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NOTE: Voting is now underway for the 2005 Canadian Blog Awards. To vote click the link over on the top left side of this site. I'm listed as "Aaron's Head" under "Best Religious Blog." You can vote once a day...imagine if government elections were like that! My sermon for today...the text is Mark 13:24-37. "Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come." I'm not a terribly patient person. I like things to happen when I want them to happen, which is usually immediately. I get twitchy waiting for the streetcar, I keep checking the mailbox when I'm expecting a package, and I have never once let a pan of brownies cook all the way through. I have things to do, I want my brownie now. This is never more apparent than when I'm working on my computer. Mouse, mouse, point click...click...click. Come ON! Click. Stinkin'...Come on! My computer is reaching that point, the point that all computers reach, when it's not as fast as it used to be. As I wait for it to grind out the simple task of opening an e-mail, I can feel my blood pressure rising. I get anxious and even angry. I think that's one of the unfortunate results of living in this technological age. We've come to expect that our machines will make everything possible in the blink of an eye. And it's not just our machines; it's all around us. Yesterday I went without breakfast because stopping in McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin would have taken too much time - even fast food isn't fast enough. There's a product advertised on TV that will make a chicken salad sandwich in 5 seconds! Remember the Minute Steak, back in the 1980's? It seems that wasn't fast enough, now we're measuring meal preparation in seconds. And when we fly out the door, too often we take our impatience on the road with us, and in our hurry to get where we're going our road rage endangers ourselves and others. So it should come as no surprise that Christmas is already here, at least as far as the shopping mall is concerned. I was at the Eaton Centre two weeks ago and already the decorations were up. I tried to pretend that it was an Advent wreath I was looking at, but to no avail...Christmas was out in full force and it was mid-November. While I can understand the rush to get to Christmas - after all, can you think of a more wonderful celebration than the incarnation of Our Lord? - the true tragedy happens on December 26th, when Christmas is chucked out the window and we're already thinking about the New Year...and stores are putting out their Valentine's Day displays. That's what makes Advent such a blessing, an island of calm in our sometimes frantic culture. We've started a new year in the church, as of today, but instead of starting with a big festival like Christmas, to really launch things off - we start with a time of preparation and patience...and waiting. Waiting. What are we waiting for? If we're waiting for the tree and for Santa and for the reindeer and all that...well, you might as well just go to the Eaton Centre now and get it over with. No, we're waiting for Our Lord to come. In some ways, yes, we're waiting for Christmas. Because although the birth of Jesus happened over 2000 years ago, and we're all just a bit late for that, we do recognize that Christ is present in the world now, in us all. God took on human flesh, and that was no limited-time offer, it wasn't just a Christmas sale. The incarnation is real every day, and when we celebrate the Christmas incarnation we're celebrating the continued incarnation of Christ within each of us. You'll see, as we set the altar for communion, the servers will bow to one another. They're not bowing to the other person, they're bowing to Christ within that person, the incarnation of Christ that is in us all. Yet, as should be obvious from today's readings, that's not the only coming for which we wait. "Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds, with great power and glory." It's a description of the end times, the final judgement. Judgment Day. It's a concept with deep roots in the Christian psyche. We live in expectation of the second coming Christ, the triumphal ushering in of the Kingdom of God. Various passages of scripture describe the apocalypse as torment and flame and punishment (lots of this) and, above all - judgement. Throughout history Christians have been fascinated by the Final Judgement, by the notion of the wicked getting their comeuppance. It's a human thing to feel that we've been wronged and that "those sinners" will be punished. This was a very hot topic in the middle ages. The medieval mind produced perhaps the richest images of judgement, in literature and stone carving and especially in doom paintings. These were huge murals that often spanned the chancel arch, which would be just up there. They depicted Christ seated in judgement. On one side the dead rose from their graves, and on the other the damned were consigned to the flames. There's a doom painting at St. Thomas' church in Salisbury, England, and I can tell you that it's an awesome and terrifying thing. The damned, including some bishops and kings, are being grasped by devils and fed into the mouth of a ferocious beast. It's a punitive image of God and one born out by many passages of scripture...but, interestingly, not by today's gospel. No, today we get none of that good, gory imagery. Rather, just where the depiction of Christ's judgement would seem to fit, after he describes his coming in clouds, right where we would expect to find wailing and gnashing of teeth, Our Lord tells us about a fig tree. "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that he is near." Fig tree? What's this about? What lesson are we supposed to learn? Are we supposed to become horticulturalists, watching fig trees for signs of the second coming? The other fig tree in Mark's gospel is the one Jesus curses, the fig tree that bore no fruit. What lesson can be learned from a tree that didn't bear fruit? And why is this one described as coming to life, like a tree in spring? Hold on to that. Jesus also tells us about a man, going on a journey, who leaves his slaves in charge and gives them tasks to perform. These slaves don't know when their master will return. That means that they can't goof off, they can't ignore their work because their master might return at any moment - anyone who has worked for an hourly wage knows that you don't want to be caught goofing off or worse, as Jesus mentions, sleeping on the job. So the slaves are to keep awake, to keep working...and so are we, because we never know when the master will return. And what are the tasks Our Lord has left for us? What do we want to be found doing when he returns? Just a little before today's reading, in Mark's gospel, Jesus tells the scribes the two great commandments, which we'll be saying ourselves in just a few minutes. The commandments are to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength," and to "love your neighbour as yourself." Today's gospel doesn't talk about judgement because Jesus has another lesson for us to learn. Who will be condemned and who will be saved, those are matters for God. If we spend too much time worrying about judgement we'll ignore our own business, the task Our Lord has given us to do. Our business is to be doing the work of loving one another, caring for one another, feeding the hungry and showing compassion to the lonely, visiting the sick and the prisoners. These are the things we want to be found doing when Our Lord comes. And if we do them I believe that we'll find a most remarkable thing - I think we'll find that Our Lord has indeed come again. He will come to us in the hungry and the sick, in the prisoner and the lonely soul, and most of all from inside our own hearts as we open them up to one another. It will be a more gentle coming, more like the original incarnation in a Bethlehem manger than any thunder-and-clouds triumphal entry. And the fig tree? The cursed fig tree bore no fruit - it was a symbol of worship without soul, a religious system that cared more about ceremony and show than about doing God's work of love. But a fig tree that is coming to life, stretching out tender shoots in a spring blossom, that is a tree that will bear fruit, a tree that is coming back to life. So no, we shouldn't watch the fig tree for growth - the fig tree's growth is our own, and only when we are ready to bear the fruit of the kingdom will we be ready to see the incarnate Christ, coming in a glory far surpassing any doom painting. But only if we are patient with ourselves and with others. Only if we are willing to slow down and give of ourselves, both to the moment and to the world around us. And only if we keep awake! |
