Advent 1C, December 2, 2012. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O unsettling God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Ready or not, we are beginning a new church year. It’s Advent!  If you were here late last night for the Christmas Oratorio, I bet this feels a lot like New Year’s Day. You’ll notice changes in our liturgy that mark this season of preparation and repentance: changes in color, in our music and prayers – whether you like them or not, the changes will probably feel unsettling or unfamiliar. Our Gospel readings in this liturgical year will be mostly from Luke. Whereas last year’s Gospel of Mark was terse and spare prose, interested in getting down just the most basic facts of the ministry and teaching of Jesus and of the circumstances of his death; the language of Luke is expansive and poetic, dramatically and outwardly focused — mission oriented. Ironically, we begin each new year with a teaching from Jesus about the world as it is known ending. This is no coincidence – all of the Gospels were written through the lens of the crucifixion and the experience of Love more powerful than the grave, and the longing for a world where the justice and peace of God will reign once and for all: all time and all people.

The writer of Luke is reminding Jesus’ followers that on the way to the reign of the glory of God, there will be confusion among the nations because of the roaring of the sea and of the waves. The powers of the heavens will be shaken and there will be people getting the wind knocked right out of them from fear and foreboding. Sound familiar? And when you see these things happening, Jesus is saying, don’t hunker down or hide – stand tall and raise your heads because your redemption –the revaluing — the revaluation of your dignity – is drawing near!

And then Luke’s story goes that Jesus told them a parable so short that, if anyone’s mind wandered for a minute, it was missed entirely. It always reminds me of one of my family’s favorite movies of all time: Joe versus the Volcano. In this early Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy. Meg Ryan plays all of the three female lead roles. Tom Hanks plays Joe Banks who is on a spiritual journey away from a color-less, loveless existence. There’s a scene in the movie where one of Meg Ryan’s characters, Angelica Graynamore, has driven Joe to the hills outside of Los Angeles at night. They’re at a scenic overlook – and Joe is on the brink of a fantastic journey as he faces his own untimely death.  They are viewing the breathtaking sight of the thousands of twinkling lights of the city that look like the stars. It appears and feels, to the earnest Joe Banks, that the stars have fallen, or like the world has been turned upside down. Indeed, Joe’s world has been turned upside down. Angelica and Joe are quiet for a while and then Angelica asks “would you like to hear one of my poems?” “Sure,” Joe says.

Long ago
the delicate tangles of his hair
covered the emptiness of my hand.

After a moment of silence, Angelica asks, “Would you like to hear it again?”

That’s what I think of when I read the part of this Gospel passage from Luke that says, “then Jesus told them a parable.” “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.” [pause] I imagine Jesus looking at his earnest audience, in a long pause that did not get recorded in the Gospel narrative, and then asking, “Would you like to hear it again?”

What sense can we make of this one-sentence parable? I think an interpretive clue comes from how the parable is placed in the Gospel of Luke, which is extraordinarily symmetrical in the way it is constructed. The writer of Luke is employing the finest rhetorical devices in his (or her) composition. The narrative, the sayings, the miracles, and the parables are all told in a writerly version of synchronized swimming! You have to map it out and stand back to see how it works. Fortunately for me, I have a friend who did that once on a long scroll of butcher paper during an extended period of insomnia!

This shortest parable – the parable of the fig tree, is the last parable in Luke, at the end of Jesus’ life. And it is balanced and actually illuminated by the first parable, which is the parable of the sower. The parable of the sower, by contrast, is long and its story covers an expanse of time – whole seasons of planting and growing and reaping. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, there is plenty of time. At the end of Jesus’ ministry, time is collapsed. In the parable of the fig tree there is no expanse of time. There is only right NOW. There is a way in which Jesus is teaching something about not getting so preoccupied with what did or didn’t happen or what might happen, that one misses the power of what one can know in the present moment.

