{"id":1480,"date":"2016-11-27T11:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-27T15:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1480"},"modified":"2019-09-24T14:21:01","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T18:21:01","slug":"approaching-advent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/11\/27\/approaching-advent\/","title":{"rendered":"Approaching Advent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew 24:36-44<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the\u00a0meditations\u00a0only<\/a><\/p>\n

The gist of today\u2019s gospel is clear enough.\u00a0 We cannot see or know the future.\u00a0 We ought to live on the qui vive.\u00a0 Health there is, to be sure, and succor in a full acceptance and recognition of such a humble epistemology and such a rigorous ethic.\u00a0 Let us admit to the bone our cloud of unknowing about the days and hours to come.\u00a0 Let us live every day and every hour of every day as if it were our last.\u00a0 Song and sacrament, sermon and prayer, they will guide us along this very path come Sunday morning, come this very morning.<\/p>\n

What is less clear is the meaning of the coming of the Son of Man.<\/em>\u00a0 What is the nature of this coming?\u00a0 Who is the person so named?\u00a0 What difference, existential difference, everlasting difference does any of this make?\u00a0 What did Jesus actually say here?\u00a0 On what score did the primitive Christian community remember and rehearse his teaching?\u00a0 Did Matthew have a dog in this fight?\u00a0 How has the church, age to age, interpreted the passage?\u00a0 We shall pose these four questions to verses 36 to 44 in the 24th<\/sup> chapter of the Gospel bearing the name of Matthew, and then apply the verses to ourselves.<\/p>\n

Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus may have used this phrase, though over late night refreshment in 1997 Marcus Borg once pushed hard that it is a later church appellation. It may have been both. This phrase, coming out Daniel chapter 7 (did Jesus hear this read and hold it in memory?) and the stock Jewish apocalyptic of Jesus\u2019 day, was as much a part of his environment as the sandals on his feet, the donkey which he rode, the Aramaic which he spoke, the Palestinian countryside which he loved, and the end of time which he expected, in the contemporary generation.\u00a0 Did he understand himself to be that figure?\u00a0 We cannot see and we cannot say, though I think it unlikely. \u00a0That is, Jesus used the phrase, most probably, but not of himself, most probably. It is Mark and the author Enoch who have given us the \u2018Son of Man\u2019 in its full sense, and it is Matthew alone among the Gospel writers who uses the \u2018coming\u2019 in a technical sense (so Dr. Perrin, IBDS 834, and others). \u00a0The soprano voice of Jesus is far lighter in the gospel choruses than we would think or like.<\/p>\n

Church.\u00a0 Mark, Luke and Matthew carry forward these standard end of the world predictions.\u00a0 Our lectionary clips out the mistaken acclamation of 24: 34, just two verses ahead of our reading, but we should hear it:\u00a0 Truly I tell you this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.<\/em>\u00a0 Like the waiting figures in the Glass Menagerie, the earlier church has hung onto these blown glass elements while awaiting a never returning person, like that telephone operator, \u2018who had fallen in love with long distances\u2019.\u00a0 They preserve the menagerie in fine glass of hopes deferred that maketh the heart sick.\u00a0 That generation and seventy others have passed away before any of this has taken place.\u00a0 We do not expect, literally expect, these portents any longer.\u00a0 Nor should we.\u00a0 They are part of the apocalyptic language and imagery which was the mother of the New Testament and all Christian theology since, a beloved mother long dead.\u00a0 The Son of Man was the favorite hope child of that mother.\u00a0 A long low alto aria this.\u00a0 Yet we should, and do, hear these apocalyptic passages.\u00a0 They are a part of our shared, family history.<\/p>\n

