SERMON OF REV. DR. ANNA CARTER FLORENCE Reading Backwards December 3, 2017 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity for ever. Now consider, we are all your people. Isaiah 64:1-9 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. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 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 13:24-37 When I was in high school, I had an English teacher named Miss Hayes who was famous for giving away the endings of the books we read. In fact, she d do it deliberately. On the first day of class, she d stand up front with the list of novels and short stories we were going to read that semester and speed talk through every plot, as if she were a reviewer, and we were movie goers trying to decide which film might interest us. And because she was so good at it, we were always spellbound, always drawn into the story, ready to go home and dive into The Scarlet Letter or The Great Gatsby or The Grapes of Wrath and then she d do it again, with no spoiler alert. She d tell us the ending. And we 1
would groan, and she would smile and say, The most important thing about a story isn t what happens. It s how it happens. And I m giving you the end so you can read backwards. I m giving you the end so you can read backwards. That s what Jesus is doing here, in our passage from Mark. And it s what the church is doing, this first Sunday of Advent. Today is the first day of the Christian Year. It s our New Year s Day. We start to tell the story of Christ coming into the world and redeeming it, of God entering human life and history. Advent to Christmas to Epiphany. Lent to Easter to Pentecost. Jesus birth to his death and resurrection. Sunday by Sunday, it s the story we tell. And because we know the ending that God in Christ has defeated the powers of death itself we tell it in a certain way. We begin with the end. We read the story backwards. Reading the story backwards means we know where we re headed. God is going to redeem this world. That is our destination, the omega at the other end of the alpha. It is the central purpose of God in history. Everything we do, in the Christian Year, starts there, with that terminus. Some people might call it the end of the world, and start fixating on when and where and who gets left behind. But it s not a threat to scare the daylights out of us. It s a promise, to stir hope in us a central, holy intention. God wants to redeem this world. Not just some of it; all of it. And God will. Christ will bring about an end to all that is contrary to the ways of God. So we know where we re headed. We can begin our sacred story there. But reading backwards doesn t mean that we can predict the future or read the mind of God. Jesus is pretty clear about that in this passage. Look, he tells his disciples: the Son of Man is coming in glory one of these days, just as the prophets said he would. He is coming with awesome deeds and power, to bring justice to this earth. But when he comes, about that day and hour, no one knows not the angels in heaven or the Son, but only the Father. So keep awake; that s your job. Keep awake, keep alert, and keep watch. Look for the signs that God is doing a new thing. On the first Sunday of Advent, that s exactly what we do. We light the candle of hope and we settle in to watch. We look for what God is doing right now, to liberate creation. In a few weeks, we ll go to Bethlehem. But before we meet the baby, we have to meet the man he will grow to be. We have to meet our maker in our redeemer, so we can tell the world what child is this, who was born in Bethlehem, and is headed to Jerusalem. I m giving you the end so you can read the story backwards. The first people to hear Mark s gospel really resonated, with this. Things were so bad, they thought the world was about to end any day now. I can relate. Maybe you can, too. There are mornings when I m not sure I want to read the headlines, and when I do, I can t believe what I m reading. Has there ever been a time in our country when the end of the world seemed as possible it does, now? Has there ever been a better time for God to step in with a little holy intention to redeem the mess we make? Advent may be just in time, this year. Come, thou long expected Jesus. But when we re tempted to despair about the state of the world and who isn t, these days? maybe we can take that urgency as a gift, or at least a holy opportunity. What if lighting the candle of hope means we pledge to kindle it, wherever we can? What if Jesus words in this passage are meant to give us some new verbs to put with the old familiar nouns, until we can read the story differently? 2
The disciples question could be our question: When, Jesus? When will God make things right? When will God step in and fix all that is crazy and undisciplined and out of control and pure evil? It s as if the disciples don t think they can make any difference, in the escalating darkness. They have no agency left, no more verbs to play. They might as well turn tail and run, or at least find a good hiding spot. When, Jesus? When is God going to do what God has promised to do? Jesus responds by redirecting them giving them something else to do and to look for than sitting in their own paralysis. He points to a fig tree, something as familiar to them as a cottonwood or white oak is to us. Look at the fig tree, he says, and learn a lesson it. As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is around the corner. That s how it will be with the Son of Man, when he is near the very gates. Look for new leaves. Look for what God is already doing. Wake up to my words. