Watching and Waiting

This sermon was preached at the evening Vesper service at the Holliday Park Plaza retirement center on December 2, 2007. The text was Matthew 24: 36-44.

I feel very privileged to be among you today on the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the liturgical Christian year and the beginning of that most festive of seasons, the preparation for Christmas.

I must tell you, though, that my husband got me a little bit apprehensive yesterday. He’d been watching the Weather Channel, you see, and saw meteorologists reporting then that a big winter storm was on its way and that 75 mile per hour winds would be raging and howling just about the time you and I were gathering here for worship. “I don’t know,” he said, “It sounds kind of scary to me—being on the top floor of Holliday Park Plaza in a big windstorm.” And yet, despite the predictions of gloom and doom—from the weathermen and from my husband!--here we are, and we seem to be safe and ok, and we’re getting on with worship.

It’s hard to know what to do with predictions of gloom and doom when we see them on television or hear them from loved ones. Regular readers of the Bible, though, are familiar with these kinds of themes—writings and prophecies about disaster, the end of the world, and God’s judgement are common enough in the Bible that scholars and theologians have a word to classify them—eschatalogical—having to do with the eschaton, the Greek word for the end of the world.

We would certainly classify the passage from Matthew’s gospel that we read a moment ago as one of these eschatological passages. Matthew tells us that Jesus is in Jerusalem, having made his triumphant entry into the city to the cheers of welcoming crowds. As chapter 24 begins, we see Jesus leaving the temple declaring to his disciples that “Not one stone” of the temple “will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Afterwards, on the Mount of Olives, the disciples come to Jesus and want to know more. “When will this be,” they ask him, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And, as Matthew records it, it is in response to this question that Jesus unleashes a storm of prophecy, encompassing parables, stories, and warnings, about the end of the world, God’s judgement, and his own part in the completion of history—an eschatological discourse of which our passage for today is but a very small part.

“About that day and hour no one knows,” Jesus tells the disciples. “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. . .if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

We read passages like this during Advent because in this time of year, when we celebrate the coming into our world of Jesus Christ, Emanuel, God with us, Our Savior in that historical moment over 2,000 years ago—we also look forward in expectation of Christ’s return—what we call the “second coming”—a moment, sometime in the future, when Christ will come to gather the faithful, to judge the unfaithful, to unite past, present and future into a triumphant completion of God’s history and God’s purpose.

And so Jesus, and Matthew’s gospel, warn and encourage and implore us--keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

Maybe some of you saw this cartoon in the your Sunday paper a few weeks ago, in the Parade magazine. It’s just one panel, very simple. In the cartoon a gentleman in a biblical-type getup—shabby tunic, sandals, long beard—is on the street holding a sign that proclaims “The End of the World is Near.” Passing by on the street is a man, sharply dressed up in a business suit and holding a briefcase, obviously hurrying from one meeting to another. And the business man is looking at the sign “The end of the world is near” and he says, “This is no time for irrational optimism, pal! We’ve got real problems!”

I thought of this cartoon when I read today’s gospel passage. Are we like that businessman, hurrying by, immersed in our own problems, unwilling to even stop and think for a moment about what the End of the World might really mean? For us, is the Second Coming just some kind of inconvenient myth or fairy tale?

Or—are we so worn down by the unremitting life of tasks and responsibilities, appointments and worries and cares that keep our lives busy and take our whole attention that we think the end of the world might be good news because we could at least then get a little rest? What does it really take to get our attention and make us stop for a moment, stop doing things, and actually think about what it is that we are doing?

Our gospel passage for today, like the bearded man in sandals holding the End of the World sign, invites us to stop for a moment in our heedless rush, to pay attention, to get ready for something that’s not on our “to do” list. Our gospel passage for today invites us to pause in the middle of what for many of us is an overcommitted frenzy of Christmas shopping and parties and TV specials and activities—to pause, to ponder, and to prepare our hearts for the miracle of Christ’s certain presence with us in the past, in the present, and in the future.

Keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

What does it mean to be awake, and ready, for the coming of Christ? Jesus gives us example after example in Matthew 24 and 25, including the example in our passage for today about the householder who needs to be alert and awake to prevent his house from being broken into.

