THE UNEXPECTED HOUR

The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel

December 2, 2007

1st Sunday of Advent

 

First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, UCC

www.firstconge.org

630-469-3096

 

 

Scripture:  Matthew 24:36-44

‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’

 

 

Sermon:

 

Here is an ethical question for you. Would you read your late mother’s diaries?

 

If your mother had died, and you were to come across her journals, what would you do?

 

The documentary filmmaker Doug Block begins his 2006 film 51 Birch Street with a home movie shot of his parents’ 50th wedding celebration. It’s a happy, low-key gathering in the suburban back yard of 51 Birch Street where they raised their three children. It could be anyone’s home movie: paper plates, a card table on the deck, a cake, grandkids running around–in other words, good times.

 

In this home movie of this sort of ordinary 50th anniversary family party, the couple looks into the camera and shares a few comments about the secret to staying married. They’re clichés, nothing deep, but touching nonetheless. It’s an iconic scene, one that you find yourself wanting to be a part of, wanting to join this family for a hot dog, a beer and later a piece of cake.

 

These home movies might have stayed home movies, but when the filmmaker Doug Block’s mother died suddenly, he began to review the old tapes with new intensity. Her death came unexpectedly, a bout of pneumonia from which this otherwise healthy woman could not recover. It was much as the scripture reads on this first Sunday of Advent. “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father… Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

 

In the gospel reading, Jesus is talking about the end of time. But what is the end of time?  The church has interpreted these scriptures in wildly different ways throughout history. Sometimes it’s called the second coming, a time when Jesus will return to the earth for the second time, at the end of time. He says, “You do not know when the son of man is coming.”  The son of man was the Jewish messiah, but later Christians understood these words to mean that Jesus was the son of man, and he was referring to himself coming back–but when and how? We combine this text with others and get all sorts of ideas: an apocalypse? with a rapture? or is this just about the end of time for us? Your end of time is different from my end of time, all of us living and dying on a different schedule, but a schedule unknown to us. “The son of man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

 

We always hear these mysterious and somewhat chilling texts at the beginning of the Advent season. We’re supposed to prepare ourselves spiritually for the birth of Jesus, and his entrance into the world. There’s an emphasis on being ready, being awake, being present for that which we cannot be prepared: the unexpected hour.

 

For Doug Block, that filmmaker, his mother’s death indeed came at an unexpected hour. She had not been sick, and then suddenly she was. And in her death, he realized how unprepared he had been for this loss.

 

But what he was really unprepared for was what his grieving father did next.  Just three months after his mother’s death, his father announced that he was going to marry his former secretary, from thirty years ago. And in his grief, and now his surprise, Block, the son, kept the cameras rolling and made this remarkable film.

 

The film works and pulls us in, because we get it. Doesn’t every child wonder what went on behind the closed doors of our parent’s relationship? What exactly were they arguing about late at night in the kitchen? Who started the fight and how was it magically resolved by the next morning? Why did we move? Remember our old dog who you told us was given away to a family who lived on a farm? What really happened there?

 

These are questions that most of us will never have answered. I know I won’t. My parents are both deceased. 

 

Yet even among the living, most parents and children share an unspoken agreement about what to show the world and what to hold close. Adult children may be curious, but perhaps we don’t dig and pry for a reason.

 

Well, in 51 Birch Street, Doug Block the filmmaker digs, discovers and then displays the family’s dirt. He films his father’s new marriage and the decision to relocate to Florida, and the sudden selling of the family home. In the packing and sorting, the family comes across his late mother’s journals.

 

There are boxes and boxes of them packed neatly and carefully labeled by date. And when you see them, it looks as though she really had left them in order to be read. But did she?

 

Our Advent scripture warns us, “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

 

As surprising as her illness was, was the mother ready for her unexpected hour? Did she leave her journals carefully packed for the thief in the night? Or was she unprepared and careless in what she had left undone?

 

Was she ready or not?

 

My parents died, five years apart. My mother went first. Her illness was long, we really had a year during which we had a sense of what might happen, and for many months we knew. My father died more recently, and when we got a call from the hospital where we thought he was making a recovery, the news that he had died just hours after my husband had been visiting with him came as total shock.

 

Settling my father’s estate was quick and easy. I sorted through my father’s papers with pleasure, smiling at his many tidy little shoe boxes filled with well organized tax returns, bills, important papers, even a contract to be buried at Arlington cemetery.

 

In the case of my mother, seven years after her death, her estate remains unsettled. There were that many loose ends.

 

One had time to prepare and one did not. But time didn’t seem to have much to do with it.  I suppose the unexpected hour is always unexpected.

 

These days, I have a thousand things I would like to ask my folks about their marriage as well as their divorce. But they took the answers to the grave long before I had come up with my best questions. If I were to come across a box of journals, I don’t know what I’d do. Do you?

 

In a delightful irony, while the filmmaker was creating a documentary about his parents’ complicated marriage, he was supporting himself by making wedding videos. So these clips of typical American weddings run throughout the film. The ceremonies of these young privileged people look a bit shallow, opulent and far too optimistic against the backdrop of 54 years of marriage being excavated by a tortured son.

 

At one wedding, Block is struck by a rabbi who actually appears to be saying something that the couple is listening to–a rare occurrence. He visits the rabbi to ask about the ethics of reading his mother’s journals. The rabbi responds that if it were he, he would want to know the truth. He would read them, but not make a movie about them.

 

Doug Block does, and the movie ends a lot like this gospel reading today. It ends with just enough resolution to make you wonder what really happened–and lingering ethical questions that are never answered neatly. A lot like real life, the film and the gospel today remind us that indeed the son of man will come at an unexpected hour, and for the generations who linger here after we are gone, that is unexpected, too. So we should be ready.

 

What does ‘being ready’ mean, in the spiritual sense of Advent? I don’t think it means get ready for an apocalypse, or prepare for the end of the world with cans of food and bomb shelters. I don’t think it means, get ready quickly, become a Christian, so that in the rapture you can leave all the Jews and Muslims behind as you high-tail it to paradise. I don’t think being ready means any of that.

 

Advent is a time of preparation; it is the beginning, the recognition that in Christ everyday is a new beginning, a new life. So what does ‘being ready’ mean in that sense?

 

Being ready might mean telling your children about your life in person, rather than leaving them to discover your boxes of tortured thoughts in journals after your death. Being ready might mean talking to your father honestly, while you still have the chance. Being ready might mean slowing down enough so that you can see what is right in front of you without having to record it all on film. Being ready might mean just paying attention to your life, and therefore, paying attention to God, who is right there in everything.

 

I think being ready for the end means engaging in life in the here and now–and paying attention.

 

Jesus tells us to stay awake, not because something awful is about to happen, but because something miraculous is already happening in life, and you don’t want to miss it–being told to stay awake, to be ready, to pay attention. That’s an Advent gift we do not want to squander.