The Advent of God

     How frustrating it is to look at Washington, our congress and our president and their inability to get anything done.  The so called “Super Committee” has just adjourned in failure, unable to agree on any way to trim the deficit.  Fingers are pointed in every direction and there is no hope of a bi-partisan solution to all of this financial trouble.  The Democrats are firm in wanting to raise taxes on the wealthy, the Republicans say no to this and want to trim Social Security and Medicare.  Everybody is waiting for the election of 2012 to solve this problem.

     But it won’t solve anything at all.  The polarity in Washington is beyond repair, the two or three or four sides simply will not compromise on anything, and new faces in the old parties will do little to create a new climate.  What is needed is firm leadership to bring discipline to our politics and to lead this nation into caring for our unfortunate, and using our resources to give to the world what we all want and need so desperately:   Peace, compassion and firm direction.

     With the blame and finger pointing in full swing in Washington, the likelihood of this is minimal.  At the moment, it is nobody’s fault that the government is in wreckage,  no one is willing to take responsibility for much of anything.  It is “their” fault, depending on whom you ask.

     Here at the beginning of the season of Advent, it is helpful to look at what we are and what we are doing.  To see what repentance might look like in our society, and how our contrition might bring us into a more wholesome place, as we wait for the return of our Lord.

     In the 64th chapter of Isaiah, there are words that sound very much like a cry from the present time:

We have all become as one who is unclean,
      all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
     and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name,
     or attempts to take hold of you;
For you have hidden your face from us,
      and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

     There isn’t much question of fault finding in this passage.  The fault is within ourselves  We are in this place because of what we have done, because of our greed, our contempt for each other, and our insistence that only our own way is correct.  True community is what is missing in all of this,  and the cry to our God is deep and utter.  Where else can we turn when we have so terribly failed?

     Advent is a time of yearning.  Yearning for the hand and voice of God to come among us to provide us with what we have no ability to provide for ourselves;  to move between us and bring us together in community to make this world into the Kingdom of God.

     It isn’t only the debt crisis that has us in disarray.  It is also our own lives, the relationships that we have with each other,  and the way that we are frustrated so often in our inability to solve our own problems.  Thanksgiving is a time that brings families together.  It is often a time when old frustrations bloom and our ability to agree with each other around the Thanksgiving table fails.  Old wounds refuse healing and our arguments blossom.

     Jesus speaks words of hope in Mark’s Gospel.  They don’t immediately sound very hopeful, he is speaking of the turmoil that his disciples will find on earth,  troubles that we know very well.  You will be hated for my name’s sake, says Jesus  False christs and false prophets will rise up among you and perform signs and wonders to lead astray the elect, Jesus goes on,  but when all of that happens, it is a sign that the Son of Man is coming back.  No one knows the day or the hour, says Jesus, so be awake and watchful.  The point of all of this is that God has his creation in hand and cares for all of us, even in our distress.

     As we look at our failed legislative and family situations, know that there is a positive solution to all of it.  That despite our place among the nations of the world, or our so called illustrious economy, or our difficulties with one another,  we are still subjects of our God, who only cares about our love for each other, not about our economic welfare,  or any of the petty disputes that we have with Uncle Charlie.

     The question that we all have to take seriously is how we are treating each other.  Do our social concerns provide goodness for our neighbors and are the poor and the destitute taken care of?  Not are the rich taxed, or are the middle class benefiting by the way that the government is structured.  Social concerns are what you and I can do something about.  We don’t need legislation for this.  If we spend our time and our talent as well as a portion of our wealth on those who are in need,  we will be fulfilling all that our God requires.  And when finally, in whatever moment our Lord comes back to us, he will discover that we are his worthy disciples, who have done what we can to take care of those in need, his beloved people.  That is all that we are being asked to do.

Let’s keep the division of labor straight:  It is God’s job to save the world, but it is our job to care for all of God’s family, who are loved so very much by our creator.

Are You a Sheep or a Goat?

