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What Are We Waiting For? November 27, 2005 The Reverend Susan Davison Archer Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church Bethesda, Maryland
Today, we will begin the sermon by lighting the Advent Candle: We have lighted this candle for the beginning of advent, a Christian observance to prepare people for the coming of Christmas, and to mirror the waiting time for the birth of a baby, for the coming of the messiah long hoped for. Like so many holidays the meaning of the 4 weeks of Advent varies widely according to the custom of time and of place and of the theology of those who observe it. Our candles this morning are white, and there are four of them, one for each week before Christmas Day. The colors of the candles may vary; there are often evergreens in a wreath around the candles harkening back to pre-Christian times of waiting for the solstice and the beginning of the return of the sun. If you have grown up in a Christian tradition you might remember observing the Christian tradition of Advent. Some of you might remember as a child being given an Advent calendar, showing various Bible verses or pictures of Bible stories from Hebrew scriptures or the Gospel birth stories, to help you wait for Christmas, to mirror the waiting of the Hebrew people for their messiah. Times have changed. When I went to look for an advent calendar, it was not journeying wise ones that I found, but rather the characters of Sesame Street. There is still a calendar with each date marked on a little window which a child can open to see a tinier picture of some aspect of the Christmas season. I couldn”t wait and that is why all the windows are open! These days the religious observance of Advent continues to be marked in Christian churches. I have heard this time described as a “spiritual waiting room,” in which people can step out of the hubbub and sometimes the madness of holiday preparations and activities, to reflect, to meditate upon the spiritual significance of Christmas, or simply to catch one’s breath. Be all that as it may, this morning I would like to look back to the Palestine of two millennia ago, to try to understand what those Jews were waiting for. The formal theological name for such an enterprise is eschatology, the study of “end times,” of what is to come, of looking to see how various scenarios of the future, affects what people think about and how they live their lives. So what was it like, that world of Judea, sitting in the larger world of Mediterranean/Greco-Roman culture? The world was one that was ruled by Rome. Pax Romana, the Romans called it. Roman rule was but one of a long succession of rulers dominating the lives of Jews in Judea. First the Babylonians, then the Persians, followed by Alexander the Great and his successors, and finally, save for the time during the Hasmonean Dynasty (descendents of Judas Maccabbe, we’ll hear more about that closer to Hannukah), the Romans. Scholars tell us that throughout these changing imperialisms Jews continued to have a sense that they were destined for independent self-rule. They longed for it. This world into which Jesus was born was one that was undergoing rapid change. Boundaries were changing, personal boundaries and geopolitical ones. There was more mobility than ever before and it was common for people to travel all around the Mediterranean world, or, at least, to encounter, those who had. In fact, “at one time Judea was landlocked and isolated until in 40 BCE Herod, a Jew named King by the Roman Senate, was given access to the coast at Joppa and a [fine] harbor was built.” (White, p. 27) As a result cultural markers were shifting. Greek was becoming common parlance. There was a growing syncretism of beliefs, values, and even religion. A Jew in Judea might encounter pagans and polytheists and various ceremonies of state religion, all unsettling. And, there was a growing economic and class disparity in Judea between Jews in Jerusalem, the seat of power, and those of the countryside. There was social and moral experimentation and exposure to increasingly nontraditional norms. For many there was a sense of what the sociologist would call “anomie,” a sense of un-connectedness. The question of “by what are you known?” and “from whence did you come?” became important, even critical. Some Jews felt pushed to observe more strictly the laws around circumcision, diet, dress, eating habits, and so forth. These were their identity markers in a shifting world. They revived their interest in the past, a wish to re-confirm their rooted-ness in a time of shifting sand. For other Jews, the old ways of obedience to the laws didn’t work in the face of a new world. There was corruption, they felt, at the highest level of Jewish religious leadership and too cozy a relationship with those imperialist Romans.. Therefore, some opted for radical, alternative behavior, a testing, a pushing of limits, the creation of sects and movements, miracle workers and fortune tellers. Some looked to the