Advent 1A + Why do you Search for the Living Among the Dead? + ACL with MCL + 11.27.22

-

 


Why do you Search for the Living Among the Dead?
Advent 1A, 2022 (Isaiah 2, Matthew 24)

All Santos, Oxnard
The Rev. Alene Campbell-Langdell with The Rev. Melissa Campbell-Langdell

 

This sermon borrows heavily from another sermon for today from Pastor Alene, with adaptations to our Sunday service context. In his popular translation of verses 26-28, a few verses prior to our Gospel reading for today, Eugene Peterson has Jesus say,

So if they say, ‘Run to the country and see him arrive!’ or, ‘Quick, get downtown, see him come!’ don’t give them the time of day.  The Arrival of the Son of Man isn’t something you go to see.  He comes like swift lightning to you!  Whenever you see crowds gathering, think of carrion vultures circling, moving in, hovering over a rotten carcass.  You can be quite sure that it’s not the living Son of Man pulling in those crowds.[1]

It’s a provocative image and one that brings to mind a question from a different season of the church, “Why do you search for the living among the dead?”  This is the question we hear on the lips of angels after the resurrection.  And it’s a question that Jesus appears to be posing in advance to his disciples.  Why are you expecting to find God’s messenger of salvation, the Messiah, the Son of Man, as road kill underneath a pile of scavenging birds?  This becomes all the more poignant as we consider that this Sunday, we also anticipate World AIDS Day on December 1st. What can we learn from our honored dead, and how can we fight for the living?

Back to “why do you search for the living among the dead”- It’s helpful when grappling with this response to take a look at the question Jesus is responding to.  This is Matthew’s version of the same question we had in the Gospel reading two weeks ago from Luke.  In Luke, the disciples want to know “what will be the sign that [the destruction of the temple] is about to take place?” (Luke21:7).  In Matthew 24, the question is expanded to, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (24:3).    It’s a curious question to ask someone you like: Hey, could you tell me when you’re coming back and everything is going to be destroyed?   “I’ll be back,” Jesus says.  And his friends respond, “Thanks for the warning!” 

While I was thinking about this sermon, one song kept consistently running through my head, “We don’t talk about Bruno.”  For those who haven’t seen the movie, Encanto, Bruno is the uncle in a family of people with supernatural gifts.  One has incredible strength, another brings beauty wherever she goes, and Bruno is a prophet.  But there is confusion in the family about the role of prophets and prophecies encapsulated in the line, “Your fate is sealed when your prophecy is read.”[2]  Because of their fear, the family has isolated and ostracized Bruno, refusing to even say his name.  His attempt to tell them the truth about their future, with the possibility of preparing for or changing that future, has instead led his family to equate Bruno with causing the thing that he predicted.

In the same way, we often don’t talk about the subject of AIDS and HIV, as if somehow avoiding the subject will make it go away. But we have learned that without public health education, rates of HIV infection go up and more people are afflicted with this terrible disease. Even with the break-throughs in medical science, we still have not found a cure for AIDs. Prevention has gotten better and better, but we have to be willing to talk about it so that people can access preventative care and take precautions.

Back to “We don’t talk about Bruno”- like Bruno’s family, Jesus’ followers have focused on Jesus’ words of preparation about the destruction of a beloved place of beauty and connected that destruction with Jesus’ second coming as if Jesus’ prediction will cause the destruction or the destruction is a necessary antecedent for his return. (We humans are very good at focusing on potential disasters with a fascination that reminds one of a deer in headlights.)  Jesus doesn’t confront this directly, but he plays with our assumptions that we as humans can somehow determine how things will turn out or even the end result positively or negatively of any one occurrence.  There have been centuries of debate over whether the “one taken” in Jesus’ short parables is “taken” away from the evil of the world or “taken” in the sense of the flood’s destruction or a Roman military attack. 