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. From the fig tree, learn its lesson from the fig tree and its leaves. Where have we heard that, before? The Bible is truly an echo chamber. A word that appears in one story may reappear in another, many chapters or even books later. Asking Where have I heard this word before? is a way of listening for echoes of it, and pondering what those echoes might mean. And when I hear fig leaves, I hear Genesis 3, and Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. I remember the story about our beginnings, and the first time human beings fell short and tried to hide from God. They sewed fig leaves together, which didn t really work the way they thought it would. Hiding from God never does. But if our first instinct, as scared human beings, was to take fig leaves and cover ourselves with them, maybe Jesus is giving us something else to do with them, and so another way to end the story. Fig leaves aren t for covering up what you don t want to see, or don t want God to see. Fig leaves are lessons in how God grows things. They re signs of what God is already making green. So you don t need to put your head down and hide, from the evil and hopelessness of the day. You can lift up your head and keep awake with hope. Read those fig leaves backwards, and you can turn your paralysis into partnership with God s redemptive work. That s a lot of reframing, but I wonder if the first Sunday of Advent, our Christian New Year s Day, might actually call for it. So much can happen, in a year. So much has happened in this last year. You and I know people whose hearts were filled and whose hearts were broken, and some whose hearts were mended, and some who are still waiting. In this church, you said goodbye to one pastor, sooner than you thought you might. Another year begins, another Advent, and we start the cycle again, looking back where we ve been, and forward to where this new year will take us, the new ministry and leadership it will bring. God s way of marking time is like a spiral staircase that we travel together, trying to remember and keep alive the promises we know are true. But we need one another to do it, so where we ve been doesn t become where we stay crouched and hidden. We need one another to know where we re headed, so we can read the sacred story backwards. A week ago, my aunt and uncle came through Atlanta in their Class A motorhome, on their annual trek from Maine to California. When my uncle retired from his surgical practice, they decided they would leave Massachusetts and live half the year in the wilds of northern Maine, on the border of Canada that s what my uncle wanted and half the year in Pasadena, in my aunt s childhood home that s what she wanted. The cold north for him; the sunny west coast for her. It s worked well, for 13 years. Every Thanksgiving when the snow begins to fly, they close their house in Maine, pack up the motorhome and head south, stopping in the same places to visit friends and family along the way to California. And every year, we ve looked forward to seeing them on the Tuesday 3
after Thanksgiving. They pull into our driveway, park the motorhome, which always takes a while, because it s enormous, let out the dog, whose name is Turbo, and after a lot of kissing and hugging, join us to make dinner and spend a wonderful evening. They are the easiest guests ever, because they bring they bring their own hotel room on wheels. And they are always eager to join us in whatever family activity is happening: a high school basketball game, a seminary chapel service, a neighborhood party. After 13 years, they ve watched our sons grow from boys into young men. After 13 years, we also have traditions we look forward to. My uncle always brings scallops that he s dug himself. My aunt always brings tea, and pictures of her latest quilt. Turbo the dog always bolts for the woods, after my uncle assures us he won t, and my husband and sons have to comb the neighborhood for half an hour, looking for him. And after supper, which always includes those scallops, and a recitation of The Cremation of Sam McGee (my uncle s favorite poem), we clear the table and my uncle goes to the piano. He has a repertoire of pieces he plays show tunes and folk songs and beloved hymns and we sing them practically in order. I sit on the piano bench beside him, as I ve done since I was a little girl. My uncle plays and sings with joy and gusto; we join in, as do the dogs. At 9:00, he and my aunt head to the motorhome, to bed. And after breakfast the next morning, they pack up and leave, with promises to be back next year. This fall, my uncle told us the motorhome was getting to be too much for them, and this would be their last trip cross country. From now on, they ll be flying from Maine to California each Thanksgiving, and back again each spring, which means our annual visits in Atlanta are coming to an end. My uncle was matter-of-fact about it, but I noticed a difference in his affect: not morose, but sober, and quietly sure. We ve had great times, he kept saying, but when we leave tomorrow, we won t be coming back. No, we won t be coming back. We sat down to dinner, as we always had. And then he interrupted the routines and traditions we d accumulated these 13 years with a new thing. He recited a poem he d written when he was fifteen, about the wonder and mystery of life; to make sure we got it, he recited it again. Later, at the piano, he played a song he d written in Vietnam, as a young medic, about an eighteen-year-old soldier he d taken care of, who had then gone out on patrol and died. He sang and rocked and told us the story, with the question he d asked himself that night, over fifty years ago: Why, o why, did he have to die? He died for you and he died for me; he died for a promise we d all be free. It wasn t great poetry or immortal song. But I honor the intention, his desire to speak truth. My uncle had never shared these things with us, before. He has hardly ever talked about the war. But last week he did, and I think it was because he was reading backwards. He knew the ending: we are in God s hands, in every season of life. But there were pieces he hadn t shown us maybe had even kept hidden and now he wanted us to see them. He wanted us to see him read his life, and these new stories, in God s time I wonder what might happen, this year, if we in the church took a lesson from the fig tree took our stories and wrapped them up in God s time, every piece of them. Read them backwards, because we know where we are headed. God is going to redeem this world. We are going to keep awake, so we can be part of it. It s the first Sunday of Advent. Happy New Year. Amen. This transcript has not been read or edited by Dr. Anna Carter Florence. 4
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