Isaiah 2: 1-5

Romans 13: 11-14

Matthew 24: 36-44

Choose Light!

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

November 28, 2004

This is the season of Advent.

A time when we are asked to be mindful of what it means to prepare. To wait. To know the real of darkness and to know the promise of star shine and to feel the tension of knowing that the Birth of Jesus is to be celebrated soon but first, first, we are called to think about what that means.

We don’t like to wait. Not many of us, anyway. We don’t like to wait two seconds for our Internet to be connected, we don’t like to wait in lines and we don’t like to wait for answers.

We are trained up early to demand speedy delivery. (God bless you, Mr. McFeely)

And yet the church year begins with a season that asks us to wait.

And the church year begins with texts that call us to think about what we are about in these days of waiting.

At the time the first writer of Isaiah was writing, the God of Israel was waiting for the vision of peace to be enfleshed by God’s people.

God waits for a day when we will live the ways of God in such a way that the instruments of fracture and war: swords and spears, will be forever more transformed into instruments of life: plowshares and pruning hooks.

At the time that the teachings from Matthew and Paul were shared, it was believed that the end times were very very near. So the sense of urgency was real. Jesus was so clear with his disciples about the need for them to stay awake – to be mindful that life can shift radically at any time – so they ought to live it mindfully, intentionally, prayerfully, as people aware of the fleeting nature of life.

So God waits. The Holy one waits for us to learn the lessons of wholeness brought to us in God’s vision for us.

So how do we live our waiting? How do will prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus? How will we use this time of Advent waiting?

I was in Duluth yesterday celebrating the life of a friend. I was officiating at a funeral for a woman who was 36 years old when she died. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 25. When she was thirty, she married a man who was her soul mate. One month after their wedding, she discovered that again she had to deal with the obscenity that is cancer – this time it showed itself in her liver and in her bones.

I wasn’t only celebrating. I was (and am) angry and heartbroken at the loss of a so-huge woman.

Janet Brown Kitson was a woman who met life with gusto. She worked hard. She organized and led and learned and managed and in her battle with cancer she did exhaustive research about how it could be treated and what her options were. She launched everything she had into the fight.

She went to the National Institute on Health for a bone marrow transplant and she fought so hard.

In all the time that I knew her, she lived with the knowledge that her time on earth was perhaps obscenely short. She knew the intensity of living fully while waiting.

There came a time when she could do no more. Her doctors told her that she had three weeks or so to live.

And so she went home to wait. Knowing that the end time she had battled so fiercely was near.

So she called in her people and she let them love her. She welcomed people into her home and they brought their love-soaked broken and grateful hearts, and they brought songs that were sung and prayers that were prayed and laughter that was shared and they promised her that they would tend the world she loves so well – they would tend it for her the best they could.

And she lived in those three weeks. She lived a life in which she let go into God and into the love of her people. She used the time of waiting to prepare her heart for the Emmanuel – the “God with us” that would be her death.

A week before she died, the Northern Lights were spectacular. Her husband bundled her up and she watched as the heavens above danced light over her head. It was the last time she was out under God’s canopy of promise.

Here’s the thing. We, each one of us, are called to live with the mindfulness, the intentionality of those who know that they are dying. Because we are, you know.

We have this time, this life, this chance to know the way of God in this world we are called to tend. What are we waiting for? What will it take for us to hear the urgency of this morning’s gospel lesson? We, any one of us, could wake tomorrow to a drastically changed world. It happens. To those you love, to those whose names you read in the newspaper. It happens to you.

I share this reflection not as scare tactic. I am not a subscriber to the smug good guy/ bad guy dichotomy found in books like the Left Behind series. I don’t think that Jesus teaches this lesson about one being taken and one being left behind to scare us silly so that we will behave and get a good seat in heaven.

I believe that Jesus teaches this lesson about being mindful because it matters to us in THIS life. It matters right now. It matters this minute.

Are you living a life that will help this creation grow in grace? Are you dressing yourself as Paul would have you do - putting on light, or are you hanging out in the shadows hoping you won’t be noticed?

Advent is a time when we are compelled to be mindful. To prepare ourselves for the amazing gift of life brought into our midst in the gift of Jesus the Christ.

I invite you to savor this time of waiting. Try to savor the richness of living in the tension of this time of stillness.

Around you Christmas is writ large. Dear God, stores were playing Christmas Carols a month ago! Merchants and those who rely on you to prove your love by buying expensive gifts – they want you to zip right into thoughts of Christmas.

But it is NOT the Christmas season. It is the season of Advent. The season of waiting. Of looking at our hearts and the way our lives live our hearts and it is the time to remember that the greatest gift we can give this world is to live mindfully the ways of God.

God is waiting.

The world is waiting.

We are waiting.

Let us live Godfully the days we are given.

Amen