1 Thess 3.9-13, Luke
21.25-36
“Be alert at all times!” says Jesus in the Gospel reading.
Oh Lord! Do we have to…?
I don’t know about you, but
at this time of year I just want to go into hibernation, to curl up like the
bears and the hedgehogs and sleep till the spring!
I don’t suppose I’m the only
one who feels like that.
Can’t we just be left to
slumber?
That isn’t an unreasonable
question. Many people these days get far too little rest, working all hours to
make ends meet, juggling to meet their commitments, under pressure to do more
with less, or struggling with chronic illness or disability. There’s often no
simple way to ease up, but it’s important to recognise when “enough is enough”,
and allow ourselves to stop. The Bible doesn’t advocate burn-out. Quite the
reverse: rest is sacred. We’re told to keep a Sabbath, a regular time for doing
nothing. And in case we’re tempted to think that might have been easier back in
Biblical times, let’s remember that God gave that commandment to keep the
Sabbath holy as his people were trekking across the desert towards the Promised
Land, when their lives must have been almost impossibly harsh and demanding.
Even then - especially then – in the fact of all that it was vital that they
learned to rely on God, not on their own anxious efforts, which were never
going to be enough in any case. We can’t do it all, no matter how hard we try.
If the Advent call to wake up,
feels like just another demand sent to hound us, another burden to bear, more
stuff we ought to do, then there’s something wrong with the way we are
understanding it. Jesus doesn’t call his followers here to be busy, but to be
alert, and that’s very different. In fact, busyness can make us less alert. If
our minds are literally pre-occupied – already full - with our to-do lists and our
worries, it’s much harder to pay real attention to the things that really
matter.
And that’s what the Advent
call is; a call to pay attention to what really matters, and most of all to pay
attention to God, to look for his presence, to notice him at work in ourselves,
in others, in the world around us. The promise of the Bible is that if we can
do that properly it will bring us the true rest we really need.
Jesus expresses this call to
pay attention in very dramatic language – signs in the sun and moon and stars.
He reminds his hearers that it may not come in comfortable ways – it may feel
like the heavens are shaking. All this
apocalyptic imagery can sound very alien to us. Did Jesus really believe that
that this was literally what was going to happen? The answer is probably yes.
He was a man of his time, just as we are of ours. His followers certainly
believed that the end of the world as they knew it was just around the corner.
Two thousand years of history
have shown that they were mistaken, but the underlying message Jesus gave them
is still worth hearing, because it wasn’t, first and foremost about when and
how the world would end, but about how to live in a world that felt constantly
as if it might tumble around their ears at any moment, as our world so often
does to us. The people of the first century lived under the shadow of
persecution, disease, war and famine; they knew they might be swept away at a
moment’s notice. For many people today that is still true. The migrants who
lost their lives in the channel this week, and the many thousands desperate
enough to take similar risks around the world, bear witness to that. But we
have all been reminded of the fragility of human life over the last year or so.
The end of the age, in some cosmic, universal sense, might not be around the
corner, but the end of the age for each of us personally can still come on us
completely unawares.
How do we cope with that? We
could try to build defences against every possible threat, but no amount of
money, power or influence can protect us completely.
We can’t stop bad things happening,
but Jesus words remind us that we have a choice about how we respond to them. And
the key to responding well, he says, is to be alert, to pay attention, not just
to the problems, but to the ways in which God is present in the midst of them. “When
these things take place” says Jesus, “stand up and raise your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near.” Look at the fig tree, he goes on,
whose unfurling leaves tell you summer is on the way. In the same way God’s
kingdom is growing among you. Pay attention to its small beginnings and nurture
them, he says.
What might that look like in
practice? It might mean paying attention to the word of God, reading the Bible,
spending time in prayer and reflection, so that we can learn to see ourselves
as God sees us - eternally loved and of infinite value.
It might mean learning to see
him at work in others too, though.
In our first reading, Paul gave
thanks for the Christians he was writing to in Thessalonika, for their love,
which gave him strength and courage. The love of the Christian community mattered
greatly to Paul. This was the man who’d once hated and persecuted Christians,
until, on the road to Damascus, he’d had a dazzling vision of Jesus. But it
wasn’t just the vision which changed his mind and heart, it was the fact that
when he got to Damascus, blind and confused, one of the very people he’d been
persecuting, a Christian called Ananias, had come to him – the enemy – prayed
for his healing, taken him in and welcomed him into this very community he had
been hell-bent on destroying. No wonder he later wrote so glowingly about the love
which “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all
things.” He knew it for himself, and he wanted others to know it too, to
pay attention to it, to draw on the strength that a community of loving people
can provide. I see, day to day, the
quiet, often unsung care that people give each other in this church, and which
spreads out to those around us too. It’s easy to take all that care for granted
– but the love which notices people and helps them in the small things of life
is something which many today are desperately hungry for, we should never
underestimate how important and precious it is.
No one has a magic wand to
wave away the sorrows of the world – the heavens do shake, there is distress
among nations – it is part of life. But within all that trouble there are also
the seeds of love and hope and joy, growing stubbornly amidst the wreckage of
the world. Our job this Advent, and all year round, is to pay attention to
those fragile seedlings wherever we find them so that they will grow into the
kingdom God wants us all to enjoy.
Amen
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