This is also the point, ultimately, of our readings that we hear today in the lectionary.
Today is a day of endings, and a day of beginnings. Today, we begin a new church year, a new liturgical year, with this first Sunday of the season of Advent, the time of expectation, the time of “already” but also “not yet” that so describes our lives as 21st century seekers after Jesus.
It is almost the end of November, which means it is almost the end of Native American Heritage Month, and our reminders of the people who brought us the first Thanksgiving to begin with, 400 years ago.
Today is hopefully the beginning of a new dedication to the concept of gratitude and thankfulness to which our faith calls us. But first, we have to confront our misunderstanding about this morning’s gospel. It seems to speak of the end—the Really Big End, the End Times, that if you grew up in evangelical Christianity meant that Jesus was going to appear again in the sky and take up only a lucky few to be with him in heaven, leaving the rest of humanity to suffer through wars and cataclysms and disasters.
This passage itself was one that was quoted to me often in my childhood churches. Many of them talked often about the “end-times,” and this was one of their favorite images: two people will be working side by side, and one will be taken and the other “left behind” when Jesus makes his “second coming.” I didn’t like hearing that any more than I imagine you did, back then.
The problem I had with the strategy behind this rapture stuff was that it put all the emphasis on the end. It really didn’t matter HOW you lived your life—so long as you personally accepted Jesus as your savior. You could still be mean to people, and make fun of or blame the poor, and hate foreigners and refugees. Just as long as you believed in Jesus, you would go to heaven. My problem with this was that I had actually read the Bible all the way through—even before we had the Old Testament TWICE in our high school English curriculum because, you know, I grew up in the Bible belt. And the funny thing was, both Moses and Jesus insisted exactly the opposite.
There is nothing in this passage actually about heaven. Read it again. But there is an insistence that we are accountable for our actions, and for living our lives on no basis other than love, compassion, and obligation to each other. Saying that you believe something, no matter how crazy it is, as we have seen over and over again in the last few years of our lives together, is the easy part. Especially if you think you will profit from it. Living a life guided by Jesus’s example, which called us to care, compassion, and healing, is much more difficult.
Because when we look at the message of the gospels in their entirety, we see a Jesus who called us to be disciples during our lives right now—to heal the sick and feed the multitudes and welcome the outcast. For all of this talk about Jesus coming again like a thief in the night in Matthew 24 there’s the outline of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus in Matthew 25, where the king judges the nations based on whether they cared for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, and the stranger. For every place in the scriptures that it talks about Jesus’s second coming, there’s many times as much of an emphasis that Jesus’s birth and life already initiated the coming near of the Kingdom of God.
The idea that Jesus will swoop down out of the clouds and take only some of us is not a helpful image. BUT the affirmation that Paul McCartney so admirably places before us, that it is the love we give and demonstrate that matters, IS, indeed, more helpful to us in unlocking the gospel imperative.
The Way of Jesus to which we are called is not about what we can take. It is about what we can give. It is not about looking out for ourselves. It is about being grateful for the chance we have to make a difference for others, to acknowledge the web of relationships that bid us together and lead us to flourish and grow as human beings. The heart of the ethical, love-affirming life to which Jesus calls us also means that we ARE accountable for our actions and their consequences, whether those consequences are deliberately intended or not.
This is where St. Paul’s admonition to wake up comes in. When I was a teen, my Sunday school class in my first Episcopal church was asked to design an altar hanging for Advent. It ended up being very simple: large dark golden letters spelled out “Sleepers, awake” with a Chi Rho against a purple background. This thing could easily be read from the back of the nave, and captured the main idea: that Advent is often described as a time of watchfulness, of anticipation, or preparation. It is a time of waking up and preparing for the coming of Christ with joy and gratitude.
Unfortunately, our epistle omits some important verses to help us understand what being awake and being thankful really means. If we back up a bit, here is what we hear:
Owe no one anything except love to one another. For the one loving has fulfilled the other Law. For the commandments “do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet” and any other commandment is brought to a head/summed up in this word: Love your neighbor as yourself.” For the love of neighbor works no evil. The fullness of the Law is love. And do this knowing the time, for the hour has already come for you to rise up from sleep… (2)
Therefore, although not mentioned within the verses the lectionary places before us, the center of the teaching we heard from our epistle is love, directed outward toward others, our neighbors, as an act of obligation, an ethical imperative to work for the good of those around us, to revel in rather than seek to deny or minimize our obligation to one another in favor of our own advantage or exploitation of those around us.