     Tony Norman had a brilliant observation in his column in the Post-Gazette this week.  He was walking down the Boulevard of the Allies on his way to work when he saw a policewoman standing beside a barrier.  He asked her what was going on, thinking that it had something to do with the Tom Cruise movie that was filming in Pittsburgh..  The cop told him kind of impatiently that it was Veteran's day and that there was going to be a parade.  Norman said that he was embarrassed by this and went on his way.  He commented about how strange it is that we seem to ignore veterans except on this one special day.

     A sparse crowd with flags in their hands watched at lunchtime as the veterans paraded and the marching bands provided music for the event.  In the closing moments, a conglomeration of homeless veterans, dressed in a motley array of uniform parts joined the parade.  Norman commented that what they received from the crowd was respect, even if it didn't amount to anything tangible like a warm bed or a full stomach.

     Homeless and unemployed veterans are all around us, our indifference to this ought to shock us and make us uncomfortable; but only one percent of us have served in these wars that our country is fighting, and when our veterans come home, they sometimes find a country that they don't recognize.  There was a time in the middle of the war in Iraq when the paper published the number of soldiers killed and wounded each day.  We were more involved in that war than we are now.  It was the time after the events of 9/11 and we were all scared and a bit paranoid.  Our wars have now moved mostly off the front page, but the soldiers are still very involved.  they are giving their lives and their limbs every day in pursuit of I'm not sure what in Afghanistan.

    Those homeless veterans are only a small contingent of the people in our society who are in terrible need.  We need constantly to be aware of them and focusing our resources on taking care of their poverty.  Not only their poverty, but all of the poverty and need that is so very much around us these days, with unemployment, homelessness and foreclosures abounding.

     In Matthew's Gospel, the last story in the twenty-fifth chapter tells the story of the final judgement, when the Son of Man comes "in his glory with all his angels with him and separates us from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats on his left.  He will tell the sheep on his right hand to come into the Kingdom prepared for them from the beginning:  Because when I was hungry, you fed me; when I was naked, you clothed me; when I was in prison, you visited me; when I was sick you took care of me; when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.  The righteous said to him:  when did we do these things to you? And Jesus answered them:  when you did these things for the least of those who are members of my family, you did them for me.  Then he told the goats on his left hand that they were accursed and were to depart from him into the fire prepared for the devil and all of his angels, because they did nothing when they saw him in these terrible conditions.

     It is a breathtaking parable, and the summation of what Jesus has taught to all of us in his ministry on this earth.  What strikes me in this story is the intimacy of the people as they help those in need.  The giving of something to eat and to drink, the visiting in prison, the clothing of the naked.  These aren't remote things don by another for our sake.  They are events that involve us in the lives of those whom we are helping.  When we do this, there is a very real possibility that we will get to know these people.  These are events that take our time and our effort, not simply our wealth.  That is the hard part of our charity.

     This is our time for stewardship in this parish.  We talk a lot about money, how we need to meet the budget and how important it is for all of us to give.  We have been reminded of the good things that we do as a parish in response to the human need around us.  They are all good things, and many of us are involved in them, and many more of us could be.  We all don't have to be like Mother Teresa, we can simply do what we can in this world.

     Rosie and I volunteer for Meals on Wheels every week.  It's really no big deal, many of you do things that are even more helpful.  We have done Meals for a long time.  The program is fairly simple.  It takes us into people's homes and lets us see how they are doing.  One of the principal reasons for the program is to keep contact with these people so that we can know their needs other than food. We have casual conversations with them and get some understanding of who they are.  We get to know their caregivers and their dogs.  Volunteers are there every day to see them so that they know that somebody cares.  What is amazing to me is how important that is to all of us.  Simply that somebody cares.  Most of the time, we don't need much, they don't need much, we all get along fine.  But every once in a while, it is nice to know that there is someone to talk to.  Somebody who is able to do something for us, even if it only bringing a meal to the door.

     If you really listen to Jesus' parable, you get the sense that the people who are caring for others hardly know that they are doing anything important.  When did we do these things for you? they ask Jesus.  They are hardly aware of their thoughtfulness.  I think that is what our faith requires of us; to have our love for each other so ingrained in us that we hardly notice it.  That is the key to the Kingdom of God.  Whenever we act like that, a little bit of heaven appears on earth, and the Angels sing.  And most important of all, our Lord notices.

