Sermon 11/27/05
Ready - Mark 13:24-37
(view lectionary notes for this text)
In a couple of weeks, a transformation will take place over at the parsonage. My home will go from what it normally looks like, to “Pastor’s Open House” mode – cat hair will vanish off of floors and furniture. Cat toys will be put away. Cat food and cat snacks will be hidden from sight. Furniture will be dusted that hasn’t been dusted in – well, let’s just say, in a while. I don’t consider myself a particularly messy person (though those of you who have seen my office might beg to differ.) But my house is definitely lived in, and I tend to accumulate little piles of things here, there, and everywhere around the house. So when company is coming over, I’m glad to have the time to prepare and get ready before the guests show up at my door. It might be easier, come Open House time, if I didn’t have so much cleaning to do, if things we’re already spotless and shining. But I don’t think I could live in that perpetual state of readiness, just waiting for the doorbell to ring. It would be too stressful, too tiring, too draining.
Indeed, being in a perpetual state of readiness is hard and exhausting work. Since September 11th 2001, the Department of Homeland Security has developed a threat advisory color coded system, letting us know how alert we are supposed to be, how likely it is that we would experience more terrorism on US soil. And since September 11th, we’ve been at an elevated level of risk, half-way up the scale. Also, Homeland Security has developed a website, ready.gov, telling us how to prepare our homes for potential biological and chemical weapons attacks, by making kits including the now infamous plastic sheets and duct tape. We’re meant to be ready and half-expecting an attack. The idea is to have us be prepared, not caught off guard in case something happens. We’re to be ready, always ready. Again, this constant readiness is hard work, and the result has sometimes been a climate of fear and anxiety and stress where we feel we’re always looking over our shoulders, always casting a suspicious eye at those who don’t seem like us or look like us. It’s exhausting work, to always be ready.
So here we are, at the beginning of Advent, the season of preparation, the season of getting ready. And it, indeed, can be exhausting work, can’t it? Here, on the first Sunday of Advent, perhaps you are already feeling fatigue from the Thanksgiving celebration of this past Thursday. Perhaps you’ve just barely recovered from that, plus maybe a day of shopping on Friday, plus maybe a fridge that’s still full of leftovers. And now it’s time to prepare, time for Advent, because Christmas is just four weeks from today, and we’ve got a lot to do between now and then.
Instead of finding peace and encouragement in our scripture readings, then, instead we seem to find only doom and gloom, and a text that may serve only to add another layer of anxiety to our lives. In the gospel of Mark, we find Jesus talking about “those days”, those days when the world as we know it will cease to exist. Jesus describes a world where the sun and moon don’t light the sky. Jesus says we’ll know the signs when we see them, like we know summer is near when the trees’ leaves begin to form. But, Jesus concludes, even if we see these signs, and think the end is near, no one knows the day or the hour – not even Jesus – but only God the Creator knows the answers to such mysteries. Jesus’ advice to us, then, is to beware, keep alert, and keep awake. He compares the need for readiness to a man leaving on a journey who would, upon leaving, put his slaves in charge of the house and a doorkeeper at the watch – all of whom must remain constantly awake and alert until the master returns. “And what I say I say to you all,” Jesus finishes, “Keep Awake.”
Jesus’ warnings seem to do little to help comfort us as we prepare in this season of Advent. I feel, at first, only more stressed after reading these words. No one knows the day and hour and yet we’re supposed to be constantly ready for these dark and vague events to take place. Is that what Jesus wants? For us to live life with one eye always turned to the clouds, waiting for them to depart and Christ to descend from the heavens? It seems this is the only way we could always be ready. And yet, with half of our mind always ready for the second coming, how can we actually live our lives here on earth day to day? How can we participate fully in the lives we’ve been blessed with here if we’re always getting ready for something that’s going to happen at some unknown time in the future? Personally, I’m not ready to trade in my life for the life of a slave or a doorkeeper who must be constantly vigilant. Is this what Jesus really means for us to do? How do we get ready for something when we don’t quite know what or when that something is?
Last week at this time I was driving home from Virginia, where I had spent the weekend watching a friend from seminary get married. Andy and his now wife, Emily, had been dating for about two years before they got married last week. They had been engaged for about nine months, and spent this time planning their wedding, planning the details of the ceremony and reception, planning specifics like what the gift bags would contain and what the order of songs would be for dancing. But I have to say, if Andy and Emily hadn’t been doing a different kind of preparation, none of these planned-out details would have mattered a bit. If Andy hadn’t been preparing, in a way, all his life, to be the kind of person that Emily would fall in love with, what would it matter what kinds of gift bags they had to give out? If Emily hadn’t been becoming the kind of person that Andy would admire and respect, what would it matter what color the bridesmaids’ dresses were? When I met Andy at the start of seminary, he had no idea who Emily was, and no idea that she was the one he would marry, and no idea when the would marry, and no idea what his life would look like right now. But he still was preparing. The best preparation Andy and Emily could do for their marriage was the internal preparation – the preparation of learning to be kind and giving and loving people who were ready to look out for another person, put another’s concerns before one’s own needs. That’s the preparation that will matter to their marriage in the long run, long after bouquets of flowers from last weekend’s ceremony have faded.
In a similar way, I think of my two cousins, both of whom are expecting their first child in June. Both are busy reading books about motherhood. Both have been shopping and planning what items will be needed in the home to be baby-ready. One cousin informed me that according to her reading, her child is now the size of lima-bean. My cousins are preparing for new life to enter the world. But again, these outward preparations mean hardly anything, if these babies are not welcomed into loving home, loving arms, to parents who will raise these babies as precious, cherished lives. Neither of my cousins had imagined that now is the time when they would be waiting for a child – but both have prepared for the unexpected by the lives they have been leading up to this point, preparing to share love for another, the most essential ingredient of parenting.
When Jesus talks about what we’re to expect for the future, what we’re to do to get ready, how we’re to keep awake and watchful while we wait for the things he describes to transpire at some unknown time, I don’t think Jesus has in mind that we will have some end-of-the-world kit ready in our closets for when we hear the trumpet blasts or see the clouds part. I think Jesus has something much deeper in mind for us. Jesus calls us to prepare ourselves not by making lists, making predictions, and living with one eye to the sky, but by preparing our whole person to become who God is calling us to be. Our whole lives are a process of preparation, getting ready to dwell fully in God’s kingdom. What Jesus wants is for us to not wait until the last minute, not wait until we think God is already knocking on our door, not wait ‘til then to start living out the gospel, to start really loving others, to start really loving God, to start really trying to be a disciple. Jesus wants us to be getting ready while we’re waiting, to be preparing our lives. And that means that we very much need to be living in this world, seeking to touch the lives of God’s creations all around us, seeking to let God into the deepest corners of our hearts.
This Advent, we’re called to prepare. We know a bit of what to expect – we expect a celebration of the Christ Child four weeks from now. But I bet you can’t yet imagine how this child can change your life, if you’re ready for him to do so. So while we wait, we get ready. We prepare our homes, our lives, our hearts, as we seek to be the people God calls us to be. What Jesus says, he says to us all: Keep awake!
Amen.