Matthew.\u00a0 To his credit and to our benefit Matthew makes his editorial, redactorial moves, to accommodate what he has taken from Mark 13.\u00a0 The point of apocalyptic eschatology is ethical persuasion, here and in the sibling synoptic passages.\u00a0 Watch.\u00a0 Be ready.\u00a0 Live with your teeth set.\u00a0 Let the servants, the leaders of Matthew\u2019s day, be found faithful.\u00a0\u00a0 After 37 excoriating verses directed against the Pharisees in chapter 23, white washed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful but within full of dead men\u2019s bones and all uncleanness\u2014the hard truth about religion at our worst, and after 43 further verses in chapter 24 of standard end time language, Matthew pulls up.\u00a0 He locks and loads and delivers his sermon.\u00a0 You must be ready.\u00a0 The figure of the future is coming at an hour you do not expect.\u00a0 Hail the Matthew tenor.<\/p>\n

Tradition.\u00a0 Immediately the church scrambled to reinvent and reinterpret.\u00a0 Basso profundo. One example, found early in the passage, will suffice.\u00a0 Of that day no one knows, not even the Son.\u00a0 Except that some texts take out \u2018even the Son\u2019, in deference to Jesus\u2019 later and higher Person.\u00a0 It is, finally, and except for occasional oddball readings, like that of the Montanists in the second century and the fundamentalists in the twenty first, the church\u2019s view that apocalyptic language and imagery convey the future as unknowable and the present as unrepeatable. The future as unknowable and the present as unrepeatable\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

To sum up: As soon as we reach out to grasp the future it has slipped past us, already flying down the road to the rear, into the past.\u00a0 The present itself is no better, because its portions of past and future are tangled permanently together.\u00a0 We do have the past, neither dead nor past\u2026or do we?\u00a0 Memory and memoir spill into each other with the greatest of ease.\u00a0 One agnostic admitted that music, performed, was his closest approximation of God, the presence of God, the proof of God.\u00a0 We shall listen in a moment to a beautiful anthem, with rapt attention.\u00a0 One trusted Christian\u2014it may have been you\u2014sensed grace and grace in the grace of worship, unlike any other. Every moment is a veritable mystery.\u00a0 Music is a veritable mystery.\u00a0 So next week, we shall hear:\u00a0 My body and My blood, these are veritable mysteries, so named mystery, sacramentum, to this day.\u00a0 How shall we respond?<\/p>\n

Sleepers awake!\u00a0 There is not an infinite amount of unforeseen future in which to come awake and to become alive!\u00a0 There does come a time when it is too late, allowing the valence of \u2018it\u2019 to be as broad as the ocean and as wide as life.\u00a0 You do not have forever to invest yourself in deep rivers of Holy Scripture, whatever they may be for you.\u00a0 It takes time to allow the Holy to make you whole.\u00a0 Begin.\u00a0 You do not have forever to seek in the back roads of some tradition, whatever it may be for you, the corresponding hearts and minds which and who will give you back your own-most self.\u00a0 It takes time to uncover others who have had the same quirky interests and fears you do.\u00a0 Begin.\u00a0 You do not have forever to sift and think through what you think about what lasts and matters and counts and works.\u00a0 Honestly, who could complain about young people seeking careers, jobs, employment, work?\u00a0 Do so.\u00a0 But work alone will not make you human, nor allow you to become a real human being.\u00a0 Life is about vocation and avocation, not merely about employment and unemployment.\u00a0 You are being sold a bill of goods, here.\u00a0 Be watchful.\u00a0 It takes time to self interpret that deceptively crushing verse, \u2018let your<\/em> light so shine before others\u2019.\u00a0 Begin.\u00a0 You do not have forever to experience Presence.\u00a0 It is presence, spirit, good for which we long, for which, nay for Whom, we are made.\u00a0 It takes time to find authentic habits of being\u2014what makes the heart sing, the soul pray, the spirit preach.\u00a0 Your heart, not someone else\u2019s, your soul,\u00a0 not someone else\u2019s your spirit, not someone else\u2019s.\u00a0 Begin.<\/p>\n

