The First Sunday of Advent, 1B, November 30, 2014; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of new beginnings, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

Today marks the beginning of a new church year. Thanksgiving to God was our last act of the year that is now past. Baptism is going to be our first act of the year to come. I love baptisms! Hadley and Piper Stuart have come to us to receive the sacrament of baptism, an official welcome to the family called Christian, in the branch called Episcopalian, and in doing that, Hadley and Piper are giving us all a reason to renew our own baptismal promises. What a blessing! I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Advent.

Advent, as you may know, means emergence, rise, development, dawn, approach, appearance, arrival, coming. The feeling evoked by the beginning of Advent reminds me of the annual ritual my family participates in when we go to the Delaware shore for a week in the summer. Most nights we are up very late playing games or working a massive jigsaw puzzle, and so we generally sleep through the sunrise. But for one morning in the week, when the sky is likely to be the clearest, we set our alarms to arise while it is still very dark. We make a pot of coffee and take the short drive to the beach to watch the sun rise. We sit still and watch the horizon go from grey to pink to orange, waiting for the edge of the sun to slip into our view. We know it’s already there; we know that that others further east of us have already spotted it; that across the ocean, it is lunch time; that across Asia, the day is already coming to a close. We know all of that – and yet, it is utterly thrilling to keep watch so that we can see the spectacularly beautiful sunrise for ourselves.

Keeping watch is a frequent theme of Advent. It is the church season that calls on us to squint — to search and find signs of the immanence of Love, capital L, which is often called God. We know it’s already there; that others ahead of us have already spotted it and yet, it is utterly thrilling to keep watch so that we can see the spectacularly beautiful Love incarnate for ourselves.

One of the curious things about our church tradition is that we begin each new year with Gospel readings about endings. Our Gospel lesson from Mark is called “the little apocalypse.” In common usage, putting the word “little” with the word “apocalypse” seems like an oxymoron. In our popular culture’s imagination, apocalypse means disaster, calamity, a cataclysmic ending. When religious exclusionary ideology is added, the violence that ensues is nightmarish. As biblical scholar Tina Pippin has written, “A good apocalypse is hard to find.” [1] But for our own more inclusive and progressive religious purposes, I want to reclaim the older and truer meaning of apocalypse: an uncovering, a revelation, a disclosure of the victory of good over evil in the end. For us, this triumph of good over evil is where good is Love, and evil is whatever keeps Love from spreading and growing –not just for some people, but for all people. According to the Gospel of Mark, we are to squint – to stay alert and awake to the ways in which Love will triumph, no matter what. And what Jesus says to his disciples, he says to all: keep awake – in other words, watch for the disclosure, the revelation of Love.

Our Gospel passage begins, “But in those days, after that suffering (or affliction), the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give her light and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” In other words, your world is going to be turned upside down. Your world is going to be rocked – and the people and systems and structures you’ve relied on are going to tumble down. Just prior to this passage, Jesus, speaking to his disciples, has predicted that they will have personal and interpersonal struggles, betrayals and trials. And that’s not all; there will be institutional failings, regional failings, national and international failings: famines, earthquakes in various places, wars and rumors of wars.

This is not a projection imagining a time thousands of years in the future. This is a description of what Jesus and his disciples were in the midst of. In Mark, this is Jesus’ last teaching before his own betrayal and trial and execution. This is Jesus’ last teaching before he asked his closest friends to keep watch while he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, and three times found them all asleep. And we know that for the Gospel writer, this story is written for a community toward the end of the first century that is experiencing betrayals and trials and executions of their own. They were experiencing institutional, regional, national and international failings. I believe that is how we can know that this text can speak to us at the beginning of the twenty-first century – because we too experience betrayals and trials and executions, regional, national and international failings, and we too are instructed to keep awake – be alert, perhaps best translated, be alive. Watch for signs of new life in what is right in front of us. Be alert for God’s (for Love’s) saving action in the world. Be alive to the possibilities of grace happening even and especially when the stars begin to fall.

It occurs to me that I don’t know a thing about the End of the World, capital E, capital W. But I do know something about endings of worlds, endings that have eliminated the light from the sun and the moon – or at least my ability to see the light anyway, and made the stars fall from heaven, and shaken all I know of heaven right out of me. I know something about endings due to death, and other losses not quite so devastating, but still worthy of enormous grief. I know some new beginnings that were born out of those endings. I can remember and point to folks who, I believe, were angels, messengers sent from God to gather up the pieces of my broken heart. I imagine that Jesus is saying, while you are waiting that considerable length of time for the world to be made right again, pay attention what’s going on right in front of you. Watch for God (or Love) at the gates – especially the gates to your hearts. Watch for God (or Love) on the horizon. Keep watch and pray.

Keeping watch for any length of time actually requires some teamwork – folks taking turns at a watch post while others eat or rest. While one is keeping watch, it makes sense to stay awake – but this is not a final lesson from Jesus about tossing and turning and worrying all night long. This is a final lesson about being attentive and being alive to the possibilities of new beginnings even in the midst of great suffering, or affliction, not succumbing to the deadening despair or the numbness or complacency or the willful ignorance that might get us through the day or night, but doesn’t make us more available to God and one another. American philosopher Cornel West once said, “You must let suffering speak if you want to hear the truth.” For Advent, I’d say, you must let suffering come into your view if you want to see the truth.

Last week I quoted theologian Jan Richardson, and this week in her blog she has written something so beautiful, I am moved again to read her words to you. She writes: “Every year, Advent calls us to practice the apocalypse: to look for the presence of Christ who enters into our every loss, who comes in the midst of devastation, who gathers us up when our world has shattered, and who offers the healing that is a foretaste of the wholeness [Christ] is working to bring about not only at the end of time but also in this time, in this place.”[2]

If we are going to practice the apocalypse, we are going to need one another – forging bonds of belonging and identity, meaning and purpose, strength and resilience. We are going to need the teamwork that happens when the church is at her best. We need to make the church her best. Needing the team is one of the best reasons I know to be a part of a community of faith – one of the best reasons I know to be baptized and to re-affirm our baptismal vows, to help one another sit still and watch the horizon go from shades of grey to shades of pink and orange, squinting, waiting for Love to slip again into our view.

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