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I first heard these lyrics several years ago when my friend Ana Hernandez recorded the song “Pay Attention.” Listen up, as they say in the South. “Pay attention” brings back memories of an elementary school teacher trying to cut through classroom chaos by clapping his hands. Or a high-school band director rapping her baton on a music stand. Today, in our distraction-addicted world, it often takes more. When we’re napping, we need more than clapping or rapping. Jesus takes this concept to the next level in today’s passage from Mark’s gospel: Keep paying attention. Keep awake. Today’s Gospel account conveys the strongest of invitations. It’s actually an imperative: keep awake! But what does this mean to Jesus; to the people of Bible times; to us in our own time? What does it mean to keep awake? I believe we can find some answers in today’s other Scriptures. It seems that keeping awake has to do with three basic things: wailing, waiting and watching. Wailing, waiting and watching. The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, a city that seems to know no peace, is a symbol. It’s where people can leave their prayers on small pieces of paper. (Now you can even send e-mails). These people often move back and forth with great emotion as they pray. They embody the ancient practice of lament. Our first two lessons from the Old Testament are classic laments, filled with pain that seeks understanding. Distracted, conquered, devastated and then exiled, Israel simply cannot understand. Why has this happened to us? Were we not delivered? Where is our God now? The prophet Isaiah voices their communal cry to God: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (64:1). Like this week’s cries of the people of Mumbai, India, Israel’s lament releases tears so endless, pain so profound that their suffering is a cry almost too deep for words. In short, they wail. Wailing is an uncensored, unconsolable lament, a grief just too great to go away. The Wailing Wall is a place where people of all faiths still go to offer their pain-filled prayers of deepest lament. Some of us have never wailed like the Jews and others who are well acquainted with their grief. Some of us carry a great deal of grief around. Some of us haven’t truly wailed since we were babies. Some of us need to learn how to pray our grief, to let it out, to wail our laments to God. God, as they say, can handle it. Lament, this kind of weeping and wailing, is never a cry of total despair. Though there are times when we human beings get discouraged and even despondent, there is deeper down, underneath our grief, perhaps unknown even to us, a cry of hope. As Joan Chittister puts it, “Hope is rooted in the past but believes in the future” (Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope). For people of faith, there is memory, and there is hope. God will come through for us, one more time. “Restore us!” cries the Psalmist, a refrain that sounds three times in the ten verses we have also prayed. “Restore us, O God of hosts... Restore us, O God of hosts...Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved” (80:3, 7, 18). The children of Israel are in what pastor Talitha Arnold calls “a world of hurt.” Regardless of who is responsible, “they want God to know about it. They hold God responsible for it…(And) they want God to do something about it” (Feasting on the Word, p. 8). “Stir up your might, and come to save us!” the Psalmist cries on their behalf. These are the pain-filled prayers of God’s children, refined in the fires of life. This could be our pain, these our prayers. Pain can keep us awake. Often it has something to teach us. A quarter-century ago, music and lyrics from a pop song became a popular TV commercial for an over-the-counter drug: “Haven’t got time for the pain….” Sometimes our pain needs medicating. But more often than not, we fear to hear what our pain longs to tell us. We are often afraid that, if we feel our pain and speak of it, even to someone who cares, we will be shunned or silenced. Yet the prophet and the psalmist are clear: We can give voice to our pain, we can practice lament, we can weep and wail, telling God what is wrong, asking God to make it right. If we cannot wail in pain – right here, today, in our church – where can we? To keep awake is also…to wait. Having wailed, having released that pain, we might more easily wait, focused on what and WHO is coming. This is not the kind of waiting filled with an impatient tapping of the foot or that childish mantra, “Are we there yet?” We learn to be patient without being passive. We begin to wait actively, keeping awake, waiting for God’s timing. We wait with the kind of patience that a potter uses to mold and fashion a beautiful creation. Waiting for God is an ancient theme, running through all of the prophecy of Isaiah, all the Psalms. These texts of our spiritual ancestors teach us that this is not the kind of waiting for the faint of heart. “It involves,” one scholar tells us, “painful longing and bold allegiance; in short, passionate patience” (William P. Brown, Feasting on the Word, p. 5). For me, this begs a bigger question: How passionate, how patient do you and I really want to get this Advent? Our wailing and our waiting inform our watching. That’s also what we do in the season of Advent. We watch for Jesus, longing for new life, which is coming in the birth of the Christ child. Children of all ages may be watching for Jesus, but it’s hard for us to take our eyes off all those beautifully wrapped gifts. Perhaps this year, it will be different. Perhaps this year, with all our economic woes, we will be different. Maybe this Advent we won’t wait until Christmas morning to wake up. Maybe we’ll keep awake, keep paying attention. In our gospel account, Jesus speaks to his disciples about the end of time, painting a pessimistic, apocalyptic picture, the end of the world as they and we know it. Starting with cosmic imagery borrowed from the prophets, Jesus moves to a story about a fig tree. Just as the tree will show signs of summer, he says, so the signs Jesus has described will tell when he will come again. Jesus is clear. He does not expect anyone, then or now, to figure out exactly when all that will happen. That’s not his question. Instead, the questions we are being asked are: Are you alive? How will you live as if Jesus were right around the corner? Are you paying attention? Until you see Jesus, how will you live? Are you awake? How will you live as if Jesus is always, always coming? The mystery and miracle of Advent is about the several ways in which Jesus comes into our lives. Today we begin again, in this Advent season, to prepare for the Jesus who came, once upon a time, as a baby. Today we are reminded also to prepare for the second coming of Christ. And today, every day, we prepare for the Jesus who is – dare I say it?! – already in our midst, already among us, here, in this gathering we call the body of Christ, in this beloved church family we call All Saints.’ A few days ago I left the Thanksgiving table where I was a guest and spent the next few days on a short retreat. At All Saints Convent, the Episcopal nuns pray all six of the ancient daily offices. That means services of prayer are offered about every three hours. Now, I’m not used to praying quite that much, so I joined them occasionally. And yet, regardless of my participation, every three hours, the bells would ring. These were not bells rung by outdoor santas, bells I can so often tune out. No, these were wake-up bells, calling people to prayer, calling me to attention. Sometimes, I slept through the bells. Sometimes, the bells woke me up. Sometimes, I even paid attention. Sisters and brothers, wherever we are on our journey with Jesus, whether we are wailing, waiting, watching – even napping! – it’s Advent. Jesus is coming. Let’s help each other try to keep awake, because…
The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg |
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