Catastrophe

Advent – 

            and our minds rush forward to Christmas.

Lists appear in our thoughts:

                        gift lists

                        to do lists

                        calendar events

Our lives are full – like the inn in Bethlehem:

            no room there for a new born Jesus.

The only room to be found is in the stable,

            in the poverty and misery of a place we would think unfit

                        for the birth of a new human being,

            there among the aroma of cow dung 

and barnyard animals 

and flies buzzing about and who knows what other bugs.

No room in our lives which are so full right now

                      that we may unwittingly exclude a Savior pushing to be born in us

          in a place where we ourselves wouldn’t go, 

                        a shelter such as what may or may not be available

                                    for those who cannot buy or even rent a place for themselves.

The world is in a sorry state right now

            on all sorts of levels – politically, not just in this country but world wide,

                                                environmentally

now especially as we must refer to this as climate crisis 

                        and not just climate change,

for we are beginning to get it that what is happening is forcing mass migration    

                        as crops fail, 

                        as species go extinct, 

                        as islands and coastal lands disappear under rising sea levels,  

                                    and the oceans fill up with plastic.

                        and as record storms bring destruction and displacement

I could go on, but we get the picture.

            This looks very possibly like the beginning of the end of life as we know it.

And this is the first Sunday in Advent, 

            and as usual, the scripture readings are apocalyptic, pointing to end times.

The Gospel reading for today is taken from a chapter devoted in its entirety

            to what has been called the Apocalypse, 

                        the second coming of Christ at the end of the world.

It is part of the last teaching Jesus gives his disciples 

            before his Last Supper with them and all that followed.

In the passage Jesus would tell us

            that this coming of our Lord is like a flood 

                        that unexpectedly sweeps away 

                                    all the holiday parties and eggnog and busyness.

In the gospel reading, Jesus is saying that encounter with

the full Presence of God expressed through the Son of Man “coming in glory”

                        is so powerful that it will be like the flood in Noah’s days.

Noah may have warned them, but the people didn’t see it coming.

It was business as usual and occasions for feasting

            right up until the moment when it was all washed away.

It took them by surprise.

Believe you me, when God shows up, really shows up,

            it will surprise you, 

and it will blow you away.

It will be a catastrophe, which is what the Greek says, the word used for flood.

It will be a catastrophe, in that the old way of looking at things will be blown away 

and a new way of seeing and being will present itself,

                                                            when Jesus shows up.

The usual question which then gets asked is “When?”

                        When will this happen?  Can we know when?

            There is more than one answer.

1) At some point in the future at the end of time, 

the “Second Coming” as some believe? 

2) Individually for each of us at some crisis point?  

3) At death? at our individual physical deaths, our personal catastrophes.

For some there are profound moments of encounter with God,

            such as the disciples experienced on numerous occasions around Jesus.

And often the gospel text describes the disciples at these times as

            “astounded,”

                        which is a mild translation of the Greek

                        that would more accurately be conveyed as

            “knocked out of their senses.”

Encounters with the divine 

that blow away everything the disciples previously had thought,

            that pulled their understanding of reality right out from under them,

            that left them without their usual bearings.

A catastrophe we might think,

            but for them, and also for us, 

the opening up of a whole new vista of perception, 

a whole new way of thinking and doing and being, 

a whole new life, a whole New Creation.

Now we are talking about personal transformational experiences.

And these incredible breakthroughs of God realization happen spontaneously 

and not just in times of prayer.

            They can happen at any moment, any time, 

day or night, even in the midst of the very ordinary. 

Jesus describes it like this:

Two men will be working in the field, 

one will be blown away and the other will be left oblivious 

to the huge advent of God’s Presence occurring right then.

Two women will be grinding wheat into flour, 

one will be taken up completely into the divine revelation 

totally transforming even how she sees the meal she is grinding, and the other won’t sense any change at all.

This kind of “Second Coming” seems like a huge secret, 

            but God is not interested in keeping things secret.

Those who are willing to be alert, who are poised in  wakefulness, 

like a prairie dog standing sentry in a colony of prairie dogs, 

            erect and surveying the horizon,

those ones are in a good place to recognize 

                        and be blown away in the best possible way

by God’s transforming Presence in our midst.

There’s a whole other world out there, or in here, to be realized!

The Apostle Paul gives us a pep talk in the reading from Romans 13:

            “You know what time it is, 

            how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. 

            For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 

            the night is far gone, the day is near.” 

These words, while they are a spiritual alarm clock of sorts,

            convey something more hopeful 

                        than the catastrophe of the flood described in the Gospel.

“The night is far gone, the day is near.” 

            During the darkest time of the year when daylight is scarcer,

            during this time in the history of humans on the planet

                        when we ourselves could be facing extinction,

this is the word of hope.

Advent is a brief season in the Church Calendar. 

            It is not just for doing Christmas shopping and having parties 

                        and baking cookies and drinking eggnog.

It is more than that;

it is a season for active anticipation in wakefulness and watching 

                        so as to be blown away by God, by the Holy Spirit,

                        by a new Coming of the Son of Man.

An Advent appearance of Jesus coming again

                                    can happen right here today for us,

            right here in the Eucharist.

Rowan Williams, retired Archbishop of Canterbury 

                        and author of our study book, Being Christian,

            in the chapter on the Eucharist

talks about the Eucharist as “the beginning of the end of the world.”

He has the insight that as we gather together for this Holy Meal,

            this Sacrament of the Real Presence of Jesus, Son of God, in our midst,

            as we eat the bread and drink the wine, 

                                    material signs of taking within us Christ himself,

this is the beginning of the end of the old world order,

            the end of the way humans have constructed power structures

                        and economic systems based on the idea of scarcity.

This is an end, an ending to be hoped for!

The Eucharist, Rowan Williams says, 

                                    is “a glimpse of the transformation of all things.”

Can we see that every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist

            this is “moving towards God’s final purpose?”

Rowan Williams calls this a “buried reality.”

            “… in the Eucharist we are at the end of the world.”

Signs of catastrophe all around us in one way or another,

            yet hope for the best sort of catastrophe, 

                        that of having our understanding of the world 

                                    shifted, transformed, re-created anew,

so that we can be of real use in a world that is going to need real Christians

            who can go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.

So wake from sleep, be alert,

            and have a place in the inn prepared 

                                    for the Savior seeking to be born again in us.