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The Thief in the Night
November 28, 2004 Advent 1
Isaiah 2:1-5, Romans 12:11-14, Matthew 24:35-44
A Sermon by the Rev. Elice Higginbotham
For the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Chappaqua, New York
William H. Willimon, for many years chaplain at Duke University, preacher and religious commentator of renown, and author of the curriculum which we are using this year with our students in Confirmation Preparation, tells this story from his own ministry experience:
She had been hit with a terrible crisis that seemed totally to devastate her, even though hers was a crisis that was not that unusual. Her husband died at 52. His death seemed to take a peculiarly high toll upon her. For days after the funeral she could not eat, sleep, or function. A doctor told her she was in the grip of "psychotic grief," deep grief that is a sort of sickness.
"Poor thing," noted an older woman in our congregation, "it's not only that a husband has died, it's that her husband has died."
I asked her to explain.
"Marilyn always kept the perfect house, had perfect children, a perfect life. Unfortunately, life isn't perfect. Now she knows. She thought she had everything under control."
***
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was driving out of a restaurant parking lot, having just concluded a monthly breakfast meeting with the pastors of United Church of Christ churches in Springfield, Ohio - it was part of my denominational staff work at that time. My husband, Max, was in New York. My cell phone rang just as I was trying to make a rather challenging left hand turn from the parking lot onto a major city street. So, driving one-handed in rush-hour traffic, I did not comprehend, or take much time to figure out the implications when Max said, "a plane crashed into the World Trade Center." So I spent a few seconds feeling bad about the terrible accident, told Max to take care of himself, and drove on toward my next appointment. It was several minutes before it occurred that Max doesn't usually call me long distance about plane crashes, and maybe I ought to turn on the radio... and the rest is history.
Instead of the quickie visit he had planned, Max stayed on in New York for several days, even though he was still serving an interim pastorate in a small congregation in Ohio. (Yes, he could have gotten out of the city the next day because he was driving, and not confined by airport closures.) But he stayed. He stayed partly because he is a minister, and his instinct in a crisis is to minister. He snapped on a clerical collar and went down to Ground Zero before it was completely cordoned off, and then went to a hospital, and in both places offered his pastoral services to stunned, horrified, grief-stricken victims whom he encountered. But he also stayed in New York - we both know this, deep in our hearts - he stayed because New York is home. Home was convulsed in shock. You don't abandon home in a crisis.
I wriggled with discomfort throughout those long, long days before Max finally drove back to Ohio. He was home, and I was not. I needed to be with him. But most of all, I needed to be home. Somehow, I was suffused with an irrational, but absolutely undeniable, feeling that "I should have been there!" Why should I have been here? Could I have controlled events? Would something, somehow have been less devastating - to me, or to anyone else - if I had been in New York City, instead of safely tucked away in southwest Ohio, on September 11? I felt out of control. I felt out of control of something I had no possibility of controlling!
***
Early last summer, a pastor departed First Congregational Church after a long tenure. The Rev. Tim Ives departed after a painful and uncertain period of questioning whether or not he was going to continue here as pastor. His departure was filled with conflict and contradiction, leaving a polarized, tired and worried congregation. Uppermost in every mind that cares about First Congregational Church is the unanswerable question: What will First Congregational Church become? Will it ever again be the church that I love? Will its preaching ever again truly speak to me? Will its worship, and program, and fellowship, and ministry ever be the source of pride and fulfillment and support and hope that I so long for in my church experience?
As a congregation, we are faced with vast, open-ended questions, and we don't know the answers. We could not control the pastor's ministry. Nor could we control his feelings, or ours, at his departure. Nor can we control the future that stretches before us.
***
Friends, all these examples of loss of control, and what to do about it, are just about as tough nuts to crack as preaching the scriptures we are given for this morning as good news.
[God] shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Well, now, yes, this is good... but is it news? Is it news for us? It may be what we desire and yearn for, but it is such a long way from our reality, isn't it? It is a vision we'd like to live up to, but how, in our world? Well, here's something that maybe we can relate to a little better:
For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.
Hm-m-m-m-m... God, and God's time, are coming, getting closer. And it sounds like, maybe, we don't want to be caught with our pants down? Or:
... 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. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Think about it. God is coming, when we least expect it, and we probably aren't ready. Like a thief. Like a thief, who breaks in, takes from us something that is valuable, and disrupts our lives. God is like - the burglar?... in the night? I don't know... I don't think that's a very comforting image. Is this good news? Is this good news of the Gospel of God about - our being out of control?
Well, yes, I'd like to suggest that maybe it is. The lessons given to us for this morning are very traditional ones for the beginning of the Advent season, the beginning of the period in our church year when we begin active, hopeful waiting for God's arrival, for our salvation to appear. And all of them tell us that, no, we are not in control. God is. This is God's time, and God's saving presence may be just as unexpected and surprising as... a fragile newborn infant. Who ever thought that would save the world, or make it a different place? Babies are cute, lots of joy, but ... change the world?
I think that all three of our lessons this morning are telling us that our "salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers." And that's not because the end of world is necessarily going to come tomorrow. It's because we never know when we may have the opportunity to discover good news when we least expect it.
