The 1st Sunday in Advent - Serenity About What Is To Come

On this first Sunday of Advent when I hear about the expected apocalypse in Matthew's gospel an indelible image comes to mind.  The Chapel of the Good Shepherd at General Seminary is very formal, but every once in a while students create "chapel pranks."  Creativity and keeping within a very broad boundary of good taste mark these pranks, which only take place at Evening Prayer.  I walked in one evening to see some clothing draped rather haphazardly across both student and faculty seating.  The faculty, who chose to attend this evening, processed in their cassocks, surplices, and academic hoods from the front of the chapel to their seats.  That's all as it should have been, but in their hands they held (given to them by students) boldly lettered signs saying, "Left Behind."  Muffled laughter arose from the seated students and staff.  Of course, that meant we students who attended that evening were also condemned to being "left behind."  Just a bunch of unprepared sinners, I guess!

Being prepared for God's revealing of God's self for the second time, probably at the end of time or at the beginning of a new age--or being unprepared--this theme colors our scripture readings in Advent.  But this concern may have little place in our thinking today.  We figure it's been over 2,000 years and may be quite a few more.  Most of us have no feelings of urgency about it. 
 
In fact, W. H. Auden, the poet, calls this time in which we live the "Time Being."  He writes, "In the meantime / There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, / Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem from insignificance."  Certainly St. Paul would agree, for in his letter to the Roman Christians he tells them to wake-up from sleep.  Only those who are alert can respond to God's call to them and make decisions to live life in such a way that important things take priority—that the Time Being is redeemed from insignificance.
 
Now Paul did believe that the apocalyptic second coming of Christ was quite near.  But whether near or far away in time, Paul's admonition would have been the same: ". . . put on the armor of light . . . live honorably as in the day."  For Paul darkness represented the power of sinful desires that pull us away from God.
 
For Auden our sin makes up part of the picture of our sorry state, but he also views us as actively working against being reflective about two important things:  first, who we are and, then, how our existence consists of more than just our daily tasks.  Not only do we lack urgency about this, we can also allow guilt about our sin repress the joy we might feel as we consider the mystery of God's incarnation as one of us--a human being.  We often feel unworthy of God’s love.
 
David Bartlett, a New Testament scholar, sees two temptations for us in our uncertainty concerning salvation history.  First, Christians may think that understanding all this is just an impossible situation. Then Bartlett says we may "fall into a state of perpetual apathy."  When we find our selves in this state of apathy, we may decide that what we do—or don’t do—matters very little.  On the other hand if we are constantly focused on the apocalypse, Bartlett thinks we will "fall into a state of perpetual anxiety."  We will focus on whether we are among the "saved" or not, often forgetting to address the needs of others with compassion.
 
As with many issues there is a middle ground here.  That middle ground consists of serenity about the future, trusting the words of Jesus that we cannot know when the Son of Man will come.  It also consists of remembering the cautionary story of Noah as an archetype of faithfulness to God's leading.  In this middle ground we also take comfort in the affirming message of Jesus' life, death and resurrection made present each Sunday in the Eucharist.
 
It means gathering with others in a community of hope--neither succumbing to apathy or anxiety.  In that community of hope we can care for each other and together respond to the needs of the world in God's name--while being alert for signs of God's reign of justice and peace, already begun, but not yet fulfilled.  Bartlett calls this "eschatologically sensitive serenity"—serenity about how it all ends.  In this community of hope—in a parish like St. Nicholas’, for example—we can received assurance that, in Bartlett's words, "we are God's people, and that the history in which we live [is] moving from God and [going] to God."
 
The words of Jesus are these: "Therefore, you must be ready. . ."  How can we accomplish this?  Let us make ourselves ready by caring for each other and responding to the needs we see around us.  Let us make ourselves ready through our individual efforts within this community to make it a community of hope, knowing, of course, that only through God's gracious blessing can our efforts be fruitful.  Stemming from God's love for us, may our attitude of serenity allow us to be ever alert for how God is moving in our lives and in the life of this community to help us grow more and more into Christ's likeness.  May we be ever alert for the dawning light of God's justice and peace.

• "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio" in Collected Poems, 1976, p. 308.
• David Bartlett, "Pastoral Perspective" on Matthew 24: 36-44 in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol.1, p. 22-24.