“Heads Up”                                        November 29, 2009
Luke 21:  25–36                                 Rev. Deryl Fleming

In my previous life as a chaplain in a psychiatric hospital one of the recurring themes was “the end is near.” At least once a month a patient invited me and sometimes others to join that chorus, usually referring to an apocalyptic passage like the one you just heard from Luke’s gospel–“signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

I was at the hospital for 17 years, and I do not remember anyone going on to say, “When these things begin to take place, lift your heads for your redemption is drawing near.” Almost always the tone or the commentary was full of fear and foreboding.

If the Bible is a love story of God’s love for all God’s children, the forecasters of gloom and doom didn’t get it. Understandably, they were too distraught to get it.

Advent is a wake up call to lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near. God is on the way already. By the way, people over 60 know that Advent comes sooner every year. Wake up, Jesus Christ is coming to town. And here we are looking for God again.

The National Eye Institute caught my eye with an ad in the Christian Century: “Glaucoma doesn’t change the way your eyes look. It changes the way your eyes see.” Advent is an annual invitation to change the way your eyes see, in the other direction, to see more clearly. A few weeks ago during “joys” Bill Lowery celebrated that after two cataract surgeries he is seeing things he hasn’t seen in years. Cataract surgery can do that for you. Advent can, too.

Sometimes our eyes get glazed over by cataracts, sometimes by familiarity, sometimes by preoccupation and busyness..

Life is largely about paying attention, Frederick Buechner says. Over and over he tells us to pay attention to your life, for if God speaks to us at all it is in our lives. Pay attention to the intersections of your life with others. Lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near.

I lifted up my head this week and saw for the first time in my life Fairview Elementary School perched nearby over Burke Centre Parkway. To the children who go there or went there, my apologies for passing by. God knows how many times, and not noticing you. “Attention must be paid,” said Willie Lowman’s wife in the Death of a Salesman.

Advent is a call to see persons’ in a different way, to see them for real. A friend told me this week that she is carrying dollars in her coat pocket so she can give them to every person she passes on the way to her office who is looking for a handout and to place in every Salvation Army bucket she passes. I could do that, I just hadn’t thought of it. I usually just walk on by.

In last Spring’s Lenten study some of us were invited to see strangers through a different lens, to realize that they, like us, have a history, that they, like us, harbor hopes and fears, that they, like us, need a little or a lot of help, that they, like us, are like us, that, like us what they most need is kindness and a prayer. I tried it for awhile, then I lapsed back into my grumpy self when I don’t get the service I want when I want it. So Advent is a call for me to try it again.

Advent is a time for living differently, for taking the time to listen to your spouse, your hurting child, your aging parent, your colleague, your friend. It takes time, and who has time in Advent to listen, given our to-do lists? If Moses had not taken the time to turn aside and pay attention to the burning bush, he would not have heard God say, “Take off your shoes, for you are on holy ground.” If Jeremiah had not gone down to the potter’s house–who has time to do that during Advent?–he would not have heard God say, “Hear O house of Israel, can I not do with you as the potter has done with the clay?” Listen to the Mystery that whispers, “Lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near.”

Advent is a time to remember that the holy is often hidden in the commonplace, that when there is no room in the inn, a barn outback will suffice. Behold your God in the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine, in cups of cold water or hot coffee given in Jesus’ name, in Kenyan crafts and alternative gifts, in sweaters for the homeless men of Christ House and the socks for Bethany, in baskets of food for the hungry echoing the angels message, “Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be to all people, for unto you is born in the city of David a Savior, your Savior, Christ the Lord.”

In a fable he calls The Living End Stanley Elkins has a scene where endtime has come and the saints are gathered to hear God speak. And speak God does, saying, “You have wondered why things are as they are. You have speculated … questioned my motives.” Groans of denial went up. God ignored them and continued, “Why first an Adam, then an Eve, or Eve at all, or if an Eve, why torn from that depleted man? Why a serpent, why a tree?” He goes on to Noah riding high atop the flood, the commandments crashing down, covenants being made and broken, mended and broken. Finally God asks again, “Why?” “So we might choose?” ventures one. Wrong answer. Other guesses, wrong answers. Then God unveils the mystery–“Because I never found my audience.”

We are made to be an audience to God, to behold the beauty and applaud the glory of the One who one day showed up as a baby from out of nowhere. Once you have seen him in the stable, you can never again be sure where he will appear or the depths to which he will descend in the wild pursuit of us (Buechner).

In 1995 Michael Goldberg published Why Should Jews Survive? He began with the premise that communities have a master story around which they organize reality. He contends that in contemporary secular Judaism the holocaust has been given that position. On the contrary, in religious Judaism the master story is the Exodus story, a story of hope unlike the dead and story of the holocaust. He then encourages his follow Jews to remember the holocaust lest it happen again and challenges them to remember that it is not their master story.

Our master story is the Jesus story, beginning with the Advent promise of the One who is to come. It is the story by which we understand all of our other individual and collective stories. So we tell it, sing it, pray it, live it even when hard times and horrific happenings so large and loud they threaten to drown it out. When these things come to pass, lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen