Homily for the First Sunday of Advent 29 November 2015
Jesus said, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.” Luke 21:26a
“Wh-e-e-e-e-re will it enduh?” Pastor
Lovejoy’s lament.
Pastor Timothy Lovejoy, The Simpsons’ American Reformed Presbylutheran minister of The
First Church of Springfield. Rueful he is about many things, not the least of
which is the “tall Episcopal church across the street.” Where will it end?
Where will
it end? Or how ─ with a bang or
a whimper? Or when: today, tomorrow … when you least expect it … when Michele
Bachmann pronounces “any moment now” or the next fundie Svengali to come along
purports to pinpoint the year, the day, the hour of The End ─ just in time to cash your tax-free gift?
Where? How? When? They’re pretty much all
the same question. And, in the run-up to Christmas, it’s the question the
Season of Advent poses and struggles to answer, or, at the very least, brings
to our attention. Just where, when, how will it end?
And what is “it” anyway? The planet? The
universe? The lives and cultures, the parties and politics, the religious
systems (or lack of them) of people we don’t happen to agree with?
If you follow the whipped-up hysteria of
fundamentalists of any stripe, The End of everything-as we-know-it is the point
when God sees everything and everyone going to hell in a handbasket, and God
says, “Enough is enough! It’s payback time!”
Or, if you prefer a more purely secular
approach: Galaxies and stars, solar systems, planets and moons come and go.
When is The End for our speck in a sea of stars?
Or, as some suggest, is The End merely our
own, personal end? Length of days depleted. Mortality, when we must yield ─ freely or kicking and screaming ─ to the regrettable inevitable: death by
dying.
But whatever we think is the focus and scope
of finitude, we most likely can settle on one issue: In a cause-and-effect
universe, The End surely can’t just come out of the blue. There are data and
phenomena ─ what edgy religious
folk call “signs” ─ leading up to The End. Even Jesus seems to advance the idea
of signposts along the way, pointing to a “time appointed.” And it doesn’t look
pretty.
But most of the doom-and-gloom soundbites these days are sucked up by “The sky is falling! Jesus is coming soon! Look busy!” apocalypticism. It reads as “We are living in the End Times.” This is just clock-ticking talk. But there’s a lot of it.
For example ─ to be really immediate (and, to a certain extent, trivial) ─ never mind Friday’s mass shooting at the
Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. Never mind the carnage in Paris,
Beirut, Egypt, and Mali. The problem, some imaginatively suggest, is Black
Friday. They charge that Black Friday is proof we’re in the End Times. If you
fall for this, don’t count on being around to return anything after Christmas, or
even paying off your shop-till-you-drop credit card.
That’s the opinion of ‘The End Times
Prophecy Report.’ A graphic on their website gloomily trumpets, “Black Friday:
Tis the Season of Greed. “It’s a recipe,” they scowl,“for the brawls,
fistfights, and other displays of extreme greed featured on Black Friday, the
most appropriately-named day of the year.”
So, on the
greed-as-greed front, I’m with ‘The End Times Prophecy Report.’ But then, as
you can imagine, they go off the rails and we part company. “Black Friday,”
they agitate, “is just another spectator sport for apostate church-goers who
prefer to keep alive the lie that they are Christians.”
Okay … I had never
thought of looking at it that way. I thought Black Friday was a way for
retailers to get a head-of-steam going into the cash-cow holiday season.
But for the
apocalyptical crowd, shopping apostasy is prelude. Prelude to The End. Duly
noted.
And yet, earlier this
weekend, I, too was thinking, “Where will it end?” … not in an End Times sense,
but in a “how low can we go,” face-palm take when I was hit with the headline: “Cards
Against Humanity Makes $71K on Black Friday by Selling Absolutely Nothing.”
Cards Against Humanity.
It markets itself as a “party game for horrible people.” This billing is, of
course, all part of the fun … because it is wildly popular, attaining cult
status … perhaps because its fill-in-the-blank format lampoons circumspect
speech by making the players say truly outlandish things ─ things they would never dream of saying in polite ─ and educated ─ company to get points.
The tone starts with
their FAQ sheet. Asked a perfectly reasonable question, they’re dismissive. Basically,
“If that’s your question, you’re too stupid to play this game.”
