Sermon Library
“Advent and Awareness”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
December 14, 2008
Service Theme: Advent III-2008
Source: Matthew 24: 1 – 8, 36, 42 - 44
Advent and Awareness
Matthew 24: 1 – 8, 36, 42 - 44
By Gregg Anderson
Up-dating a Bible Story
At Sunday school, the younger children were drawing pictures illustrating Biblical stories. The teacher walked by and noticed one little boy was drawing an airplane! “Oh, what Bible story are you drawing?” she asked. “This is the Flight into Egypt,” the little boy answered. “See, here is Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. And this,” he said, pointing to the front of the plane, “is Pontius the Pilot.”
This young man was updating a Bible story. This is really the task of contemporary theology today. We need to understand the stories within their context and within their time of history and often transpose the meaning for us today. This is not to change the meaning or even the story, but it is to make the most essential meaning of the story at the time to directly translate to the most essential and meaning for us today. It is my belief, in general, that a contemporary literal and inerrant interpretation of many scriptures actually distorts their real meaning, both then and particularly today.
We need to be aware. Awareness necessitates wisdom and discernment. Understanding history helps our awareness in the present. Planning for the future directs our decisions in the present. Our history and our future assist our awareness of our present. Being aware of our religious history and our current spiritual journey is vital. Being fully aware of our present, however, is probably most significant.
Advent
Advent means being aware of a forth coming event. The Latin word is adventus, the same root in which we derive adventure. Adventus stems from advenire which means to anticipate an arrival. The arrival may come later, but the anticipation is in the present tense. It is what we are doing now. Christianity typically defines Advent is a time of waiting and preparing for the arrival of the messiah, the Christ child. Like anticipation, preparation is what we are doing now as well. Don’t just wait for Christmas during advent, but be very present with your spirit and your advent awareness here and now.
Waiting
When my niece Debbie was waiting to hear test results regarding her bone marrow transplant, she indicated that the waiting was pretty hard. And, of course, it is. As I had been writing a few thoughts to her in her blog site which is simply called thoughts.com, I wrote this thought to her. “Dear Debbie. Sorry to hear about the past rough few days. In the sixth chapter of the book, When Thinks Fall Apart it begins “It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.” I suspect you may be feeling that you are waiting forever to feel better. And it has been a long time, but in the big picture time is less an issue than attitude and perspective. Somehow, try to allow the waiting to not just be waiting, but living each day, the best one can, within that given space. Don’t just think of it as waiting, but simply living within the temporary spaciousness of time. In other words, the phrase, “hang in there” can mean that “hanging” for now is okay. So hang in there Debbie. Love, Uncle Gregg.”
Being aware of our present and presence process is to momentarily accept and even celebrate our now, whatever exists within the now. We can make those immediate, momentary and emotional decisions to do and be the best we can within the waiting and anticipatory space. In essence, whenever we are waiting, we can decide not to wait and use that free time to relax, contemplate, meditate and simply be. We can do what we often fantasize that we would like to do which is to take the time to simply be, breathe in and breathe out, and for a few minutes escape the anxiety filled busyness of our day to day compulsions to reflect and become aware. We are constantly looking back and looking forward while we forget to look at our present. Rather than saying, “I can’t wait until I get in the front of the line,” one can say that, “I can wait in this line and I will use it as an opportunity to meditate and reflect.” If we can remember, we can give ourselves, through a change in attitude and perspective, an incredible gift of the place of the pause. (Keep in mind, I have never been able to do this myself, but do think it is completely possible and helpful.)
If there is anyone who needs this message it is me. I can be relatively patient with big goals and the big picture, but when I want to accomplish small things within a limited time frame, I am not patient. I know of very few times in my life that I am doing nothing. If I am forced for whatever reason to have to do nothing, like standing in a line, I become agitated and impatient. What I need to do is to tell myself that this is not a problem, but a gift and use it for a momentary meditation. I need to be aware of the great prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” This has been a hard lesson for me, but I do admit that the times that I have been caught in such situations and I have remembered and made the appropriate mental adjustments, I have literally altered a bad circumstance into a good opportunity. In other words, I know this can literally work. If I can remember and do it from time to time, you can do it, too.
Lighten Up and Loosen Our Grip
Pema Chodron, the author of When Things Fall Apart has this to say about awareness, patience and being present. “The point is to lean toward the discomfort of life and see it clearly rather than to protect ourselves from it. In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal – quite the opposite. We’re just being with our experience, whatever it is. If our experience is that sometimes we have some kind of perspective, and sometimes we have none, then that’s our experience. If sometimes we can approach what scares us, and sometimes we absolutely can’t, then that’s our experience. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and it’s always with us is really a most profound instruction. Just seeing what’s going on – that’s the teaching right there. We can be with what’s happening and not dissociate. ‘Awakeness’ is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary lives.”
“Once we know this instruction, we can put it into practice. Then it’s up to us what happens next. Ultimately, it comes down to the question of just how willing we are to lighten up and loosen our grip. How honest do we want to be with ourselves? The point was not to try to achieve some special state or to transcend the sounds and movement of ordinary life. Rather we were encouraged to relax more completely with our environment and to appreciate the world around us and the ordinary truth that takes place in every moment.” It is about being keenly aware of our present situation – whatever it may be.