What Are We Going to do About Hell?

     I watched 60 Minutes on Sunday night and was overwhelmed by the pain of the veterans of the Iraq war who returned to Iraq to deal with their problems.  One of them was a soldier who was wounded, and whose lieutenant came to his aid and was killed in the process of retrieving him from danger.  His guilt for his lieutenant's death was palpable.  He spoke of terrible dreams and lack of sleep from the moment of his wounding on.

     The program that took these men back to Iraq was an excellent one that produced some fine results.  Some of the men said that they had been helped by the process and had had a lessening of their symptoms.  It was incredible to me to see the sacrifice that these men had offered to their country, and I was reminded again about how the rest of us more or less sat out the war while they fought.  I also wondered what the members of the last administration would think of these stories of the soldiers' sacrifice in the war that we became involved in without any requirement on our part for sacrifice at all.  We got off Scot free in this war, no matter how we felt about it.

     What I saw in the eyes of those men who had fought in Iraq was the meaning of hell.  We think of hell as the place where bad people go when they die.  That has been a part of our theological thinking for centuries.    But the truth is that we create hell here on earth all of the time.  We do it in the way that we blame others for our problems; for the unthinking way that we treat the unfortunate, and deny care to people who desperately need it.  We do it manifestly in our war making, in the way that we enlist our young to carry on the business of war for the rest of us, then sit back and comment on the progress of it, or don't comment at all and just let it go on.

     Matthew's Gospel has a series of stories in the 25th chapter that demonstrate the meaning of Hell.   We hear about the foolish bridesmaids who are shut out of the wedding banquet because they are off buying oil for their lamps.  That is followed by the story of the frightened servant who buries his talent in the ground because he was afraid of his harsh master.  He has his talent taken from him and given to the man with ten talents and he himself is thrown into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  The final story in this Gospel is the story of the sheep and the goats, where the sheep who took care of those in need were accepted into paradise, but the goats, who ignored the poor among them had to depart into eternal fire because of their neglect.

     It is no wonder that hell has become such an overwhelming part of our theology.  If what Jesus is saying in these stories is literally true, then we are all in trouble; because there is not one of us who has not been foolish like the bridesmaids, frightened like the servant with the one talent, or neglectful of the poor like the goats.

     So then, what do we all have in store for us when we meet our Lord?  Are we all destined for the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth?  There was a preacher who was preaching about this and was asked by a member of the congregation, What about the people who have no teeth?  The preacher responded without missing a beat:  Teeth will be provided!


    If our damnation is not the issue here, then what is?  What is Jesus trying to tell his followers in these stories?  It seems to me that the point of all of these parables is the same:  Keep Awake!  Keep watch because we don't know the day or the hour of our Lord's return.  We don't know the moment when the final judgment will occur and we will stand before our God with our lives behind us and eternity before us.  Keeping watch is the essence of what Jesus was teaching his followers and all of us in these stories.

     We are coming to the end of the Pentecost season where we have been reading constantly about the life and the teaching of Jesus.  Matthew follows these stories with the coming of the Passion of Jesus, his betrayal and crucifixion, leading finally to the resurrection on Easter.  But that isn't our story at the moment.  This is a summing up of all that he taught us, a kind of a review.

     Keeping watch is the lesson that he brought to us in these stories.  When we watch what Jesus did with his life, we see the heart of his compassion for everyone who was in need and his unwavering willingness to give himself for the care of others.

     The most magnificent moment in our liturgy for me is the time when the priest stands before me with the wafer in his hand and says:  The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.  The body of Christ, who gave himself on the cross for me, that my life will be redeemed and have ultimate meaning, even as I also know that I haven't been all that I could have been.  That is when I know that I am safe in God's hands for eternity with my Lord standing beside me with all of his forgiving grace.  It is the moment that I know that no matter how I have failed to live up to my Lord's teaching, that I am still received by God in the way that I receive the wafer from the priest.

     That is also what I know about those soldiers in Iraq, or Afghanistan or wherever it is that they are fighting for us.  That their lives, and the lives of their enemies will also be redeemed by our loving God who sees us not as we are, but as how He created us, and who sent his son to show us the way so that we will never be lost.