Leave the light on for God

Note:  St Gabriel is one of a small number of churches which is experimenting with Extended Advent--extending it by three weeks, beginning three weeks earlier, to give us more time to enjoy this time of self-examination and thoughtful preparation. It's designed to give us a little breathing space and help prevent Advent being really just the "pre-Christmas" season. 

It's interesting that the Irish church in the old days had the notion of Extended Advent in their "three Lents." The Lent of Jesus is the one we celebrate, but there was also the Lent of Elijah, in Ordinary Time, and the Lent of Moses, which was anticipating the incarnation. With its added three weeks, Extended Advent is effectively a 40-day journey of preparing and anticipating the light coming into the world. What is lovely is that our Extended Advent coordinated with the beginning of a three-week class on Celtic Spirituality, so we had a happy synchronicity with what the earlier church had set apart as the Lent of Moses.

However...we have continued the use of the lectionary in conjunction with the formal Church calendar--so our propers correspond with the very ending of Pentecost. 

What are we waiting for?” That’s the question the Rev. Dr. Bill Petersen asks in his book about Extended Advent, and that is the question we at St Gabriel agreed to take up when we decided to embark on our Extended Advent journey. And so we begin Advent, the first season of the church calendar, and we have given ourselves more time, and more space, to prepare, anticipate, wait, and watch for the coming of the light of Christ into the world.

And yet, as far as our lectionary is concerned, we are closing out the calendar year—we’re still finishing Pentecost. So we come to those readings, especially in Matthew’s gospel, and also in Paul’s letters, where the followers of Jesus are thinking about end times, not beginnings. They had known Jesus in his time on earth and looked for his return—which they believed was to happen any day. They too, are anticipating, and waiting, and watching--for the second coming of Christ. And they too wanted to know:  What exactly are we waiting for? And how do we prepare?

When Paul wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians--the very earliest, chronologically, of his letters in the Bible--he himself assumed that Christ’s return was imminent. He was learning of the Thessalonians’ anxiety by way of Timothy, along with their many questions, including what happened to people who died before Christ’s return. Had they missed the party?  Will they see them in heaven? Paul assures them that God has not forgotten them, that Jesus will bring them with him when he returns—and all God’s people will be brought together at that time. So yes, he says to them, in effect:  you may feel sad, but do not be anxious. Your grief may be tempered with hope, the hope of Christ’s return.

Hope is a frequent message in the apocalyptic texts. Like this letter, and like today’s Gospel, apocalyptics in both the Old and New Testament reveal what is to come. They tend to follow a pattern: Suffering will happen or is happening as a result of evil in the world. There will be a sorting, and much stress and strain over who stays and who goes. But God will prevail in the end, and so will those whom God favors. So wait, with hope, endure the suffering, for all shall be well in the end, because God is in charge. That’s the general message.

Today’s Gospel takes up that “sorting” question, but it’s a tough one for me. Among my questions:  How come the wise bridesmaids don’t help the foolish ones? Why do they get to the party, when they didn’t share their oil? And what’s with the shut door? Is this really Christ who will not let them in, after they’ve stumbled around in the dark?  Dylan Breuer, a priest whose blog I follow, says it sounds like a Jesus that Arnold Schwarzenegger would play:  The Christinator. “I’ll be back,” he says, “and some of you will get in and some of you won’t!!” As someone who can definitely identify with the foolish bridesmaids, the ones whose oil ran out and are running around looking for a 7-11 in the middle of the night, that’s not very encouraging.

The truth is, we don’t actually know what will happen at the end of days--we just know that we will be with Christ.  I don’t read the parable so much as speaking to the “who’s in/who’s out” formula. First of all, I think it’s more about what happens within us, more than it is about world events.  After all, Jesus tells the disciples--don't waste your time trying to figure out the day and the hour.  He wants us to live in the present.  And second, it's important to remember that this is still the Jesus of Nazareth we know—not the Christinator!  This is the Jesus who tells us that the kingdom of heaven is full of the ones who welcomed the least of us:  those who fed the poor, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned.  Those who showed hospitality and love for others. And here’s the thing:  this message is true on earth--where the light has come into the world in the incarnation and remains with us in Spirit—as well as in heaven—the kingdom yet to come—the one that we, along with the Thessalonians and the Jesus-followers of Matthew’s day, still await.  

So for me, whether we celebrate the first coming, or anticipate the second one, it is about waiting well. Remaining alert to Christ’s presence in the world and preparing a place for it.