If we had stayed awake for 24 hours for days and weeks on end, just in case the thief arrived to steal our valuables - would we have been ready, and saved ourselves? I doubt it. What we would have been was tired -- tired to death, with slow reflexes and poor judgement, not in condition to save anything. What the Gospel-writers has put in Jesus' mouth is a verbal image of the degree of change and upset that God's arrival, God's salvation, God's new world will bring to our lives. A profound awareness of the presence of God will be just as disruptive to our present modus operandi as... a thief in the night... as the toppling of Twin Towers and the toppling of our national image of ourselves... as the stressful departure of a pastor, leaving a church with unresolved issues among the members as to who we are, what we are as a church, where we are going, and what pastoral leadership will be needed to get us there.
But if our salvation is nearer to us now than when we first became believers, perhaps all that stress and tension represent the opportunity for us to find ourselves... to find within this divided body, a new unified body of believers... a renewed and united First Congregational Church. Advent is the season of active, hopeful waiting. I would like to suggest that a renewed and united First Congregational Church is worth waiting for. It is worth expecting, like Christmas.
Friends, each of our lessons for this morning tell us that we do not have control, but, rather, that the control belongs to God. We can respond to our lack of control in two ways: we can despair, because we simply can't do anything about it; or we can trust God - we can hopefully, actively trust God, and wait for God's possibilities to be fulfilled.
Well, I don't know about you, but it's not my job to opt for despair. It's not yours, either. Our job together is to hope, wait and trust, actively. Now, St. Paul said to new believers, struggling to understand how this new experience of God was going to affect their lives:
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 than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Now, I am not going to preach at you about reveling, drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness because, frankly, I don't think those are our problem. They may, indeed, be problems for some of us, but I don't think they're First Congregational Church's challenge right at this moment. Now... quarreling and jealousy... maybe? What do you think? Maybe a little closer to home. But, my point is, I think the scriptures are saying to us, do not keep doing the same old things, and expect to become a vibrant new church, where you are open to God changing your lives, and you are empowered to reach out and change the lives of others!
So here's my Advent plan for us, First Congregational Church, my plan for watchful, expectant, hopeful, active waiting for God's presence to be revealed among us in ways we may never have expected.
1) Stop and pray. Friends, we are so busy in this church, and never busier than in Advent. We decorate trees and sell trees, we have bazaar and Cookie Walk and Advent Workshop. We have a good time. We raise money for the church and for other worthy causes. Stop! Take time. Look at each other, and listen to each other, especially to those you don't like, understand, or trust. This Advent, this pre-Christmas season, pray for those in this congregation that you do not like, understand or trust. Here there are, right in this place, right now. Pray for them. By name.
2) Talk to each other. Talk about faith, about what you believe. Friends, I have noticed that we don't do that a lot as part of our church life. You do listen to me talk, for an hour or so each Sunday, and you do so with a fair degree of patience. But that's not the same as talking back and forth about faith, and with all our fellow Christians and seekers here. Are we afraid to? Do we fear we might offend someone? Do we fear we might have to examine what we believe, or have it challenged? Do we fear having to reveal something very intimate about ourselves to someone we don't quite trust? Friends, we will not create a trusting church unless we talk to each other about what we believe, and about the questions we have about our faith, for this is the only way we will grow - grow in depth and power of spirit, and believe me, without depth and power of spirit there is no point in our growing in numbers, or in dollars.
Now, I wasn't just a-kiddin' when I referred to my "Advent plan for First Congregational Church." I urge you to come to our Advent series of worship and conversations, called "Transition as a Sacred Journey." You may come Sunday afternoons at 4:00 p.m., or Wednesday evenings at 8:00 p.m. But whichever time you choose, what we're going to be doing is talking about our experiences in, and our feelings about our experiences in, First Congregational Church, and praying for ourselves and for each other. And I also urge you, if you're interested, to join me for a while after church in the Memorial Room, with your coffee hour refreshments, and we'll engage in Sermon Talk-back. This is a time for you to talk to me, and to each other, about the sermon - wherever that may take you. If you have a question about something that was said in the sermon, or have a completely different take on the scripture, or whatever... it's a chance to talk to each other about faith. So... you see I'm serious when I say, "Stop and pray" and "Talk to each other."
Friends, this time of stressful transition, uncertainty and anxiety at First Congregational Church... is God's time. It has come upon us, like a thief in the night, to disrupt our sleep and call into question our self-image. Beyond our control, it has happened. How do we apply the resources of our faith to this time? How do we wait actively, instead of passively and fearfully. Well, let's think about what we can, and cannot, control.
We cannot, for instance, control the amount of money that people will or will not pledge or give to the church's budget. We can control whether or not we welcome people, make them feel at home, cared for, taken seriously, that that this may be a place where they want to give their money.
We cannot control the amount of time people have, or the activities in which they choose to involve themselves. We can control the programs and the atmosphere we create, so that what we do meets real needs, so that this becomes a place where people need to be.
We cannot control, in the sense of predicting in advance, before the Pastoral Search Committee has done its huge labor of love, exactly who the next minister is going to be, exactly when s/he is going to arrive, or whether the congregation will like her/him over the long term. We can control the ministry that we are committed to doing, so that good candidates will know that they identify with it and want to offer us their leadership gifts.
We cannot control what people think, or believe. We can control our openness to listening to them. We can control our tolerance, our agreement to disagree agreeably, our respect for each others' opinions. We can control whether or not this is a place where no one need fear ostracism, or being talked about behind his/her back.
We cannot control whether we shall be a strong church or a weak church, a large church or a small church, or a rich church or a poor church. We can face our own vulnerability, and ask God to be with us, to give us trust and hope, that, strong, weak, large, small, rich, poor... we may be faithful. Amen.
Willimon, William, "Out of Control," in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 32, No. 4, Logos Publications, Inver Grove Heights, MN, p. 38.
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