12/1/19 “The Year for Absurdly Audacious Acts” by Nancy Petty
Scripture: Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44
They were the Camelot years. The first six and a half years of my life as a minister. My role: youth pastor. The churches: Greystone Baptist just down the way on Leadmine Road here in Raleigh and St. John’s Baptist in Charlotte, NC. To pastor the youth of these two churches, the former one from the summer of 1985 to the fall of 1988 and the later from the winter of 1989 to the Spring of 1992, may very well be the most significant honor I have had in my life. Now before you get your feelings hurt, the greatest honor of my life has been and is being your pastor. But those early years in ministry were significant. I loved being a youth minister. I had so much energy, and the match up of my energy and what is needed to be an effective youth minister aligned perfectly.
Never mind that I was only about six years older than some of my older youth. It truly is a miracle that none of the youth in my care were ever seriously hurt.
Honestly, though, I loved being with those youth. I loved their spirit of adventure. Their questions of life and faith kept me thinking about my own questions of life and faith. Their ability to be silly one minute and serious the next was refreshing. Their spontaneity renewing. Back then, with fewer gadgets to distract us, I didn’t have the competition of Internet and hand held phones with video games. We had fun, old-fashioned fun. Sunday night youth gathering, cookouts, swim parties, retreats, sex education classes, visits to temples and synagogues learning about other faith traditions, work mission trips, summer youth camp and simple things like going to get ice cream or taking a summer walk or going to a concert. I loved every minute of being a youth pastor.
Almost! There was that one event that I detested. And of course, it was their favorite. The dreaded lock-in. There are many reasons that I hated youth lock-ins. Too many to name here. But the main reason was that I couldn’t stay awake all night. And if you are a youth minister and you are the responsible one at a youth lock-in you need to stay awake. Trust me. You need to keep awake. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t. Somewhere along about 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. I would drift off to sleep. And the youth knew this. That’s why they waited, patiently I might add, for me to fall asleep so they could do those things youth do when their youth pastor falls asleep at the lock-in. I remember one lock-in with my youth at Greystone Baptist. In that time frame between 1 and 2 in the morning I had fallen asleep. At around 3:00 a.m. I awaken to the smell of eggs cooking in the little kitchen off the youth room. I jumped up quickly and inquired about the eggs. Where did y’all get those eggs, I asked. Oh, we walked to the store and bought them. You did what? Yeah, we got hungry and we didn’t want to wake you so we walked to the store and bought them. You didn’t want to wake me? To all you youth pastors out there, my one piece of advice: keep awake.
Keep awake, that is the clarion call on this first Sunday of Advent. Matthew reminds us to “keep awake” for we do not know the time when the Son of Man will return. Keep awake and stay vigilant Matthew says, for you do not know when Jesus will come again. Now most of the commentaries you read on this text will tell you that this passage invites reflection on the eschatological theme of Christ’s second coming. And in the halls of academia and with those interested in the themes of eschatology, those conversations can be interesting. And I will even admit that what Matthew thinks of the second coming can be and may be relevant to understanding his broader theology. But here’s the thing. In 2019, with our world, and specifically our country, in the throes of a moral crisis I’m not much interested in issues of eschatology. I’m more interested in how we keep awake to the ways we are being asked to usher in God’s commonwealth here on this earth, right now, not in some future afterlife. I’m more interested in how we keep awake to the truth that Jesus comes to us and in our world and in our communities every single day, now. I’m not interested in staying awake for some end time or future “second coming.” No, this Advent I’m interested in how we, as people of faith, keep awake right now, and how we can keep awake to those moments and places where the Christ child is being birthed right now—today, tomorrow, the next day and the next day and the next day, and every day. In our homes, at church, at work, at school, in our communities, in the streets, at the borders, in the jails and prisons, at the soup kitchen, in the shelters, at the detention centers, at the emergency rooms of the public hospitals where no one is supposed to be refused medical care. In these places the Christ child is being born daily. But are we keeping awake to his presence?
On this first Sunday of Advent, I am most interested in how we wake up and stay awake? How do we stay awake to things like what happened in Michigan this week? Did you catch that story? The Department of Homeland Security set up a fake university in metro Detroit to trap foreign students awaiting lawful resident status in this country. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the fake school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies.
These students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. ICE has now arrested a total of about 250 students since January on immigration violations; this includes 90 that were arrested this past week. Young people who thought they were furthering their education only to learn they were attending a fake university set up by our government to entrap them for deportation. How do we keep awake to such immoral acts?