What spoke to me in the parable of the bridesmaid were the many allusions to a hospitality of spirit:  mindful waiting, and welcoming. In ancient Jewish marriage tradition, the bridegroom prepares a place for the bride, literally in his father’s house, and cannot return for her until his father is satisfied with what his son has made. When the bridegroom is asked, “when you are coming?” he answers, “Only my father knows.” And when the room is finally ready, and it’s time to get his bride, she is warned only by the distant noise of the crowd and a shofar blown to signal his coming. Whatever the day or hour, she must have everything ready to make her new life with him. Then, after he is welcomed into her household, she, along with her bridesmaids and family, goes with him to his house for the consummation of the marriage, and literally a solid week of partying. She knows neither the hour nor the day he will come, and she has to be ok with that. She and her party must wait with patience and faith, and be prepared to welcome the bridegroom, and also to be welcomed into his household.

And so, we too wait, and do what we need to do to prepare a room in our hearts and wait for the light to come.

Painting by Carol Aust

 This idea of patient waiting, of making a place for others, fits so well with our foray into Celtic spirituality in our Advent series, because hospitality is a deep Celtic value. The Celtics are pilgrims, rooted on the land on the one hand, but always on a journey.  The Gaelic phrase, Céad míle fáilte --a hundred thousand welcomes--reflects this emphasis on hospitality to the traveler. There’s an old legend that a warrior--one of the “bad guys” in Celtic myth--is made king, and he quickly becomes renowned for his stinginess. The bards complained that visitors to his house could count on leaving with no smell of beer on their breath!  He was A Very Bad King.

My story of Celtic hospitality came on a visit to Scotland with my cousin. We were on an island, trying to make the last ferry to the next island, where our bed and breakfast was. The roads were literally one lane, with little passing places, and the going was slower than we thought. We were running out of petrol, but also, we were running out of time. We made the ferry with five minutes to spare, only to learn that the petrol station by the landing would be closed by the time we docked.

The folks who ran the ferry told us to drive to a huge construction site nearby – it ran 24/7, they said, and they’d have plenty. But first, we called our bed and breakfast and said, we might be late. We might run out of gas!! “Don’t worry,” we heard, in their soothing Scottish brogue. “However late you are, we’ll be here, and we’ll come get you if it comes to that.” Then, they welcomed us warmly into the construction trailer—we, the hapless American tourists--but it was a diesel-only site. No petrol. Then they thought of a worker who had a can of petrol in his pickup, and went and got him. He not only gave us some petrol from his can, but he followed us to the station up the road to make sure we were safe.  He wouldn’t let us pay him. He wouldn’t let us buy him a beer.  So we hugged him.  Ha ha!! He tolerated it—he was a good sport. We were a good two hours later than we had promised, but our hosts at the bed and breakfast were waiting for us. The lamps were lit, the door was opened, the party began. We were in Scottish heaven.

Our hosts had anticipated our every need. They had prepared a place for us. And so we too must prepare a place for God in our hearts. Like good hosts, we set aside what is convenient for us, and let go of our own expectations.  Seeing how Christ is working around us and in us requires a patient attentiveness and watchfulness. Like the wise bridesmaids, we must learn holy waiting, and we must keep our lamps lit.

In the secular world, waiting is disparaged. It is a waste of time. A long wait time is a sign of bad customer service. But the Dutch priest and writer Henri Nouwen (quoting Simone Weil) wrote that waiting is the foundation of a spiritual life. The vigil of waiting and watching is deeply embedded in the Christian mystical tradition. As we say in Compline:  “Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”

Good waiting is hospitable. It is to live as though each moment is full, not empty. It requires us to give up our attempts to control the world and to be willing to see where God’s hand is at work. Rather than wishing for it to be a particular way, we learn simply to rest in hope. Nouwen wrote,“we experience more rather than less of what God has for us if we cast aside our useless wishes, and instead, hope in God’s promises.”  

He goes on:  When we pray the Lord’s prayer, we say, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Why shouldn’t we expect the power of God to enter the moments and circumstances of our ordinary days on earth?  God is always coming to us, but rarely on our terms, according to our calendar, or in line with our expectations.  

And so, let us strive to wait well. To prepare our hearts to be welcome, for whatever the hour or whatever the day the light comes to us, and joins with the little flame we have kindled and nurtured in our own hearts to greet it. 

Amen.

Preached at St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland, OR, Nov. 12, 2017