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"Jesus is coming soon." So says the sign on the billboard. But I wonder. I wonder what that means. What is "soon?" Next week? The week after that? By Christmas? If "soon" doesn't mean at least by the end of the year, then what on earth or in heaven does the word "soon" mean? Today's Gospel reading reminds me of the television movie "The Day After," which was about life in Kansas the day after Kansas had been hit with a nuclear bomb. But the movie began on the day before. On the day before, everything was all anticipation, expectation. Some people were wondering where to go to dinner, others were standing in line to check out at Toys R Us, another was planning an interview for the next day. It was a movie about what it was like in the days of Noah, before the Flood, "people eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage." All expectation. Is that what "soon" is? Expectation? Anticipation? "What is time?" St. Augustine asks. "Who can easily explain it? Who can comprehend time, even in thought, so as to express it in a word? Yet what do we talk about more familiarly and knowingly in everyday conversation than time? Surely we understand it when we talk about it.... What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I want to explain it to someone who does ask me, I do not know." (Confessions, Book xi, chapter 14) But in truth, Augustine adds, time does not really exist. We say that time is past, present, and future. But the present does not exist, because the instant it appears, it ceases to be and slips into the past. And clearly the past exists only in our memory and the future only in our anticipation. So perhaps time is only God's way of creating us so that we always live in the Day Before, which means, as Jesus says, that it is folly, absolute, sheer folly, to live today in such a way as to take life, or each other, for granted. All life is lived in the Day Before, in expectation, in anticipation of a future we do not know and cannot know. Life cannot be lived any other way, because it is lived in time, which we do not know. So Jesus tells us to "keep awake, for neither we nor Jesus himself knows on what day the Lord will come," unlike the billboard sign, which seems to know more than Jesus knew. No one knows the time, says Jesus, not even the Son of Man, but sometimes Jesus does talk as if the kingdom has already drawn near. Is this what "soon" means? That the kingdom of God has already slipped into time without our realizing it? That Jesus is already here? That the opportunity to live as God would live in time is already ours? St. Paul seems to think so. "Always remember that this is the hour of judgment," he says "This time, not some time later, is the hour of crisis.... It is far on in the night; day is near.... Let us therefore throw off the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light.... Let Christ Jesus himself be the armour that you wear; give your unspiritual nature no opportunity to satisfy its desires.... Instead, remember the debt of love you owe one another. He who loves his neighbor has met every requirement of the law.... Love cannot wrong a neighbor, because love is the fulfillment of the law." "Love," Mother Teresa used to say, "is a fruit in season at all times and within the reach of every hand." In other words, love can be done at any time. That is true, as long as time is. Can love be done tomorrow? Sure, if there is still time then. More surely, it can be done right now, because now, in the hour of crisis, there certainly is still time. Advent is about the "yet-to-comeness" of life and about the constant necessity of decision. Advent reminds us about the coming intersection of our own judgment about life with God's judgment about life, and about our necessity to decide how we're going to live our lives in time in the only world God has given us. Who knows when or where that intersection is? Or was, or will be? All we really know is that right now we live in the Day Before, in the hour of judgment. The Day After is yet to be. The present means that life in the future is yet to be, and that there is still time for it to be. Put another way, Advent is about being pregnant. And Christmas is about being born. Advent reminds us that the Word of God is ever pregnant in the world. We know about being pregnant. We know, when pregnant, that we have a choice, which is what life lived in time is all about. We have a choice. There is time, if we wish, to abort the Word. And there is also still time to bring the Word to birth. Still time to see it born and to give it a name, still time to beat swords and spears into plowshares and pruning hooks... ...still time to give birth again to God's Word in this given world, still time to heal the sick, cleanse lepers, and raise the dead, still time to share our food, our clothing, and our money with those who have none, still time to visit those whom no one wants to visit, still time to share time with our children and to tell them we love them... ...still time, in John the Baptist's words, to repent, still time to turn to the babe in the manger and to Christ on the Cross, still time to turn from our desperate notions that we can save ourselves with our money, our intelligence, and our human