"Timing" November 29, 2015

Jeremiah 33:14-16 Luke 21:25-36 There is always a choice of TIMING on mornings like this. Being “Thanksgiving Weekend,” do we preach on Giving Thanks, or with Turkey Carcass made into soup and The Dinner made into sandwiches, do we look ahead in HOPE and Anxious Anticipation to the First Sunday of Advent? Thanksgiving, while a National Holiday recognizing European conquest of the land and inhabitants; a day of gorging and intoxication; a day of parades and football, is not prescribed by Scriptures! YET, a Sabbath of giving thanks to God is prescribed in the Torah and Prophets, over and over; our stopping individually, and as a Nation, and over the world as a people of God, every day, every week, every month, every year and periodically throughout life, in order to recognize who we are in relationship to God, and just how blessed we are in life. I love everything about Thanks-Giving as a celebration of faith! Gathering with family and friends. Sharing in cooking family recipes, the house smelling of pies and turkey. The table with extra places intentionally created, covered with our finest china and crystal, as a symbol of the Psalm “Thou hast prepared a Table in the presence of my enemies and my cup runneth over!” and Deuteronomy's creating a place for the Sojourner in your midst. Most especially, that people who often do not give thanks or ask the Lord's blessing, on this day: Do! But my confession is that as a very young child, I have a painful memory equated to Thanksgiving, which my family never ever let me forget. As a child I was captivated by Cartoon television shows! In particular: The Flintstones and The Jetsons, but especially when not about every day but Holidays we have. On the Thanksgiving when I was 3, there was advertised, a Thanksgiving Special of the Jetsons Meeting the Flintstones, and I could envision nothing better. However, the only time, our family ever went out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving happened that year... Throughout Thanksgiving dinner, I was anxious we would miss the “Real Thanksgiving” happening on television. At several occasions I was instructed to be silent or face the consequences. When we got home, on Thanksgiving I faced those consequences. More painful however, was that at every family celebration since, over 54 years, my brothers have reminisced about this. I truly do not recall the punishment, but I do recall afterward asking if it was now time to watch the Jetsons - Flintstones Thanksgiving Special? And was told to give up hope for that time coming. Over the years, my role in my wife's family has been to clean and stuff, cook and carve the Turkey, in part because one year someone had not removed the neck and heart and giblets before cooking; another year the bird was still frozen after it came out of the oven; and one year someone stuffed the Turkey the night before. Over the years, this has changed from volunteering to help at her grandmother's, to other's homes, to the years we went to the Macy's Parade, the year we had to have “Turducken,” and the year after when the Vegans demanded “Tofurke,” the year the bird was cooked outdoors in a deep fat fryer, and years when it was soaked in brine for days; and this year's suggestions the bird be cooked inside a Pillowcase, wrapped in Bacon, or barbequed in a trash can. The question, dependent upon whose oven, how cooked, and how large a turkey, was always TIMING. How to prepare the pies, stuffing and bird during the Parade, to be complete before the Rockettes and Santa arrived at Macy's, in order to be cooked, carved and hot but not dried out, at the perfect time for dinner? Recently, my friend Scott described that the NY Times published 75 different ways of cooking the Thanksgiving feast, searching for the ideal, whether in a slow oven, in a bag, basting, a roaster, on rotisserie spit on a grill? Their conclusion was that the ideal was TURKEY OF THE APOCALYPSE, with the best flavor, crispy skin, and moistness throughout, and pyrotechnics!, all from placing the bird in an open pan in a pre-heated 550 degree oven for 90 minutes! However, during cooking, every person would be forced into exile by the fire department because of smoke, and afterward the pan and oven needed to be replaced due to burned on grease. There will always be 3 year olds who are more pre-occupied with things other than eating. There will be family who are required to be present at multiple Tables. But the point of everything in this season, is for us to stop in Sabbath to recognize how blessed we are, LIFE is too short. Beginning a few decades before the year 2000 and correlated to events continuing today, there have been those who identified Present Signs with A Final Apocalypse and those Left Behind. They have brought their questions to the Bible