And Jesus said, “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. The initial reports indicated that at least some people heard what they thought were fireworks. Those more familiar with the sounds of gun fire recognized the initial sound as small arms fire that was followed shortly thereafter by explosions and then bursts of what was clearly machine gun fire. Some of the Americans assumed that it was some type of gang fight going on outside the hotel. But then they began to smell the smoke. Hotel staff began to gather some of the hotel visitors in one of the ballrooms for safety. With cell phones people began to gather information from the outside world telling them that armed militants had attacked several locations in Mumbai, India. There were reports of fatalities and hostages being taken. Some hotel residents locked themselves in their rooms while others made desperate attempts to escape down fire escapes or even out the windows of their rooms.
And Jesus said, “Beware, keep alert.” She left the house carrying the baby and calling to her three year old to follow her to the car. She opened the door to the back seat and helped the toddler climb into his car seat. Then she placed the baby in her car seat and buckled the toddler in, talking to him about the busy plans they had for the day ahead. She settled behind the steering wheel, started the engine and backed the car into the street. The day was clear and sunny. She turned on a CD that she knew her children would like and heard her young son begin to sing along. She turned left out of her subdivision, proceeded north to the stop light. As the light turned green she began to accelerate and suddenly saw the other car out of the corner of her eye clearly not slowing as it entered the intersection. The impact on her car spun it into the oncoming traffic from the other direction. The semi driver slammed on his brakes and the tires smoked as the truck slid into the spinning car.
And Jesus said, “you do not know when the time will come.” What he told me later was that he knew he hadn’t been feeling right. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on but he just didn’t feel right. He kept telling himself that he would call the doctor tomorrow but tomorrow never seemed to come. He kept assuring himself that if anything was really wrong he would know it. As he told me later, he didn’t remember the stroke. He only remembered waking up unable to move, speak or communicate. And he remembered thinking he would not be going into work today. The unexpected enters our lives and we strive to explain and understand. We want to be ready for the unexpected. Terrorists may be a real part of our world but we also believe in the strength of our military and the vigilance of home land security. Anyone who travels regularly knows the warnings, especially to American travelers to be aware of any signs that a threat is imminent. Driving is an essential part of our modern existence. Traffic accidents are also a reality in the modern world. We buy our cars with reinforced passenger cages and learn to drive defensively, watching for signs of risk in the behavior of other drivers. And when it comes to the question of our health, we know the importance of regular checkups and preventive actions that allow for early diagnosis and timely treatments. Yet we also know that there are no guarantees when it comes to wellness and healthy living.
The very modern themes of watching, anticipating and waiting are the common motifs for the beginning of the Advent season. This is the start of the four Sunday countdown to Christmas. For most of us it is a measure of the days we have left to complete the various tasks we assign ourselves this time of year. The shopping, card writing, gifting and gathering are all the signs of the season. The advent countdown to Christmas is important to both the secular business world and our faith community with significant similarities and distinctive differences. In recent years the business community has focused much of its attention on “black” Friday as the first sign of how the holiday season will go. And then the countdown continues until Dec. 24. Christmas is the end point of the shopping frenzy, except for the returns and clearance sales the week after Christmas. This year there are particularly dire predictions for the fate of our economy. All eyes are watching for signs of relief to increasingly desperate markets. The desire is to get things back to a stable and more predictable market time line. In contrast the Christian community has historically seen the beginning of Advent as an opportunity to once again consider a different timetable for living. We are confronted by readings from scripture that were written to people much like today who were desperately seeking to find a way through difficult times.
