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Bridging
the Betweens
Raewynne J. Whiteley
A
selection from Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching
the U2 Catalog,
edited by Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard,
foreword by Eugene Peterson.
This
book is a collection of sermons from people around the
world who have been moved to spiritual reflection by
the art and work of the rock group U2. Below, Episcopal
priest Raewynne J. Whiteley reflects on lyrics from the
U2 song "Peace on Earth" and traditional Advent
readings from the Bible as she takes a candid look at
the the bridge between promise and fulfillment, between
heaven and earth.
Song
reference: “Peace on Earth” (see
text
in italics in
left column)
Biblical
References: Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:37-44
(see text in
left column)
U2’s
song seems to capture the place that we are in right
now. Standing in a hotel lobby yesterday, I saw Christmas
decorations and heard Christmas carols playing: “Silent
night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright”;
and part of me wanted to shout No! No! Nothing
is calm, nothing is bright! I turn on the TV, and twenty-something
have been people killed, mostly young adults, in Israel,
and in the Palestinian West Bank two children have been
shot dead, and the day before a family died in Afghanistan
when an aid package fell on their house, and the day
before and the day before and the day before. ... All
is calm, all is bright? What are we doing, heading toward
Christmas with its talk of peace and its haloed baby
in a manger, what are we doing reading Isaiah with its
promises of nations coming together and melting their
armaments to make farm tools, when war seems to be escalating,
and terror increasing, when all around us is fear and
broken promises and death?
It
is Advent, and I sometimes wonder if we know what we
are doing. I guess, if I had my choice, I’d put
aside the war and the pain and the difficulty and run
with the baby Jesus and peace and joy, because that’s
what life is all about, or at least that’s the
fairy tale that we want to believe in. We want the world
to be a good place, a place where we are safe and loved
and happy, where life is good and babies are typical
in their innocence instead of extraordinary. That’s
the dream, that’s the illusion of Christmas. That’s
why, as soon as Thanksgiving is over, we put up the decorations
and turn on the carols. And if I had my choice, I’d
really rather our gospel reading for today had begun
where it should, with the beginning of the story of Jesus
in the first few verses of Matthew.
But
if we’re honest, we all know that it’s an
escape, an illusion, and real life is a whole lot more
sordid, and perhaps the people who put our lectionary
together knew better than we do that what we need at
this time is not an injection of fairy tale but an injection
of reality in all its grimy anguish. And so, juxtaposed
with Isaiah’s promise of peace is Jesus’ prediction
of pain. He returns us to the days of Noah, days not
known for their glory but lamented for their depravity.
This time between Christ’s earthly life and his
return, this time between promise and fulfillment, will
be a time like that of Noah. A time when people were
caught up in their own lives and their own interests,
when they cared more about the wine they would drink
tonight than the beggars lying hungry outside their gates,
when they fought for their own importance and laughed
at crazy old Noah, giving up everything to follow the
call of an unseen God.
It’s
a lot more like our world than the world of our Christmas
cards.
Yes,
we dream of peace, yes, we dream of a better time to
come, but in the meantime we have to live in the reality
of a world torn apart by selfishness and greed and fear.
But that reality is not all there is; that reality is
not the whole story. For all that we suffer, for all
that we struggle, there is also a promise. A promise
that one day all this will end. One day God will come,
one day Christ will return, one day there will be heaven
on earth, or at least earth will be caught up into heaven,
and the tables will be turned, good will triumph over
evil and right over wrong, and there will be peace, and
love, and joy.
But
we live in the in-between times. We live knowing the
promise but seeing little hope of its fulfillment. We
live caught between fear and faith, between history and
hope. There is a gap, and the pain and the suffering
and the sorrow which are all around us threaten to overwhelm
us.
Christmas,
at least as the carols and Christmas cards would have
us believe, offers us an escape, a refuge from what we
see every time we turn on the TV. But an escape can only
ever be temporary, and refuge is fine for a time, but
eventually we must emerge into the cold light of day,
where the reality is that we live in in-between times,
times between the promise and the fulfillment, between
fear and faith, between history and hope. Advent is about
those in-between times, and Advent is where God will
meet us.
We
have, on the one hand, a world in a mess, and it doesn’t
seem like there is a whole lot of hope. And on the other
hand we have a vision of something better. That has always
been the struggle of Advent. Because we are caught, caught
in the in-between. Between a haloed baby in a straw-filled
manger and angels announcing “Peace on earth,” and
a bloodied man, on a splintery cross, crying out, “Forgive
them, Father. For they do not know what they do.” Between
a weeping Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus in a small town
outside Jerusalem and the heavenly Jerusalem where all
tears will be wiped away. Between the fear of a God who
comes like a thief in the night and the hope of God who
comes not to steal but to save.
And
bridging those betweens is the promise of Easter, the
promise of a God who proclaims, “I am the resurrection
and the life! Whoever believes in me, even though they
die, shall live!” The promise of a God who enters
a locked room, holes in his hands and side, and breathes
peace on his friends. Who gives bread and wine, body
and blood as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.
Bridging
those betweens is Christ, haloed baby in a manger, weeping
friend by a four-day-old tomb, dying body croaking forgiveness
from a cross, resurrected life offering peace, bright
image of God awaiting us in glory.
It’s
a bridge, this Christ who doesn’t solve the problems
or remove the ambiguities or the pain or the struggle,
but who says that promise will make way for fulfillment,
and perhaps fear can be met with faith, and maybe history
and hope do rhyme.
And
it’s a bridge, this Christ who is our head and
we, the church, his body. So that in our lives, we echo
the life of Christ, bridging the betweens. In our bodies
the life of Christ resounds, in our spirits, the Spirit
of Christ reverberates, ringing out his tears, his forgiveness,
his peace, his resurrection, in our world.
Heaven
on earth. ...
Episcopal
Church of St Michael and St George
St Louis, Missouri
December 2, 2001
 Excerpted
from Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog, edited
by Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard. Copyright ©2003
by Raewynne J. Whiteley and Beth Maynard. Published by
Cowley Publications. Used by permission of Cowley Publications. To
purchase a copy of Get
Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog,
visit the non-profit bookstore Sacred Path Books & Art.
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