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Phil Blackwell

“A Sense of Timing
”

Mark 13:24-37

This is the First Sunday of Advent, the first day of a new year according to the Christian calendar. But, who has a Christian calendar at home? Who knows the cycle of seasons from Advent to Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and the interludes of Common Time? It is an obscure sense of timing because we live by so many more pressing calendars.

The calendar on the wall, on the desk, on the phone tells us that Christmas is 28 days from now, and everything between now and then will be a blur. Of course, we knew that Christmas was coming without the need of a calendar when we saw the Christmas trumpets go up on Macy’s at Halloween. We just experienced Black Friday, the official beginning of the shopping season “dawning” well before sunrise with surges at the front doors of Wal-Mart’s across the country, accompanied by shootings and pepper spray. Oh, you can’t beat the holiday spirit!

Some of us are on academic calendars, with finals coming, papers due, and a vacation just a few weeks away. Others are on work calendars, with year-end reports due. There are the sports calendars . . .college football turning toward conference playoffs before the bowl games, the Bears kicking off this afternoon at 3:05, college basketball getting its early games out of the way before the conference schedule begins, and the NBA maybe, just maybe, getting a late start with a Christmas Day triple-header. How would we know it is Christmas without the NBA?

Of course, we have personal calendars . . . doctor’s appointments, deadlines for insurance bills, the kids’ Nativity Scene practice at the church, and birthdays. My birthday is December 21st. When I was little, if I was disappointed with my birthday gifts, my parents would say, “Well, Phil, Christmas is coming. Why don’t you wait to see what Santa brings?” If I was disappointed after Christmas, they would say, “Well, Phil, what did you expect? You just had your birthday.” Oh, the cruelty of being born on the shortest day of the year!

So, what time is it? It depends on what calendar we consult. That is why I share with you a poetic prayer by Ted Loder. For 38 years Loder served as the senior minister of the First United Methodist Church in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was a civil rights advocate, a champion of programs for high school dropouts, a builder of affordable housing, a friend of immigrants, and a leader of a Reconciling Congregation. But for our purposes today, it is his poetry that helps us pray to God, “Grant Me a Sense of Timing.” Not only does it give us the sermon title for today, but also its three-stanza structure prompts us to contemplate the lessons of waiting, the lessons of endings, and the lessons of beginnings.

The preamble and first stanza:

O God of all seasons and senses,
grant me your sense of timing
to submit gracefully
and rejoice quietly
in the turn of the seasons.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of gray and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of waiting:
of the snow joining the mystery
of the hunkered-down seeds
growing in their sleep
watched over by the gnarled-limbed, grandparent trees
resting from autumn’s staggering energy;
of the silent, whirling earth
circling to race back home to the sun.
O God, grant me your sense of timing.

The lessons of waiting. Advent is a difficult time because it is neither here nor there. Last week we celebrated Christ the King Sunday, the coming to full disclosure the perfection of God’s reign, how in Jesus the Christ goodness and mercy and justice and truth and love and beauty ultimately triumph over all else and become the standards by which all of life is judged. It was a glorious affirmation in the midst of the tawdriness of the world.
But that is past and it is not Christmas yet. We have to wait. What are we to do while we are waiting? What can we learn from this interlude?
It is not as passive as it first may seem. The gospel writer Mark uses two words that we translate as “Watch out!” or “Beware!” One word cautions the disciples to take care not to be misled by external appearances. “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers” (12:38-40).

The other word Mark uses appears in our reading for today. “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” This is a call to watchfulness, an active engagement of the world around us. For what is the short parable which Jesus tells to make his point? It is like the man who goes on a journey and puts his servants in charge of his work. Here it is not “watch out” but “watch over.” Do the work of the master for as long as he is away.

Notice that this gospel passage for the First Sunday of Advent is not at the beginning of Mark but near the end. Jesus is talking about his return. This is very confusing to us because the Second Coming reference is placed in our season of anticipating the First Coming. This has the effect of conflating the two. “No one knows the day or hour;” it is as if every moment is a timeless moment, as if we live in an eternal “now.” The charge is the same: watch over the work of the Lord, do the work of Jesus for as long as the night of waiting persists.

So, in God’s sense of timing, what are the lessons of waiting? They are learned as we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, defend the prisoners, and protect the children. Advent is a time of activity, not passivity.

