Advent 1, Year A

December 2, 2007

The Rev. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew

Michael May is a man who lost his vision due to a chemical explosion when he was only 3 ½ years old. Forty-three years later his sight was surgically restored. The big surprise came when he and others around him began to realize that, despite perfectly normal visual function, Michael still couldn’t “see” like most people. Even though he receives the same input you and I do, Michael is not always able to process the information and put it together to form a coherent picture his brain can recognize. Mr. May’s story is one of the major clues we have been given that sight is more than eye function. On some level one has to learn how to see, or at least learn how to interpret what one sees so that it can be understood.

Today’s readings hold up for us a challenge similar to that of Mr. May, the challenge of learning how to see. Even if we are fortunate enough to have eyes that work well, we are responsible for cultivating our capacity to see. Isaiah begins his book by providing us with a dismal court scene in which God presents the sinful behavior of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. It is this behavior which will lead to judgment and destruction. Yet in the very next chapter we are given a vision of Jerusalem “in the days to come.” This vision includes people from all nations streaming to the house of the LORD, “that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” God’s instruction shall lead the people to see the world so differently that “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

How is it that Isaiah can hold up two such strikingly different visions of Jerusalem side by side? He proclaims the coming judgment and destruction in chapter one, which we know came to be fulfilled through the Assyrians and Babylonians. He also declares the ultimate restoration and exaltation of Jerusalem in chapter two, which has yet to happen. Isaiah could see both, although neither had yet occurred. The first, the days of judgment, were beginning to unfold and it was almost as if Isaiah could see where the path inevitably led, rather like those moments in a car accident when everything happens in slow motion even though in real time it’s too fast to change course. Isaiah holds up for us the reality of both ways of seeing, of the already in process and the yet to come. If we only see one way, like monocular vision, the truth is distorted because we have no depth perception. When we learn to see both ways, holding the two in tension gives us a three dimensional vision. Shifting from a single focus to two changes our perspective, our way of understanding what we see. Isaiah saw both judgment and restoration. To focus only on the judgment would have been incredibly discouraging. To focus only on the glory would be to ignore the reality before him. God gave Isaiah a glimpse of the already and the not yet, of the world the way we need to learn to see it.

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus tells his disciples of the importance of cultivating a theological way of seeing reality. He tells a cautionary tale of the days of Noah, when “in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage…and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away….” Jesus does not say that there is anything wrong with eating and drinking, or with marrying and giving in marriage. But if we, like they, live our lives as if what were happening in our own little corner of the universe is all there is, we are missing the big picture. While being truly present can be a virtue, our mindfulness to our current reality needs to be balanced with attentiveness to what lies beyond our immediate concerns. Failure to seek this balance can result in a distorted and often discouraging view of life, as Peggy Lee lamented famously with these words:

Is that all there is? Is that all there is?

If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing

Let’s break out the booze and have a ball

If that’s all there is

To see as Peggy Lee saw is to see in one dimension. Jesus wants us to see in at least two, if not three dimensions. Have you ever seen a perceptual illusion? These are drawings, usually in black and white, that show two different realities at the same time. The trick is that you have to be able to look at the same thing more than one way to see both realities. A famous perceptual illusion is of a young woman and an old woman. Looking one way, you see an over the shoulder view of a young woman. Shifting perspective, you see a profile of an old woman. Yet they are the same picture. The Necker Cube is another famous perceptual illusion. The same set of cubes appears to be both sinking into and popping out of a piece of paper, depending on how you look at them. People do not always see the two pictures at first, but once they are taught how there is an “Aha!” moment. It is that moment that Jesus is trying to cultivate in us. The parables, the healings, the self-offering of Jesus all encourage us to look at reality in a new way and begin to see that there is more. We can, and should be, fully engaged in life. Jesus was fully engaged during his earthly ministry. Jesus also balanced that ministry with a view to the reality of eternal life. We are called to do the same. The choices I make today will be different depending on whether I think this is “all there is” or whether I believe that my life is grounded in the unfolding reality of God.

During the height of the popularity of the Left Behind series of books about the End Times, Father Dave and I were preparing for the 9:30 worship service. It was a beautiful summer day and was about 9:10 in the morning. Not another soul was in the church, on the street, or in the parking lot. It was eerily quiet. He looked at me in puzzlement and asked “Where is everyone?” I, being witty and possessed of a warped sense of humor, replied: “Oh no! It’s the Rapture and we’ve been left behind!”

No, I didn’t think Jesus had whisked away the true believers and we had missed it, as was proven when people began to appear just a few minutes later. I do believe, though, that Jesus is serious about the need for us to “Keep awake!” We could very easily miss what is important because we have been solely focused on what is in front of us. If we only see in one dimension, that of what is right under our noses, we fail to see how God is at work in the midst of it all, as well as beyond our imagining. To “Keep awake!” is not only to have that moment of recognition of how our reality lies as a tiny part of the Reality of God, it is to intentionally cultivate our awareness. We are meant to live life, not as those blissfully unaware, as with Noah’s generation or the householder who is sleeping when the thief comes. We are meant to live our lives aware and awake to the Reality of God, and that God’s Presence, whether in the form of the Holy Spirit or of Jesus coming again, could be made known at any moment. The question is whether we will be paying attention closely enough to notice.

Amen