Sleepwalking

Matthew 24:36-44

‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But 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.

My first Advent here with you all was a strange one. The church was empty except for Jan, we were still hunkering down awaiting the promised vaccines, it wasn’t necessarily the most joyful, hopeful time. But I remember that Advent made me think of some friends I had from Philly who were German. They had talked about how in Germany, Christmas is still a deeply religious holiday, and it is quiet, solemn, serious. Now Yves and Franziska loved American Christmas, as they weren’t religious people, so American Christmas was a very fun culture shock for them. And, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a knock against Yves of Franziska, and this isn’t a knock against the secular joy of Christmas— I love lights and trees and secular Christmas songs, I do love the joy and the brightness of Christmas, but I think that first real pandemic Advent did force us to slow down, to really experience the quiet and the contemplative nature that Advent is ultimately really about. It took away so many distractions, so much noise and materialism. It forced many of us to just kind of be—to sit with the dark and the quiet, to be alert to our immediate surroundings, and there was something really beautiful and profound about that Advent.

I think I’ve now quoted this essay from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in all of my sermons for the First Sunday in Advent, but you know, I think it bears repeating, so I dunno, I guess this is a new first Sunday of Avent tradition. Bonhoeffer writes:

Christ is…knocking. It is not Christmas yet. But it is also not the great final Advent, the final coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate goes the longing for the final Advent, where it says, “Behold I make all things new.” Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life, however, is Advent—that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: “On earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.” Learn to wait, because he has promised to come.

This final Advent that Bonhoeffer talks about—that’s what we’re reading about today. And that might seem strange, a little counterproductive to be reading about the second and final coming of Christ when we’re building up to the first. But I think it puts things in perspective. Because it’s easy to kind of disregard this idea of waiting and quiet contemplation during the rest of the year, and only focus on it during Christmastime. But never forget that our whole lives are Advent—our whole lives are discerning and working and waiting for that perfect earth as it is in heaven. And that’s why having that quiet, contemplative Advent two years ago was so formative, for me, at least—it really brought me back to what Christmas and Advent was always supposed to be, it really reframed things for me. I began to really take advantage of the quiet, of the darkness, of the peacefulness of this season instead of being distracted and consumed by presents, travel plans, finding pet-sitters…

But this passage, I think, is a little anxiety-inducing, right? People seemingly being raptured away, never knowing when this day is going to come, always having to be on your toes… on the surface it doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with the quiet, relaxed contemplative vibes I was just reminiscing about. And I think we sometimes have a tendency to look at things as very black or white—I think when we read a passage like this, it may fill us with anxiety, and we could find ourselves constantly walking on eggshells, constantly on edge, worrying that the end-times are going to come in a powerful blast and so we always be on our toes. Or, we could look at it another way—and I think this is probably the way most of us rational, skeptical New Englanders will look at it—we might just kind of brush it off as dramatic, as a scare tactic, and we might not pay much attention to it at all, leaving us at risk of maybe being a little too relaxed, and therefore more easily distracted by the things that just don’t really matter. But there’s some gray area; there’s a happy medium here. We don’t have to be wholly consumed by anxiety, and we also don’t have to fall prey to cynicism or indifference to these kind of fantastical words.

And the reason I think there is a happy medium here is this section of the passage that reads, “…two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.” Jesus doesn’t say exactly why one is taken and one is not; but the implication is that one of the two in each of these pairs had their priorities straight, and the other didn’t. Even though they were both doing the same thing in the moment, the same actions, the same job, one of them must have been living a quieter, more humble, more attentive, more intentional life. This, I believe, means Jesus isn’t telling us to stop doing our jobs, to forget about the basic needs and responsibilities of our modern lives; but he is telling us that while we perform the everyday tasks required of us, we must also leave room for awareness and peace of mind that allows us to pay attention to things in this world that are deeper than our daily jobs and chores.

Now, I don’t know if many of you have been following the absolute insanity of the Elon Musk Twitter drama that’s been going on the past couple weeks, but I admit, I was pretty enraptured with it for a while. Well a couple weeks ago, in the wake of mass layoffs, Musk sent out an email to remaining Twitter employees about his “Twitter 2.0” standards. He told employees that they will need to be “extremely hardcore,” that they would need to work “long hours at high intensity,” and that “only exceptional performance would constitute a passing grade.” This ultimatum prompted a wave of resignations. Those who resigned, I believe, are people who had their priorities straight. What is life if you’re fully consumed by the whims of your egomaniac boss? What kind of joy and hope can you find in life if it’s implied that your job performance at a social media corporation is the ultimate measure of worth? What kinds of wonderful moments will you miss out on if you’re completely overwhelmed by the ridiculous requirements of a job that completely isolate you from family and friends?