Today is a day for us to wake up to the blessing that obligation is in our lives, the holy calling to self-giving that Jesus embodied for us to imitate as his friends and followers. To remember that Christian love is not a choice or an emotion, but an obligation, a holy calling, an act of will, and a response ingratitude to what has first been given to us by a God who loves us so much as to give us God’s very Son to show us the way to holy, grateful living. The one we await and yet already know in this season of Advent.
And interestingly this brings us to the Native American wisdom we have been celebrating this month.
Biologist, professor, and enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic work Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants speaks of the word obligation repeatedly in indigenous understanding of relationship. Early in the book, she tells the story of her father thinking strawberry shortcake to be the best present in the world, made from berries picked by his children. She notes:
Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate. The field gave to us, we gave to my dad, and we tried to give back to the strawberries. When the berry season was done, the plants would send out slender red runners to make new plants. Because I was fascinated by the way they would table over the ground looking for good places to take root, I would weed out little patches of bare ground where the runners touched down. Sure enough, tiny little roots would emerge from the runner and by the end of the season there were even more plants, ready to bloom under the next strawberry moon. No person taught us this-- the strawberries showed us. Because they had given us a gift, an ongoing relationship opened between us.(3)
It seems obvious, right—and is especially a vital reminder as we continue to confront the need to care for this parish in our annual giving campaign. Use up all the strawberries, and the strawberries will soon not be there for you. It’s a simple reality we completely ignore at our own peril. Fail to take care of your needs now, and soon the things you depend upon for life will no longer be there for you at all. And the fact is, the same thing is true about any of our relationships—including, especially, with each other.
Ms Kimmerer goes on to share in her book an Iroquois pledge of gratitude that is used to start every meeting of the people. It is called the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, or in their language, the “Words Before All Words.” They start with this pledge of affirmation to remember all for which they are grateful, and I want to share some of it with you. It very specifically lists all the things for which we as human beings depend, and for which we are called to be grateful and acknowledge. It starts like this:
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| Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy |
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty and responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give our greetings and our thanks to one another as people. NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.
We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send our greetings and our thanks. NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.
We give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength and nurturing life for all beings. Water is life. We know its power in many forms — waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. We are grateful that the waters are still here and meeting their responsibility to the rest of creation. Can we agree that water is important to our lives and bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to the water? With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to the spirit of Water. NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.
And on it continues, listing food plants, medicine plants, animals, winds, thunder, sun, moon, stars. It gives thanks for the teachers of wisdom who pass down the collected lore and knowledge of the people, which once again reminds me of Thanksgiving at my grandfather’s house as we would listen to stories from our elders. It ends by thanking God, our Creator:
Now we turn our thoughts to the Creator, and send our greetings and our thanks for all the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator. NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE. (4)
Our readings today remind us, as our Indigenous friends’ words of gratitude do, that life is a circle, a sacred hoop of giving and receiving that has no beginning and no end. That we are bound together in reciprocity, obligation, and love—and that is a GOOD thing. That personal character—especially a character of giving and generosity—matters. That how we LIVE, rather than how we end our lives, is our foundation as Christians, yes, but as fully alive and flourishing human beings.
“Belief” in Jesus isn’t just about heaven and what happens to us after we die or a magic ticket to save yourself, but rather and most importantly a call to work for the repair of the world. Belief in Jesus is about nothing if it is not directed outwardly toward those around us—that’s why there are so many commands to love one another in scripture. Belief in Jesus is nothing if it is not transformative, leading to making us not just fans out to save our own necks, but disciples. Discipleship is about transformation of our lives and our relationships with each other, especially the marginalized, the oppressed, and the helpless, right now. It’s about working to bring the kingdom of God into being the kin-dom of God, to recognize each other as beloved children of the One Who Made Us and Loves Us.
In the end, it is the life and love we offer each other that matters, and brings us back to the beginning. And the beginning is love.
Preached at the 505 on November 26, and at the 10:30 Eucharist on November 27 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
Citations:
1) John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "The End," from the album Abbey Road, 1969.
2) Romans 13:8-11
3) Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, 24.
4) Ibid., 106-116. A version of the full text can also be found here: https://danceforallpeople.com/haudenosaunee-thanksgiving-address/
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