By Marek Zabriskie
Last Sunday was the First Sunday of Advent and the beginning of a new Church Year. The Church Seasons and the Bible readings form a spiritual landscape that we walk like pilgrims over the next 365 days, taking us through the wilderness, beside still waters, across green pastures, down into desolate valleys and up majestic mountains.
The theme for this First Sunday of Advent is to be awake and to anticipate that Christ will return and enter our lives again. God has not abandoned us. We are not alone.
The belief that Jesus will return is one of the most basic Christian beliefs. You can hear it every time we celebrate Communion and say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
You will hear it when we recite the creed and say, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead…”
You hear it in the gospel, when Jesus says, “Therefore, keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” (Mark 13:35-37)
The famous monk Thomas Merton wrote, “The spiritual life is first of all a matter of keeping awake.” Being awake is crucial to many religions.
The Buddha was literally “the one who is truly awake.” Through discipline and meditation he saw into the heart of reality and woke up, and his face began to radiate light. One day, a man who met him on the road asked, “Are you a god or a magician?” The Buddha answered, “I am not a god, and I am not a magician. I am awake.”
Likewise, the Sufi Muslim mystic poet, Rumi wrote:
There are many whose eyes are awake
And whose hearts are asleep;
But the one who keeps his heart awake
Will know and live this mystery;
While the eyes of his head may sleep
His heart will open hundreds of eyes.
But if your heart is already awakened,
Sleep peacefully, sleep in the arms of Love.
Mark’s Gospel was written almost forty years after Jesus had died. Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans, and the temple lay in ruins. Many Christians had been persecuted. So, Mark recounts Jesus offering what is called “the little apocalypse” – “In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”
It is both a prophetic judgment and a prophetic comfort. Jesus anticipates the end times when heaven will quake and the stars will fall out of the sky. But what sounds like disaster actually prepares for the “Son of Man” to be born.
This little apocalyptic passage captures the unsteady ways in which our lives can unravel, and it’s the unraveling that so often leads us to Christ and to the heart of what life is really about. I think of Henri Nouwen, who in his book “The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom,” wrote about the most difficult period of his life.
He wrote, “That was a time of extreme anguish, during which I wondered whether I would be able to hold onto my life. Everything came crashing down – my self-esteem, my energy to live and work, my sense of being loved, my hope for healing, my trust in God…everything. Here I was a writer about the spiritual life, known as someone who loves God and gives hope to people, [and I was] flat on the ground and in total darkness.”
Such challenges can affect each of us, especially during the holidays as we travel great distances and try to reconnect. Old family dynamics come to life. Even stable families are filled with tension.
Ask any therapist and they will tell you that Christmas is the most emotionally loaded time of the year. Our fears, worries, and challenges seem magnified, and we are tempted to think everyone but us is smiling and having fun, but us.
With all the we must do to get ready for the holidays, we may wonder, “Why do I need to be told to ‘keep awake’? I’m already on overdrive.” One of my colleagues notes that we’re operating like “bourgeois bunnies on a rabbit wheel.” Instead of saying, “Keep awake,” we should be passing out sleeping pills and serving chamomile tea to the overstressed who come to church.
Into these troubled times Jesus says that you will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.” The central message of Advent is that God is not just a light at the end of a dark tunnel. God is in the dark tunnel with us.
Today’s scripture is apocalyptic. Apocalypse means “revelation,” where you see through something to something beyond. Something you’ve seen all your life suddenly becomes a sign pointing to something more significant.
It’s like watching the sunrise on a crisp New England morning, when the grass is frozen, and the birds are silent, and you see the sun rise like an iridescent peach poking through the barren limbs of maples trees and suddenly you have this sense that God is holding you and the world together.
Without these glimmers into deeper reality we may be wide awake in worldly ways during the holiday rush, but we can easily fall spiritually asleep to God’s invitation to slow down, keep awake, and watch for Christ.
Advent is about preparing a place for something new in our lives, for new life in us, and then waiting without knowing, waiting with nothing but hope and love in our hearts for Jesus quietly to enter our lives.
The Rev. Marek Zabriskie is Rector of Christ Church Greenwich.