Preparation is something we know about. We prepare for a new baby by getting the diapers ready. We prepare for an earthquake by practicing getting under our desks at school or at work. We prepare for retirement by saving money.

I remember that in the 80’s when I was in graduate school in Boston, we prepared for Hurricane Gloria’s arrival by taping up all of our dorm windows--and then laying in a big stock of beer. We weren’t only prepared to outlast that hurricane, we were prepared to enjoy it. We gathered in a room and waited for the hurricane—and it never came. It went out to sea instead of heading in towards Boston.

So what was all that preparation for? Was it meaningful or important at all? What good is it to be awake, and to be ready, if what you’re waiting for never comes—at least during your lifetime?

For me, the key to understanding our passage for today lies just a little further along in Matthew’s gospel. In chapter 26, as Jesus sits praying through the night in the garden of Gethsemane, waiting for his arrest, he tells the disciples: “I am deeply grieved, even to death. Remain here, and stay awake with me.”

And as Jesus waits and suffers throughout that long night, his disciples fail him and fail him again by falling asleep when he needs them most. “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” he says to them. You can hear the disappointment and the pain and the betrayal of those words.

Jesus’ words of prophecy “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” in Matthew 24 are poignantly echoed by his heartfelt cry, “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” in Matthew 26. And the Greek word used in the original text is the same one in both places. In my translation, the NRSV, it’s written as “stay awake”—and in other translations such as the NIV, it’s written as “keep watch.”

So. What if we think of staying awake not as being prepared for something to happen, or as waiting in expectation or readiness—but as keeping watch, as Jesus wanted the disciples to do in the garden--keeping vigil in patience and love, companionship and simple presence--while nothing in particular—certainly nothing dramatic--is happening?

What if we think of being ready not as an activity like getting diapers, or buying beer, or having an emergency kit in the car trunk, or anxiously awaiting an event? What if being ready is simpler than that? What if being ready is simply keeping vigil or keeping watch--being present and patient, being attentive, listening, being, companioning—loving—in the time we find ourselves—in this "time between?”

It’s the difference between being vigilant—which is future centered, always focused on an upcoming event; and keeping vigil, which is present-centered, always focused on what is happening now.

When was the last time you kept watch or kept vigil through the night in this sense of the word? Were you standing on the deck of a frigate at midnight in the Pacific? Were you hovering over a sleeping infant with her first cold? Were you breathing through birth contractions, one after another after another? Were you stranded by a snowstorm in the airport at Minneapolis/St Paul? Or were you holding the hand of a loved one as they died, patiently waiting and companioning and loving them as their breaths came further and further apart and they drifted from this life to the next?

What happens to us when we keep vigil—when we stop doing and simply be? It seems like time stops, doesn’t it?

All of our senses are heightened as the world around us quiets and we can hear the rustling of the trees, feel the hardness of the chair or the warmth of a hand, see the stars or notice those first hints of morning light drift over the horizon. Our priorities shift and for a moment what becomes important is a loved one’s breath; or murmured words of comfort; a cold cloth on the forehead; a warm blanket; a favorite song or poem.

We know the grace of doing “nothing” but being—and the holiness and beauty of “being” overwhelms us, more than enough and overflowing.

Theologians might say that the difference between “waiting” and “keeping watch” is the difference between chronos and kairos. The difference between time measured out in minutes, tracked and known by clocks and activities and chores--chronos; and time as God knows it, time experienced as timelessness or fullness, sacred and still and meaningful—kairos.

“Keep awake,” Jesus tells us, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

But the wakefulness and readiness Jesus wants from us isn’t found in doing, or preparing, or even in waiting. The wakefulness and readiness Jesus wants from us is found in keeping watch—companioning and comforting one another; taking time to stop doing and embrace being; experiencing God’s grace and holiness and timeless presence in the time we have, the patience and the fullness and the completeness of this “time between.”

This Advent, my prayer for you is that you will know this stillness and beauty, this holiness and patience—that you will experience God’s sacred kairos--as you keep awake and keep watch in joyful expectation for the gift of Christmas and for the mystery of Christ’s second coming.

Amen.