Watch, wait, be ready

A reflection on Isaiah 64:1-9 and Mark 13:33-37

A patient wakes up following an operation to find the doctor standing beside him. He’s not feeling at all well, but he manages to ask, "Doctor, how did it go?"
"I have good news and bad news", says the doctor.
"Give me the good news. I feel terrible and I need cheering up"
"The good news is that we managed to save your kidneys."
"That’s terrific. What's the bad news?"
"The bad news is I have them here in this jar."

 

My suspicion is that, if we are offered a choice between good news and bad news, we will want the good news. And not the good news first, but only good news. Being rational human beings we avoid the bad news if we possibly can.

 

I think that’s one of the reasons we like Christmas: it’s a good news time. A story about a little baby born in a stable – that’s a good news story. A story about a fat man dressed in red bringing presents to all the girls and boys – that’s a good news story. The whole idea of Christmas parties, gatherings of families and friends, gift giving and receiving, it’s all such a good news thing, isn’t it?

 

But our Bible readings this morning don’t seem very good news at all; they seem far more bad news. I mean, just listen to some of these verses from the first reading. God’s chosen people are speaking to God and they say:

   There is no one who calls on your name,

    or attempts to take hold of you;

    for you have hidden your face from us,

    and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

(Now that’s bad news.)

 

    We all fade like a leaf,

    and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

(And that’s bad news too.)

 

   You meet those who gladly do right,

    those who remember you in your ways.

(Good news!)

 

    But you were angry, and we sinned;

    because you hid yourself we transgressed.

(Bad news.)

 

The reading from the gospel of Mark, the words of Jesus himself, aren’t terribly positive sounding either:

Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come… you do not know when the master of the house will come [and] he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 

 

Sleeping when the boss returns? Bad news!

 

So what is this all about? This time of the church’s year is set aside to prepare for Christmas. So why the focus on bad news rather than getting excited about the good news that is to come? Surely we can prepare for the good news of Christ’s coming into the world without having to think about anything too depressing.

 

Or can we?

 

Perhaps, we need to face the bad news in order to recognise our need for good news. Perhaps, we have become so accustomed to good news – comfortable lives, security, good health, good times – that we don’t even recognise that there is something missing, some need in us that is not being met because we are anaesthetised by too much good news.

 

And the Bible is really excellent at this: pointing to what is real in this world to remind us that we need something from beyond this world. The Bible is a consistent reminder that the world in which we live is not just a good news world. There are countless biblical references to what is wrong, and each of those references is meant to point us towards what is needed to make what is wrong right.

 

Instead of living in a fantasy world, where everything is jingle bells and Christmas stockings and plates heaped with turkey and ham and enough food to provoke the most profound indigestion, instead of a fantasy world where everything is all right, we are asked to recognise a greater truth: all is not well, and Christ comes into the real world in order to do something about it.

 

Did you know that tomorrow, the first day of December, is the fiftieth anniversary of the day Rosa Parkes got on a bus? “Who is Rosa Parkes?” you ask. On December 1, 1955, a black woman got on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in the United States. She was required to go to the back of the bus because the front was for whites only. This is the U.S. just fifty years ago. But Rosa Parkes was tired and weary from a long day of hard work, and she sat herself at the front of the bus and refused to move. Her small act of defiance is seen by many as the initiating event for the movement for civil rights in America; the whole Martin Luther King revolution which has made it possible for a black man to move into the White House began with a tired and weary woman who refused to change her seat.

 

We are watching and waiting for Christmas, but are we ready to allow our dissatisfaction with the way things are to bring Christ into the world?

 

Another thing about the first of December is that it is World AIDS Day. Do you have any idea how many people in our healthy, rich, well-educated world are going to die between now and Christmas from a disease which could be controlled if not defeated through education and spending some money on making medication available where it is needed most?

 

But, of course, those who suffer from HIV/AIDS aren’t on our TV screens at this time of the year. They aren’t even in our country. So we can choose to ignore HIV/AIDS; this is a problem we don’t have to see unless someone is rude enough to disturb our good news preparations with some bad news.

 

We are watching and waiting for Christmas, but are we ready to do something about bringing real good news into this world?

 

Jesus says,

Beware, keep alert… It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work.

 

There is work for us to do while we watch and wait; there is a readiness we have to adopt. Perhaps this year it is finding a red ribbon to wear tomorrow, the first of December, World AIDS Day, and to keep on wearing right up until Christmas to remind ourselves of the bad news and to remind ourselves that good news is needed and good news is coming.

 

Watch, wait, be ready.

 

Where will we look in the days and weeks to come? Will we look only under the Christmas tree? Will we only wait for Santa Claus? Will we be ready only for good news for ourselves?