You must be ready.\u00a0 For the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>For example. \u00a0How do you deal with hurt that comes from a person you deeply love, a relationship you truly enjoy, an institution you firmly affirm, or a friendship you lastingly cherish? Was yours a contentious Thanksgiving feast?\u00a0 It is one thing to think about pain, permanent or passing, that comes in collision with others whom we do not know well or care for.\u00a0 These traffic accidents are perhaps to be expected in the rush hours of relational experience.\u00a0 When we do not know one another, or not well, we can miss cues and generate miscues that those more familiar would avoid. Not knowing you I did not know and would never have expected that you are an avid Yankees fan, and if I had I would never have said what I did, directly, about Alex Rodriguez.\u00a0 Well, I probably wouldn\u2019t have done.\u00a0 But what about the church you deeply love, when disappointment comes from the pulpit? What about that lifetime friend who says something unpleasant and hurtful?\u00a0 What about that employer, whom you revere and admire, to whom you give both creativity and loyalty?\u00a0 What about that community group whose organizational needs you have selflessly met, that then makes a statement or takes a decision that causes you pain? Or, what about the country you love, when its voice, its choice, deeply disappoint? \u00a0In short, what happens when those you love hurt you?\u00a0 How do you deal with that?<\/p>\n

Perhaps you will irrupt in the moment, lash out in reaction, without any due process of reflection, because the moment needs it, and you have or feel you have no choice.\u00a0 Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.\u00a0 Be angry, and let not the sun go down on your anger.<\/em>\u00a0 This may cause more problems than it solves, of course, but you may have had no choice.\u00a0 Sometimes it is better to stand and fight.<\/p>\n

Perhaps though flight is better.\u00a0 You may sense that you just want to put some distance between yourself and your source of pain, institutional, relational, or personal.\u00a0 A little time, a little distance, a little pause, a little absence.\u00a0\u00a0 Thence a cooling off, it may be, not a squaring off.\u00a0 In some measure that may suit you and the challenge.\u00a0 You did not start it.\u00a0 You do not need to take responsibility for it.\u00a0 Shake the dust from your feet<\/em>.\u00a0 Let the day\u2019s own trouble be sufficient for the day.<\/em> (You see how tough it can be even, especially when you know the Bible, to pick out the right Bible verse!)\u00a0 Flight postpones, but not in healing tones.\u00a0\u00a0 The trouble is still there, though it may just dissipate on its own.\u00a0 Not all battles have to be fought.\u00a0 Sometimes it is better to take flight.<\/p>\n

Perhaps playing dead is the way to go.\u00a0 You know, like animals do, they just curl up and become a log or a part of the scenery.\u00a0\u00a0 Let life go along, and let the conversation play out.\u00a0 You do not need to oppose.\u00a0 You do not need to repose.\u00a0 You can just pose in silence.\u00a0 You can use the silent treatment\u2014present but quiet.\u00a0 This could work, though there is a quality of falsehood about it.\u00a0 It may depend on just how substantial the fender-bender was, how hurtful the collision, how extreme the traffic accident.\u00a0\u00a0 Silence alone has limits to its beneficence.\u00a0 Still, as the man said, \u2018I would rather remain silent and be thought a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt\u2019.\u00a0 Sometimes it is better just to keep your own counsel, and play dead.<\/p>\n

