Grace-St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Mercerville, New Jersey

Readings for 3 December 2006

"Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down" the psalmist begs God.

"Lo, he come with clouds descending, " promises this morning's hymn.

Some say the world will end in fire, and some in ice, commented the poet.
“But ice is nice, and will suffice."

To which T. S Elliott seems to respond,
"This is the way the world ends, . . .. This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but with a whimper."

Faith’s pictures of the end of the world
have always and forever fascinated people
I add that most of us generally prefer the big bang to the whimper.
So, apparently, did the gospel writers and most of the prophets,
Rending heavens, and trumpeting angels
plagues, horsemen, diademed women, opening graves and royal judgment,
blinding light, falling stars and mountains moving into the seas
are what biblical authors imagine
when they speak in apocalyptic language,
that is, in words of end of this present world as we imagine it will be.

Their different emphases show most clearly
in whether they imagine that much good can be said about this final
catastrophic time.
Amos, several weeks ago asked, "Why would you desire the day of the Lord?
It is darkness and not light, as if you fled from and lion, and met a bear
or leaned against the wall of your house and were bitten by a snake.
Not exactly an enthusiastic description designed to make us WANT God to come and end it all!
Isaiah, on the other hand, saves his most poetic and lovely promises for the end time, declaring that as the valleys are lifted up
and the mountains and hill become plains,
"the glory of the Lord will be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together!"

In Bible study classes, people’s emotions seem to be evenly divided
between ominous darkness and doom
and the kind of excitement and expectation, which we might expect
at the ultimate fireworks display

Clearly the End of Time, The Day of the Lord,
may be either glorious and wonderful
or dreadful and terrible according to various poets of faith
but the end times are, we are assured,
"Absolutely, Positively guaranteed" to be spectacular.
I HOPE SO, because I love being part of spectacles,
I have always adored Advent, especially Advent I
precisely because it is so wrapped about
with pictures of processions of saints and angels,
and it is surrounded by the glow of Isaiah's prophecies
about lions and lambs together,
about the city set on the hill to which all the
nations stream –
and I’m sure those nations are walking,
in an endlessly glorious candle, song and incense-filled procession.

But what if Amos is RIGHT, and the spectacle is DREADFUL?
Even worse, what if Elliot is on to something
and there isn't any spectacle AT ALL?!??!?
What if it all really ends "not with a bang, but with a whimper.”
(I'll DIE!)

Yet it’s about that little whimper,
about what Richard Holloway, the late Primus of Scotland
calls "the sidelong glance" at Emmanuel, the quick glance at God-with-us
that I that I want us to think about during the coming weeks of Advent.

I want us to consider that the “end of the world” pictures are
not literal pictures of whatever the end of the world may look like,
Jesus says even he doesn't know what the end times will look like.
They are times that exist only as a vision in the mind of God.
What I want us to ask ourselves is what parts of our life/lives –
right this minute, and yesterday, and this afternoon-
FEEL or LOOK, or SOUND like the end of the world pictures in Mark
( or for that matter, in John or Matthew or Revelation)

Where are OUR personal falling stars?
Where is our rampant turmoil and fear?
Where are our experiences of being judged?
Where is our darkness?
Where is the world crashing in around us?
What is awful, or awesome, or ominous, or frightening in our lives?

Could it be that it is there, in our personal and communal “end of the world scenarios,” that Jesus might be found?
Is it possible, that if we stopped, looked, listened -
even thought or prayed, however momentarily, at those turmoil filled, Judgment times, that we might catch a sidelong-glance or a glimpse,
or hear a whisper, of Jesus, of God-with-us!?!
Is it possible that we are so busy looking for the coming of Jesus in stately
Liturgical splendor, - or at least in a big bang al la Hogwarts or Star Wars, -
or perhaps in a terribly clean and well-ordered holy manger,
or on a "lily-surrounded" red and gold holy cross,
that we miss Jesus’ coming, Jesus presence, in turmoil, in darkness,
and in the world which is crashing in around us?
Could it be that we are so convinced that God does everything so perfectly
beautifully, decently and in order
that we can't really see Jesus when he is in the scrabbled together
messiness, confusion, third-rate ness, and bickering
which make up so much of our lives?
Are we having trouble hearing the good news because
we can't credit the form in which it comes?

Advent, we are told is about getting ready for Christmas, and so it is -
Or at least the last six days are for getting ready for the Nativity.
But Christmas, the original one, didn't look much like ours.
If you don't believe me, try putting a couple of sheep, some goats, a banty
hen and a cow under your tree for several days
Add a newborn baby, and exhausted mother and a distracted dad,
and notice how often House Beautiful arrives to photograph your holidays?
Observe how many people want to spend
their time under your Christmas tree!!
We've got Christmas, and the Christ Child, so scrubbed
so rich, so golden and perfect and “officially happy.”
that neither Mary nor Joseph would recognize either Christmas or the baby Jesus, were they to celebrate their son’s birth with us.

That REAL first Christmas does give us some clues
about the Second or other comings of Christ,
both in its glory and its aweful dailiness
Both the first Christmas, and the second coming prophecies
Promise that God-is-with-us,
(Holy and glorious, AND TOTALLY OUT OF PLACE)
in all the mess, judgment and confusion of ordinary living
(Would you have volunteered to drive to Bethlehem along with everyone else who had gotten dragged in from the four corners of the world
to PAY YOUR TAXES?!!??!!??
Where is it written in ancient scriptures that a local IRS office notice
is to serve as the official announcement of the Messiah's coming?

I am not suggesting that there won't be an end to the world
nor am I suggesting that the Christ, The Word of the Most High God
will not be there to Judge the living and the Dead.
Jesus will come to Judge –
And to that judgment we are all accountable, both for our lives
and for the possessions God have given for our personal use.

I'm merely reminding us all that the Jesus who comes,
or tries to come into our lives every day,
is the same Jesus who came in Bethlehem
and who is pictured as coming at the end of Creation,
That Jesus comes now, exactly the same way He came then,
and exactly as he is expected to come in the future.

Which means, as I read the Biblical record,
that Jesus can be expected to appear in our lives in the
middle of noise, and confusion, and not very pleasant circumstances;
Jesus will probably show up in very ordinary places,
and will be surrounded by rather ordinary people.
I am profoundly sorry to say that Jesus' coming is not now,
and probably is not going to be a big liturgical spectacular,
and that the people who get to see angels,
will probably not be priests waiting in a liturgical procession.
God seems to have a bias toward dirty and mundane people
and folks we normally considered disreputable
God is also unlikely to have much patience with liturgical processions.

The Jesus for whom we watch and wait this Advent
is too important and too present
to be tied down in a renaissance manger scene.
He is too active to hide at the back of a long line of white and gold robbed angels.
Jesus is too often present in the world.
He refuses to be confined by our
human preference for rare and spectacular appearances.
Instead Jesus can be glimpsed in the faces of every human being we meet
at school or at work,
and in every human tear of joy or sorrow,
Jesus is to be found in a sideways glance at our co-workers
or at the children in our car,
or in the pictures of Afghan refugees on the Television.
The Jesus we worship can be found in crowded shopping malls, in
quiet forests and seashores, and in the local county jail.

Indeed, wherever you find the noise, and tumult, and judgment
and the confusion and rat race, and even the occasional falling stars of daily life
Wherever you find human beings of any kind,
There you will also find the Christ of God
Jesus

Jesus who came,
Jesus who is coming,
Jesus who is will come again

* * *

"And what I say to you, I say to all, WATCH!"

In nomine . . .