Poolesville Presbyerian Church
11.27.11; Rev. David Williams
Over the last week, I've been seriously slacking off. I have, despite the whole world's efforts to the contrary, managed to totally neglect my duties as an American shopper.
For
the past several weeks, the busy busy people of America’s marketing and
advertising industries have been spooling up for the most important
shopping day of the year. Every retailer we’ve ever done business with
has been filling our email inbox with excited announcements, and our
snail-mail box is a cascading cornucopia of catalogs. Banner ads are
splashed across every web page. Our newspaper arrived on Wednesday
bearing an advertising supplement insert that weighed more than most
butterball turkeys. Employees of retail outlets across the region are
putting in long, long hours, working through the small hours of the
morning.
And
even in the face of all that herculean effort, I just can’t seem to get
myself motivated. I can’t seem to managed to get out there and shop
during this long four-day vacation, which business media outlet CNBC
described as “Black Friday Weekend.” That’s what this is, right?
“Black Friday Weekend?”
Instead
of camping outside of Best Buy in the hopes of getting a half-price
flat-panel TV, I spent Thursday afternoon eating tofurkey and stuffing
and gravy in a room full of family. Instead of being encouraged to line
up under the illuminated Toys R Us sign for a super, super deal on the
latest Call of Duty game, my children were preparing music and impromptu
comedy routines to entertain the adults. Instead of rushing out from
the family gathering to hit the anchor stores at Tysons, my family went
home and curled up on the sofa and watched a movie. A Norwegian movie,
with subtitles, a clear sign that our credentials as American consumers
are deeply in question.
When
we’re called up before the Committee on UnAmerican Consumer Activities,
that’s the question that’s going to get us in trouble. “Are you now,
or have you ever been, a watcher of Norwegian films with subtitles?” Couple that with the tofurkey, and I could be in some serious trouble.
And
then we went to sleep, while the lines snaking around the stores hadn’t
even been let in yet.
Oh, there was a chance to redeem myself on
Black Friday, that day of all shopping days. It was a banner day, by all reports, fully six point six percent better than last year. I don't know if that does the next decimal place to six point six six, but if it does, that opens a can of worms we just don't want to mess with this morning.
I could have gotten up
early. I could have rushed out to hit the second wave. But no. I was
too lazy. Too self-indulgent. Instead, I woke up at about
seven-thirty. I walked the dog. I had some coffee. I read the paper,
the whole paper. Our entire Friday morning vanished in a warm haze, a
morning when we could have been productively consuming. And then,
because it was a distractingly beautiful day, we all went for a
five-mile roundtrip walk to go get lunch. We. Weren’t. Even.
Consuming. Gas. Then I came home and took a nice little nap.
Lazy,
lazy, lazy. Every moment counts, and we’ve got to stay awake and on
the ball. That’s the point Jesus is trying to make in this morning’s
passage from Matthew, although I’m pretty sure his completely different
spin on it wouldn’t pass muster before the Committee on UnAmerican
Consumer Activities.
This
text comes to us from a portion of Mark that is often called the
“little apocalypse.” The “little apocalypse” runs for most of chapter
13 of Mark’s Gospel, and contains much familiar imagery. It’s a
description of the destruction of the temple and the catastrophic
collapse of society, followed by the fulfillment of the messianic age.
There
are wars and rumors of wars. There are earthquakes, trials and tribulations, cats and dogs, living together, the whole shebang. At the
conclusion of the sequence of events, we hear, in verse 26, that there
will be the arrival of the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power
and glory.
It’s
pretty much the essence of what we visualize when we visualize the
apocalypse. There are a couple of elements, however, that make this a
bit different from the typical end-times schpiel.
First,
most apocalypses follow a particular format. In the Book of
Revelation, the apocalyptic chapter twelve of the book of Daniel, and a
variety of apocalypses that didn’t make it into the Bible, there is
usually 1) a bizarre vision being presented from God; 2) an angelic
intermediary to interpret the strange visions, and 3) a clear judgment
of bad folks. We don’t see those elements here.
Second,
and more significantly, this “little apocalypse” strongly implies that
the events that are unfolding are not in the future, or even imminent,
but in process. In verse 30, Jesus seems to clearly indicate that
everything that he’s talking about will occur within the lifetimes of
“this generation,” reiterating a commitment that he also made earlier in
Mark 9:1, where we heard that “there are some standing here who will
not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with
power.” It’s a bit of a fuddler, frankly.
The
world didn’t appear to come to an end in the first century, nor are
there, to my knowledge, some 2,000 year old Judeans kicking around
anywhere. How are we supposed to read this, then?
It
helps to remember that much of what Jesus declares in chapter 13 of
Mark’s Gospel did occur. Within the lives of most of his listeners,
Judea had been completely destroyed by the Roman Empire. The city of
Jerusalem fell, destroyed in the year 70 by the combined assault of
three Roman legions. The second temple was razed, and Israel as a nation
was shattered for nearly 2,000 years.
Yet
though that “suffering” which is described earlier in the chapter and
is referred to in verse 24 seem certain to have happened within a
generation of Christ’s saying it, the passage does go further. Jesus
suggests strongly that somehow Christ’s Reign may be something that the
disciples will experience...and yet it clearly hasn’t happened yet. The
Son of Man descending? Has he? Angels gathering the elect? They can’t
have. Can they?
It
is that tension between the fulfillment of the Reign of God and the
anticipation of it’s arrival that is why this passage gets served up on
the first Sunday of Advent. What Jesus is saying is not to be understood
as being true only for the generation that heard him first. The reality
he is describing isn’t something that occurs at one moment in time, or
at one place. The arrival of God’s Kingdom does not belong to one
particular generation...it belongs to all of them.
It’s
not a reality that happens at one moment, and then passes on. As Christ
says, though Heaven and Earth will pass away, my words will not pass
away. That call to stay awake, then, has direct implications for how
we are to live our lives in the now.
Are
we structuring our lives so that we’re clearly prioritizing those
things...in the right now, the this-instant...that mean our existence
reflects our Maker’s purpose? Attentiveness and giving priority to
those actions that best mirror the gracious intent of the Gospel is
absolutely essential. It reinforces the necessity of considering how
and in what way our actions mirror our reason for being, and how the
ways we choose to focus both our minds and the precious time we’ve been
given reflect the Reign of God.
That,
I think, is the biggest challenge facing us in the festivals of
consumption our culture encourages. We like the shiny shiny things
we’re offered, and that fleeting hit of Splenda sweetness that comes
from getting a new thing.
But
the “new” things we cram in the backs of our ‘utes, big boxes coming
home from big boxes, well, they’re not really new. They lack the
ability to change us in any way that matters. Well, perhaps that’s not
true. They do reduce our patience, increase our hunger for
possessions, and distract us from both injustice and the glories of
creation around us. The choice we’re given--between shopping and
shabbas, between time in line and time to catch our breath and find
connection with loved ones--is a real one. Attending to the life that
Christ seeks for all of us needs to guide our every moment.
We
do not know, after all, when that hour will come. Is it next year? Is
it next week? Is it tomorrow? Is it one forty five this afternoon?
Is it now? Was it yesterday? Was it Friday?
We are called to live as if those all were true. We are called to stay awake. Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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