And it is the power of the present moment to which Advent calls our attention. Advent is a season of repentance, but it’s not the kind of repentance that is popularly understood in our contemporary Christian culture. The biblical repentance of Advent is not about wallowing in regret for our sins; it’s about changing our behavior. And Advent is not a season of change in terms of personal piety or private salvation – rather Advent’s sacramental purpose is effecting corporate accountability and communal behavior modification. The calls for change and the promises of redemption are directed to institutions and societies and nations. And so our liturgical changes are designed to be unsettling, agitating, and provocative to the whole community. In Advent, perhaps more than any other time in the church year, our work is to offer affliction for the comfortable as we work to change, so that we can better provide comfort for those who are most afflicted.

The power of the present moment can too easily be given up or given away in at least three ways: one is to live in the past – or to blame the past or feel guilty about the past. Not liking our past is as effective as not liking gravity. We can (and should) learn from the past, but wishing that our past were different or that it still existed is a way to give up the power of the present moment – the “now.” Another way of giving up a “now” is to live in the future. This is not to say that we shouldn’t have visions or goals or hope or imagination. But spending our “now” wishing rather than taking action, or spending our present moments worrying – feeling anxious or afraid – will rob us of our powerful “now” so fast we won’t know where it went. And the last way we give up a “now” is to try. Trying is not doing. If we “try” to pick up a piece of paper, nothing happens. This is picking it up. This Advent, see if you can eliminate your use of the word try when it comes to what you are talking about doing. When you hear yourself say “try,” stop and listen deeply to yourself, because you probably have just said in a very polite way that you are not doing it yet, or that you probably won’t do it. Know that if you say you’ll try to do something, you have just let yourself know (and now anyone else that is in this room) that you haven’t made a commitment to do it. Telling truth about that will give you back your “now.”

So whenever you want to engage in transformative action, start. Do a small piece of it. Then be glad when you say “we are changing x (whatever it is).” Maybe it’s not as much as we’d like, but it’s more than before. Listen to the powerful difference between saying that Emmanuel Church is trying to witness to God’s mercy and justice and Emmanuel Church is witnessing to God’s mercy and justice. We are feeding and housing people who need physical nourishment and shelter, while we provide food and a safe haven for all kinds of people who are spiritually hungry and in need of spiritual shelter. We are digging deep for the spiritual and material resources in order to be the change we want to see in the City of Boston.

Jesus tells his hearers what to do when (whenever) it seems like the world is getting turned upside down. When confusion and fear are colluding to reduce us to passivity and despair, knocking the wind right out of us, we are not to squander our energy, engage in avoidance or create distance or indulge our anxieties. We are to stand up, raise our heads and know that redemption, revaluation of our dignity is near. We are to look at what is right in front of us right now. Truly I tell you that generation did not pass away until all things had taken place, and this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place either. You know, the Biblical idea of end times “is not about some mass immigration from a doomed world to a blessed heaven. Rather, it is about the end of …[an] era of war and violence, injustice and oppression. It is about the earth’s transformation, not about its devastation. It is about a world of justice and peace.” [1]

What did you read on the front page of the Boston Globe this morning or see on the news last night about distress among nations? Of people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world? How are confusion and fear and foreboding happening in our nation, in our city, on the other side of your desk in your office or in school or at home, or in your extended families, or even in this room? Where is the drama of giving up the power of now playing out in our relationships, in our institutions, in our bodies? And what redemption or re-valuing might be near right now? What would it take for us to stand up and raise our heads? [2]

It’s been said that no tree looks more dead than a fig tree in the Palestine winter. Imagine noticing little leaves sprouting out of buds on the branches – tiny tiny hopeful signs of growth – of change – of new life. Jesus seems to be saying that in the middle of whatever is turning the world upside down, pick your heads up and look for and see the signs of hope that are right in plain sight, right now. Christian hope, according to Jurgen Moltman, is not an “opium of the beyond;” rather, it is “the divine power that makes us alive in this world.” It’s not a hope that things will return to the way that they were, that the past will be different, or even that a bad thing will never happen in the future. It’s hope that right now, Love (another word for God), Love is redeeming and revaluing what seems dead or shameful or worthless or wasted or hopeless, in us and through us, in here and out there. Advent is a season of change and a season of hope that right now Love can do that. Raise your heads and see that right now Love is making a way where there is no way. Raise your heads and see that right now Love is very near.

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