devices, still time to turn from life lived for self to life lived for others, still time to sell what we have and give to the poor, still time to do for others as we would want them to do for us, still time, in other words, to be the Word of God in this given world that Jesus is waiting in the womb to be born into the world to be in time. For although the Word was born and made flesh once upon a time, he is ever seeking to be born again and again and again. And Christmas is about giving birth, and about naming what is born. Christmas is about the birth of the Word of God, the Life of God, into the world in time. And the anticipated life of God's Word promises to make a difference in this given world again, if we will allow him to be born into this given world again. Time is the agent of hope. The future provides hope to the present, hope that it could be soon, tomorrow, today - St. Paul says it is right now - when the judgment of God about us and our lives intersects with our own judgment about ourselves and our lives. Hope means that there is still time, which is any time, when we can decide to live in this world that God has given us to live in the life God himself lives in it, and time means that there is still hope. In our time, we live in the Day After September 11. And yet we are still living in the Day Before, with people still wondering where to go to dinner, people standing in line at Toys R Us, people eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, because there is still time. And because there is still time, there is still hope. "When have Christians [ever] been promised physical security?" J. B. Phillips once asked, once upon a very dark time in the world. "In the early Church they did not even expect it! Their security, their true life, was rooted in God, and neither the daily insecurities of the decaying Roman Empire, nor the organized persecution which followed later, could affect their basic confidence. "In my judgment," Phillips continues, "the description which Christ gave of the days that were to come before his return is more accurately reproduced in this fear-ridden age than ever before in human history. Of course, we do not know the times and the seasons, but at least we can refuse to be deceived by the current obsession for physical security in the here-and-now. "While we continue to pray and to work for the spread of the kingdom in this transitory world, we know that [the kingdom's] center of gravity is not here at all. When God decides that the human experiment has gone on long enough, yes, even in the midst of what appears to us confusion and incompleteness, Christ will come again. "This is what the New Testament teaches. This is the message of Advent. It is for us to be alert, vigilant and industrious, so that his coming will not be a terror but an overwhelming joy." Advent brings a word of judgment, a word of crisis, but because it is a word in time, it is a judgment not of fear or despair, but of hope and joy. "We may be living on the edge of eternity," Dorothy Day also observed in that same dark once-upon-a-time of the world that J. B. Phillips knew, "but that should not make us dismal. The early Christians rejoiced to think that the end of the world was near, as they thought. Are we so unready to face God? Are we so avid for joys here, that we perceive so darkly those to come?" We live in a difficult time, but God is coming soon. God is in charge, thanks be to God. The world is shaking in its foundations, but a new world is being born. That's what the sign says. Not the billboard sign, but the rainbow, the sign God gave Noah, the sign sent by God to say that he is finished with dealing with the disaster which human history is by wreaking his wrath upon it and is making a new covenant of grace and mercy, a covenant of promise and hope. The kingdom has already drawn near. That's what the sign promises. Not the billboard sign, not Noah's sign, but Jesus' sign, the Cross. On the Cross, Jesus' judgment about how to live his own life in time intersected with God's judgment about life as God gave life to be lived in this world. This intersection, the Cross, is Jesus' judgment for us. The Cross is the hour of crisis, the hour of judgment, for the world of time, and it is the only sign we will ever get, because it's the only sign we will ever need. It stands eternally over the given world, past, present, and future. We live in a difficult time. The signs are all around us, the signs of the hour of judgment. "Jesus is coming soon," the sign says. It's on the billboard. But the sign was also here in the days of Noah, and the sign became flesh in the manger. And he is coming again soon. In fact, he's already here - Messiah, the judgment, the crisis, the Cross, the sign. The only question is how we are going to read him, how we are going to receive him, in our time. No one knows what time is. And yet, there is time. And, thank God, it is God's time, not ours. So watch, stay alert, walk in the light and be glad in the time God has given you, because love can be done at any time, as long as time is. Can love be done tomorrow? Sure, if time still is then. More surely, it can be done right now, because right now there certainly is still time, as Advent reminds us. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |