November 29, 2007
Watchout
Advent 1A Mt 24.37-44
It’s Advent, and away we go! It’s that fork in the road again. Like Bishop Yogi said, When you come to it, take it. Don’t just stand there counting up the Pentecost.
And remember, Matthew said that Jesus said, “Watch… for you don’t know from nothing… ”
Lookout! Look for the signs. To understand the times, to read the seasons, to grasp the moment and how it fits into all the other moments… Watchout.
Look at something else besides yourself. When we promise in the Baptismal Covenant to seek Christ in all persons it doesn’t mean just those comfortable ones around you. It means look everywhere for the hand of God and while you’re at it, get a notion of what God’s hand looks like. Watch. And don’t stop to count the fingers.
To understand our lives, we must see other lives. To understand events, we must see the ways those events impact other people. To understand our children, in spite of the confusion, we must see and listen to them. To understand our mates, we must step outside the shelters of our desires, our perceptions, our feelings, our needs, and see what kind of flag they’re flying and whether it’s upside down or not.
“Dying to self” has become so trite and oversimplified a phrase that we’ve got ourselves blind to what a messy job it can be. So easily can it escape us that it’s actually a way to God and to God’s point-of-view. It means stepping away from self-reference, from self-determination, from self-expression, not because they are wrong, but because they keep us from seeing over the next hill. It means to be surprised over and over again to find out that the gospel is not about how to live. The gospel is about how to die.
If we see life only from the vantage of self, we hurt others even if we want only to love them. We diminish ourselves. We trespass on community. We turn away from God. Before we know it, we become as parched and sterile as last summer’s backyard.
So we look. What makes a difference? When it comes to planning our days, it’s easy to presume the time’s already used up. It’s not all that easy to realize that the point is more like the old Duke Ellington tune, “It ain’t hutchyewdo, it’s the way hutchyewdoit.” It’s the way we come and go, stay and return, meet and greet.
And don’t forget, there’s more to our lives than putting one foot in front of the other even though we’ll never get anywhere if we don’t. As we go, listen to the talk and then walk the talk. Tune in to the laughter and the crying, and then shed a few yourself. Take somebody’s hand. Listen to somebody’s story. Honor somebody’s journey. It never is and never could be parallel to ours. Unlike in geometry, we’ll intersect long before we get to infinity.
In God’s economy, all of life is connected in a way that we can neither create nor stop. So far as we know, maybe we are the only part of life even halfway self-conscious. The universe needs us for a voice. God made us for an audience that would talk back, and, as well, figured rightly how important it might be that we’d have each other to talk about. The commitment to be aware of this and to see it as it is remains an essential part of our being, our privilege, our responsibility, our vocation, our Advent.
And remember. Advent has Christmas by the tail and won’t let go.
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