The point is to make
the game humiliating, embarrassing, and self-revealing. Because it’s such
don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously fun, I doubt Cards Against Humanity has been
much of a hit among the End Times crowd … except when it comes to knocking the
legs right out from under Black Friday. That’s because for all-day Black
Friday, Cards Against Humanity offered a holiday deal unlike any other. Shell
out $5 … and get nothing in return ─ absolutely nothing (zero, zip, nada).
How much money did they
make in Black Friday sales? Over $71K from roughly 11,200 “buyers.” Modest in
comparison to the take of big-box stores. But that $71K: that’s where it gets
interesting. And gives a bit of insight into a different reading of The End
than the End Timers try to pawn off, or any of the other options we’ve listed
so far.
In other words, that
$71K could help us understand how God
might answer “Where will it end?”
Now, Cards Against
Humanity is known for their charitable fundraising. Over $4 million so far,
including full-ride scholarships to women getting degrees in science.
But this year, who got
the money, the $71K-plus? From
their website: “We're happy to announce that this time … we kept it all.”
Greed to the End
Timers’ tune of apostasy? Not quite.
Sure, there’s team
member Amy. She used some of the money to pay off 1.5 percent of her $100K-plus
student debt. And she bought a PlayStation or two. But she earmarked most of
her take for charity: the Wilderness Society and the Greater Chicago Book
Depository.
And Henry. Among other
gifts for himself, Henry set aside a big bundle for dinner-for-two at an
obscenely swanky Chicago restaurant with the plea, “Oh God, please, someone eat
fancy food with me!” By his own admission, Henry would be pathetic, except he
also gave most of his share to DonorsChoose.org (they purchase essential
supplies and computers for students and schools). He also gave generously to
Planned Parenthood.
Matt used his haul to purchase
a MacBook Pro with Retina Display, but most ($2.5K) he gave to Planned
Parenthood.
You get the idea.
Obviously, many of the spending decisions were made in the aftermath of the
mass shooting at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs on Friday.
But the trend here is:
They made their giving decisions with an eye toward changing the future ─ positively
─ for their neighbor … revealing the truth that Cards Against
Humanity isn’t anti-humanity … but pro-people, pro-planet, pro-aware, pro-facts, pro-science … pro-sanity!
Giving us pause to wonder, when we look at the raw and soaring hope that
underpins their giving patterns, “What if The End isn’t all fire and smoke,
earthquakes and hail, plague and pestilence?”
What if The End Jesus is talking about ─ once you get past all the astrophysics and seismic predictions designed
to get our attention ─ what if
Jesus’ point isn’t fear and
trembling, but longing and action: a New Advent of charity … sparked with
urgency? In other words, taking ─ on a dare ─ Jesus’
challenge to love, and embracing his urgency to make an end to all the stuff
that diminishes our lives and the lives of our neighbors.
Meaning, an end ─ The
End ─ achieved not by the
impatient and violence-laced intervention of a “launch-the-auto-destruct-sequence”
God, but by the persuasive movement of God’s Spirit in the hearts, heads, and
hands of men and women everywhere … outstretched toward our elbows-rubbing
neighbors, as well as our lumbering neighbor, the planet.
What if The End, then, is a realization ─ our own
realization ─ long past
realized by God ─ that “enough is enough!” As the Italians would say, “Basta!” Enough!
Read: Women and men mowed down in the
everyday course of seeking basic ─ and legal ─ healthcare.
Enough is enough!
Guns ─ military-grade assault rifles ─ everywhere. Enough is enough!
Children ─ all over the planet and in this, the most resource-rich country on
earth ─ going to bed hungry …
getting up in the morning, hungry … enduring the mid-day … hungry. Enough is
enough!
Black people and other minorities targeted
by cops for harassment, unwarranted arrest, choked, gunned-down to the point
that they’re forced to conclude their lives don’t matter. Enough is enough!
Immigrant neighbors labeled by
fact-deficient and morally-bankrupt demagogues as rapists, drug dealers, and
criminals. Enough is enough!
Theatregoers enjoying the pleasures of the
City of Light ─ any city or
place ─ cut down and blown to
smithereens by abyss-visioned extremists. Enough is enough!
Where, then, will it end — the
“fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world”?
It ends the moment we believe that an end in
fire and smoke isn’t inevitable.
It ends the moment we let sanity, critical
thinking, cool heads, charity, action, God’s New-Advent Spirit prevail.
It ends the moment we realize the Apocalypse isn’t near … but the need to say with finality,
“Enough is enough!” is now.
Amen.