future they believed was rushing in upon them. One scholar tells us that for some there was an expectation of “the End of Days to come at an indefinite future date, when the Davidic throne would be restored to God’s Annointed. Some in Palestine at this time felt the End was near and were tensely awaiting this Messiah. He would bring righteous rule to the Jewish people, eviction of alien occupiers, retribution for evil doers, justice for the oppressed. Under his guidance they would approach the day when God’s kingdom would be established on earth.” (Sid Green, Jesus seminar) Theologians call this kind of thinking apocalypticism - hard for me to say and harder yet to spell. It is to this group that I want to give attention to today, those who were waiting for a messiah to come, for God to act in history, to somehow destabilize the oppressive world and bring in a new kingdom. They were ready to let go of the old ways of piety and obedience to custom, law and tradition. This was a huge and fundamental shift of world view for the Jewish world at that time. For apocalyptic visionaries, this was a time of great risk-taking without assurances. They cautioned people to take seriously how to prepare for the coming messiah. To survive and be ready to meet the new age, one should be awake, sober and prepared, attentive, watchful, ready for the unexpected, intense. One should travel light, not invest in the world order, but imagine a new order. I have heard a variety of liberal-ish contemporary theologians explain this coming of the Kingdom of God in words like these: When the holy spirit, the power of god comes into the world, it will not be about law and order, but about ferment and creative imagination. We will be free to experiment with life. Evil comes not from chaos but from rigidity. To reduce life to a few words and customs is death. Instead, the last will be first and the first will be last. The poor and the peacemakers will be blessed. The old world will be shaken and turned upside down! Revolution!! Now, all of this was quite at odds with traditional conservative Judaism of the time in which people looked for salvation to their history, to the stories of the God that chose them and led them to the promised land, to the Torah, the community of memory. Theirs was an intense devotion to cultural heritage and maintenance of continuity with the past. Theirs was a tradition of remembering in contrast to the apocalyptic approach of forgetting! So, this is the kind of world Jesus was born into, in which there was a basic tension between maintenance of the old and openness to the new. Jesus was born during the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus. What do we know about his birth? Very little, actually. While we do know he was born, the gospel story is misleading in some details. For instance, Joseph and Mary could not have been going “to be enrolled” during the rule of Herod as these two events—the census and Herod’s rule—were separated by at least several years. It is likely that Jesus was born when Herod reigned, four or more years BCE. The census was not until year six CE. Some of the other specifics about his birth may well have been added as the oral stories about Jesus were passed down. We know, for instance, that signs in the sky—like a star, wanderers and fortune tellers, like the wise ones seeking the baby—were common in the stories of the time, especially to give credence to a story or event. How did people of this time understand Jesus? A complex question! “During his own lifetime, it seems,” says scholar Michael White, “Jesus was viewed as some sort of charismatic preacher by some and as a magician or miracle worker by others. They thought of him as an Elijah or one of the prophets of old who performed miracles and spoke in the name of the Lord.” (White, p.13) “Some thought Jesus was the messiah, a king like David of old, reborn to lead the nation of Israel. To others he was perhaps one of several messianic figures, one in the crowd. So, for some he was THE messiah while for others still he was just one in a long line of pretenders.” (White, p.14) Many scholars, believe that Jesus is best understood historically as a first-century Jewish apocalyptic prophet. People were looking for that coming “golden age.” It should also be noted that probably heavily influenced by Greco-Roman thinking, came new vision, new mythology in which there were symbols for good and evil doing great cosmological battle. We can see an apocalyptic tone in the much of the New Testament. In looking towards the Kingdom of God on earth, there were declarations not just about God, but about both God and Satan. This was a dualism in synch with the Hellenistic notion of dualism as well as in concert with a polytheism which was in common in the wider Mediterranean world. So, when we sing “O come, o come Immanuel” we sing a song trying to capture the sense of people who had been oppressed by non Jews and, in some cases, seemingly oppressed by those in power and authority in the Temple. The waiting for Immanuel reflects the understanding of those earliest followers of Jesus that the new world would surely come, and come soon. Now, 21 centuries later, here we are, a bunch of UUs, from many theological backgrounds, waiting for Christmas. What is our eschatology? What are WE waiting for? In some ways our times are like those of ancient Palestine: unstable, people reaching out to find stability through clear, unquestioned religious observance, with a sense of linear history in which the Messiah will come back to rule over an earthly kingdom. For some people of faith, the world now is, as it was for some apocalyptic Jews in the first century, a cosmic contest between good and evil, a battle between God and Satan. Their eschatology, their view of the world to come, is still quite literally, that God will overcome Satan and reward them for being part of that battle. [People really DO believe that! Someone knocked on my door while I was writing this sermon to convince me of just such!] But what about us? I think most of us who are UU and, likely some other liberal co-religionists as well, have a very different sense of eschatology. Most of us do not buy into this cosmic battle scenario. We come out of a heritage that says the future will get better and better. After all, we were children of the Enlightenment who understood the universe as an orderly place (like Newton told us!), we could surely use that order to increase the good in the world and diminish suffering. Our world view has been colored by a paradigm of a clear and predictable, and therefore controllable universe. Upward and onward forever. It most likely actually never seemed that way to many of the world’s poorer people. Scientific thinking and many acts of devastation, wrought by human beings, and too great to overlook, have led some of us away from that paradigm of a natural progression towards the better. There is much in life we cannot get control over. For me, today’s understanding of the universe is not grounded in Newtonian predictability, but rather in a kind of cosmic chaos theory, in which the unexpected and sometimes disturbing pops up and may knock us down, terrorism, a sniper, riots, lying and greed by those whom we trust with authority, the list will continue. Like ancient Jews, we do long for a better world. We have worked for a better world, yet sometimes, we find ourselves, in a very fragile place. The Kingdom of God seems pretty far away. It’s hard to have faith in the Messiah of those ancient days. Here is a story about a a different kind of Messiah. Perhaps you have heard it. The Rabbi’s Gift There was once a very successful abbey somewhere in Europe. In it were many monks. The place itself was beautiful, with fine gardens and well-cared for buildings both at the abbey and among the homes in the nearby town. There came a long period of war and hate throughout the land. It was a most discouraging time. The abbey itself was in great disrepair, the gardens overrun with weeds and brambles. The town also was falling apart. People— monks and townies alike—were grumpy, and hungry and dirty, for food was scarce and water seemed too hard to carry. The people, once cordial and loving, squabbled and there was much unpleasantness, sometimes even meanness and bullying. Few expected the Abbey or the town to survive much longer. In the depths of the surrounding forest was a cabin, where a Rabbi, who lived most of his life in a city, would go for a few days’ seclusion every now and again. Once, when the monks were circulating word of the Rabbi’s imminent visit, the Abbot—an old man worried about the Abbey’s prospects—had a flash of inspiration. “Why not visit the Rabbi at his cabin? Perhaps he can give me some advice on how to save the abbey and town from decline?” he thought to himself. Upon his arrival at the cabin, the Abbot was greeted warmly by the Rabbi. When he stated the intention of his visit, the Rabbi showed nothing but compassion. Though the Rabbi empathized with the Abbot, he offered no suggestions as to how to make the situation better. The old Rabbi and the old Abbot seemed to bond with each other, reading the Bible together and discussing many issues. As night closed in, the old Abbot had to leave and he gave the Rabbi a farewell hug. Then the Abbot said, “Great! It is wonderful that we have met. It is a pity that I have not fulfilled the aim of my visit, though. Do you really not have any advice for me to save the declining abbey?” he said. “No, I am sorry,” the Rabbi replied, “I have no advice for you, but I can tell you one thing—one of you in the Abbey is the Messiah.” Upon the Abbot’s return to the abbey, his eagerly waiting colleagues closed in around him, hurriedly asking,” What did the Rabbi say?” “He could not give us a hand,” the Abbot answered, “When I was leaving, he told me one thing—it sounded strange and mysterious, and I don’t know what it means. He said that one of you is the Messiah.” During the days, weeks and months that followed, the old monks reflected on those words. “Do the Rabbi’s words `One of you is the Messiah’ carry any other connotations?”, they asked themselves. Does the “you” refer to us? If it does, then who is the Messiah? they asked themselves. Is he the Abbot? Maybe. He has led the parish for over 20 years. But Father Thomas is likely to be the Messiah as well. As everyone knows, he is a saint-like man. Or maybe Father Eliot is the Messiah. He tends to behave awkwardly and sometimes says words that hurt people’s feelings; but on closer examination, his words always turn out to be reasonable. Of course, Philip is not the Messiah, is he? Perhaps he is the Messiah. Certainly, the Messiah that the Rabbi talked about cannot be me as I am just an ordinary person. But what if it does turn out to be me? Oh! My God! It cannot be me. I couldn’t bear that! Am I capable of shouldering the burden of being the Messiah? Such were the thought processes of the monks over the ensuing days. Each of the old monks at the Abbey was engrossed in reflection. But, having engaged in reflection, they started to treat one another with greater respect every day. As one of them was likely to be the Messiah, how could they fail to hold him in regard? Each began to treat himself with more self-respect as it dawned upon each individual that they themselves could turn out to be the Messiah. How could he fail to respect himself? And how can we allow this old abbey to go on in disrepair and our gardens without care. Soon the abbey was restored to its former beauty. Respect for one another was its song. People from the town brought friends to this special spot, and their friends invited their own friends. And everyone stopped being grumpy learned to truly care for one another and began to help one another to build and keep up the kind of town they wanted. Of course, they were all messiahs, just waiting to be discovered and to show others that they too are messiahs. So I ask again, what is our UU eschatology? What can we believe about the future that will give us some guidance about today. I, for one, believe that at least some of the kind of life we yearn for is available now. We have glimpses of it from time to time, in acts of justice and courage and vision and love. I believe that there will always be pain and loss. Those cannot be avoided if one is to live. However, we can do the work to transform the world in an ongoing way so that the good increases and the destructive diminishes. As in the days long gone, we have masses of poor people, wars, and violence. I cannot believe in one great messiah returning from some eternal place who will lead us out of mutual destruction and into the Kingdom of God. There is no time-line for when the world will be saved, will be all better. One election won’t do it! That would be unrealistically easy. However, I do believe that we can keep before us an image, a vision, of the world we would like. And, I do believe that each of us has some of “messiah” in us, some POWER, to make the world a bit more like that vision. A new world order won’t come in one fell swoop. It won’t be one cosmic battle between good and evil. But change needs to be pursued in an ongoing, sometimes even tedious way. It will not come as the result of a glorious cosmic battle. It will come from hard work and tenacity. We need to continue to advocate again and again for sharing the world’s abundance more equitably. We need to pursue in an ongoing way efforts to take care of the earth, air, and water—this will be required of us over and over and over. We need to take every opportunity we see to be inclusive and respectful of all—and, again, I don’t believe any of these hopes will ever completely arrive. But, they can get better, and regrettably, they can get worse. We have to keep at it, over the long haul. We have the resources and know-how, the technology, the tools at hand, more than ever before in the history of the world. And we have one another to keep our spirits high, to celebrate the messiah in one another and in all we meet. I like these words from Annie Dillard, who re-worded one of the great old Psalms: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us.” There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, But only us, . . .there is no one but us. There never has been.” So for me during this period of Advent, I will, like the ancients, await Christmas, await the birth of a baby. But not a baby who will bring one new and perfect, just kingdom. I will wait for Christmas, and then rejoice, because babies always remind me to hope. A new baby, as well as being a great joy, is a significant theological statement! A new life, a baby challenges us to keep before us a picture of a world we hope for. As for salvation, as for that better world, that is in my hands, that is in our hands. There is no one but us. Sources: White, L. Michael, From Jesus to Christianity (HarperCollins, 2004). Jesus Seminar: various papers Assorted lectures by Bart Ehrman |
Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist
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