You have though at least one other option.\u00a0 Fight, flight, play dead if need be.\u00a0 Yet you might also, well, wait.\u00a0 We are approaching Advent, are we not?\u00a0 Wait upon the Lord.\u00a0 That is, you might think through what happened, both putting the best and worst lights upon it.\u00a0 You might pray about it.\u00a0 Hold it in prayerful thought.\u00a0 You might think out a couple of sentences that you would caringly use, should the institution, relationship, or person provide an opening for that.\u00a0 And then you would have to \u2018hurry up and wait\u2019.\u00a0 Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.<\/em>\u00a0 \u201cYou know, I have had that interchange in mind since it happened.\u00a0 Honestly, for whatever reason, it did hurt.\u00a0 But given the love, joy, happiness, meaning and help you give me over so much time, it is just one brief solar eclipse that comes once a decade, when all else is sunshine. Thanks for mentioning it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example.\u00a0 For those still reeling a bit from the last 18 months and the last 18 days in these United States, we may ask:\u00a0 How do you feel?\u00a0 What have you learned?<\/em>\u00a0 Your prot\u00e9g\u00e9, now ten years out from his Marsh Chapel choir experience, and his decision to enter ministry alongside his choir member bride, now in Philadelphia says,\u00a0 I feel like I\u2019ve been kicked in the smug (<\/em>J<\/em>).\u00a0 <\/em>How do you feel?\u00a0 And what have you learned? What are the lessons to be stowed away for future use as birthday gifts, years from now, gifts on the go as it were, for future generations?\u00a0 The lesson that \u2018those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities\u2019(Voltaire)?\u00a0 The lesson that we see what we want to see?\u00a0 The lesson that both sexism and racism lurk, endure, live and breathe?\u00a0 The lesson that, in some dark seasons, selfishness trumps charity; anger trumps reason; hatred trumps comity; bigotry trumps friendship?\u00a0 The lesson that voting, the act itself, matters\u2014really matters?\u00a0 The lesson that gathering\u2014in a rally, say, or better in worship, say\u2014empowers, enlivens, motivates, for ill, or good?\u00a0 (Do you worship? Advent is a good time in which to approach worship.) The sad lesson that some, to win, are willing to enter the sphere of demagoguery, \u2018sometimes you have to use a certain kind of rhetoric to motivate people\u2019 (DJT, NYT, 11\/16)<\/em>?\u00a0 Can you hear that?\u00a0 It begs to be heard. Or, even, the basic, technological lesson that email, whether well served on its servers, or ill served by it servants, serves to dehumanize, as a sub-human form of communication?<\/p>\n

How about this:\u00a0 The lesson that what one means\u2014by an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say\u2014is not all that such an act means? \u00a0We will experience Advent through this lesson this year. The lesson, that is, that what you in your heart meant by an act, a word, a statement\u2014a vote, is not in fact the limit of what that vote meant:\u00a0 in fact it is a small part, the greater part of the meaning being found in the effect, the impact, the historical influence of the vote.\u00a0 The meaning of a text is found in the future it opens, the future it imagines, the future it creates. (Ray Hart). <\/em>So too, the meaning of an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say, is found in the future, bright or dark, which it creates.\u00a0 What you meant is not what it means.\u00a0 For that, you have to listen to those harmed, or helped, by it.\u00a0 Meaning is social, not individual, hence our use of words, our developed language, our investment in culture, our life in community.\u00a0 You may have meant it one way, but its meaning is found along another.\u00a0 Such hard, tragic lessons, to have to learn and re-learn.<\/p>\n

The gist of today\u2019s gospel is clear enough.\u00a0 We cannot see or know the future.\u00a0 We ought to live on the qui vive<\/em>.\u00a0 Health there is, to be sure, and succor in a full acceptance and recognition of such a humble epistemology and such a rigorous ethic.\u00a0 Let us admit to the bone our cloud of unknowing about the days and hours to come.\u00a0 Let us live every day and every hour of every day as if it were our last.\u00a0 Song and sacrament, sermon and prayer, they will guide us along this very path come Sunday morning, come this very morning, as together, in faith and hope and love, we approach Advent.<\/p>\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service Matthew 24:36-44 Click here to listen to the\u00a0meditations\u00a0only The gist of today\u2019s gospel is clear enough.\u00a0 We cannot see or know the future.\u00a0 We ought to live on the qui vive.\u00a0 Health there is, to be sure, and succor in a full acceptance and recognition of such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1915,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions\/1915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}