Scripture:
Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122
Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 24:36-44
Many of us remember the movie The Matrix, about a planet
earth that has been devastated and nearly destroyed, run by machines who
provide human beings with a world of fantasy while using their bodies as
sources of energy. The main character,
Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given a choice – to take a blue pill which will
return him to his world of computer-generated fantasy, or to take a red pill
which will awaken him to reality.
Today is the First Sunday in Advent, and the beginning of a
new liturgical year. As often happens,
the church is out of step with the world.
On one hand, the malls and radio stations are already celebrating
Christmas with merchandise displays and Christmas music, while in the church we
celebrate Advent – a season of waiting for the coming of the Christ Child. On the other hand, in the church we are
celebrating a new liturgical year, while on the secular calendar the new year
doesn’t start for more than a month.
Another peculiarity – each
year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the Gospel reading is not about
Christ’s first coming – not about the Christ child – but about the Second
Coming, at the end of all things. This
reminds us that the story of Christ is not finished, that there is still much
to anticipate.
Our reading picks up in the middle of an extended section of
Jesus’ teaching his disciples, and his teaching is described as
apocalyptic. The word apocalyptic is
commonly used to describe events that would be the end of the world as we know
it – to use a quote from the movie Ghostbusters,
“a disaster of biblical proportions, real wrath of God stuff….fire and
brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of
darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, cats and dogs
living together, mass hysteria.” But the
word “apocalypse” really means “unveiling” – the revelation of truth to those
within a community that is hidden from society at large – sort of like the red
pill in the Matrix movie that would awaken Neo from fantasy to reality. Earlier in this section of teaching, Jesus
talked about societal upheavals, false prophets, persecution, suffering. But in today’s reading Jesus talks as if, at
least in for some, life would go on as always – as in the days of Noah, people
eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage – and the Son of Man
coming unexpectedly in the midst of it.
These people weren’t doing anything particularly bad….they were just
living their lives, but they were unprepared for what was about to happen.
What are we to make of this?
On one hand, upheaval, persecution, suffering; on the other hand, life
as usual. Perhaps this has to do with
peoples’ awareness, which is why Jesus used words like “keep awake” and “be
ready”. I’m reminded that in Nazi Germany,
Jews, communists, gypsies, homosexuals, and others disfavored by Hitler
experienced incredible and increasing persecution – and yet, for many if not
most Germans, life went on much as always.
Perhaps their persecuted neighbors were being fired from their jobs, perhaps
synagogues were being vandalized and destroyed, perhaps the display windows on
their businesses were shattered, as on Kristalnacht, and these businesses were
closed by the government, perhaps they were being arrested in the middle of the
night, but this wasn’t enough to awaken the sleeping consciences of ordinary
Germans, or shake ordinary Germans out of their routines. Whatever was happening, wasn’t happening to
them, and so they didn’t care. Hitler’s
propaganda slowly desensitized most of German society to the increasing persecution
and suffering their neighbors were experiencing, to the point where ordinary
Germans turned a blind eye as their neighbors were led off to die. Many accepted official explanations that
their neighbors were being relocated to the east, and thought no further about
it; indeed, the reason we remember those Germans and others who resisted, such
as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is that there were so few of them. And as a reminder, from the moment Hitler
took power, German law was adjusted, bit by bit, with the addition of emergency
powers and such, so that all of this was legal under the German law of the time,
and the police who should have been safeguarding life became accomplices in inflicting
suffering and death. And so, for some,
persecution, suffering and upheaval, while for others, business as usual, life
as usual.
What is the difference between the heroes of the Resistance,
such as Bonhoeffer, and the ordinary good Germans who, when asked afterward to
explain how they could allow millions of their neighbors to be killed, said
they were “only following orders”. It
isn’t because Bonhoeffer was ten feet tall or had superpowers; indeed, he was
pudgy, had a receding hairline, wore glasses, and looked more like a
stereotypical librarian than a superhero.
It wasn’t because he had any unique kind of special theological
training; he underwent the same seminary program as his other classmates who
would go on to support Hitler, though it must be said that he took his studies
very seriously. Rather, it was because he
took his faith with utmost seriousness, indeed, so seriously that he looked at
all of life through the lens of his faith - and because his life
experience awakened his conscience. That
is to say, for Bonhoeffer, faith wasn’t just something set aside in a special
airtight compartment labeled Sunday morning; for Bonhoeffer, faith either
connected to all of life, or it was worthless.
Specifically, it was the year Bonhoeffer spent in America, and how he viewed that year through the lens of his faith, that awakened Bonhoeffer’s conscience. When he graduated from seminary in Germany at age 24, by the customs of that day, he was too young to be ordained to ministry in Germany – and under Hitler, conditions in Germany were already starting to become oppressive - and so after graduation, in 1930, he went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City for additional studies. An African-American classmate, Frank Fisher. introduced Bonhoeffer to life in Harlem, specifically the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a leading African American congregation in Harlem. His conscience was awakened to the injustice and oppression suffered by the African Americans he met – and to the wider church’s failures to bring justice.[1] He could no longer read Scripture from a detached, academic standpoint – the words of Christ about bringing good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind were coming to life in Bonhoeffer’s experiences in Harlem. And Bonhoeffer’s conscience wouldn’t let him live safely in America while Hitler was clamping down in his home country. When Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, his experience of injustice in America awakened him to the injustice occurring all around him in Germany – and, being awakened, he acted, ultimately at the cost of his life. But again, Bonhoeffer’s classmates at Union Seminary, just as Bonhoeffer’s seminary classmates in Germany, had many of these same experiences – but their consciences were asleep, and so they did nothing.
Specifically, it was the year Bonhoeffer spent in America, and how he viewed that year through the lens of his faith, that awakened Bonhoeffer’s conscience. When he graduated from seminary in Germany at age 24, by the customs of that day, he was too young to be ordained to ministry in Germany – and under Hitler, conditions in Germany were already starting to become oppressive - and so after graduation, in 1930, he went to Union Theological Seminary in New York City for additional studies. An African-American classmate, Frank Fisher. introduced Bonhoeffer to life in Harlem, specifically the Abyssinian Baptist Church, a leading African American congregation in Harlem. His conscience was awakened to the injustice and oppression suffered by the African Americans he met – and to the wider church’s failures to bring justice.[1] He could no longer read Scripture from a detached, academic standpoint – the words of Christ about bringing good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind were coming to life in Bonhoeffer’s experiences in Harlem. And Bonhoeffer’s conscience wouldn’t let him live safely in America while Hitler was clamping down in his home country. When Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, his experience of injustice in America awakened him to the injustice occurring all around him in Germany – and, being awakened, he acted, ultimately at the cost of his life. But again, Bonhoeffer’s classmates at Union Seminary, just as Bonhoeffer’s seminary classmates in Germany, had many of these same experiences – but their consciences were asleep, and so they did nothing.
It was Bonhoeffer’s experience of seeing injustice in Harlem
through the lens of his faith that awakened his conscience. While our society has changed greatly since
Bonhoeffer’s 1930 visit to America, there is still great injustice, great
suffering, extremes of wealth and poverty. We see increasing environmental damage. In North Dakota, right now, as I’m preaching,
there are hundreds of Indian tribes and their allies trying to prevent the
destruction of their land and the pollution of their water, and law enforcement
declaring war on them to help an oil company run a pipeline – and this is only
one of many struggles. But are we awake? Are we aware? Are our consciences awakened enough for us to
be disturbed by what we see around us?
If, God help us, registries or deportations or internment comes to our
neighbors, will we be aware, and will we act? Or will we sleepwalk past the suffering of our
neighbors, turning on the TV to watch the antics of “Real Housewives of New
Jersey” while ignoring the suffering of the real housewives of Bridesburg, or
Port Richmond, or Frankford, or Kensington, or Mayfair, or Lawncrest, flipping
the channel to watch “The Walking Dead” on TV while ignoring the walking dead
OD’ing in Kensington, in Camden…and out in the ‘burbs as well – or ignoring
those who may come to be treated as dead men and women walking because of their
race or national origin or religion or sexual identity.
The early Christians, those who heard Jesus’ message and those
who followed, had a choice between listening to the familiar, comforting
message of the Roman empire – Hail Caesar, Caesar is Lord, Caesar has
everything under control, just pay your taxes to Caesar and obey Caesar’s laws,
enjoy the bread and circuses Caesar provides for your entertainment, and leave
everything else up to us - or breaking away from all of that to act on the
disturbing message of Jesus. It was the
choice faced by Neo in the Matrix movie – blue pill or red pill? The same
choice faced Bonhoeffer – the comforting message of culture or the disturbing message
of Christ – blue pill or red pill – and the same choice faces us.
Among people of all faiths working for social justice,
there’s a saying: “Stay woke”. Stay woke, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer became awakened
during his time in Harlem. Be aware of
the suffering of our neighbors. Don’t
let the store displays and blinking lights send us off to sleep.
Yes, faith in Christ, following in the way of Jesus, will
ultimately bring us to a place of great comfort – ultimate comfort even. Jesus promised that we would have life
abundantly in this world, and eternally in the world to come. But the comfort promised by Jesus isn’t just
rainbows and unicorns – isn’t fantasy, isn’t something like cotton candy that
tastes good for a minute and then leaves us with a sugar crash and a headache
half an hour later, isn’t a bedtime story to send us to sleep – even though religion
has often been misused in that way.
Jesus isn’t calling us to go back to sleep and dream sweet dreams. Rather, Jesus is calling us to wake up from
the lies and false dreams our culture peddles to us – lies that tell us the
more we have, the happier we are, lies that tell us that might makes right,
lies that tell us that we can look out for ourselves without considering how we
are connected to one another and to the environment, to the planet we live
on. Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel
reading grab us by the shoulders and shake us and yell at us to wake up from
the easy but wrong answers, the false but fleeting comfort, offered by our
society, and to embrace the initially unsettling but ultimately comforting
reality that comes from following in the way of Jesus, loving God with all our
heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves – the real and
lasting comfort that comes from living as we were intended to live, in
relationship with God and neighbor – in the words from Isaiah that we heard
earlier today,
“[T]hey shall
beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
From our reading in Matthew: “Keep awake therefore, for you
do not know on what day your Lord is coming….therefore you also must be ready,
for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” From our reading from Romans: “You know what time it is, how it is now the
moment for you to wake from sleep.” So
yes, let’s keep awake. “Stay woke.” May we live as those who are fully awake and
fully alive to follow where God leads. Amen.
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