In the words of the great contemporary philosophers and song writers, Simon and Garfunkel, “You have to learn how to fall before you learn how to fly.” Then they repeat the phrase in reverse. “Before you learn how to fly, learn how to fall.” Falling includes flying and flying includes falling. Being aware of this is its acceptance.
Buddha
There is a basic and fairly well known story about the Buddha. One of his students asked the Buddha, “Are you the messiah?” “No,” answered the Buddha. “Are you a healer?” asked the student. “No,” Buddha replied. “Then you must be a teacher?” insisted the student. “No, I am not a teacher, either,” said the Buddha. “Then what are you,” concluded the student. Buddha said, “I am awake.”
Jesus
Jesus is on the Mount of Olives talking with his disciples about the future. Jesus said that someday this temple will fall down, “There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” The disciples asked Jesus, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” Jesus speaks at length about future tribulations. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.”
Jesus continues with more trials, but concludes, “But of the day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. Therefore watch, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must watch and be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” (Matthew 24)
There are other places in which Jesus tells his disciples to watch and be awake. In the Garden of Gethsemane after the last supper, Jesus asks his disciples to stay awake with him. But they fall asleep. Jesus came and found them sleeping and said to them, “Are you asleep again? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mark 13: 37)
People have interpreted such passages with an emphasis of getting your soul ready for the apocalypse. This is unfortunate. People kept asking Jesus for signs and Jesus kept saying that that is not what is important. What is important is that you watch, be aware, and stay awake. Our interpretations of Jesus have been so conditioned by ancient doctrines that we can miss the sayings between this lines that are so meaningful. Thank God, we are doing this now as the doors of theology are growing more open. It is remarkable that in the anticipation of the apocalypse, Jesus is telling his disciples not to store up grain, not to be worried or anxious, watch and be awake.
Buddha, Chodron and Thoreau
This is so similar to the Buddha’s comment and Pema Chodron’s emphasis of awakeness in the midst of adversity. Thoreau also talks about awakeness in is book Walden. He went to the woods to live deliberately and writes, “To be awake is to be alive” and to live in a state of “perpetual morning.” He wishes to truly be awake in that he wants to comprehend fully all that which is taken in by the senses. He says, “The millions are awake enough for physical labor, but only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. Here Thoreau criticizes the masses in stating they go about their daily lives grinding our a living, but do not stop to appreciate any of it at all If people were to hold an infinite expectation of the dawn, Thoreau believes we would be able to consciously better ourselves and be all the more content with life because of it. By ridding himself or erroneous details by which life is frittered away, Thoreau wished to know all things not in the sense of knowing facts or procedures, but in the sense of communing with all things. In essence, Thoreau yearned to be aware of all that exists and to be immersed in life and to be truly awake.
The Divine Improv
I close with this wonderful illustration of being keenly aware. It is written by David Hajdu, a writer who stumbled into the Vanguard club in New York one Tuesday night and had an amazing experience. Wynton Marsalis, one of the truly exalted rulers of the jazz universe, was part of a small combo offering up a series of bebop classics. The set started off in an unremarkable way, but then Marsalis stepped to the microphone to offer a solo called “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You.” It was a melancholy song, full of murmurs and sighs, and Marsalis performed it with deep feeling and expression. At the climax of the song, he played the final phrase in such a way that the trumpet seemed to give actual voice to the heartfelt words “I don’t stand ... a ghost … of ... a ... chance ...” The audience sat in awe, listening in silence.
Then it happened. In the middle of that sacred silence, at the song’s most dramatic point, someone’s cell phone erupted in a chirping, sing-song electronic melody. In an instant, the spell was broken. People in the audience giggled nervously, turned to their drinks and resumed their table conversation. Marsalis paused for a beat, and stood motionless. His eyebrows arched. The embarrassed cell-phone owner fled the scene, and The conversation in the club grew louder. The man could have stepped down at that moment and quit the gig, disgusted. After all, he is a king of jazz and doesn’t need to perform in little clubs with rude cell-phone users. But he didn’t move. Instead, he put his lips to his trumpet and replayed the stupid cell-phone melody note for note. Then he played it again, and began improvising variations on the tune. The members of the audience stopped chatting and slowly began to listen up. He changed keys once or twice and then seamlessly eased back into a ballad tempo, and in just a few minutes, finishing his improvisation, he was exactly where he had left off: “I don’t stand … a ghost … of … a … chance … with … you …” The ovation, reports David Hajdu, was tremendous.
Wynton Marsalis transformed a rude interruption into a moment of glory. He didn’t allow an unexpected shock to stun him or stop him or silence him, but instead he twisted this setback into a comeback.
There’s a message in this for all of us, especially as it reminds us that God does the same thing for us every day. God is the Master of divine improv. It is about advent and awareness in the deepest and simplest sense. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 81611
http://www.aspenchapel.org