How do we keep awake to gerrymandering? How do we keep awake to the constant lies coming out of Washington? How do we keep awake to the power grabs of the NC General Assembly? How do we keep awake to the images we see of children detained in cages, crying and reaching for their mothers and fathers? How do we keep awake and not fall back asleep to all that is wrong in our country and world?
There is another keeping awake question to ask today? How do we keep awake to the beauty and goodness of humanity? How do we keep awake and support the 60 airline workers who were arrested this past week amid
wage protests? How do we keep awake to the compassion our guests need when they come to our church on Tuesday and Thursday to sit at a table and eat a hot meal? How do we keep awake to extending generosity to our international partners when we live with such abundance? How do we keep awake to the simple beauty of gathering in this space each week for worship? How do we keep awake to the goodness in each other as we step out into the world every day to try and make a difference—to make our world a better place for all? How do we stay awake to life’s blessings, beauty and goodness?
Late yesterday afternoon, in the middle of writing this sermon, I had to run to grocery store for grapes and lettuce. As I moved through the produce section I saw a woman that I thought I knew. She looked like my mentor and friend, Roz Pelles. Roz lives in DC so my first thought was, “Wow, Roz is in town.” As I approach this woman, who I thought was Roz, I saw that she was holding an apple in her hand. And just as I started to call Roz’s name I realized it wasn’t her. But by then we had locked eyes. She looked at me as if we knew one another, and holding an apple in her hand she said to me, “Have you ever seen a more beautiful apple. Look at the deep red color. It is beautiful. We are a very blessed people.” I thought: what kind of person stands in the middle of the produce section reflecting on the beauty of an apple to a perfect stranger? And then my second thought was: She’s awake and she is exactly what you are trying to preach about.
In lectionary group this week Clinton made the comment that we need to be alarm clocks for one another—making sure we are keeping each other awake. Sometimes I feel like I keep awake for the big and extraordinary things in life but I forget to keep awake for the ordinary beauty and goodness in life. There in the produce section a stranger sounded the alarm clock and woke me up and reminded me not so much of the beauty of that one apple but of the importance of recognizing beauty in the small and ordinary things in life.
Keeping awake is what Matthew is calling us to. And keeping awake is important. But my friends we are living in a time where hope requires more than just keeping awake. Hope, the kind of hope our world needs-the kind of hope represented in the coming of God made flesh—will require us to rise up after we wake up. While Matthew calls us to keep awake, Isaiah calls us to rise up. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” The hope of Isaiah’s vision requires us to rise up. This kind of hope doesn’t just fall out of the sky. This hope isn’t about keeping awake while still sitting on the couch or in the pew. No, this hope is about rising up and beating our swords into plowshare and our spears into pruning hooks.
And if you don’t mind, allow me to translate swords and spears for 2019: we must stay awake and conscious so that we can transform our sword of greed into plowshares of generosity; awake and conscious and rising up so that we can redirect our spear of consumption into our pruning hook of compassion; awake and conscious and rising up so that we can overcome our sword of fear so that our love of power can be reborn as the plowshare power of love; awake and conscious and rising up so that we can arouse from our spear of apathy and fall in love with the pruning hook of what is; awake and conscious and rising up of our sword of lies so that we may grow into plowshares of truth, awake and conscious and rising up of how our spear of needing to be important serves no one, but our need to belong to one another serves us all; awake and conscious and rising up of our own sword of darkness so that we might amplify the light; awake and conscious and rising up so that we might dare to defy our sword of despair and be the pruning hook of the hope we seek; awake and conscious so that we might not only wake, but rise.
I titled this sermon The Year for Absurdly Audacious Acts. To birth hope in our world we will need to rise up and proclaim this year, the year for absurdly audacious acts. If we take on the task of birthing hope in our world by keeping awake and rising up, the world will look upon us as absurd and foolish for certain just like they looked upon Jesus. So grow some thick skin people of faith. If we take on the task of birthing hope in our world we will seek out those audacious acts of faith that work to turn detention centers into welcome centers, shelters into homes, prisons into state of the art schools, and our houses of worship into places of sanctuary and belonging for all God’s children.
So my fellow resisters, dissenters, and those still willing to birth hope: let us proclaim this church year 2019-2020 the year for absurdly audacious acts. And in so doing, may we find favor with the one who has come, is coming now, and will come again and again and again.
