Matthew 24:36-44
36“But
about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the
Son, but only the Father. 37For as
the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38For as
in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and
giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39and
they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be
the coming of the Son of Man. 40Then
two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41Two
women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be
left. 42Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord
is coming. 43But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what
part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would
not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore
you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
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I met one
of my dearest friends for lunch on Tuesday in Cartersville, which means that I
spent much of the day Tuesday driving in the blinding rain, trying not to die.
It is stressful, navigating through that kind of weather, with eighteen
wheelers weaving in and out of their lanes, poorly lit road signs and streets filled
with other flustered drivers. It’s enough to get you so worked up that you
can’t focus upon anything other than your own predicament, that which is
happening inside your own head.
And it was
on the way home that I turned the radio to NPR, as is my habit, hoping for some
peaceful music to calm my frayed nerves. The host of the program announced that
the next song would be a piano piece by Franz Liszt entitled “Transcendental
Etude Number 5,” which he described as one of the fastest-paced and most
difficult pieces in all of classical music. I would only add that it is also
one of the most stressful. As the pianist played notes all over the keyboard,
it was all I could do to keep from driving all over the road.
I’d have
reached for the radio dial to change it, but for the fact that the only things
keeping me alive were my eyes glued to the road, and fortunately Transcendental
Etude Number 5 was a short piece, and the announcer began to introduce the next
song, a Scottish ballad called “Lament for Mulroy.”
And I have
to tell you, I’m a little embarrassed by this, because it shouldn’t be so, but
as the song started, and as the violin began to play, it was if I had never
heard beauty before this moment. It was as if the violinist were magic, as if
he were making the instrument make sounds ten times more beautiful than
anything I’d ever heard before.
Here, I was
stuck on myself and my own predicament, pinned down in the driver’s seat, and it
was as if the fullness of God’s love came through the radio, and it hit me like
a ton of bricks: such beauty, such art. That kind of thing will grab hold of
your heart, if you’ll let it. It’s enough to lift you out of your seat and pull
you straight into the presence of God.
Has that
ever happened to you? Have you ever found yourself pulled into the presence of
God? Is there something in your life, a piece of music, a memory, something to
remind you that God is with us?
I had the opportunity to visit France for
the first time about ten years ago. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to
visit Paris, but it is gorgeous, of course, and full of history. I did the
usual tourist thing, looking through museums and visiting the regular sites.
And I spent much of one day at the Louvre, which of course is the grand Museum
of Paris. They say that if you spend eight seconds looking at each of the
pieces in the Louvre, you will be there for some number of decades. It is full
of precious art.
After I toured the Louvre, almost as an
afterthought, I went to visit the Musee de Orsay, which is a museum nearby,
much smaller than the Louvre, but filled with Impressionist pieces. I'm not
much of an art historian and so I don’t feel strongly about much art, but I
have never much been moved by Impressionism, by folks like van Gogh and Manet. And
so I was almost rushing through the museum, because I had been to the Louvre already
so there wasn't much here to move me. But I'll never forget coming up an
escalator at the Musee de Orsay and being greeted by what has become my
reminder.
There, on the wall, was a painting that
nobody seemed to care much about, but it grabbed ahold of me and wouldn’t let
me go. It was called the Floor Scrapers by the otherwise forgettable
Impresisonist artist Gustave Caillebotte. He was more famous for collecting
other arists’ work than creating his own, and yet, on a wall in the Musee de
Orsay, I found my reminder that God breaks through the work of even the most
pedestrian of artists, that Christ is continually born anew, and that God is
with us. I don’t know why that painting grabbed me, but it did, and it holds my
heart, still. That kind of beauty grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go, and if
you aren’t careful, you know, if you don’t fill your days with meaningless
tasks and your life with an abundance of possessions, you may find yourself in
the predicament of constantly watching for God. Thankfully, I’m pretty busy, so
I don’t have to worry about that sort of thing. I have tasks and possessions
aplenty. That’s a lot for God to break through, and thank goodness, you know,
because that’s a pretty hefty responsibility, to constantly find yourself in
the presence of God.
But, even still, I crave it. I crave that
presence. Do you?
A few years ago, I was craving that
feeling so bad that I decided to go to Uganda. My wife and I were kicking
around places to lead our next mission trip, and we decided that our plates
were so full, that we were so stuck on our own stuff, that it was time to do
something radical about it. So we gathered the troops and did the work of preparing
for a mission trip to Uganda, to a school outside Kampala called the Humble
School, a place for children whose lives had been affected by HIV/AIDS and
poverty, a place where many children had no parents.
