To Live Like You Were Dying Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 24:37-44 November 28, 2004, Year A, First Sunday of Advent The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi In his country song Tim McGraw tells of a young man who learns his father is dying from a brain tumor and asking his father what he did when the finality of his imminent death sank in. His father responded, "I went sky diving, Rocky Mountain climbing and went 2.7 seconds on a bull named BluManchu. I loved deeper, spoke sweeter and gave forgiveness I'd been denying. I was finally the husband that most the time I wasn't and became a friend a friend would like to have. I lived like tomorrow was a gift and you've got eternity to think about what would you do with it and what did you do with it?" His father then offered to his son, "Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying." A strange song to quote on the heels of Thanksgiving and only a few weeks before Christmas. After all the secular world is in the frenzy of Christmas shopping and putting up Christmas trees, and non-liturgical churches are singing Christmas carols and talking about the birth of the sweet baby Jesus - but not we Episcopalians and other faith traditions who follow the Christian year. Instead, we are greeted by scripture that reads like the bumper stickers we sometimes encounter: "Warning, when the rapture comes, this car will be empty." Just as spending a lifetime only preparing for the future or living a purposeless life both fail to live an authentic life, so to be preoccupied with the baby Jesus or with gloating over those we think will be left behind both fail to understand the Gospel and particularly today's reading from Matthew. Yes, everything changed because Jesus pitched his tent among us, became one of us. But the story does not end with the first coming. No, that's only the infancy part of the story. Nor is the story about putting bumper stickers on our cars that gloat, "I'll be sipping wine in heaven while you burn in hell." No, Advent reminds us it is always Advent, and we live perpetually between the already and the not yet. While Christ came in a specific time and place some 2000 years ago, he continues to come to us, to the Church, to the World. His light continues to shine in the darkness of our own hearts, in the dark places of the Church, in the pitch-black corners of our world. So we believe. We long for God without ceasing. We hope. Advent reminds us we wait, as a pregnant woman waits - not passively, but a waiting in which everything is being transformed. Advent, invites us into a readiness to turn all into a new dimension of living. Advent blooms resplendent with the birth of Jesus, his ministry, his passion, death and resurrection. Over time, it continues to blossom and unfold, to be born in us. The Word is enfleshed again and again within and among the Body of Christ. The enfleshed Word within and among us reminds us we are to be about beating swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks and no longer learning war. The problem with the fact that Christ has been coming back for so long is that many have given up on him. Before he died, he told his followers he would be right back. Believing him, they did not make long range plans. They put all their energy into preparing for the end. All of Paul's letters were written with the second coming in plain view. However, a decade passed, then another, and another. The people who had actually known Jesus began to die off. Pretty soon the stories about him were being told by people who had known people who had known Jesus. The only reason we have gospels at all is that someone finally worked up the nerve to say, "You know, almost all the eyewitnesses are gone. We ought to get this stuff down on paper while we can." For most of the next 12 months, we will journey with Matthew. Matthew's very name, meaning "gift of God", suggests that our search for understanding the signs of the time will finally show up as a gift - unearned, undeserved, unexpected. While the author of Matthew primarily wanted to tell the story of Jesus, he had to assuage those who were frightened and tired of waiting - to people desperately wanting to know whether Jesus' delay was part of the master plan or whether he was missing in action. Was Jesus really coming back to pull them from the edge of the abyss where they were clinging to life or were they just going to hang there until their fingers gave out and they crashed on top of the mounting exhausted bodies at the bottom? Matthew's answer comes in the twenty-fourth chapter. In the verses that immediately precede today's reading, he gives the answer that has challenged Christians for 2000 years: "This generation will not pass away until these things have taken place. But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Because Matthew could not resolve the tension without putting words in Jesus' mouth, he, instead focuses on Jesus' advice on how to live within this tension. Back in 1976, while living in Greenville, I returned home one Saturday after an overnight trip. As I made my way through my house, I began to notice things were not in their normal places and then noticed that my stereo and all my camera equipment I had used the day before and left on my bed were gone. Anyone who has returned to find a normally locked door ajar or that they have been robbed begins to understand the troubling imagery of today's gospel. Matthew warns us these things happen but not according to our calendars or Palm Pilots while we are at our desks, in class, at a lunch meeting, checking our email, running to the grocery store, dropping off the kids at soccer practice, or the many ways we spend our public hours. I can't enter in my Palm Pilot, "11:00 a.m., Monday, November 29, appointment with Jesus." because that's not the me or the you Jesus comes to: that public you that you present to others while you are out doing whatever it is you do in the world, pulled together as best you can so that you pass for normal. No, it's after you have wept over a life choice your child has made, after you've argued with your spouse but can't even remember what it was about, after you have sat mindlessly before the television hoping that drink will bring a little relief, after you have struggled to balance a non-balanceable checkbook. Hoping for nothing more than a few hours sleep, it is then that you are most vulnerable. It is in that darkness God is most likely to come, when you least expect God. Why would this kind, loving God we talk so much about come then, because it is only then that we let our guard down. It is only when we are vulnerable when we do not have the resources or energy left to lock God out that God comes. It is for this reason that those most in crisis experience Christ's redemption. It is for this reason that it is the one who learns the finiteness of his earthly life who makes the most of the life he has left. Only then do you realize the abundance God offers you compared to the mere pile of possessions you have spent a life time protecting. It is only then you may go sky diving, Rocky Mountain climbing, and go 2.7 seconds on a bull named BluManchu. It is only then that you may love deeper and speak sweeter, and give forgiveness you've been denying, to be the spouse that most the time you haven't been or to be a friend a friend would like to have. The threat is not outside the door. It is within you: in your unfounded fears, your misguided defenses. The Son of Man comes in an unexpected hour. Keep awake, not to keep him out but to let in the one who brings light into your darkest corners, to let in the one who out of all the interpretations of the past and in the face of all the possibilities of the future beckons you to live now, to let in the one who comes to give you the freedom to live like you were dying.