The Long Watch

 Mark 13:24-37, Isaiah 64:1-9 (1 Corinthians 1:3-9)

I’ve often been puzzled by Isaiah’s appeal for disruption that we hear today:  “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and descend, that the mountains would shake.”

We’re entering the season of Advent, which will lead us again, as it does every year, to heavens that sing with angels, and the gentle miraculous peace of a sleeping infant, the incarnation of love. 

How desperate must you be to want God to come with fire and trembling fear and earthquake, instead?

And then I realized I might understand a part of that, after all. Because recently I’ve gotten a little nostalgic for March.

Yes, surprisingly nostalgic for those first scary and disruptive days of this pandemic in our country, when life as we knew it came to a screeching halt.

I’m not nostalgic for the fear for our health care workers, family, and friends, or the toilet paper shortages, or the rising case loads (we’ve got that back already, anyway). 

It’s the shared sense of urgency of those days, the need to care for one another: the calls to check in on those who were alone; the rallying to raise funds and support for workers and industries knocked out by the shutdowns, the pizzas delivered to hospital emergency rooms and EMT stations.

March was terrifying – and it carried an urgency of compassion and care, sacrifice and support. The love of God was manifest in hundreds of ways, thousands of individual actions.

But humans aren’t good at sustaining that urgent compassion, that immediacy. Ten months of disruption and anxiety grind into us, fostering resentment and exhaustion. Disasters that drag on weigh down our souls, sacrifice and support erode our hearts when problems build instead of resolving.

We’re tired. It’s harder and harder to pay attention, to leap into caring for strangers, to look – and keep looking – for God at work.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is talking about when he tells his disciples to stay alert, to watch the signs.

The darkening of the sun and moon, the falling stars he mentions are going to be just one more in a long cascade of disaster and distress, he tells us. Destruction of the city. Wars and rumors of war. Global upheaval. Famines and earthquakes. Family betrayals, the direct and personal trials of our faith, false prophets, and devastating loss. By the time the sun darkens we’ll be so exhausted from putting one foot in front of another, making it day to day, that the falling stars may not even register, much less the gloriously terrifying arrival of the Son of Man.

That’s why Jesus has to remind us, order us, insist to us: stay alert. 

Somehow, Jesus’ friends, his followers, you and I, have to watch through all these disasters, all the turbulence and loss, to see and respond to the particular upheavals that are the signs of the coming of God.

As this pandemic keeps climbing and winter is coming, after a summer of fire and hurricane and partisan strife, Jesus is telling you and me right now to wake up, watch closely, stay alert for the newly-disruptive signs that God is powerfully at hand.

It’s a tall order, a big ask. And I’m sure Jesus knows that.

He promises the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our trials, the gathering of God’s beloved into glory. Paul promises us that Christ will strengthen us all the way through.
We – you and I – are commanded to keep watch, but we do not do it alone.

And the disruption of our everyday may actually help us, even if it’s also wearing us out.

In my conversations with family and friends, and some of you, this last week, I kept hearing people say that the changes enforced by this pandemic have helped many of us sense what’s most important in the ways we celebrate love through the holidays. 

In the same way, we can let the ongoing disruptions of our lives renew our sense of urgency – not fear, but the immediate importance of compassion and care for one another.  

God’s presence pours into our world in our acts of care. 

This year that might be a phone call to someone you can’t be with, or a month of rigorous quarantine so you can be somewhere. It might be gifts and food delivered to overworked nurses and first responders, acts of generous sympathy when our colleagues’ work - or our own - is disrupted again and again, or pouring time and money into keeping a roof over a stranger’s head and food on anyone’s table.

We can let the fact that so much must be different this year keep us alert to the action of God. Instead of seeking substitutes for things and actions that will get us close to “normal”, we can make choices to make our traditions different – more like the coming kingdom of God. 

If we can’t browse the stores for a perfect gift, perhaps we can shop for hope, reconciliation, justice and transformation – the hallmarks of the reign of Christ. We won’t all do that the same way – sometimes it’s about the particular gift we buy; sometimes it’s about doing that shopping with a lit candle and persistent prayer, instead of crowds and lists.

When we can’t gather in big parties for celebration, perhaps we can seek out new ways to celebrate love and sacrifice and faithfulness – the traditions of the kingdom of God. One of us might write that celebration into cards and thank you notes; another might create an online festival that many more can share. 

In any year, but even more in this year, our Advent practices should be whatever helps us to notice and invest in the kingdom of God: a world of reconciliation, hope, trust, and transformation that begins here and now.

The forced changes of this pandemic, one friend told me, can even relieve us of burdens we’ve carried for years. 

We simply can’t get everything “right” or perfect the way tradition insists. We can’t be in many places, so we really can't try to be in many places at the same time.

That may, in fact, be one of the signs of the coming of God. 

When things change in such a way that we can’t rely on ourselves no matter how hard we try, when we are forced into letting go and trusting God instead of ourselves, that’s a sign of God’s powerful nearness breaking in, disrupting and transforming the habits of our lives, whether we wished it or not.

Lillian Daniel, a preacher and writer, reflects that when the world around us is busy, keeping us sleepless, being awake to God may actually be restful for us. 

I am learning that the more we watch for God, the more we actually see and feel God healing and transforming and renewing the world, humanity, and ourselves. The more we see and feel that, the easier it is to trust our own burdens of pain and frustration to God, let those burdens fall from our backs, and rest in God.  

The more we watch for God’s love and compassion, the more we feel it in our hearts. And then the easier it is to both care for others, and receive that care ourselves.

I believe that’s what Jesus wants for his disciples, for his friends and followers facing a generation of disruption and disaster. That refueling with the fierce and powerful love of God that comes from watching for God’s presence. 

I believe that’s what Jesus wants for his disciples, for you and me this year and always. That he commands us to keep alert for God’s signs, because in doing so, we will rest and be renewed in the compassion and justice, reconciliation and hope, strength and trust that come from the nearness of God, breaking in to disrupt our lives for good.