Watch for What?
Stories
Contents
"Watch for What?" by C. David McKirachan
"Santa Claus Is Coming" by C. David McKirachan
Watch for What?
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 13:24-37
I remember vividly my mother, looking in my eyes and saying, “Pay attention.” She wasn’t yelling at me, she wasn’t telling me I was doing something wrong. She was establishing a beach head for learning. ‘Pay attention’ became a watch word for seeing past a cursory glance. It led me into places that I would have never gone if I hadn’t paid attention to what was going on back there in the shadows and right in front of my face. It kept me out of trouble and it got me into trouble. Bird’s nests, clouds, snakes, a look of fear, a look of pain, a look of hope, sunrises and sets, music, rocks, an eddy in the river, tears, different kinds of laughter, exhaustion, a wilting plant, gifts given and received, stories and the language that build them, silence, wonder… ‘Pay attention.’ In my list of rules it’s number three, after Love the Lord and love your neighbor and Love Chris (that sounds like fourth, but you can’t peel the first apart). So when Jesus says “Watch,” I hear “Pay attention.”
This passage is full of mixed messages. “…the sun will be darkened, …the stars will be falling from heaven, …the Son of Man coming in clouds…” Then there’s the part about the fig tree. The signs are there. Pay attention. But then the Lord says, nobody but the Father knows when this is going to happen. So be ready.
We’ve all heard the prophesies of end times. Not too long ago people were finding real estate in caves because it was going to happen. My now son in law told his then fiancé that it looked like she wasn’t going to get the Dyson vacuum cleaner she wanted for her birthday because it came after the prophesied date for the END. She didn’t give an inch. I think she got the Dyson. It’s hard to take such warnings seriously, they’ve been wrong so many times. I would refer such prophets to Mark 13:32. I would tell them to get over themselves. If such is the case, and Jesus told us to watch, what exactly are we to watch for?
It’s Advent. It’s the time we’re supposed to be getting ready for the birth of our Lord. The signs of the holiday are all around us. It would be hard for any of us to miss them. But when he was born there were no darkening of the sun, stars falling, or authority figures coming in on the clouds. The nativity story was anything but what ‘should’ have been. And hardly anybody noticed it. They weren’t paying attention. They weren’t watching.
It’s our job in Advent to point out the signs of the coming of the Lord. Not the signs our culture trumpets, but the signs that God has been trying to get through to us from the beginning. The signs of hope, of peace, of joy, and of love. I try to listen to the first half of Handel’s Messiah before Advent 1. The first words the baritone sings are from Isaiah 40, “Comfort ye…”
I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t lead me to look for real estate in caves. That leads me to pay attention to the signs of the time. The twinkling lights on houses in the neighborhood are a quiet and magical statement of hope even in the darkness. The cards that stuff our mailbox are prayers from people distant in space and time as they reach out with blessings and wishes. And angels, oh the angels… So I’m a Christmas freak, sue me.
We need to alert people to the signs of the time. And this time is a moment when eternity intersects with our dark and dreary world and lights it with glory. My mother would say, “Pay attention.” Our Lord told us to watch. The prophet tells us, “Behold the days are coming…” Take your pick.
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given,
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.
* * *
Santa Claus Is Coming
by C. David McKirachan
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
One of my least favorite moments is being confronted by folks of any creed whose belief systems demand. Legalists, Fundamentalists, Literalists, Evangelicals who demand that we, all us unwashed ‘others’ agree with them or pay the price. In my first parish, we got together with a few other churches to show a Billy Graham film as an ecumenical outreach. The film was OK, but afterward one of the other pastors, whom I’d never met, stood inside my personal space, stared me in the eye and demanded, “Are you born again?” I felt attacked, embarrassed, pushed around. I responded, “That’s lousy technique for spreading God’s love.” And walked away. I had bad dreams.
At a Jewish/Christian symposium, I overheard one of my parishioners share with a discussion group that they were intimidated by ‘Born Agains’ who seemed so ‘pushy’ and ‘know it all.’ A Jewish believer exclaimed, “That’s the way I feel with Orthodox people! They act like they have all the answers and I’m an idiot.”
It drives me bonkers to hear my belief system hijacked by people who represent a set of beliefs that have little to do with the faith that is at the center of my life. But that inter-faith encounter helped me realize that this isn’t a only a Christian problem. People of faith of all flavors have been judged and blamed and stuck with members of their families of faith, not only judged by them but blamed for them. The Crusades and the Inquisition were a long time ago. Please don’t hold them against me. I don’t think I would have approved of them then. I don’t think my Lord would have either.
That’s why I love Advent.