It was a
marvelous, difficult, beautiful, life-giving trip. Oh, how we were blessed, as
we played with the children who lived at that school, as we heard their
heartbreaking stories of illness and loss, as we played soccer with them and as
we let them play with our cameras. One day of our trip was a national
holiday—International Women’s Day, which we ought to celebrate here, if you ask
me—but it was a holiday, so there was no class. The teachers came down to help
us move bricks at the dormitory we were building, fireman style, with a chain
of people tossing bricks, one after another, until the entire pile had been
moved. The teachers came to help, and the children followed, because they stood
to benefit from the building of the dorm, and they wanted to help in whatever small
way they could. So the children who were strong enough and the teachers
intermingled with the mission team, and for an hour or so the kingdom of God
was present on earth, passing those bricks, one after another, learning one
another’s work songs, tossing bricks down the line. And I got so into the work
that I almost didn’t notice that behind us, in a smaller line, there stood a
group of small children, too small to pass the heavy bricks, but wanting to
help. These small children found a small pile of pebbles, and they stood behind
us, lined up, about 10 of them, taking a pebble from the pile, passing it
along, passing it down, until they reached the end of the line where they would
pile them up.
Watching
that, watching God break through time and space and show up like that, it was
Christmas all over again, not the kind of Christmas that is full of wrapping
paper and candy, but the kind of Christmas that involves a birth, an inbreaking
of the divine into our lives, a reminder that God is with us, even when we
forget to look.
It was
Christmas, even without the perfect tree, or the perfect gift, or the perfect
family, and it is no surprise, really, because I’ve found that the pursuit of
the perfect Christmas is MUCH more about me than it is about Jesus, because the
first Christmas, of course, was anything but perfect. It’s almost cliché to
talk about it this way, but that’s just because we’re so resistant to the truth
of the Christmas story that we call it cliché so that the truth leaves us
alone. And yet it is the case that the first Christmas happened in the cold,
outside, in a barn, with an unwed mother and a child who was born among animals
and placed in a feed trough to sleep. The beauty of that scene cannot be
replicated in a plastic trinket from Big Lots. It cannot be contained in our
own traditions, especially when they distract us from that which we are
allegedly celebrating. The beauty of the nativity is the kind of beauty that
comes when you look for it, or, if you are lucky, the kind of beauty that comes
to you on a cold, rainy day, the kind of beauty that hits you like a ton of
bricks and reminds you of something greater, something more real than your own
problems, your own issues, your own baggage you bring with you to the holidays.
It’s the
kind of beauty that will break through occasionally, merely because it’s more
powerful than any of the rest of the things with which we fill our days. But if
you don’t look for it, it will be relegated to an occasional thing, a periodic
“aha” moment that leaves as fast as it comes. But if you watch, if you keep
awake, you will find your life awash in beauty, for you will notice God.
Now, the
thing about noticing God is that it is really hard to do when neon “sale” signs
are flashing in your eyes, when the first thing I see in the morning when I
open my email is a list of the incredible deals that could be mine if the price
is right. It is really hard to do when you are busy making your home perfect,
absolutely perfect, unfailingly perfect. Noticing God is really hard to
do—borderline impossible—when you’re working harder to make more money or
spinning your wheels to find the perfect gift, as if the perfect gift is what
brings happiness. None of these things are the places you’ll find God; in fact,
these things may well be the exact opposite of Christmas, for they are things
that exist to keep you from noticing.
It ought
not require a near-death driving experience, or a trip to Paris, or a week in
Uganda. It ought to happen right here, right now, and in all the right heres
and right nows of life, for the promise of Christmas is that God is with us,
always! How dare we only notice when it is convenient for us, especially in a
season that is dedicated to the birth of Jesus Christ. Rather than watching out
for God in our everyday lives,, we act as if Jesus spent the month of December
celebrating my birthday and that I ought to celebrate me, too.
It is one
of the gifts Christmas gives that even in the midst of everything with which I
fill my life, all the things I use to make me feel like a full, contented
person, even in the midst of that, God breaks through. And when that happens I
am reminded that it is not my own fulfillment I should be looking for. I should
be looking for God rather than looking to fulfill myself. I should be looking for those times in which God is at work, because
keeping watch is infinitely more life-giving than staring at my own navel.
So, in this
season, keep watch. Be ready. Be on the lookout for Christmas, for Christ to be
born again in you. Even in the midst of the holiday rush, do not let yourself
be persuaded that this is all about decorating the house or finding that
perfect gift. Don’t believe it when you see the sign in WalMart advertising
that you can get More Christmas For Your Money. Christmas doesn’t cost money.
It just requires opening your eyes to the birth of Jesus all around you.
So keep
watch, for just as the great flood in Noah’s day surprised those who were
similarly distracted , so, too, will God break through the veil between heaven
and earth, and we will find ourselves surrounded in love. So, too, will God
arrive, if not because of our preparations, then in spite of them. And yet, God
is already here. So keep watch, keep watch.
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