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The Mindset of A Lert

The Rev. Thomas W Simmons IV

In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus tells us to do three things.  Number one, he wants us to "keep alert".  Secondly, he wants us to "keep awake."  And number three he wants us to "keep awake." 

All right Jesus, stop beating around the bush! What's the point?  What are you trying to say here?  I think I see a pattern emerging…  Is Jesus saying that he wants his people to be alert? OK…I think I get it!   We need to be a-lert.  That's important, because the world needs more lerts! 

Jesus wants each of us to be a lert - alert to the imminent possibility of his any-time-return.  To put it in contemporary terms, Jesus says that he just might come while you're eating dinner this evening, or just after you've fallen asleep in front of the TV at midnight, or perhaps in those few minutes just before your alarm goes off tomorrow morning.  Jesus says he could come THAT suddenly. 

Do you ever think about that?  Does this reality ever impinge our your daily life?  Are you a lert?  Jesus told the disciples to be alert and wait for his arrival.  And we are still waiting 2000 years later. 

At the end of my sermon three weeks ago I said, “We've been waiting for Jesus so long many of us have forgotten what we're waiting for.  Maybe we've given up waiting and gone about our daily business, figuring the future will take care of itself.”  Remember that?  I pointed out that this is not an acceptable posture for the people of God, and concluded saying, “We'll have opportunity to talk more about these things in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.”

Well it’s Advent now and it’s time to get serious and learn how to live like Jesus said: awake and alert to the reality that he will break into our world suddenly and without warning. 

As strange as that concept may be to many of us, it is not as foreign as it may seem.  The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the sniper attacks last month have taught us to be awake and alert to the possibility of terrorist attacks that can strike suddenly and without warning. 

We don't know when or where the attack will come, but we know it will come.  That’s a reality we are learning to live with.  We are gaining the mindset of a lert. And imagine what it's like for those people in the military, intelligence and security services whose duty it is to watch and prepare. 

I think that’s the kind of alertness Jesus urges us to have in waiting and preparing for his return.  So how do we do it?  I think it's a matter of mindset. 

It's a mindset we see in each of our readings.  In all of them I am struck by a simple, salient fact.  All of these believers, from the Psalmist, to Isaiah to Jesus to the Christians in Corinth were living in anticipation and awareness of God's active involvement and intervention in the world.  He is there and he’s doing stuff. 

But our secular culture teaches us a different mindset.  In the modern world we have demystified the universe, sanctified the present and pushed God out to the margins. With this mindset, God’s presence and active involvement and intervention feels much more distant, abstract and, shall we say…unlikely. 

But for the folks who speak to us from the Bible, God’s intervention is a present reality.  It’s something they bank on, and hope and prepare for.  They are as alert to the coming of God as our FBI and CIA agents are to terrorist attacks. 

To be faithful as Christians we must be alert and awake, too.  That’s why we have Advent, to help us regain and live with a sense of God’s nearness to us. As secure as the world around us often looks and feels, we must realize that we are always on the edge of chaos and the radical breaking in of God's kingdom. 

You see the mindset of alert in our Old Testament lessons where Isaiah and the Psalmist cry out to God in the midst of Israel's exile and humiliation.  “Rend the heavens and come down.”  They yearn for the coming of God to show his strength, to deliver his people, to punish evildoers and reward the true and just. 

Our Gospel has the same view of the world.  Jesus gives his disciples a glimpse of the future, showing them hints of his coming.  “When you see these things taking place, you know that the time is near, at the very gates.”  He even tells them when these events will happen.  “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”  They’ll see it with their own eyes. 

The Christians in Corinth that Paul addresses in this morning’s Epistle were awaiting these very things.  Paul assures them that “you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord.” 

Sure enough, within that generation, Jesus came in judgment on Jerusalem and the city was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. All the events that Jesus promised would precede the arrival of the Son of Man, like wars and rumors of wars and the destruction of Jerusalem were fulfilled.  But the world survived.  His return was delayed. 

Once all these precursors had come to pass, Jesus' coming became truly imminent, in the sense that there would be no further cues or warnings.  “He is at the very gates." He could have come then…he can come anytime. “Of that day and hour no one knows.”

That's the world we live in today, 2000 years later. We are still waiting. Jesus tells us to be a lert.  How do we do that?  Being a lert is a matter of mindset.  It’s also a matter of action. 

Let me tell you how not to act, because it’s possible to go too far in our efforts to be a lert.  That’s what I did in my senior year of college. My Christian buddies and I came back to school in August and when we went to church people were all-abuzz about a book called, “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Come in 1988”. 

The author said that Christ would come again on Rosh Hashanah, September 14.  Wow…we were hooked!  We spent the next couple of weeks like a very serious bunch of lerts, believing that those weeks were our last.  It was a trip that I wouldn’t want to repeat, but I wouldn’t trade for anything. 

If the world was lacking in lerts back in 1988, we more than made up the deficit.  We went overboard, telling people – lots of people – that the world was going to end.  That’s probably not the best way to spend your last two weeks.  But that’s just half of the story.  We also left undone those things which we ought to have done…like our schoolwork.  That made the rest of the semester difficult.  

I think our Lord calls us to a different sort of alertness and anticipation.  He wants us to work and wait, keeping one eye on the Lord and what he’s doing in the future, while keeping the other eye firmly focused on our calling to serve him here and now. 

That’s what he’s described in recent parables. We need to have fuel for the long haul, like the bridesmaids waiting through the night for the groom.  We need to be diligent and entrepreneurial in doing “the work he has given us to do,” like the servants entrusted with the master’s talents.  We need to care for the people around us as though they were Christ himself, like the sheep gathered at the right hand of the Lord.

I think this mindset and lifestyle is well expressed in our liturgy this morning.  The Great Litany is the first piece of liturgy translated into English.  Thomas Cranmer wrote it in 1544.  It breathes a piety of alertness to the power and presence of Christ and our need for and accountability to him. 

It teaches us how to prayerfully wait for Jesus and it helps us keep awake and alert to the dangers we face as Christians and as a Christian community.  It expresses our great trust in and dependence on God. Good Lord, deliver us. We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. Lord have mercy upon us.  

When we do this we will be like the Christians in Corinth, “not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” AMEN