The second stanza of Ted Loder’s poem:
In this season of short days and long nights,
of gray and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of endings;
children growing, friends leaving,
jobs concluding,
stages finishing,
grieving over,
grudges over,
blaming over,
excuses over.
O God, grant me your sense of timing.

What lessons are there in endings, even painful, unwanted endings? It is hard to let go and leave behind, even if it means that we are better able to pick up and move on. This is a season that is hard on some of us . . . as we especially feel the pain of the death of a loved one, the dissolution of a family, the loss of a job, the breaking of a relationship, the moving to this city from a homier place.

But the affirmation is that in our endings form new beginnings. Here is another poem, one of my favorites by one of my favorite poets, Brian Wren. It is in the Hymnal, #383.

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

This passage of scripture in Mark Chapter 13 can be one of the scariest in the Bible, depending on how we read it. Jesus employs the apocalyptic imagery of the Old Testament to dramatize his point. The sun is darkened and the moon disappears; the stars fall out of the sky and the rules of the universe no longer hold. The signs of the end times.

There have been Christians from the moment of the crucifixion of Jesus who have been prophesying the end of the world. There have been true believers who have scaled mountains or hidden in caves to avoid the destruction of God’s wrath. There have been those who have prayed to be swept up into heaven, with only a faint regret for those who would be left behind. I knew a minister decades ago who always wore a jumpsuit because he wanted to be appropriately attired when he was taken up into heaven. That is true, and he knew the seasons of the liturgical calendar; he had jumpsuits that were purple or blue for Advent, white for Christmas, purple at Lent, red at Pentecost, green for the rest of the year. He always looked to me as if he should be working in an auto body shop while he was waiting for salvation.

There was that elderly self-ordained preacher in California who predicted the end of the world last spring. It did not come except for a few people who committed suicide to avoid the conflagration. He readjusted his calendar to target another date this autumn. It was not such big news when he missed the mark again. Some thought that 11/11/11 would be a good, symmetrical day for God to end it all. But the day came and went with many weddings and a few celebrating Nigel Tufnel Day, but no end to the world. (Thanks to my children and grandchildren for that “Spinal Tap” reference!)
So, what are the lessons of endings? One is that it is not the end of the world. It well could feel like it, but in God’s sense of timing it is a time of letting go and moving on. In the midst of all of the shadowy imagery of the apocalypse, we have the gospel affirmation that Jesus has authority over the established powers of the world and God’s will is the urgent work of the people of faith. The vision is not emphasizing the extinction of what we know but rather points us beyond what we know to what can be.

And so, the third stanza of Ted Loder’s poem:

In this season of short days and long nights,
of gray and white and cold,
teach me the lessons of beginnings:
that such waitings and endings
may be a starting place,
a planting of seeds
which bring to birth
what is ready to be born –
something right and just and different,
a new song,
a deeper relationship,
a fuller love –
in the fullness of your time.
O God, grant me your sense of timing.

(This poem is in the collection entitled Guerillas of Grace)

In our waiting and in our endings there are new beginnings; that is the Advent gospel, the good news of this awkward season. The birth that we will celebrate, embodied in an infant form so enshrined in our minds, on our Christmas cards, in the crèches displayed on the sideboards and over the fireplaces of our homes, even in Daley Plaza, off to the side of the marketplace, near the pigeons huddling around the eternal flame for warmth, the birth that we will celebrate is our own. A rekindling of life that is a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love.

Can it be? Miracles happen at Christmas, but only if we learn the lessons of waiting and of endings. And be clear that this can be not only a rebirth of each of us individually but also of all of us together, and not just Christians, but of the whole world. There is enormous power in affirming beginnings in the wake of endings, of light in the midst of darkness, of life in the face of death. Jürgen Moltmann, the scholar most known for giving us a theology of hope, observes, “People who love life liberate the future from fear of the world’s end, and from the death wishes of apocalyptic terrorists” (quoted by F. Harry Daniel, “Journal for Preachers,” Advent 2002). It is our obligation, our privilege to liberate the world from fear.

That is what we learn from the lessons of waiting, of endings, of beginnings in this season of short days and long nights, of gray and white and cold. “O God, grant me your sense of timing.” Amen.

Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
November 27, 2011