Advent

Good Shepherd

December 2, 2007

"The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour" (Matthew 24:44)

When Henry David Thoreau, the author of "Walden Pond," was terminally ill, a friend tried to get him to express his thoughts on life-after-death. Thoreau replied, "One world at a time." It is a great blessing to be able to live in one world at a time: to be able to live fully and completely in the present moment. It is a great blessing to realize that the very best way to prepare ourselves to die is to live fully and completely now.

The words "eternal life" obviously have a future reference, but not always. There are a great many Scripture passages in which the words "eternal life" have a present reference. For example, in the Old Testament, although the people already had an awareness of the importance of the past and of the future, nevertheless they were very much a "now" people. This is beautifully expressed in the 118th Psalm which opens up by acknowledging God's Presence and His power and His love. Then it reaches a climax as the Psalmist says,

This is the day the Lord has made;

let us be glad and rejoice in it (Ps. 118:24).

Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today: this is the day the Lord has made. We get this feeling of "nowness" in the New Testament as well, and especially in the Gospel of John in which "eternal life" is the primary theme of Jesus' teaching. Here Jesus speaks of eternal life as a quality of life, not a dimension. He defines it clearly for us in His great prayer in the "upper room":

This is eternal life: to know You, the only true God

and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ (Jn. 17:3).

To know God, to love God, to experience His Presence with your whole being, this is the beginning of eternal life--and it is now. Many of us get caught up in the past, dreaming with Barbra Streisand about "The Way We Were." And many of us get caught up in the future, dreaming about the way we will be "when we retire" or "when the kids grow up." Or we get so caught up in the after-life that we are missing the present life. "We're so caught up in heaven that we're no earthly good" is the way an old song puts it. It is important that we be conscious of our Christian heritage, knowing that what we are now is rooted in what has come before. It is important also to be a people of hope in what is yet to come. But what is most important for us Christians is to be able to live deeply and fully in the present moment:

This is the day the Lord has made;

let us be glad and rejoice in it.

There was a small iron-working town where the mills were kept running day and night. The great steam-hammers, some of them weighing several tons, were going all the time, beating out huge masses of molten metal. All night long the sound reverberated through the streets of the village. But the townspeople had become so accustomed to the noise that they could sleep soundly through it. One night, the machinery broke down, the hammers suddenly stopped working, and nearly everyone in town immediately awoke. They had been awakened, unexpectedly, by the silence.

"Stay awake... The Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour," Jesus says in today's Gospel (Mt. 24:42, 44).

When would you least expect Him to come? Could it be that you are so buried in the past, dreaming about the way things were, or so wedded to the future, dreaming about the way things are going to be, that now is the time you would least expect Him to come? But today is the day the Lord has made. Today is the day in which to be glad and rejoice. Today is the day to shut down the turmoil in your anxious hearts, full of worry about the past and the future, and allow the blessed silence to awaken you to the Lord's presence in your life.

Scripture tells us that "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life" (1 Jn. 5:11-12).

Jesus said that He came that we might have life and have it abundantly. What does it look like in Holy Scripture, this life God gives us in Jesus Christ? It looks like acceptance, as experienced by a despised tax collector. It looks like forgiveness, as experienced by a woman who was about to be stoned by those who didn't understand such forgiveness. It looks like new meaning, as when a person who is estranged from her community comes to the well at mid-day to find a mysterious young Jew who tells her about the refreshing waters of eternal life. It looks like comfort and hope as experienced by two women who are weeping because their beloved brother is in the tomb.

It looks like hungry people sharing some loaves and fishes on a hillside; it looks like human need of all kinds being met: the lame leaping for joy, the blind receiving sight, the deaf hearing, the captives released, the dead brought to life again. It looks like a man going all out for another, holding nothing back for Himself, sacrificing Himself in affirmation of all of us, and then appearing on the third day as a stranger who is recognized in the simple act of breaking bread together.1

What does it look like, this life we have in Jesus? It looks like a scene that unfolded one night in a hospital:

A nurse escorted a tired, anxious young man to the bedside of an elderly man. "Your son is here," she whispered to the patient. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient's eyes opened. He was heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack and he dimly saw the young man standing by the side of his bed. He reached out his hand and the young man tightly wrapped his fingers around it, squeezing a message of encouragement. The nurse brought a chair next to the bedside. All through the night the young man sat holding the old man's hand and offering gentle words of hope. The dying man said nothing as he held tightly to his son. As dawn approached, the patient died. The young man placed on the bed the lifeless hand he had been holding. Then he went to notify the nurse. While the nurse did what was necessary, the young man waited. When she had finished her task, the nurse began to offer words of sympathy to the young man. But he interrupted her. "Who was that man?" he asked. The startled nurse replied, "I thought he was your father." "No, he was not my father," he answered. "I never saw him before in my life." "Then why didn't you say something when I took you to him?" asked the nurse. He replied, "I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn't here. When I realized he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, I knew how much he needed me."2

On a wall filled with graffiti, someone had written, "Christ is the answer!" Underneath those words another person had written, "What is the question?" On this day the Lord has made, the question is, "When can you most expect the Son of Man to come into your life?" And we can rejoice and be glad in the answer. The answer is "Now!" This the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

1 - Dunham, Maxie, "Barefoot Days of the Soul," Word Books, 1975 (adapted).

2 - From a story by Roy Popkin: Donald Tubesing & Nancy Tubesing, "The Caring Question," Augsburg Publishing House, 1983 (adapted).