I attended a worship service once, at the beginning of Advent. They sang Christmas Carols, they decorated the Christmas tree, they read the Christmas story. It was the first Sunday after Christ the King. What happened to Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love? What happened to preparation? What happened to expectation?
The Christian mothers and fathers were no dopes. They looked around them and saw a world of hurt. They saw that their people were struggling with a world that was ruthless by its very nature. Nature doesn’t take prisoners. Good folks get cancer. They also saw that the Gospel, though offering something other than survival as a priority wasn’t an easy row to hoe. The Christian disciplines that help us love the Lord and love our neighbors, though offering the gifts of life abundant, are about as easy to stick to as a strict diet. Thank God we’re forgiven. But we blow it and the world and our Lord suffers for it. I guess that’s called sin.
Advent accepts that as a given. It starts us here, where we are, in the mud that’s laced with all the nasties of living. It doesn’t deny any of it. All it does is plant a seed, a seed of hope. And then it nurtures that seed with the traditions and the practices of our faith that can give meaning to the cultural stuff like decorating, cards, even Christmas shopping. Yes, I said Christmas shopping. Speaking of mud laced with the nasties of living. Advent reminds us that the Lord came to this world, this broken and fearful world, to quote a confession. His coming was not a nice neat package, but a painful delivery, from a child, a frightened unwed mother, to a terrified decent man, who were both victims of political greed and arrogance, in a barn (if you’ve had any experience with barns no adjectives are needed), witnessed by a bunch of blue collar workers who smelled like sheep. And this is the arena and these are the players for God’s drama of salvation.
Without Advent we package this too neatly, we ignore the mind boggling paradox that is central to the gift. God knows who we are and loves us anyway. I don’t think paradox fits into a rigid belief structure. God gives us wiggle room. God knows we need it.
We know God if faithful. That’s what we preach. But if we’re going to be honest with our people and let them see that in spite of the realities of their lives God is present in them. God is their loving parent. And the Glory of the Lord will be revealed. We’ve got to start here and now, just like the Christmas story does. We’ve got to give it some time to sink in.
I don’t like ‘You’d better watch out,…’ But I like Santa, the spirit of Christmas. And I know Christmas is coming. No matter the darkness that surrounds us, Christmas is coming. It’s time to get ready.
O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.
God bless us every one.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 3, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Watch for What?" by C. David McKirachan
"Santa Claus Is Coming" by C. David McKirachan
Watch for What?
by C. David McKirachan
Mark 13:24-37
I remember vividly my mother, looking in my eyes and saying, “Pay attention.” She wasn’t yelling at me, she wasn’t telling me I was doing something wrong. She was establishing a beach head for learning. ‘Pay attention’ became a watch word for seeing past a cursory glance. It led me into places that I would have never gone if I hadn’t paid attention to what was going on back there in the shadows and right in front of my face. It kept me out of trouble and it got me into trouble. Bird’s nests, clouds, snakes, a look of fear, a look of pain, a look of hope, sunrises and sets, music, rocks, an eddy in the river, tears, different kinds of laughter, exhaustion, a wilting plant, gifts given and received, stories and the language that build them, silence, wonder… ‘Pay attention.’ In my list of rules it’s number three, after Love the Lord and love your neighbor and Love Chris (that sounds like fourth, but you can’t peel the first apart). So when Jesus says “Watch,” I hear “Pay attention.”
This passage is full of mixed messages. “…the sun will be darkened, …the stars will be falling from heaven, …the Son of Man coming in clouds…” Then there’s the part about the fig tree. The signs are there. Pay attention. But then the Lord says, nobody but the Father knows when this is going to happen. So be ready.
We’ve all heard the prophesies of end times. Not too long ago people were finding real estate in caves because it was going to happen. My now son in law told his then fiancé that it looked like she wasn’t going to get the Dyson vacuum cleaner she wanted for her birthday because it came after the prophesied date for the END. She didn’t give an inch. I think she got the Dyson. It’s hard to take such warnings seriously, they’ve been wrong so many times. I would refer such prophets to Mark 13:32. I would tell them to get over themselves. If such is the case, and Jesus told us to watch, what exactly are we to watch for?
It’s Advent. It’s the time we’re supposed to be getting ready for the birth of our Lord. The signs of the holiday are all around us. It would be hard for any of us to miss them. But when he was born there were no darkening of the sun, stars falling, or authority figures coming in on the clouds. The nativity story was anything but what ‘should’ have been. And hardly anybody noticed it. They weren’t paying attention. They weren’t watching.
