Advent 1C
St. David’s, Austin
Nov. 29, 2009
Gospel Reading: Luke 21:25-36
25“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. 28Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
29Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; 30as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. 31So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. 33Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 34“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, 35like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
Good morning. And Happy New Year! This morning we mark the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new year in the liturgical calendar, and a new beginning for Christians everywhere as we anticipate the advent of Christ. We often mark our secular New Year’s Day by taking stock of where we’ve been, and by resolving to do better in the coming year. We resolve to eat less and to exercise more, to spend more time with those we love. Those are all good things. But I think it’s even more appropriate to reflect and to resolve when it’s our spiritual New Year’s Day, and so I begin with a story that throws much of this past year into resolution for me.
On a Wednesday night a while back, I was at the Continental Club on South Congress to hear Jon Dee Graham and James McMurtry, and at the end of his set, Jon Dee looked out into the darkened room, and he paused for just a moment, clearly trying to put together what he wanted to say in closing.
What he said was this: “Don’t be so afraid.
“You don’t have to be so afraid.”
I received these words then, and now, as a message from God, although Jon Dee would be the first to tell you he is someone who wants to believe, not a believer.
But he would also tell you that when the only thing to read in the hotel room is the Gideon Bible, he reads the Gideon Bible.
I begin with Jon Dee’s invocation against fear this morning, when we should enter a new liturgical year in hope and begin to anticipate the coming of Christ, because I have been living with a lot of anxiety lately, and I know that I am not the only one. As Anne Lamott said about a dark year of her own, of late, many things seem to have broken, lives and hearts among them, and although Episcopalians are statistically the wealthiest Christian denomination—which is to say, on average, that we are better off than some folks—we are most certainly not immune to painful loss, both human and financial. In the past year, people I know and love have lost their jobs at our seminaries around the country, including the Seminary of the Southwest here in Austin, as well as at our National Cathedral and the Cathedral College of Preachers, and I know that there are Episcopalians here this morning who wonder what tomorrow will bring because yesterday has been fraught with difficulty.
So as we reflect on a year filled with tough economic times, with environmental crises, with wars and rumors of wars, we hope for some clarity from our sacred texts.
And we wake up this morning to this horrifying Gospel text.
Now, as you may know, we tend to have troublesome apocalyptic Gospel texts on the first Sunday of Advent talking about distress, fear, foreboding, and, some might suggest, the end of the world—which may be why I always seem to get invited to preach on the first Sunday of Advent.
And by troublesome, I mean cryptic. Difficult. Scary.
So, as my dear friend Charlie Cook would ask, Where is the gospel in this Gospel? Where is the good news that tells us how we should keep going, find our way, be a light to others?
How can these words of Jesus teach us something about where God is in dark times?
And in asking all these questions, I’m also asking this: How can these frightening words help us to be less afraid?
Now it just so happens, that I am the trustee of a useful story about fear. When I was serving at Calvary Episcopal in Bastrop, John Henry Faulk’s daughter gave me a tale and asked me to use it whenever I found occasion. Molly Ivins used to relate this story once a year in her columns before she passed, but now it’s all on me, so I’m thankful that this happens to be a story that fits neatly with a gospel reading about people fainting from fear and foreboding.
When John Henry Faulk was a small boy in South Austin, not too far from where we sit this morning, in fact, he and one of his friends, Boots Cooper, were playing Texas Rangers. At the request of John Henry’s mom, these valiant lawmen were commissioned with the task of rooting out a chicken snake that was causing some trouble in the hen house. Now just going into a dark and dank hen house to get some eggs is a fear-inducing thing when you are a small person; I stepped into the old hen house on our farm this week to remind myself of that. Chickens are scary—they’ve got beaks that peck, and those reptilian grasping feet with claws, and soulless beady eyes. Chickens look like hired assassins.