Now, this Musk-Twitter example is extreme, no doubt, but as I’ve talked about before, we sadly live in a world that values wealth, materialism, and ego above all that really matters—and when we put so much value in these, to put it bluntly, sinful things, we lose sight of what matters; we get distracted from what matters. So we are constantly in state of heightened anxiety, but we’re not anxious for some glorious second coming—we’re anxious about whether or not we’ll make enough money to impress everyone on Christmas, we’re anxious about whether or not our bosses will approve of our work performance if we didn’t have it in us to go above and beyond, to be “extremely hardcore.” And Church—this is how we miss out. This is how we’ll be caught asleep when the time comes; we won’t be literally asleep. We’ll be zombies, sleepwalking through life for a society that gives worth and value to all the wrong things. Today, maybe this passage would read, “There will be two in an office building, coding; one will be taken, and one will be left.”

We have to do our jobs, we have to food on the table for ourselves and our families, there is no getting around that, and we won’t be punished for not living some kind of monastic, ascetic life of pure deprivation. But again—there’s a middle ground here between that and between being totally consumed with the secular, materialistic concerns of the world in which we live.

In therapy a couple weeks ago, I was talking to my therapist about strategies of sort of… dealing with certain family members, certain questions, things that have a tendency to exacerbate my anxiety. My therapist asked me about my private prayer or mediative life, and, as usual, I shamefully admitted that I am so, so bad at maintaining a private prayer life. But I did realize that that closest I come to cultivating an intentional time of contemplation is when I’m walking in the woods behind my house. My therapist asked me how I feel when I get to a good state of mind during my hikes, and I said, that I feel both relaxed and alert at the same time. As someone who does suffer from anxiety, this initially seemed like a contradiction to me, because I associate alertness with a sort of hyper-vigilance that is anything but relaxed. But I now realize that being relaxed and alert at the same time is not only not a contradiction, but it’s kind of the ideal—especially in the context of today’s scripture reading.

There was a 2018 study I found when researching this “alert-but-relaxed” feeling that tracked the effects of taking a 15-minute walk through a bamboo forest vs. a 15-minute walk in a city. The measurement that caught my eye most of this study was one that measured both attention and relaxation. In both cases the participant who walked through the bamboo forest scored about 10 points higher in both categories than the city walker. [i]

So what this says to me is that we need to make time in our lives to take a deep breath, to take a break, to slow down, and to get to that relaxed-but-alert feeling. And we can’t get to that point if we don’t make time in our days to stop and just be. If we don’t make time to reconnect with the world and our surroundings, we’ll find ourselves sleepwalking through life, vulnerable to this thief in the night that Jesus talks about it—that thief being Jesus himself, come again. It may seem strange to think of Jesus as a thief, even in metaphorical terms, but remember—Jesus comes to turn the world upside down. And for those who have a lot to lose, for the Elon Musks of the world, an earth as it is in heaven will feel like a loss—it will be a loss of power and a loss of control. But for the people who were ready, who were awake and alert—the people who found the time to appreciate the things around them that really matter: the love of family or friends; practicing kindness and compassion, taking the time to truly appreciate the world around them—those are the ones who have everything to gain.  

So while today’s scripture passage may seem kind of apocalyptic and anxiety-inducing, remember—Jesus isn’t telling us we have to drop everything in our lives and tremble in fear worrying about this second coming—after all, Jesus doesn’t even know when it’s going to happen! We can live our lives, we will continue to do our jobs, to provide for our families; and we can even continue to take pleasure in the secular joys of this season. But in the midst of the holiday chaos and our busy jobs and travel plans, we have to do our best to make time to appreciate and notice the things in life that really matter. And maybe we do that by walking in the woods; maybe we do that by practicing mindfulness meditation, something that has been proven to improve mood and alertness; maybe we do that by setting aside a quiet time for prayer and little talks with God. There are no wrong answers here. Any of these actions will help us to be ready for when that great final Advent comes. Any of these actions will make it so that we won’t be sleepwalking through life, oblivious to the things that really matter in this world.

I don’t know about you all, but I remember as a kid, there was this huge letdown when my parents would finally take down the Christmas tree. This season of hope was over, and it was back to the usual routine. Well today’s passage is a reminder that our whole lives our Advent—that it’s not just the next four weeks where we wait in quiet anticipation. This hope, this anticipation— they last our whole lives. We always have something to look forward to, if we just slow down; if we just pay attention. Amen.  

[i] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5896408/