and lifted these words out of context to make them mean what they worry about. There will be Earthquakes and Hurricanes, Fires, Wars and Refugees. HOWEVER Advent is the Antithesis of Worry! Advent is waiting so expectant as to Hope Fulfillment! Jeremiah in the First Testament, is continually filled with doom and gloom and exile. But here, when arrested and imprisoned, which at the time would have been to be dropped into a sink hole or the bottom of a well, still Jeremiah has HOPE that God's Time is not our Time. If we do not pluck out our favorite words, making the Bible say what we want, but instead, connect passages of a similar place across the Gospels to ascertain their meaning,... just before the warning of this morning in Luke 21, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, at the climax of Jesus' Journey of Healings going toward Jerusalem where he would be crucified, there comes a Rich, Powerful, Young, Man to ask what he must do to inherit Eternal Life? Not unlike our own family members who as soon as the meal was served were asking about Black Friday Sales and where they could go to GET THE BEST DEALS. In each of the Gospels, these whom our world identifies as Successful, Having It All, identify that they have done everything commanded: They have honored their Mothers and Fathers, they have not Lied, Cheated, Stolen or Committed Murder... To which Jesus commands one thing, that in each case causes them to go away sorrowful, Jesus asks them to Give, Give away all you have gotten, all you possess. This first Sunday of Advent is akin to Simon and Garfunkel's: “Sound of Silence” beginning “Hello Darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again.” There is a story about those lyrics having been written in 1963 at the assassination of President Kennedy, at the Apocalypse of a Time, the death of one set of illusions and adoption of another. But in each of the Gospels, this is followed by a Blind Beggar, in Mark the oldest of the Gospels he is identified as as Bartimaeus, just before Jesus entering Jerusalem to describe that time is short and his purpose is about to be fulfilled. The curiosity being that the Name Bartimaeus only occured in Ancient Literature twice! In Hebrew the first three letters BAR identify this as “The Son Of” like Johnson or Stevenson, would be. So one identification of this Blind Beggar is identified as The Son of our Time = BAR-Timaeus, which is odd because Timaeus is not a Hebrew Name but Greek. The other occasion of there being a Timaeus is the Greek Philosopher Plato, who lived within 200 years before Jesus of Nazareth. In Plato's Writings, he names Timaeus as the Greek Ideal of being Educated to believe in the Theoretical, in separating the Physical of Life from the Spiritual of Faith; Timaeus provides the only description of the location of Atlantis, Timaeus identifies the formula for the Golden Ratio used by the Great Painters and by Apple in their designs. So, here we have a man, possibly the same Rich, Powerful, Young, Ruler of a few verses before; identified as Child of the Learned, Child of Education and Society's Ideals, who here sits on the curbside as a Blind Beggar. Perhaps like our own generation's children so deeply in debt from education, unemployed in the careers of their training, feeling lost and blind, now Demanding Fulfillment, demanding that Faith and Education and Life, Ideals and Reality be Given! What Bartimaeus said is recorded as “Jesus, Son of King David, Have Mercy Upon Us!” In the Church we prefer to ritualize this as on Palm Sunday singing “Hosanna.” The purpose of having us read these passages about the End of Time at the Beginning of Advent, are that from our Greek Ancestors we inherited two understandings of Time: Chronos from which we get Chronology, that Time had a Beginning and a Lifespan and will naturally have an End. And Chiros, which is the same root word as Christ, meaning that there is Time before our faith in Christ, and Time after Claiming Christ. There are those this morning who will feel disappointed. Who, trying to please family, got up early on a Sunday to come to Church in Advent, and there was only one Christmas Carol, there was no Virgin Mary, Donkey or Baby, or Wisemen. All of which are Christmas and After, not Advent, ADVENT is Waiting, Expecting, Demanding Change in our lives, Hoping. To be ready for Christmas, to Prepare to greet Christmas as the Scriptures intend for us, is to look for God to Fulfill HOPE for the Poor, to provide HOPE of Comfort for the Grieving, for the Lost, To Provide HOPE of Freedom for those addicted and held Captive by fear or Mental Illness, The Savior of the World, Savior of all Time coming for all the Nations, then comes in surprising fulfillment of all these Hopes as an innocent baby, coming to forgive the sins of all the world.