Hope

"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory [...] Therefore, keep awake -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake." (Mark 13:24-26, 35-37)

Advent is profoundly mysterious: the time that is coming, that we are waiting for, will come like a thief in the night, at a time we know not when. Who can know for sure what that day will hold? The angels will gather the elect, but will we be among them? After the Son of Man has come on the clouds and gathered the elect unto Himself, what will our existence in glory be?

Mystery, mystery: all the things we anticipate but do not understand. All the certainties we are uncertain of.

We know that Jesus has come. We know that He is coming again. But about that day and hour no one knows. It's unsettling, this time that pulls together the past and the future into an uncertain present, looking backward and forward into a veil beyond which we cannot see.

We are called to prepare a path for the Lord -- like Elijah, to make a straight path in the desert. Wait, and be watchful, always making ready, for we do not know when our Saviour will come. Advent calls us to prepare ourselves for God's coming, to make ready for the final day by immersing ourselves in a period of watching and waiting.

We do not watch by looking resolutely forward, by focusing ourselves on that which we cannot see. That is not really hope: that's an obsession with trying to predict or catch the very moment we cannot grasp upon the instant of its awakening. Nor do we watch by turning backward to what has already past, what we know and understand, because hope cannot live looking behind itself. We watch by preparing within ourselves a silent space, a place within which we immerse ourselves in the present moment, the time in-between.

What we know to have been is part of our hope: the Incarnation we prepare to celebrate fills us with certainty about who God is. We know that Jesus has come. What we know is coming is also part of our hope: our longing for the future fills us with direction and a yearning to be with God. But hope is primarily about the present, because it can only be experienced now.

Our hope and longing for God's coming is like watching a sunrise. We know that the sun has risen a thousand times before. And we know that if we wait long enough the sun will come up above the horizon. But it is by immersing ourselves in the blackness, by watching each moment pass without hurriedly imagining a future where the sun is risen, that we open up a space inside our hearts to see the light seep in.  

Dawn is gradual and sudden, a crack opening up to the light in myriad ways. It illuminates us with longing and sweetness for each moment as we experience it. The past and future never really fall away. But only by really being in the moment can we experience the awe and mystery of what is taking place. We prepare ourselves by being fully immersed.

So, too, the mystery of Advent springs upon us suddenly and is quickly gone. Through patient hope -- a hope that longs by a willingness to see each moment as one in which God is coming -- we abide in the coming of the Lord. 

The Lord has come and the Lord will come. In hope, we live in the conviction that the Lord is coming always, and everywhere.  

"for in every way you have been enriched in him [...] He will also strengthen you to the  end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." (1 Corinthians 1: 5, 8-9)

Honored

Have you ever felt overwhelmed and honored by an opportunity that's presented to you? This Sunday, I felt that to an amazing degree: my parish priest asked if I would be interested in preaching for our upcoming Lessons and Carols service. The service by itself would be a big deal, coming as it does at such an important time in the liturgical year. But this service is extra-special because it's ecumenical -- members of all the local churches have been invited to attend. We're raising money for the charity Agape, and last year there was a really great turnout. By which I mean the church was full.

And now it looks like I'll get to preach at it.

It isn't like I'm not humbled and overwhelmed every time I get asked to preach. I am. I'm grateful and excited for every opportunity. And it isn't that I've never preached at a 'big' event before: I've done a baptism, Back to Church Sunday, and the service for the ACW of the deanery. But this is totally, completely a big deal, and certainly the most important event I've been asked to speak at.

First thought that went through my head? Terror.

Second thought? Yep, I'm terrified. And the priest is insisting I don't have to do it and he doesn't want to pressure me. But there's no freaking way I'm giving up this opportunity just because of a little fear.

I wonder if maybe that wasn't something like what Mary felt when the angel appeared to her and asked her to bear God's child?

I know, I'm being awfully presumptuous by comparing myself to the Virgin Mother. Obviously the situations are nothing alike. But still, I think that our everyday experiences give us insight into the miracle of God's work in the world, let us see intimately into the mystery of the Incarnation and the love God has for us.

She must have felt terror when he told her. She must have felt fear, and overwhelming awe, and humility that she was even being asked, even as he told her it was okay to say no. But in the midst of her fear, her uncertainty, her feeling that she couldn't possibly ever be enough, she reached out and grabbed that opportunity. She said yes: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (Lk 1:38).

When the Church talks about Mary, it is most often about her humility, her acceptance of the will of God. The way she is a good and faithful woman. But we don't talk nearly enough about her courage. Mary was a very brave woman. She said yes even in the face of fear and uncertainty. She didn't give in to God, the way someone gives in to a powerful demand because they cannot resist it. She grabbed hold, with both hands -- she said yes 'come what may.'

Mary the brave one, Mary of the strong heart. Mary who asks her son to perform his first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana, Mary who follows her son to the Cross, Mary who wraps and perfumes his body and lays it in the tomb. Mary who waits with the Apostles for the Spirit to come.

Mary who says yes to an angel and carries her beloved son inside her, her past and future wrapped up in these precarious moments, as precious, fragile, and uncertain as a newborn wrapped in swaddling clothes.

