Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-3
“Keep awake!”
In the name of the (+) Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
One of the wonderful things about St Margaret’s is the way in which people enjoy telling stories. I really enjoy spending time visiting people, or catching up after the Mass, and listening to the stories people tell. Just the other day, I heard one about a trip a couple once took to India – over land. It’s something which you don’t hear happening much these days, of course: ironically in our modern globalised world, travel across continents has not necessarily become easier and in many places such as Iran, Syria and Iraq, it is considerably more difficult than it once was.
Such stories are fascinating, because they speak of a world with which we are familiar, but frequently they put an entirely different perspective on the world which we had not necessarily considered. They remind us that in a few short years, so much can change – but we often don’t realise quite how much change has happened until we look back in retrospect. Looking back, and taking the time to listen to stories, is often seen as a luxury. But without regular time devoted to reflection in this way, we risk losing sight of the bigger picture of the story of the world, and of our own tiny place within it.
We perceive the world in different ways, each of us conditioned by our own experiences which have shaped us and our feelings. Yet we each know when summer is coming, don’t we? We northern Europeans might not all recognise the leaves of a fig tree (at least, not as readily as our southern and middle-eastern cousins), but each of us can interpret the seasons relatively well in our own way. At this time of year, as the days become ever shorter and the temperature ever lower, thoughts turn towards the coming of winter, and with the arrival now of Advent, we are consciously preparing ourselves for the great solemnity of the Christmas season. We are looking forward – many of us expectantly, even excitedly in some cases – to what’s coming next. We are always “on the go”!
I have American relatives, and they’ve just been celebrating Thanksgiving. Part of the modern Thanksgiving weekend involves what is known as ‘Black Friday’ – the biggest shopping day of the year in the USA with lots of deals and discounts, especially on high value items like TVs and computers. People are urged to watch out for the best deals, and long lines form before dawn outside stores, as people fight to make sure they’re first in line and don’t miss out. This is increasingly becoming the norm in this country, too: have you noticed how the January Sales have become the Boxing Day sales? Online retailers like Amazon have even started to encourage the Black Friday phenomenon in the UK.
So Americans (and increasingly we Europeans) have become experts in keeping awake, but for all the wrong reasons. We keep awake so we can consume more and cram ever more spending of time and money into each day. This is evident not just in the marketplace, but in the workplace, as the modern always-connected, 24/7 culture leads us to go to extraordinary lengths to fill our time. People work longer hours to avoid going home to an empty house. We check our work emails from home when we do get there. We fill our rest time with activity: our children’s weekends and holidays are full of clubs, courses, and sports, while the parents ferry them to and fro. We seem to want to fill each moment of our lives with one of the multiplicity of options for diversion which our sophisticated, cosmopolitan society offers us. We rarely take time to stop and listen to those stories which might help us to understand things more deeply.
Jesus tells us to keep awake – but he doesn’t mean like this. We aren’t to keep ourselves constantly on the go: working, shopping, partying, and so on. We are told to wait, to be watchful. Like the household awaiting their master’s return, we must remain alert. This means seeking to read the signs of the times as best we can. The greatest error of the Reformers was to do away with so much that was good which had built up slowly over the previous centuries: so much of the richness and depth of the faith was discarded because it appeared to be in conflict with the ideas, with the new scriptural hermeneutic, of Enlightenment Europe. The signs of the times had been read too quickly, one might say. Of course, there were areas where abuses were taking place and which were rightly corrected. However, the gradually accrued wisdom of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church was all too readily dismissed in the brave new world. The resulting splits between Protestants, Catholics, and Anglicans are tragic and sinful, and reflect a failure to listen carefully not just to the story of our salvation revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, but to the wisdom of the ages. The signs of the times do not always demand that we do things differently. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. There is no need to rush out after the latest craze: time is required in order to discern what is right.
Isaiah laments that God “did awesome deeds that we did not expect”, but “because you hid yourself we transgressed”. Yet God “works for those who wait for him…for those who remember [him] in [his] ways”. This particular section of Isaiah comes hot on the heels of a series of visions of God acting in his wrath. He acknowledges that we are like clay in the hands of a potter, and prays that God will “tear open the heavens and come down”, revealing himself as he did in times of old.
This is what we, during this season of Advent, are called to do: we remember how God has acted in the past, with confidence that he is the God who reveals himself in fire and boiling water, “with great power and glory”, but who also stoops to our level and became one with us as a helpless baby in a manger. So, keep awake: not in order to spend ever more money, to get that project finished for the boss, or to get to the next level in Candy Crush Saga. Keep watching. Listen to stories, and through them, try to interpret the signs of the times. Prepare to meet thy God…
Grasping at Holiness 