Our first lesson is the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah written to a people who had just returned from years of captivity in the city of Babylon (located in the modern country we know too well as Iraq). Having been freed by the Persian emperor (from the modern day country of Iran), the Jewish people returned “home” to find their land ravaged and their holy temple in Jerusalem having been leveled. Having spent decades in a land far from the center of their faith, the people turn to the prophet for a sign from God that there is still a reason to believe. Our gospel lesson for today is filled with similar doubts about God and the future of the faith. We begin today a year of lessons that will be primarily drawn from the Gospel of Mark. This is the oldest of the four gospels written in all probability around the year 70 AD, some forty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. That same year Roman soldiers marched into Jerusalem and destroyed the temple while scattering the Jewish community into the country side and to foreign lands. The followers of Jesus were experiencing acute persecution from both the roman government and other faith communities. Families were splintered between those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and those who did not. In the face of increasingly hard times, the promises Jesus had made seemed to be empty and losing value. It is to this disillusioned group of believers that the gospel writer retells the story of Jesus. He has Jesus speak words of hope to a people experiencing his absence from their lives and the world. What he offers them is a hope that something is coming, things are going to change. Jesus calls upon the people to beware, to keep alert. There are many who read the 13th chapter of Mark’s gospel as an apocalyptic vision, a picture of the end times complete with clues to help us in our anticipation. There was a time when a text like this would be used by the preacher to scare the faithful into turning their lives around. To declare that we are all sinners in the hands of an angry God and we better repent before God claps his hands together declaring that he is done with all humanity. If God were bound by the way we normally live our lives in time, there would be cause for such fear and anxiety about our future. In the days of the prophets and the world into which Jesus was born people had a much more narrow and limited view of life. They believed that just as God had created the world at the beginning of time so God would ultimately bring an end to his creation when time ran out. They believed that the generations of the human race could be numbered and chronicled. The world was not beyond their knowing and was measured and quantified usually in terms of hundreds and thousands. Theirs was a world created by God and constant as God in its purpose and meaning. Even the evil that befell humanity was not beyond God’s control and direction. If one knew the signs of the time one could certainly come close to reading the mind of God. All things were measured and known from beginning to end. The Greek word for this way of thinking about time was chromos from which we get the words chronology and chronological. Things in a proper sequence. If you see a 10, you know that 21 will follow sometime down the line and that 8 was sometime earlier in the series. If you hear of Moses you know that the Ten Commandments and the rise of Israel as a nation will follow while events before Moses will include the names of Abraham and his descendents. But there is another way to experience time. Another Greek word is kairos, it refers to God’s time determined not by chronological sequence, careful plans or even cause and effect. Kairos is the collapse of time and space into the divine mystery of the holy. Creation has no fixed beginning or end but instead is continuing and on-going. Jesus did not come once long ago but rather is coming again. Kairos time is Jesus saying look to the signs and you will find not the end but the beginning of the kingdom. Jesus was not telling us to beware of some final judgment but rather to have Kairos eyes seeking the glimpses of the kingdom that are even now breaking in once more into our world. Kairos time is anticipating the next moment. It is the babbling baby about to say her first words or the infant about to take his first steps as the parents watch and wait. It is riding the bicycle for the first time without training wheels. It is the never ending anticipated list of firsts; first date, first time holding hands, first kiss, first time driving the car alone, first job and then discovering that chronology doesn’t matter at all. That the most amazing and meaningful may be found even in repeated moments. The holding, the feeling of achievement, the embrace, the moment of insight, the touch, the sense of the holy.
There was a time when people understood and even looked forward to death as a time to be with God. But advent means we look for God to be with us, to come to us again and again, while we live until we die and beyond. No one expected the first coming. Only a few even witnessed it yet time has never been the same since. Advent is the reminder to beware not only of the threats of terror but the triumphs of generosity and care for others that takes so many forms this time of year. Advent is a reminder to keep alert not just to avoid the unexpected accident but to experience the wonder of the spirit lifted by music and song, rituals and tradition. Advent reminds us to keep awake for the dawning of miracles of healing and wholeness found not only in body but also in heart and soul.
The challenge is to have Advent eyes that seek to see and experience god’s Kairos moments. The moments when the familiar is suddenly opened to the unexpected. I truly love the woods and forests of our various communities. But one of the most interesting moments for me each year as the season of fall drifts into winter and the last leaves vanish, is the discovery of houses and buildings visible through the trees that I never knew existed. Many is the time when I find myself driving down one of the many roads and I glance left or right and see through the trees structures that seem to have sprung forth from the earth sometime during the summer. I wonder at the miracle of their existence without my knowing or seeing them behind that wall of green. I am reminded of the old saying that you cannot see the forest because of the trees. Jesus said “Beware, keep alert.”
We listen for the sounds that would warn us. Dire predictions about the economy, epidemics in Africa, reports of wars and rumors of war. But there are other reports that we too often miss. Reports of life bursting forth as God’s kingdom draws near. New births in the congregation, young people giving of themselves to feed the hungry, older members stocking food pantries, volunteering time to help shelter the homeless, visiting the sick, caring for the elderly, offering their talents teaching and singing, helping others to also begin to see with advent eyes the kingdom drawing near. There are those other reports of work for peace and striving for justice. Those who help us to see God’s presence once more in all that is holy and good and true.
We know that our humanity still visits terrible accidents on innocent victims who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we live in the hope and belief that the kairos moment, the uniquely defined moment of God’s choosing, also touches lives. We still seek the miracle of Christ’s coming, witnessing its power to transform and reshape lives that have been trapped into the routine and ordinary patterns of daily chronologies. It is not so much that we wait for Christ to come again as that we learn to see how he comes to us each day, in each moment. Advent is the proclamation of a simple truth. God entered the world long ago, God continues to enter our world this day, God will enter it again. Jesus said, “Beware, keep alert.”
Amen