Advent 1, Year A, 2001

Episcopal Church of St Michael and St George, St Louis, MO

Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24: 37-44

The word of the Lord
to Isaiah:
"Many peoples shall come and ...
They shall beat their swords
into ploughshares ,
and their spears
into pruning hooks;
nation
shall not lift up sword
against nation,
neither shall they learn war
any more."

[Listen to the first 1:24 mins of U2's "Peace on Earth" from their album "All That You Can't Leave Behind" which begins
"Heaven on earth
we need it now"]

A city street, and a man stands on a bus,
clutching a ticket in his sweaty hand.
Then a searing fireball
twisted metal
and cold silence.

Heaven on earth
we need it now. . .

A cathedral chapel
towers of black metal
rise from a tray of concrete dust,
and candles stand sentinel
over the names of the dead.
John, Allison, David, Shawn, Colleen, Donnie, Sal....

Heaven on earth
we need it now. . .

There's dust on the ground, hard packed
like stone, and on it
two large toes
bound with a dirty white rag,
a beaten body
receding
into nameless death.

Heaven on earth
we need it now. . .

U2's song
seems to capture
the place that we are in
right now.
Standing in a hotel lobby yesterday,
the Christmas decorations are up, and the Christmas Carols playing:
"Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright;"
and part of me
wanted to shout NO!
NO! nothing is calm,
nothing is bright!
Because I turn on the TV,
and today there are twenty-something people killed, mostly young adults, in
Israel, and in the Palestinian West Bank two children have been shot dead,
and the day before a family died in Afghanistan when an aid package fell on
their house, the day before and the day before and the day before that...
All is calm, all is bright? What are we doing
heading toward Christmas, with its talk of peace
and its haloed baby
in a manger,
what are we doing reading Isaiah
with its promises of nations coming together and melting their arms
to make farm tools,
when war seems to be escalating,
and terror increasing,
when all around us is fear
and broken promises
and death? It's Advent,
and I sometimes wonder
if we know
what we are doing.

I guess, if I had my choice,
I'd put aside the war and the pain and the difficulty
and run with the baby Jesus and peace and joy,
because that's what life is all about, or at least
that's the fairy tale
we want to believe in.
We want the world
to be a good place,
a place where we are safe and loved and happy,
where life is good
and babies are typical
in their innocence
instead of
extraordinary.
That's the dream, that's the illusion
of Christmas.
That's why, as soon as Thanksgiving is over, we put up the decorations
and turn on the carols.
And if I had my choice
I'd really rather that our gospel reading for today
had begun where it should,
with the beginning of the story of Jesus
in the first few verses
of Matthew. But if we're honest, we all know
that's it's an escape, an illusion,
and real life is a whole lot
more sordid,
and perhaps the people who put our lectionary together knew
better than we do
is that what we need at this time
is not an injection of fairytale
but an injection of reality
in all its grimy anguish.

And so, juxtaposed
with Isaiah's
promise of peace
is Jesus' prediction of pain.
He returns us to the days of Noah,
days not known for their glory
but lamented
for their depravity.
This time
between
Christ's earthly life
and his return, this time
between promise
and fulfillment
will be a time like that of Noah.
A time when people
were caught up in their own lives and their own interests, when they cared
more about
the wine they would drink tonight
than the beggars
lying hungry
outside their gates,
when they fought
for their own importance
and laughed at crazy old Noah
giving up everything
to follow the call
of an unseen God.

It's a lot more like our world
than the world
of our Christmas cards.

Yes, we dream of peace, yes, we dream of a better time to come
but in the mean time
we have to live in the reality of a world
torn apart by selfishness
and greed
and fear.

But that reality
is not all there is,
that reality
is not
the whole story.
For all that we suffer, for that we struggle,
there is also a promise. A promise
that one day
all this will end. One day
God will come, one day
Christ will return, one day
there will be heaven on earth,
or at least earth
will be caught up into heaven,
and the tables will be turned,
good will triumph over evil
and right over wrong,
and there will be peace, and love and joy.

But we live
in the in-between times. We live
knowing the promise
but seeing little hope of its fulfillment.
We live
caught between fear
and faith, between history
and hope.
There is a gap,
and the pain and the suffering and the sorrow
which are all around us
threaten to overwhelm us.

Christmas,
at least as the carols and Christmas cards
would have us believe
offers us an escape, a refuge
from what we see
every time we turn on
our TVs.
But an escape
can only ever be temporary,
and refuge is fine for a time, but eventually we must emerge
into the cold light of day,
where the reality is
that we live
in in-between times, times between the promise
and the fulfillment, between fear
and faith, between history
and hope.
Advent
is about those in between times,
and Advent
is where God will meet us.

We have, on the one hand
a world in a mess,
and it doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of hope
and on the other
a vision of something better.
That has always been
the struggle
of Advent.
Because we are caught,
caught
in the in between.

Between a halo-bound baby
in a straw-filled manger,
whose angels announced
"Peace on earth"
and a bloody body
on a splintery cross,
"forgive them, Father.
For they do not know
what they do."

Between the tomb of Lazarus, in a small town outside Jerusalem,
with a weeping Jesus,
and the heavenly Jerusalem
where all tears
will be wiped
away.

Between the fear of a God
who comes like a thief
in the night,
and the hope of God who comes not to steal
but to save.

But bridging those betweens
is the promise of Easter,
the promise of a God who proclaims
"I am the resurrection and the life!
Whoever believes in me, even though they die, shall live!"
who stands in a locked room,
holes in his hands and side
breathing peace on his friends.
Who gives bread and wine, body and blood
as a foretaste
of the heavenly banquet.

Bridging those betweens
is Christ,
haloed baby in a manger,
weeping friend by a four day old tomb,
dying body croaking forgiveness from a cross
resurrected life offering peace
bright image of God awaiting us
in glory.

It's a bridge, this Christ
who doesn't solve the problems,
doesn't remove the ambiguities
or the pain
or the struggle.
But a Christ who says
that promise
will make way for fulfillment,
and perhaps fear
can be met with faith,
and maybe history
and hope
do rhyme.

And it's a bridge, this Christ
who is
our head,
and we, the church, are his body.
So that in our lives
we echo the life of Christ, bridging the betweens,
in our bodies
the life of Christ resounds,
in our spirits, the Spirit of Christ reverberates,
ringing out
his tears
his forgiveness
his peace
his resurrection
in our world.

Heaven on earth. . .

Raewynne J. Whiteley
2 December 2001