06 December, 2008

1st Sunday of Advent (30 Nov 08)

In the course of 5 verses from that gospel reading today, we get the admonition to stay awake 3 times.

verse 33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.

verse 35 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,

verse 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."

Staying awake, remaining alert. It's hard to do. And honestly, as much as I'd like to say it's because it's starting to get dark around what seems like 2 in the afternoon, that's not what Jesus is talking about I don't think. throughout the gospels, there is this admonition to stay awake. It's in parables and it's in requests Jesus makes of his disciples

No, the problem with staying awake, has less to do with winter solstice and the cloud cover and more to do with the very human propensity to check out from reality.

And these days, reality oftentimes seems like a bitter pill to have to swallow. And even if we are upright and walking, our eyes are open and a thermos of coffee attached to our hip, we can be asleep. Unaware. For some it's drinking too much, or taking an extra tablet of that prescription, We all find ways to stay numb. Sometimes it's staying buried deep in a novel, or a computer game, mindless television, updating facebook pages or surfing the net becomes a way to numb ourselves. Sometimes, even watching the news is a way to check out, to fall asleep, to not be alert.

It's something I noticed beginning on Wednesday, this vegging out with TV news, as I began to hear about the terrible tragedy in India. It's easy to get sucked into the drama of it. the 24-hour coverage of it. the reality TV'ness of it. experiencing anything through the window of the television screen makes it nearly impossible to really "get" that it's really happening, to real people. Unless we feel the blasts, smell the smoke, see the horror first hand, it becomes a sad event that's happening to someone else. somewhere else.

Friday night on the airplane trip from Atlanta to Seattle, between chapters of the novel I was reading and a few rounds of the video trivia game. I was trying to check out from the discomfort of my narrow and cramped seat on that narrow and cramped Delta jet. I would occasionally flip the little TV monitor on to the CNN coverage, to check out in a new way. the standoff at the Taj Mahal hotel was coming to an end as we were somewhere over Missouri. All that billowing black smoke pouring out of that 100 plus year old building, the lives of the guests and their families, their fellow Indians and Israelis, Brits and Americas, the lives of the hotel staff changed forever.

Just as the drama of it was winding down, the flight attendant handed me my coke, I lowered the headset to thank her and she said, oh, that's so sad. I nodded, and I realized that it was as much of the suffering of others that we were willing to engage or think about: we were at the, oh that's so sad stage. to then be dismissed to the growing list of things I didn't want to think too much about.

and then, thank God, I got a reality check. As I sat there sipping my coke and watching the conversation taking place between Larry King and his panel of guests, the Indian man on the panel woke me up. He wondered aloud why these religious conflicts, between Muslims and Jews, or Protestants and Catholics, between Muslims and Christians, Hindus and Muslims. Religious conflicts once localized to Israel and Palestine, to Northern Ireland, to Bosnia, and nations in Africa, have now become global. He wondered aloud why more and more young Muslim men are willing to kill and be killed. to kill and be killed in the name of God.

What is it about the world today that has gotten us to this point (?) he wondered. He made a couple of references to religious fundamentalism and noted that it was not just financial markets and manufacturing and corporations that were now global, it was also religious fundamentalism. And the extreme elements in every religion were media savvy, were tech savvy and were willing to kill and be killed in order to receive their heavenly reward.

I then remembered an explanation of fundamentalism that I had read just a few days before. Read it in an interview with the writer Chris Hedges. He's just published a book critical of the new atheists. Writers like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. Authors of books like the God Delusion, The end of Faith and God is not Great. Books that certainly have a thing or two to say to religious folk, but authors who seem to Hedges to be as fundamentalist in their own line of thinking as the religious people they criticize.

Hedges says that fundamentalism can be found in both the religious and the secular worlds. It's a worldview that divides the world into us and them, good and evil, right and wrong. Fundamentalism, Hitchens says, is a belief that the individual and those who subscribe to the same ideology have found the absolute truth. It must be accepted by everyone. And here's the scary place we are today--fundamentalism requires that those who don't accept that worldview must be silenced or eradicated.

That's certainly what was going on in India this past week. The bloody work of silencing or eradicating those who see the world differently. And I would imagine, for the Muslims who support these acts of terrorism, they see an attempt from the west to silence or eradicate them. Maybe they feel that even if they're not the terrorists, there is an attempt from the rest of the world to eradicate them, or at least to eradicate their way of life. The Indian man on Larry King's panel was the only one willing to ask the tough questions. Questions about how this situation came to be as it is. Everyone else was talking about immediate retribution.

Jesus and those who followed him lived in times not so very different from ours. The world was dominated by a particular worldview--in the case of the first century Mediterranean world--the political and economic worldview of the Roman Empire. There were certainly a wide diversity of religious viewpoints. And the Jewish people were of many minds about what it meant to worship the God of Israel. Jesus and his followers represented one of those viewpoints. In those days, there were acts of terrorism, attempts to overthrown the ruling Roman elites. The temple in Jerusalem, the center of religious life for the Jews, was finally destroyed in the year 70 because the Romans had had enough of subversive Jewish trouble making.

Yes, Jesus and his followers would certainly understand the state of the world today. And so what would he do, what would he say, if he were gathering with friends over turkey and dressing, sweet potatoes. Gathering with friends and family and news came to them of death and destruction. Of the brutal murders of business people, of people simply waiting for the next train, of spiritual seekers, of rabbis. He would not immediately call for retribution, I'm pretty sure of that. He would do now as he did then....he would ask questions....he would stop and think....he would pray...and he would remind his followers to stay awake.

We are living in very difficult times. Dangerous times. Perhaps not any more difficult than life has ever been. but certainly more dangerous. more dangerous because we have the ability to blow the whole enterprise to smithereenes. To bring about the Apocalypse that today's gospel reading refers to in those words at the beginning of the reading--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.

So, as those who follow Jesus in this day and age, we are called like his followers have always been called: to heal, to feed, to gather together as a community to break the bread, called to ask the tough questions and to be willing to hear the response. As Americans, we sometimes forget to hear what other people are saying and that has gotten us into trouble. So that might be a particularly helpful reminder for us--to listen.

And always and forever, we are called to stay awake. A response will eventually be needed from us....we must be prepared to act in the way that is worthy of the One we follow and serve.

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