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
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment