Keep watch!

Isaiah 63.16-17

Mark 13.33-37

Preached at St Christophers Catholic Church, Manuka

Advent 2005

“What I say to you, I say to all: “Keep watch!”

It is Advent – the season of expectation, of looking forward to the coming of Jesus. Advent looks not primarily to his birth, but to the second advent, Jesus coming again into human life. All the Old Testament prophecy read during this season, all the stories of the preparation for his birth, remind us that Jesus’ coming is not always plain. It is to the heart of faith that prepares for it and to the eyes of faith that watch for it, that Jesus comes. And so we must stay alert and keep watch!

We live in a world where it is easier than ever to keep watch. Video cameras observe our shopping malls and public spaces. Red light cameras snap us as we drive by on our busy way. When you hear the little ‘chirrup- chirrup- chirrup’ of your mobile phone clicking know that a combination of phone masts and computers is fixing you in time and space. Our government issue fridge-magnets exhort us to be alert but not alarmed, and new legislation gives even greater powers to the forces of surveillance and watch-keeping.

Of course, we are not alert for grace and wonder. We are not keeping watch for Jesus. We live in a society increasingly fearful of those who are ‘different’, those who have a different faith or a different political philosophy. We are keeping watch for ‘sedition’ not for miracle. We are staying alert for the good of the economy, not for the coming of God.

The message of Advent is that God comes to us and keeps coming to us. In the Incarnation God pitched his tent with humankind and decided to be one of us. Jesus said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” So he comes, surprising us, time and again. But the manner of his coming is mysterious. He comes like the supper guest at Emmaus who disappears as soon as he is recognised. He comes like a thief in the night. He comes like a boss making a snap inspection at an unexpected time. We have to be alert and watchful for his coming or we might miss it altogether.

The sad thing about Advent in Australia is the energy and time we put into watching for anything but God. We keep watch for terrorists, or for the trends of the economy or even, in a well-named TV show, for the latest ‘Australian idol’ diverting our culture.

So much around us is vacuous and shallow and cannot nurture the soul. Yet it dominates the culture and captures the attention of so many. God is very marginal to our culture and to the lives of many of our fellow citizens. Like the prophet Isaiah, we recognise that the hearts of the people are hardened and that we do not respect, or to use the Biblical term, ‘fear’ the Lord.

The passage from Isaiah is part of one of the most powerful laments found in the Bible. It names the faithlessness of the people, the sense of the absence of God and the barrenness of spiritual life. It is a potent prayer for the coming of God, a watching and yearning for the presence of the divine:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

so that the mountains would quake at your presence -

as when fire kindles the brushwood

and fire causes water to boil –

to make your name known to your adversaries,

so that the nations might tremble at your presence! (Is 64.1-2)

Now that is the kind of coming of God that we humans might listen to! But babies in mangers, thieves in the night, masters inspecting their property, don’t really ‘cut it’ as self-evident manifestations of God. So we need to be alert, keep careful watch, to discern within all the hoopla of an entertainment society the signs of a God who comes to us in quiet ways.

Part of the Isaiah prophecy is precious for today. Unusually for the Old Testament this oracle invokes the fatherhood of God:

For you are our father

Though Abraham does not know us

And Israel does not acknowledge us;

You, O Lord, are our father;

Our Redeemer from of old is your name. (vs 16)

The prophet realizes that the religious tradition will not save them. The connection to Abraham and Israel is forgotten, powerless. The people’s identity as the children of Israel is now empty. Their Jewishness is no safe place any longer. They must find God as Father, as the Redeemer from of old, if God is to come to them in any way that is able to save. In an age when our identity as Jews and Christians and Muslims and Buddhists seems only to crystalise our divisions, and we seem to keep watch on each other, we may need to remember the older, primal name of God as ‘Father’, as ‘Redeemer from of old’, if he is to come to us in a way that can save.

One of the parish elders in a church I served had grown up an orphan in a Salvation Army Boys Home. He didn’t speak often of the experience but it had been hard. Christians can lack love and can even be abusive. But kindness in such an environment has an even greater impact and my friend was watched over by a gentle and loving man on the staff of the orphanage. In the manner of the Salvation Army he had a military rank and perhaps in a manner more characteristic of your tradition he had taken a Biblical name. He was Major Pentecost. Major Pentecost was a simple man who worked in the kitchen. He preached no sermons, had no great learning, could not counsel his way through a supermarket checkout but he had faith. One day, taking a break from his kitchen duties, Major Pentecost stood by the bins and greasetraps that are part of every institutional kitchen and was looking up into the sky. My friend, then a little boy of 8 or 9, watched him for a few minutes but couldn’t see what he was gazing at so intently. ‘What are you looking at Major Pentecost?’ he asked. Rather sheepishly the man replied, “O, I was just looking to see if Jesus was coming back!”

In a world obsessed with surveillance and focused on risk, where people are looking for a business opportunity or for the ‘next big thing’, the Major Pentecosts of this world are a bit of a joke. The humble, kindly people who look to the clear blue sky for God’s blessing and spend their lives in the service of others are decidedly out of fashion. Yet the gospel suggests that the future is theirs, that the domestics and door-keepers and night-cleaners who keep watch for the coming of grace, are the ones who will share with the Lord in a rebuilt world of mercy and peace.