“Watch”
Isaiah 64.1-9, 1 Corinthians 1.3-9, Mark 13.24-37
Bridestowe, Lydford, Advent Sunday 27/11/2011
“Keep awake; keep alert; watch and pray” said Jesus to his disciples, just days before they fell asleep in the garden at midnight on the eve of his arrest and execution.
“Keep awake; keep alert; watch and pray” said Jesus to his disciples, in expressing to them how to live in the face of a dangerous, destructive and seemingly dying world.
“Keep awake; keep alert; watch and pray” says Jesus to us, his disciples today, at the start of Advent, a season in which we are invited to consider the significance of the coming of Jesus into our lives, the coming of God physically into the world.
We should take note, and we should take heart, of Jesus’ words, for if we animate within ourselves the ability to see the world the way that Jesus sees it, then the world will be transformed in our eyes, from a world of conflict, suffering and pain into a world of grace and hope.
“Watch,” says Jesus. It’s one of the most important things he ever says to us. He wants us to see the world through his eyes.
I have preached many times before on the concept that we always learn to see through the eyes ofanother. James Alison writes that
The desire of another directs our seeing and makes available to us what is to be seen. In other words, there is no reality "out there" to be seen. What is "out there" is already, inescapably a construct made real by human desire.
What we see is what is given value by the other, and the one seeing it is moved by that desire, and knows and loves with that desire: the "self" becomes the incarnation of that desire, jostling for security, reputation, goodness, success. [1]
And so we walk into Waitrose and suddenly we are seeing the world through the eyes of Delia. We hadn’t previously realised that we wanted to spend the rest of the day concocting Sparkling Mulled Jellies with Frosted Grapes, but that is what Delia desires in her world, and so we feel that our world also will not be complete without the same.
And so our children see Christmas through the eyes of other children; and, provoked into a frenzy of desire by mass-marketing they are in a world of expensive electronic gadgetry and digital entertainment.
And so we see Christmas through the eyes of our children; and we are in a world of need to find ways to fulfil their desires, in seeing other parents and grandparents finding the means to give the children what they want, and understanding that only through fulfilling the children’s desires will our desires be met: to be loved by our children, and better still, to be liked by them.
This seeing the world through the desires of others, Thomas Merton refers to as a sort of collective hypnosis.
But in a Christian context, when we talk about learning how to be given our desire through the eyes of another, the other is Jesus, the Word of God. James Alison says,
So, we are being taught to look at what is, through the eyes of the One who reveals the mind of God, that is to be possessed by the mind of God ourselves. By being taught to receive ourselves and all that is around us through the eye and desire of God our "self" becomes an incarnation of that desire and we start to speak words formed by the un-hypnosis, the awakening desire of the Creator. In other words: we are being taught to be loving lookers at what is, by the One who is calling into being and loving what is. We are being taught to see and delight in what is, by the One whose delighting is what gives it, and us, to be. [1]
But how can we see the world through the eyes of Jesus when we find it so hard to see God in the world at all?
We live in a time which seems very like the times Jesus was describing to his disciples, in what has been called Mark’s Apocalyptic passage. The word Apocalyptic means ‘unveiling’, and what Jesus unveils to us is a world of violence, in which the temple at Jerusalem is destroyed, a world of wars and rumours of wars, where nation rises against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; where there are earthquakes in various places, and famines.
We live in a time which also relates to the time of Isaiah, where the people, despairing of themselves and the world of sin which they have created, cry out to a God who has become absent to them:
There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. [Isaiah 64.7]
Isaiah’s people are part-way to opening their eyes again because they recognise that they have brought their problems on themselves by turning their sight away from God and onto each other. We might question the way they see it - is it really the case that God has hidden his face from them, or is it more the case that they have stopped looking for him? Either way, it is clear that God plays no part in their destructive behaviour. That is their doing. It belongs to a world of seeing in which God cannot be found.
And it is notable that in Jesus’ apocalyptic passage God is not present. he eyes of Jesus reveal that God has not caused the conflict and destruction in this world of pain: it is a completely human construct. God comes into the world to do something entirely different: while the world watches itself implode, Jesus gives himself to this world of destruction, to be crucified, but gives himself to this world of destruction knowing that he himself cannot be destroyed, and that the consequence of his self-giving is to bring into the world of pain the eternal presence of his boundless love - for those who have eyes to see it. “Watch,” he tells his followers: watch for the coming of this new world of self-giving boundless love.
Advent gives us plenty of opportunities to cultivate a way of seeing the world through the eyes of Jesus, if we accept the invitation to engage with the stories of those around Jesus who watched and waited for his coming - for instance Mary, carrying the Son of God in her womb, spending all the time of her pregnancy opening her eyes to God’s way of seeing the new world she was helping to bring to birth; or John, a child alongside Jesus and as a grown man the herald of the new kingdom to come.
So, “Watch,” see the world through Jesus’ eyes, this Advent. If your eyes are open this way then you will start to see signs of the new world of self-giving boundless love breaking through into our world of rivalrous desires. I love the TV advert showing a young boy restless with anticipation at bedtime on the eve of Christmas, leading us to think that he’s excited about all the great presents he will soon receive. But the next scene shows him opening his parents’ bedroom door early in the morning, and with great joy in his eyes presenting them with a badly-wrapped parcel - his gift to them, the first one ever. This boy’s Christmas joy is entirely in the giving. It’s a small hint of another way of seeing, which is available to us in this world.
Notes
[1] James Alison, Contemplation in a world of violence: Girard, Merton, Tolle.
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