Keeping Awake to Christ
Category: Advent
Speaker: Grace Atherton Pratt
May the words I speak be those You want spoken, may the words we hear be those You want heard as we prepare for the gift of Your son in this Advent season, may we live to Your glory. Amen.
This morning’s reading from Mark paints a picture of an apocalypse with stars falling from the sky and a dark sun. Most of us, including myself, don’t normally associate the beginning of Advent with an apocalypse. This is the time of year we start thinking about shopping for gifts, baking cookies, and holiday parties. And yet our world is more complex and this past week has had it’s own apocalyptic tones. The events in Ferguson, the UVA assault scandal, and the continued Ebola crisis have given many of us the sense of an apocalypse. However you feel about these issues, and their constant presence in our 24/7 media cycle, they can make you question what kind of a world we live in. Indeed for many of us here, the last week of news may have felt apocalyptic. I personally have felt very sad. I feel sad for those affected most directly and for our country as a whole. I think many of us have felt that way this week. I’m barely over one troubling news article before the next one takes over my Facebook newsfeed.
So how does this sense of apocalypse relate to Advent? In this morning’s reading, Mark tells us that with the end of the world comes the son of man, or Jesus. He is the main event in the swirling falling sky scene that Mark describes. He is the main event we are waiting for when we feel like our world is falling apart. Mark teaches us that in these apocalyptic moments we are waiting for Jesus. And this is definitely what Advent is about.
But how do you wait for Jesus? This was a literal question for the early church as they expected Jesus to return at any moment. But for us now this is a very different question. In Advent we celebrate that Christ did come to earth and we offer thanks for this gift of God incarnate. And we know when to celebrate His birth, December 25th. So we aren’t exactly looking for signs that will tell us when he is coming like his early disciples did. We live in this tension of already and not yet. Christ has already come and yet he has not returned. However, Mark’s command that we “Keep awake” is very appropriate to our situation. This is an opportunity to think about what exactly we are awake to in this Advent season.
Right now, we may be more awake to our holiday to do list than to anything else. The list of gifts of to be purchased, the parties to attend, the travel plans to make, the cookies to bake, the cards to be ordered, and all of the end of the year school and work projects... And we might also be more aware of the constant onslaught of news from our phones, computers, newspapers, and TV’s. And it is easy to be more aware of these tasks and news items because we already know when Christ is coming. The date is right there on our calendar so it’s hard to miss. If we already know the answer to when, then the question here should really be WHO are we awake to? Are we awake to Jesus? Are we awake to the Christ in one another?
When I thought about seeing Christ in one another, I remembered a beautiful article that I read amidst all the other news this week. A woman was wandering around the Albuquerque airport waiting for her delayed flight, when she heard a plea over the speakers for someone who spoke Arabic to help the flight attendants at her gate. She reluctantly moved that way and found a Palestinian woman crying on the floor, the attendants explained that she had started to wail as soon as they announced the fight was delayed. The author leaned over and spoke to the distressed woman who explained that she had an urgent medical procedure scheduled at her destination and thought the flight had been cancelled. She was greatly relived to know that her flight was just delayed, and the author called the woman’s son and explained it all to him, and finally the Palestinian woman was able to relax. As they were waiting the Palestinian woman brought out a bag of homemade cookies. She offered one to all the people waiting for the flight. Amazingly none of the travelers declined a cookie. The author described this exchange as a sort of sacrament. All these travelers from all over the world were covered with powdered sugar from the cookies they had all shared. Surveying the scene the author remarked; “This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate— once the crying of confusion stopped— seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other people too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”
This story is so powerful because it describes a shared world. The kind of world that feels like it is being lost when we hear about the distrust and anger in our world. The stories of protests in Ferguson scare us into thinking that this kind of trust between people who are different is no longer possible. And yet this shared world that this story depicts is what God envisions for us. God is telling us to “Keep Awake” to His presence in our world and to His presence in one another. So everything is not lost, even when the world may look apocalyptic, the shared world can still be seen and trust between strangers is still possible. We have to “Keep Awake” to Christ and to the Christ in one another this Advent.
We have to make room for Him in our busy Advent lives. We need to be awake to Christ and not just Christmas. And there is no magical solution for this. Perhaps making room for Christ means taking some things off your to-do list this year? Maybe it means ordering the Christmas dinner so you can enjoy church? It could mean looking for stories of trust in society for every story you read about violence or distrust? It could be that you join a special advent study group? Or better yet it may mean scheduling time to sit with Jesus in prayer. What do you need to do to keep awake to Christ this Advent? I hope that this is something we can all think about during this busy season. I hope that we can all be awake to Christ and to the Christ in one another this Advent. Amen.