So John Henry and his friend Boots were already more than a little apprehensive as they went out to the hen house, where there were strange smells and lots of shadow, and they moved slowly and cautiously toward the nesting hens, where the eggs would be, and where they’d most likely find a chicken snake if one was to be found.
And lo and behold, as they drew near to one of the roosts, hearts pounding, already full of fear, they did see a snake coiled there, big as a python to their young minds, and they just about jumped out of their skins.
They ran. Oh, yes, they ran. In their panicked flight, they ran into the side of the hen house, Bang!, and then they tumbled out through the door and into the chicken yard, Oof!, and then finally, banged up and covered with dust, these valiant Texas Rangers fled to the Faulk house.
So John Henry and Boots went running into the house, the screen door banging behind them, and John Henry’s mother looked at them. Just looked at them—winded, panicked, bruised and battered from collisions and falls—and she shook her head.
“Boys,” she said, “that there was just a little ol’ chicken snake. It can’t hurt you.”
“Yes’m,” Boots Cooper said. “Maybe so. But there’s some things’ll scare you so bad, you hurt yourself.”
And that’s just exactly what happens when we’re afraid—we hurt ourselves. Emotionally. Spiritually. We make bad decisions, we react to things out of a bad place, and we forget what we are called to do, how we’re suppose to act, what is ultimately supposed to matter. We look around, and the world seems so dark and dangerous that we don’t know what we’re supposed to do next, and we forget that the battle that truly matters has already been fought—and won—on our behalf.
That’s why I say that fear is un-Christian. I try not to make blanket statements like this, to dare to speak for the whole tradition. But throughout the gospels, our normative texts, Jesus and his miraculous works and ethical teaching are set against and in opposition to the backdrop of fear. The Greek root used today and elsewhere in the Gospels is phobos, which we know from our words “phobia” and “phobic.” And it is used over and over again in this controlling context: Jesus is constantly telling his listeners—and us—not to be afraid, whatever happens, because God is in control.
Texts like our gospel reading today, which scholars call The Apocalyptic Discourse of Jesus, have been badly read and misused for centuries within the Church to stir up fear among the faithful, to encourage a focus on the future and a withdrawal from the world so as to be safe and sound for some imagined end. Now it’s not that we haven’t had church leaders tell us that this passage and others like it should be read as history, not prophecy. Augustine wrote that, unlike the parallel passages in Matthew and Mark, it’s clear in this reading from Luke that the prophecies of destruction that Jesus is making have to do with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, not with some end of the world scenario. The Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, and other modern historical scholars likewise hold that, read literally, the apocalypse Jesus is warning of has happened already; it is not some future doomsday to be deciphered with the aid of clues from Revelation and Daniel or close study of the statements of world leaders.
When apocalyptic passages are read literally, they are often excuses to inject even more fear into a world that on its own naturally has plenty of chaos and uncertainty. But this Apocalyptic Discourse, like its partners in Mark and Matthew, like the Apocalypse of St. John, which we know better as Revelation, is spiritually powerful for us in this respect: as Fred Craddock points out, the Jewish tradition of apocalyptic writing represents “history being set in the larger context of God’s purpose.” These and similar passages have always been strangely comforting for troubled people in dark times, because they remind us that God has a plan where clearly we have none, that God is in control even when we feel most out of control. “When you see these things,” as Jesus tells us today, “you will know that the Kingdom of God is near.”
And indeed, the Kingdom of God is near. The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ, God’s master plan put into human form, represents, as the contemporary theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar has written, God’s loving and beautiful ending to a story that without His intervention would end in disaster. And so, this morning, we are again anticipating the coming of Christ, our annual reminder that God loves us, suffers alongside us, and would do anything to draw us into abundant life with Him.
I come back to Annie Lamott, as I often do, who has written that the most profound spiritual truth she knows is this: in the darkest times, just when it seems as though there is no way for Love to conquer all, it does.
Don’t be so afraid.
You don’t have to be so afraid.
Jesus is coming.
Amen.
a beautiful, helpful word/Word
rog
November 29th, 2009