 

Or will we look for the lost and the lonely, the despairing and deprived, the suffering and saddened? Will we wait with those whose daily news is bad news? And will we be ready for the good news that comes into our world at Christmas?

 

Watch, wait, be ready.

Hope - stars in the darkness

A reflection on Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36: Sunday, 3 December 2006

Yesterday, I was reading the letters to the editor in The Weekend Australian magazine. A number of people had written responding to an article the previous week about global warming. I’ll share some of those responses with you in a moment, but first I want to point to a reality: the world is no longer the way it used to be. Global warming or climate change can no longer be denied. After years of fruitless attempts to share the bad news with us, the environmental scientists have finally been listened to. Is it too late? I don’t know; but I do know that things are looking pretty black for us, and things are looking pretty black for the world.

There is an ancient Persian saying: “When it is dark enough you can see the stars.” “When it is dark enough you can see the stars!”

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. Even though the shops have been telling us for weeks that Christmas is coming, today is the first Sunday that the church turns its eyes towards 25th December and begins to prepare for the coming of a baby.

But this morning’s readings are not about the coming baby. This morning’s readings are about the coming darkness. Our readings from Jeremiah and Luke are quite dark. And it isn’t just the readings that are dark. When we look at our world we also see much darkness.

Twenty centuries after Christ we still have wars, poverty and injustice. The world is still racked with violence, yet not destroyed. It is filled with destruction, yet not overcome. We live amidst injustice, poverty and prejudice, yet still there are signs of God’s kingdom, signs of hope.

And just as in the time of Jeremiah and in the time of Luke, we wait and we watch and we hope - for the light which Jesus will bring. For when it is dark enough we can see the stars - those little specks of light that bring hope. This first Sunday in Advent is the Sunday of hope. As Christians we are called to be people filled with hope.

Walter Brueggemann, the biblical scholar, tells us that Jeremiah was written while the Israelites lived in exile. He tells us that in exile they learnt some important things: They learnt how to express sadness, rage and loss. They learnt how to complain - not in a way which left them overwhelmed by the darkness. No. Their complaining was so that they could search for stars in the darkness. In exile they learnt how to face the darkness of their lives so that they could live in hope.

Sometimes it feels like we live in exile too. Family life, society, and the church are no longer what they used to be. The old ways are being dismantled and we are still waiting for the new ways to be birthed. At times like this we have three choices just as the Israelites of Jeremiah’s time had choices:

First, we can pretend it isn’t dark; we can go on pretending nothing has changed. But if we do this we will be left behind. The hope we have for the future will become less and less real and will no longer sustain us. Interestingly, there were letters yesterday crying out, “There’s nothing really wrong with the environment. We’ve got nothing to worry about.” It’s extraordinary the lengths people will go to, to pretend that the darkness is not real.

Second choice, we can focus on the darkness. Many people focus on the darkness of life. They keep picking at all the things that are wrong. They worry, they complain, they are negative, they become depressed and in the end they have no hope. They refuse to see the stars until, in the end, they are unable to see the stars. Again, yesterday’s letters illustrated this stance too: all is doom and gloom, global warming means the death of us and the death of the world. Darkness obscures the possibility of stars.

But there is a third choice: we can acknowledge the darkness and put our energy into searching for the stars. If we are willing to see the darkness in our lives and in the world then we can look for the stars. The stars are those points in our lives where we meet God. Those people and places that remind us that God is with us; that God will never leave us alone; that God’s ways of justice and faithfulness will come when we live lives of justice and faithfulness.

Last week, Joan was telling me about just such an event in her life and in the lives of some young refugees from Afghanistan. After a long period of time, two of their brothers arrived in Australia. After all of the struggles to convince the Australian government that their situation is one of genuine need, after all of the paperwork, all of the waiting, after many disappointments, light has shone in their darkness. There still is darkness, not just for this family with parents and a brother still in Afghanistan, still in great danger but also darkness for the millions of refugees around the world. But there are still stars that shine, to give hope to all those who wait in darkness.

As we prepare for Christmas we remember that each Advent, each coming, is a reminder to us of the hope we have because God chose to become human and live among us. Even in the darkness, or perhaps, because of the darkness, God chose to become one of us. God continues to choose today to love us, to forgive us, to invite us to journey into God’s future looking always for the stars – those signs of God’s presence with us.

Each Advent we are reminded of how God wants us to respond to the darkness within the world. We are to be the people who seek out the tiny lights of justice, and kindness, and loving, which are a part of life. We are to live in ways which make many more of these tiny lights until the darkness of our world is illuminated with the light of Christ.