We can all learn a lot from Mary. She teaches us that fear is not something that needs to hold us back, that we can and must push through it if we want to realize God's purpose in our lives. We must not let fear stop us from grasping and cherishing the moments of our lives. As we keep these things treasured in our hearts, to ponder and wonder at them, we must nevertheless go through the uncertainty, through the doubt, and through the fear with humility and courage.

Humility and courage. Doubt and fear and overwhelming uncertainty are normal parts of our lives, and we are not meant to be ashamed of them. What we are meant to do is take hold of the moment in spite of them, and let God do the rest.

Lesson from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Now I realize that it's been a while since I've posted anything. And by a while, I mean many eternities, if you were measuring time based on the lifespan of a goldfish. So obviously I expect few people will read this, given that the world has undoubtedly moved on to reading blogs that are updated with something resembling regularity.

I also realize that Buffy isn't a canonical book of the Bible. But really, who's going to call me on it?

A few months ago, I bought the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer series on DVD and started watching it. This wasn't some kind of nostalgia for the halcyon days of my youth or anything -- when the show first aired, I never watched it. But I caught a few reruns when my cooking show got cancelled, and I was hooked! Lo and behold, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was not the over hyped show that I thought it was! The actors are skilled, the plots are good, and the scripts are amazing. It's truly, truly worth watching (in case you've never seen it).

But I digress.

Yesterday, I watched the episode titled "The Body." In case you haven't seen Buffy, and don't want me to spoil it for you forever, please stop reading now.

This is the show where Joyce Summers -- Buffy's mom -- dies suddenly. It's pretty heart wrenching, especially since she'd recovered so well from her earlier illness. Watching this show, you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. When is the monster going to attack? Is this all some kind of evil demon plot of false memories? Will it turn out that Glory, the evil goddess of the demon realm, killed Joyce to get at Buffy? Will vampires take advantage of the situation and try to kill Buffy?

Barring one undead incident in the morgue, nothing like this ever takes place. Nothing terrifying jumps out of a closet, or turns out to be hiding in the house. There is no demonic element to Joyce's death. There's just the relatively common-place aneurysm.

But you keep waiting for that moment, for that other shoe to drop. In the end, you realize that the most horrifying thing of all is not monsters or demons or unexpected plot twists, but the sheer reality of death itself. Even while Buffy battles with a vampire in the morgue, her sister Dawn stares at her dead mother, riveted and frozen, uncaring of everything else that's going on.

Death is the horrifying thing.

For all the killing that goes on in the show -- dead vampires, demons, various unholy creatures, unfortunate bystanders -- you don't ever really think about death. It doesn't so much touch you as it is something that happens. Death never really has consequences.

It made me think about how we don't really understand it, and how we as a culture go out of our way to avoid really thinking about it. Many times, we circle around the question of death: we use euphemisms, we discuss the aftermath in platitudes. Other people's pain is uncomfortable and incomprehensible because we don't want to face those issues ourselves. We say things like, 'he's at peace now,' or 'she's gone to a better place.' For some people, death is even something glamorous, something to be almost courted or dared. But do we really know what happens after death, or what occurs during those final moments?

As Christians, it's tempting to say we know what death is, what it means. God has told us in the Bible. We've heard stories of Saints. There are various interpretations of what happens to you after death, which of course vary depending on what kind of a life you lived, but in Western Christianity they all involve some sort of uninterrupted continued life that goes on forever.

We go to heaven or hell or purgatory-then-heaven, and we used to go to limbo which as it turns out has been officially debunked. From heaven we can look down on the world and see it's goings-on, we can worship God and, some people believe, pass along requests for intercession if we're close enough.

But there isn't a concept of life stopping. There's no concept that there might be nothing, even for a little while. Or that, when we 'wake up' in the afterlife God might have made us significantly different that we used to be simply by removing all our faults. We believe in a continuity that outlives the body. Even Buffy tells her sister, face to face with the body, that it 'isn't here: she's not here anymore.' We envision some sort of departure, and those of us who share the Christian faith tend to believe that the thing that departs you lives on.

We celebrate elaborate funeral rituals that express our beliefs about death. But, in the end, isn't death the final mystery? How could we ever know what lies behind it, what God has in store for us? Our faith isn't about knowing. It's about trusting.

But it's really really hard not to know. So, of course, it's only natural that within the framework of faith we try to explain it to ourselves. I think part of the reason so many of us find death scary -- even when we see it on a fictional show -- is because part of us knows that we don't really understand, no matter how strong our beliefs are. I know I feel that way. And maybe we're not supposed to understand. It is a great mystery, after all.

On the show, Anya (who is a thousand-year-old ex vengeance-demon) says it best: "But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she can't just get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."

I think maybe at this time of year, when we're thinking of eternity and the end times and the world to come, and we're waiting for Jesus to come, and about to start pondering the miracle that is new life and the Incarnation, that this is a time to think about death and what it means to us. For all that we can't comprehend it, as both an end and a beginning, it is the fundamental human experience that we share with every living person.

And, through the miracle of Christmas, a mystery that we share even with God.