In the same way, AIDS may fill many with a sense of unease and lack of control, and we try to anticipate and control the outcome. But as we begin Advent season, how might we look towards the coming of Jesus with new eyes? How might we not avoid what might come but acknowledge the truth of what is happening all around us? We can not only educate our friends and neighbors about staying safe in body, mind and spirit, but we can be more aware and unafraid, knowing that even as we await him, Jesus is with us, come what may.

What better time than in the midst of the latest news cycle to see Isaiah’s vision of God’s desire for us once again?  To look up and catch a glimpse of a heavenly temple, higher than the highest mountains?  To catch a ray of hope from a time when justice will spring from a place of true understanding, and peace will be grounded in equity.  That ray of hope, that gleaming light, is the light Isaiah invites us to walk towards this Advent.  “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” (Isaiah 2:5), or in the Psalmist’s words, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1).   And so, Jesus tells his disciples to stay awake and be ready, not so that they can prevent some disaster—as if that was even possible, but so that they can prepare the way for this new thing. Because spreading knowledge against fear can promote health of body, mind and spirit. Now is the time to turn our eyes once again towards the light and hope of Christ’s coming and allow that light to guide our way forward.  Now is the time to love.  Now is the time to prepare ourselves for a world without AIDS, war or famine. Amen.

 

 

 


[1] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002.

[2] Lin-Manuel Miranda, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” in the movie, Encanto. Walt Disney Music Co, 2021.  Lyrics available online at https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/encantocast/wedonttalkaboutbruno.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Faith or Fear? Advent 1C

-
Melissa Campbell-Langdell All Santos, Oxnard Year C + Advent 1 (Jeremiah 33:14–16; Ps. 25:1–9; 1 Thess. 3:9–13; Luke 21:25–36) So… what are you going to do when you stand before the man with the holes in his hands? Now that may seem like a strange question to ask this first Sunday in December.  Surely, Pastor Melissa, we’re gearing up for jollity, not getting ready to meet our maker? But in a sense we are, always, all the time, waiting for Jesus, and I think that’s what Advent is really all about.  Reminding us that we are always waiting not just for the Christ Child to come and be born in our midst, but that we are also waiting for that awesome, if slightly scary Second Coming of Christ. And it is true that this passage talks about distress and the roaring of the waves.  And many looked at the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, that iconic image of the ocean-side theme park, including a Ferris Wheel, in the waves, and many said, this is something w...
Read more

Proper 20 (B) + A community of power + 9.23.18

-
Image
M. Campbell-Langdell All Saints, Oxnard (Proverbs 31:10–31; Ps. 1; James 3:13–4:3, 7–8ª; St. Mark 9:30–37) Take a moment and think of the most powerful positive woman figure you know – in your life or in your favorite movie, show or book. Who is the woman who has most inspired you? Keep that image of that woman in mind as we look at this passage from Proverbs Chapter 31. Now here we see the verse “A capable wife who can find?” And all the feminists amongst us will be relieved to hear that a better translation from the Hebrew would be: “a woman of power” instead of a “capable wife.” [1] That changes things, doesn’t it? Then when we hear about this ideal ancient Hebrew woman’s exploits – her buying of lands, her trading prowess, her physical strength, even her domestic abilities such as weaving, and perhaps especially her kindness to the poor, we see strength and power in all of these. Of course, looking at this passage, this is not one woman but a concept of the most...
Read more

Proper21BAcceptingourownwounds29sept24

-
  Accepting our own and other’s wounds Mark 9: 38-50   St Michael’s, Isla Vista / All Saints Oxnard The Rev. Alene Campbell-Langdell; MCL additions   May I just start this morning by acknowledging that our Gospel reading is complex.   The images are startling (horrifying?) and the metaphors come almost too quickly to catch.   What is clear is that something serious is going on between Jesus and his disciples, and Jesus is using every means possible, including some pretty harsh language, to try to course correct.   To even begin to understand this passage, we need to back up to last week’s reading from Mark.   In that reading, the disciples are arguing with each other about who is the greatest and best disciple.   In response, Jesus gets a little kid, some commentators say “toddler,” and holds this child in his arms during the rest of the conversation.    The other part of the scene to keep in mind is that Jesus has just told...
Read more