“The Doctor is IN,” says the sign over
Lucy’s booth in the comic strip Peanuts. Ever forlorn and confused Charlie Brown
confesses to her, “Sometimes I think I don’t know anything about life.” He pleads with her, “Tell me a great truth!”
Lucy asks a question first, “Do you
ever wake up at night and want a drink of water?” “Sure,” comes the reply from Charlie. Her voice dripping with “wisdom,” Lucy
pronounces, “When you’re getting a drink of water in the dark, always rinse out
the glass because there might be a bug in it!”
Charlie reflects, “Great truths are
even more simple than I thought they were.”[1]
Perhaps it would be best if we came at
this apocalyptic text from Luke with Lucy’s simplicity.
This First Sunday of Advent is one of
the most difficult Sundays for Christians in our tradition. We are not comfortable with these texts about
the second coming and the day of judgment.
They remind us too much of hellfire preaching and street corner signs of
doom.
Sort of like Lucy’s curbside
psychiatrist’s office, we don’t expect much good news. Charlie comes to her despondent, as he so
often is. He does not understand
life. The pieces don’t come together for
him. Lucy’s message to him is mocking;
that’s part of her role in the cartoon.
But she’s on to something, and so is Charlie. “Maybe Great Truths are more simple than I
imagined.”
So is there some simple great truth
for us in this end-times rhetoric?
Jesus says some scary stuff:
There will be signs in the sun, and the moon, and the
stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused at the roaring of the
sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding at what is coming
upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
If you listen closely to those words,
you can almost hear a description of the coming ecological crisis, but I think
Jesus is talking more broadly than that.
He is saying
You will experience the world being turned upside down and
inside out, so you do not know which end is up.
What is perfectly normal will not seem normal to you. You will be anxious and afraid. Your faith will be shaken to its core.
Does
that sound more familiar? We live on the
edge of being out of control. We live in
moments when the pieces of our lives lay at our feet and there does not seem to
be any way to put them back together. Sometimes
this happens to us as individuals, sometimes as families, sometimes as
communities, even nations. These are
times that are truly confusing or frightening.
So
what is Jesus' advice when these upside down times are upon us?
Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and
raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
Stand
up and lift up your heads. A simple, great
truth. To understand it more clearly it
is important to see what he does not say. He does not say:
· Fall on your knees and hang your head
in shame.
· Run for the hills in order to save your
life.
· Be afraid, be very afraid.
No,
he says, "Stand up and raise your heads." Why? "Because your redemption is drawing
near." Again, it is important what he does not say. He does not say:
· Your judgment is drawing near.
· The wrath of God is coming upon you.
· You are going to get what you deserve.
No.
He says, "Your redemption is drawing near." Redemption.
What does he mean by that?
"Redemption" is one of the words used in the Bible to describe
what God fundamentally wants for us and what Jesus' life, death, and
resurrection does for us. There are many
words you could insert there: salvation,
rescue, healing, liberation, etc. The
point is that the time of confusion and fear is also the time of redemption, of
healing, of liberation.
Christian
people learn that when trial or crisis comes, we should look not for signs of
ending, but rather for signs of new life because they will surely come. That does not mean that anger at what has
happened, or grief, or any other human emotion is not appropriate for
Christians. It is too say that those feelings are never the last word.
I know what it is like to be in the
middle of a mess I am sure I cannot get myself out of. Some kind of defeat or betrayal or wrong
choices that seem to spell the end of my life as I know it. There are days when I cannot follow Jesus’
direction to stand up and raise my head.
But Jesus does not put it all on me
when I am so deeply troubled, nor does he put it all on any one of you. He says, “Stand up and raise your heads.” The “your” in Greek is plural. During these times
when it feels like the world is coming unglued and there’s no way out—this is
the time when we need each other. When I
cannot stand up and raise my head, I need you to do it for me.
So what is Charlie Brown’s simple,
great truth here?
When the world is falling apart and
you feel like you are falling apart with it, you need not fear the judgment of
God, rather, you need to embrace the mercy of God, and we never have to do this
alone. Because the greatest simple Truth
is that we are always, always in this together.
All of this is summed up in a
subsequent strip of Peanuts. Charlie Brown discovers this in a subsequent
strip. The first frame is entirely black
with just the outline of Lucy, stumbling in the dark. Perhaps she has stubbed her toe on the
bed. “Curse it all!” she cries. Next frame, still black, “Blast the blackness
. . . Oh, curse, curse, curse.” Finally
in the last frame stands Charlie Brown.
In the midst of the dark, he stands in the glow of a candle.[2] When all Lucy could do was curse the darkness—and
haven’t we all been there?—Charlie Brown knows to light a candle, the kind of
thing we are called to do for one another so that we can all get through life
when it turns upside down.
[1]
Quoted in Sam Portaro, Daysprings:
Meditations for the Weekdays of Advent, Lent, and Easter (Boston: Cowley,
2001), p. 3.
[2]
Ibid., p. 5.
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