!

Do you know the story of the people of San Jose de Gracia? The story, so it goes, is set back in 1899, in a little mountain village in central Mexico. And back in that rural place, in those simpler days, amongst the poor and uneducated, they were quite apprehensive of what would happen on New Year’s Eve, on the brink of the end of the century. And the story goes like this:

There were some who spent the savings of several generations on one last spree. Many insulted those they could not afford to insult and kissed those they shouldn’t have kissed. No one wanted to end up without confession. The parish priest gave preference to the pregnant and to new mothers. This self-denying cleric lasted three days and three nights in the confessional before fainting from an indigestion of sins.

When midnight came on the last day of the century, all the inhabitants of San Jose de Gracia prepared to die clean. God had accumulated much wrath since the creation of the world, and no one doubted that the time had come for the final blowout. Breath held, eyes closed, teeth clenched, the people listened to the 12 chimes of the church clock, one after the other, deeply convinced that there would be no afterwards...

Well - the people of San Jose de Gracia had clearly been spending a lot of time reading certain parts of the Bible. Parts of the Bible, perhaps, rather like the ones we have been hearing this morning, from which we learn how when the Lord comes down to the earth, the very mountains quake, so terrifying is the prospect of the Lord in his wrath. And if Old Testament prophecy is not enough for you, we have Jesus himself, in that gospel passage we have just heard, speaking of the sun and the moon being darkened, and of a time of great suffering, and then the final judgement coming upon us as the Son of Man comes in glory. It sounds terrifying – and that’s because it is, or it should, be terrifying!

And, as we know from history, the people of San Jose de Gracia are far from unique. I’m sure we many of us still remember how just about everyone in the developed world approached the millennium only 17 years ago. We were so concerned about the utterly non-existent Y2K bug that people didn’t dare fly, they didn’t dare use machinery, they didn’t even think it was safe to drink tap water. And we are meant to be capable, educated, developed people, unlike those in  San Jose de Gracia. But, for all that, I suspect that you and I don’t, by and large, think we will live to experience in our life time all the terrible apocalyptic predictions we find in the pages of the Bible, whether from Old Testament prophets, or even on the lips of Jesus himself. We don’t think we will live to see the wrath of God made manifest on earth in that way, do we?

That, I suspect, would have been pretty much the opinion of Natalia and Gianna Baca, a pair of twin teenage girls at Faith Lutheran High School a private Christian academy in an affluent community of gated neighborhoods nine miles west of the Strip in Las Vegas, who were profiled earlier this week in the Washington Post. American Lutherans are not particularly known for preaching an apocalyptic approach to the Christian faith, and I’d be prepared to bet that these 17-year old young women had much the same pragmatic approach to life as most of us here this morning. That is until they both received serious gunshot wounds on that awful night in Vegas just over two months ago, along with 544 other injured people, let alone the 59 people who lost their lives in that sudden, inexplicable outburst of violence.

And until the last year, I doubt that young Shawkat Arwah would have been too perturbed by apocalyptic thoughts. She and her family lived in Myanmar as members of the one million strong Rohingya minority in Rakhine State in that country – lived there until, as she related to Pope Francis this last week – soldiers appeared, shouting “You Rohingyas, you Bangladeshis”, and then started shooting. As this brave 12-year-old girl told the Pope in Dhaka, Bangladesh, “they killed my aunt, my uncle, my four brothers, my sister, my parents – I have nobody and nothing left.” And now Shawkat faces life as one of over 600,000 refugees, chased from their homes in Myanmar, now living a desperate life in Bangladesh.

The number of people killed in the awful events in Las Vegas was probably more than lived in San Jose de Gracia in 1899; the number of murdered, let alone displaced Royingya, approached 10% of the entire Mexican population in 1899. Young Shawkat and the Baca twins in their different contexts were caught up in horrors that must have felt truly apocalyptic. Gunshots, panic, darkness, fear - and all quite out of the blue. And one thing I would venture to suggest is that those young women whose stories grabbed my attention just in the last 48 hours worth of news stories from our world – they and all who were caught up in this week’s traumatic events would now understand is just why it is that Jesus tells his followers to keep awake, to beware and to keep alert. For, truly, none of us knows the hour when something apocalyptic might happen to us, whether on the streets of Vegas, Chicago, Myanmar, or anywhere else in the world. But the wrath of killers or terrorists is not, we must recognize, the wrath of God.