It’s our job in Advent to point out the signs of the coming of the Lord. Not the signs our culture trumpets, but the signs that God has been trying to get through to us from the beginning. The signs of hope, of peace, of joy, and of love. I try to listen to the first half of Handel’s Messiah before Advent 1. The first words the baritone sings are from Isaiah 40, “Comfort ye…”
I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t lead me to look for real estate in caves. That leads me to pay attention to the signs of the time. The twinkling lights on houses in the neighborhood are a quiet and magical statement of hope even in the darkness. The cards that stuff our mailbox are prayers from people distant in space and time as they reach out with blessings and wishes. And angels, oh the angels… So I’m a Christmas freak, sue me.
We need to alert people to the signs of the time. And this time is a moment when eternity intersects with our dark and dreary world and lights it with glory. My mother would say, “Pay attention.” Our Lord told us to watch. The prophet tells us, “Behold the days are coming…” Take your pick.
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given,
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.
* * *
Santa Claus Is Coming
by C. David McKirachan
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
One of my least favorite moments is being confronted by folks of any creed whose belief systems demand. Legalists, Fundamentalists, Literalists, Evangelicals who demand that we, all us unwashed ‘others’ agree with them or pay the price. In my first parish, we got together with a few other churches to show a Billy Graham film as an ecumenical outreach. The film was OK, but afterward one of the other pastors, whom I’d never met, stood inside my personal space, stared me in the eye and demanded, “Are you born again?” I felt attacked, embarrassed, pushed around. I responded, “That’s lousy technique for spreading God’s love.” And walked away. I had bad dreams.
At a Jewish/Christian symposium, I overheard one of my parishioners share with a discussion group that they were intimidated by ‘Born Agains’ who seemed so ‘pushy’ and ‘know it all.’ A Jewish believer exclaimed, “That’s the way I feel with Orthodox people! They act like they have all the answers and I’m an idiot.”
It drives me bonkers to hear my belief system hijacked by people who represent a set of beliefs that have little to do with the faith that is at the center of my life. But that inter-faith encounter helped me realize that this isn’t a only a Christian problem. People of faith of all flavors have been judged and blamed and stuck with members of their families of faith, not only judged by them but blamed for them. The Crusades and the Inquisition were a long time ago. Please don’t hold them against me. I don’t think I would have approved of them then. I don’t think my Lord would have either.
That’s why I love Advent.
I attended a worship service once, at the beginning of Advent. They sang Christmas Carols, they decorated the Christmas tree, they read the Christmas story. It was the first Sunday after Christ the King. What happened to Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love? What happened to preparation? What happened to expectation?
The Christian mothers and fathers were no dopes. They looked around them and saw a world of hurt. They saw that their people were struggling with a world that was ruthless by its very nature. Nature doesn’t take prisoners. Good folks get cancer. They also saw that the Gospel, though offering something other than survival as a priority wasn’t an easy row to hoe. The Christian disciplines that help us love the Lord and love our neighbors, though offering the gifts of life abundant, are about as easy to stick to as a strict diet. Thank God we’re forgiven. But we blow it and the world and our Lord suffers for it. I guess that’s called sin.
Advent accepts that as a given. It starts us here, where we are, in the mud that’s laced with all the nasties of living. It doesn’t deny any of it. All it does is plant a seed, a seed of hope. And then it nurtures that seed with the traditions and the practices of our faith that can give meaning to the cultural stuff like decorating, cards, even Christmas shopping. Yes, I said Christmas shopping. Speaking of mud laced with the nasties of living. Advent reminds us that the Lord came to this world, this broken and fearful world, to quote a confession. His coming was not a nice neat package, but a painful delivery, from a child, a frightened unwed mother, to a terrified decent man, who were both victims of political greed and arrogance, in a barn (if you’ve had any experience with barns no adjectives are needed), witnessed by a bunch of blue collar workers who smelled like sheep. And this is the arena and these are the players for God’s drama of salvation.
Without Advent we package this too neatly, we ignore the mind boggling paradox that is central to the gift. God knows who we are and loves us anyway. I don’t think paradox fits into a rigid belief structure. God gives us wiggle room. God knows we need it.
We know God if faithful. That’s what we preach. But if we’re going to be honest with our people and let them see that in spite of the realities of their lives God is present in them. God is their loving parent. And the Glory of the Lord will be revealed. We’ve got to start here and now, just like the Christmas story does. We’ve got to give it some time to sink in.
I don’t like ‘You’d better watch out,…’ But I like Santa, the spirit of Christmas. And I know Christmas is coming. No matter the darkness that surrounds us, Christmas is coming. It’s time to get ready.
O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.
God bless us every one.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 3, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
