Not Waiting Around
Photo by Rido81, Envato
A colleague of mine, a Lutheran Pastor named Heidi Neumark was talking on the telephone when her four-year-old granddaughter, named Mia overheard her. Pastor Neumark was visiting Mia and her family when she took a call from someone back at the church she serves in Manhattan. Mia overheard Pastor Neumark talking about how someone had drunkenly fallen asleep at the top of the outside steps which lead to the church’s shelter for homeless trans youth – youth who had been kicked out of their homes by families unwilling to accept them. The sleeping, intoxicated man was blocking the steps that led down into the shelter. (This story comes from the latest issue of the Christian Century.)
Mia, the granddaughter, hearing just one side of the conversation, only heard that the man was sleeping in an odd place. “Oma, (her name for her grandmother) where is the man sleeping?” Mia asked her grandmother. Her grandmother told her the man was sleeping on the step. “Why is he sleeping there?” Mia asked. Her grandmother tried to explain it to her. “Mia was silent. I figured she’d moved on, but no…” Oma,” she finally said, “it was a cozy step.” Pastor Neumark writes, “The top step of the stairway had to be cozy, because Mia could not imagine anybody sleeping out in the cold on a hard, rectangle of concrete.
In Mia’s four-year-old world, there is no such thing as homelessness. In Mia’s four-year-old world there is no such thing as an uncomfortable, cold place to sleep. In Mia’s four-year-old world, there exists – for everyone, EVERYONE only what she knows – a warm, bed into which she gets tucked every night safely and lovingly.
That’s the way the world should be yet we all know what the world is really like. Today, Advent begins – the short four-week season of the church year that serves to remind us that we straddle the world as it is and the world as it should be, while never fully being home on either side of those worlds. We have one foot in the world as God intended it to be – you know, like how Mia imagines everyone goes to sleep at night while at the same time we have one foot in the world as God never intended it to be – a broken world in which many of you spend hours each week or each month preparing and delivering food to people who are without homes and who may be the next ones to sleep on that slab of concrete at the top of the stairs leading to the homeless shelter for rejected trans youth.
Can you imagine a world in which God intended any child of God to sleep on a cold, rectangular slap of concrete? Mia, the four-year-old absolutely cannot, thank God. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way God intends it to be until…until…until…we see with our own eyes or hear about or read about another 4-year-old, not Mia, but another 4-year-old who is laying down at night in a card-board box outside in the cold or who is sleeping in a tent in a Palestinian refugee camp or who is hiking through the jungle in Central America fleeing with her mother their home in Venezuela which is no longer a safe place to live. That’s not the way God intends it to be, and that’s the two worlds of Advent – how God intends us to live and how God weeps over such a broken creation.
The season of Advent straddles two worlds – the as-it-is world and the world as our benevolent God intended and, yes, the world as it will be when the Son of Man comes again. But Matthew, the gospel writer, sends us a powerful message this morning and that is this – we are called not just to be vigilant and be ready for the second coming of Christ as our text alludes, but we are called to be vigilant and ready right now to usher in the kingdom right here, right now.”
What does it mean to usher in the kingdom here and now? It means that we act so that there are fewer and fewer children sleeping on the streets or in living in camps or fleeing their homes. We are called not to wait around for the second coming of Jesus. Rather we are called to introduce Jesus through our words and actions to those who are suffering.
Advent is the season in which we straddle two different worlds – the world as it is and the world as God intends it to be. As you well know, about 8 days ago a heavily armed man in tactical gear entered the Q night club in Colorado Springs and opened fired killing 5 people. It looks like these 5 people were gunned down in cold blood simply because the shooter hated people who were different from him. That’s the way the world is. That’s our foot in one world.
Then last Monday evening, here at Holy Trinity for the Transgender Day of Remembrance Service we gathered for a very simple reason – to love one another – and to remember those who were killed because someone else hated. The power of your love, our love cannot be overstated for what we created here last Monday evening is the way God intended the world to be. The other world in which we have a foot. The power of love through beautiful music and words and prayer and food.
The graciousness and goodness of hospitality cannot be overlooked for such gospel-inspired hospitality creates community – the beloved community God intends us to be. It was amazing who God through you brought together. High school students from the area. College students from Stonehill. Elected government officials. Community leaders. Many who had never stepped foot into this place, and some just looking for a safe and caring place that would welcome them just as they are.
Listen to the words from St. Paul in today’s second lesson. He is speaking to us. He is affirming what we are all about: “Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now that when we became believers.” In other words, we are not sitting around holding vigil until Christ comes again. We are not distracted by what may or may not happen in the future when Jesus comes again. We are about the work of salvation right here and right now. St. Paul goes on to say, “the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the words of darkness and put on the armor of light…put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
In other words, don’t let hate have the last word. Don’t let violence and poverty be normalized. The day is near. In fact, it is here. One of the toughest things about being hospitalized for almost a week as I was last week is that in an instant I was cut off from community. I was cut-off from the people I love. Yes, there are visiting hours but that’s not the same. I was separated from all of you. I had to cancel my flight to Milwaukee to attend my grandson Charlie’s first birthday party. That isolation is the dark side – one foot in the world as it is.
But then something remarkable happened in the hospital. A new community of healers was formed around me. Doctors and nurses and technicians and chaplains and food service workers and everyone with their own specialty focused on one thing –healing! Coming together, forming community for one purpose – the purpose of healing. Community coming together for healing. Just like the TDOR service. Just like our church. Just like your family. Just like the communities in which we live.
As you engage in all the preparations for Christmas how will your family, your relationships be a source of healing and hope and love among yourselves? How will Jesus show up – not in some distant future apocalypse, but how will Jesus show up in and through you – for isn’t that exactly why we go through all these preparations – to be on alert for how Jesus shows up – just as Jesus showed up as an infant in a manger so long ago?
That’s the world God intends – a world in which Jesus shows up for the purpose of healing, for the purpose of giving us hope, for the purpose of loving one another. Listen to Paul’s words, “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.” My dear sisters and brothers, the day is here! Amen.