And so, on this first Sunday of Advent, let me echo those words of Jesus and say to you, right here and now - Keep Awake! But, despite the horrors of events such as the Vegas shooting, the Orlando massacre last year, or any of the other horrific crimes and attacks which so regularly assail us in news broadcasts from home or abroad, I’m telling you to keep awake not because I think that the second coming is imminent. Nor, even, am I saying it because I think you or I are particularly likely to have an experience similar to the victims of massacres such as that perpetrated by Stephen Paddock just a few weeks ago. The reality of our situation, yours and mine, is that we are most, most unlikely to be plummeted into something you might call apocalyptic. And that’s good, because, actually, notwithstanding what we have just heard read from Scripture, it’s not very helpful to live apocalyptically...

Some Christian sects are fanatical and obsessed about the coming of the Last Day, and how world events relate to it. The season of Advent, if they notice it at all, must be a special cause of excitement to them, with all the talk of judgment and end-times the season brings. But, in fact, such Christians don’t need the seasons of the church’s calendar to get carried away. After 9/11 there was no shortage of people out there on the lunatic fringe trying to explain how it had been foretold in the Book of Revelation. But actually, it’s not our place to be trading in apocalyptic visions of the second coming and the judgment. As one great Chicago theologian once put it:

Apocalypse is the cry of the helpless, who are borne passively by events which they cannot influence, much less control. Apocalyptic rage is a flight from reality, a plea to God to fulfill their wishes and prove them right and the other wrong. Apocalyptic believers could hardly think the saying, “Go, make disciples of all nations,” was addressed to them. Had apocalyptic believers dominated the church since the first century, there would have been no missions, no schools, no hospitals, no orphanages, no almsgiving. The helpless cannot afford to think of such enterprises; they can only await the act of God, and then complain because that act is so long delayed. The gospels and epistles rather tell the believers that they are the act of God.

That’s a very powerful and coherent statement, and it reminds us, I hope, that - as a Christian community - we are not called to be helpless people, caught up passively in events. The reason why Jesus tells us - us good people of St James Cathedral - to keep awake is to make sure that we are not distracted from undertaking the work of God and the building of God’s kingdom, right here and now. We, I hope, are the type of Christian who takes comfort that over the years, the Church has helped create missions, schools, hospitals, orphanages, and almsgiving. Because, you know, if we don’t, it’s not always plain who will...

At tonight’s Advent Procession with carols, we will be giving our collection away to our friends and mission partners at Covenant House, working with homeless young people living on the streets right outside our doors. And at Christmas, we will be using your generosity once again to support the impoverished and under-funded orphanage in Bethlehem that some of you have now visited with me.

And the ministries of these wonderful institutions, both here and overseas – these ministries are only possible because their staff, their EDs, their boards and their funders – their supporters are people who keep awake. These are people who make wonderful things happen by being open to God’s call in their lives – God’s call not to take an easy option, but to do something gospel-shaped that make’s a Christ-shaped difference in a harsh world.

And like them, we - you and I - we can only serve God if we keep awake. That is God’s message to us this morning, and it is the over-arching message of the gospel. Because the real point of that passage we just heard from Mark 13 - the real point of it is that precisely because we don’t know the hour of the coming of the Son of Man, it has to be business as usual - which means the business of today to prepare for God’s tomorrow.

On Friday morning, a few of you shared with me the privilege of hearing former Education Secretary Arne Duncan speak at the Chicago Leadership Prayer Breakfast about the work of the charity he now runs, that seeks to create job and life opportunities for the all too many disconnected youth of some of the most challenging neighborhoods on the south and west sides of this city. He spoke with vision and passion about the challenges faced by these young people – people who live in constant fear of the violent surroundings in which they live. He pointed out that these are people who will be lucky ever to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – for they live with Present  Traumatic Stress and the disorders it brings. And, while he avoided using any overtly religious language, he was quite clear that, ultimately, the only thing that will help these people is the injection of hope – real hope, of the kind which St Paul famously claims ‘does not disappoint’ – the injection of hope into their lives.

And that’s the kind of work God is calling us to do right now. And just maybe, if we ever get that all done and wrapped up, and we have fed every hungry or homeless person on our streets, and ensure that no more babies are discarded as unwanted embarrassments on the streets of Jesus’ own hometown – perhaps then we might indulge in the luxury of speculating about the last days that are still to come. Then, perhaps, but not before.

For I’m afraid that the people of San Jose de Gracia quite misunderstood what kind of a future God was calling them to, and they ended up being profoundly embarrassed by their behavior. Let us pray that with God’s help we will be wiser this Advent, and use this holy season to redouble our efforts to seek out and obey our extraordinary and Incarnate God, and to show Him all the more clearly to the rest of the world around us. So What I say to you, I say to all: Keep Awake!  Amen.