Comments for Jim

Sunday, November 29, 1998
Rev. James A.Todhunter

"OUT OF TIME"

ISAIAH 2:1-5 ROMANS 13:11-14 MATTHEW 24:36-44

Last week I had lunch with my good friend Steve Gilbert. As many of you know Steve has been on the Johns Hopkins waiting list for a lung transplant for over a year. All in all he is doing remarkably well under incredible circumstances.

We met at Fred and Harry’s at Four Corners. As has been the case for months, the phone call from Hopkins could come at any time of the day or night. When it does, he will drop everything and rush to Baltimore, driven there by one of us who is on call. We’ve already had one false alarm when the donor lung turned out to be bad. Steve now moves very slowly and is winded easily. His activities are very limited and any real exertion exacts a tremendous toll on his energies. He is highly susceptible to respiratory infection. It can be discouraging and I am amazed how he has been able to keep his spirits up.

But as we talked it was just so striking to me how suddenly, out of the blue, his whole life will one day change. The call will come. He has to be ready. He has to keep his strength up, watch his diet, avoid infections, and stay hopeful. He has been in a state of high alert and total preparedness for over a year. And he is still waiting. But the day will come and he will be ready.

As we ate, he went on to tell me a story of something that had happened that week. He was driving through the parking lot at the White Oak shopping center. Driving is the one thing he is determined not to let go of. As he halted at a stop sign at a cross street in the lot, he noticed that in front of him and next to the curb, that a woman was lying in the street. She appeared to be in her sixties. She seemed very disoriented and unable to get to her feet. Steve’s immediate impulse was to get out and help her. But he had to stop and think. Did he have the strength to do this? Would he himself be able to physically help her given his weakened state? Even so would he be able to get back into his car afterwards? What should he do? Surely there were others who could help, but then...Now he noticed that cars were lined up behind him and they had started blowing their horns.

He decided to help. He put his flashers on and slowly got out of his car and made his way toward her. A car pulled out around him and the driver hollered an obscenity as he drove by. More horns added to the blare. He finally got to the woman, who was still sprawled out next to the curb. Now what should he do? If she was injured in some way and he helped her up, perhaps that would worsen the injury. What if he got sued? He bent down and asked her if there was anything he could do. Could he help her up? Yes, she said, he could. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but she felt better though still dizzy. She didn’t appear to be injured. He reached down and helped her slowly to her feet, which took about every ounce of energy he had. Another angry car tore out around them. Not one other person took any helpful notice of what was happening. The woman thanked him and appeared able to walk unassisted. He offered to take her to the hospital but she declined. She would be all right she assured him. Steve returned to his car, opened the door and got in. He was totally winded and could barely move. There was now a long line of cars blasting away. The cars drove on. Eventually he felt strong enough to get moving. He drove home, lay down and could barely move for two days.

What does one make of a story like this? One response might be to glorify Steve, at the very least, as some kind of good Samaritan. But when he gave me permission to share this story, he insisted that I not do that. "Don’t make some saint out of me," he grumbled. "How could anybody not help?" The other response might be to roll our eyes with disdain and complain about how uncaring and apathetic people are today. Road rage (including parking lot rage) is a reality. But I think neither of these approaches is particularly helpful.

But as I thought about my conversation that day with Steve, it seemed to me to really be about Advent. This is the first Sunday of Advent, and that is reflected in the three scriptures. And each scripture in its way is about being prepared, being ready. Something very significant is going to happen and we must be ready. There is a theme that runs through the words of Isaiah, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus. It is about an attitude of expectancy for something that is going to happen, something profound with tremendous impact. Jews talk about the coming of the Messiah. They live in expectation of one who is to come, one who will establish justice and peace, and under whose reign we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Jesus in the scripture from Matthew talks about being ready for the coming of the Son of Man. Does he mean the Messiah? Does he mean somehow himself? Jesus’ ministry itself begins with his words "The Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel." In today’s scripture he tells us how this will happen. It will be like the proverbial coming of a thief in the night. So be prepared. And St. Paul in Romans speaks in terms of the lively expectation of the early church that Jesus himself was about to return.

It seems to me that the scriptures make three points to consider about Advent. First of all, God is coming into your life in a dramatic way. If you are prepared, it will be very, very good. If not, it will at the very least, be a lost opportunity of disastrous proportions. So the first point is that God is coming and your life will be transformed. It will have the impact of a lung transplant, or as Jeremiah the Prophet suggests, a heart transplant. "I will replace your old heart of stone with a new heart of flesh." The gospel train is coming, as the old spiritual says, and don’t be left behind. The second two points have to do with what it means to be prepared. First, to be prepared means to have an attitude of alert awareness and expectation. You’ve got to be awake. Paul says that we must awake from sleep. Jesus says don’t be like the homeowner who falls asleep when he should be on watch. A lot of people go through life in a dream world. One day is just like the next. They are like the people in the days of Noah before the flood. It is a matter of consciousness. I think one of the great things about being in a musical like "The Music Man" or any play on stage is that when the performance is going, on stage or off stage, you’ve got to stay awake, you’ve got to pay attention. People fluff lines or miss entrances not because they are forgetful, but because their attention wanders, and they aren’t alert. This attitude of being on alert is a kind of heightened way of living. And it is very energizing. For the Bible this heightened state is what it means to be fully alive. Alert and waiting. Steve Gilbert repeatedly tells me that even with the horrible suffering he is going through, even with the terrible debilitating effects of his illness, he will say "I have never felt more alive in my life." So being prepared is living on high alert.

But secondly, being prepared is also living to our full potential as people called to be righteous and compassionate and responsible. I remember as a twelve year old kid that my friends and I would sometimes get into one of these conversations about the question "What would you do if you knew the world would end in twenty-four hours?" Since we were totally obsessed with cars and girls, you can guess some of the answers. One of us, for example, said he would break into a showroom and steal a new Thunderbird, and whisk away his girlfriend, and drive off at over a hundred miles an hour to the beach, etc. You get the idea. I think the point was that we would really live; which, of course, meant do all those things that were forbidden to twelve year olds boys.

But what Paul says is this:

In so many of Jesus’ stories, the master unexpectedly returns and demands an accounting from those he left in charge. That can be good news or bad news.

I think of Steve’s story in this light. There were many good reasons that day to drive on and let someone else tend to the woman who had fallen in the road. Why didn’t he? I think simply because he was there and it was the right thing to do. He was there and he noticed her in a way that apparently no one else could or did. Steve’s health situation places extreme demands on him, and I think he behaved heroically. But the point is, for any of us in any circumstance, doing the right thing is rarely easy or convenient. The call to an act of righteousness and compassion usually comes as an interruption. The imperative to respond to human need is a disruption of our routine. As in the story of the good Samaritan, we are always on our way elsewhere when we are called upon to respond. And there is always a risk. Good Samaritans today can get sued or even killed. The timing is never right and responding is always dangerous.

And in the same way, we are always heading somewhere else when the Messiah comes, when the Son of Man appears, when Christ himself returns, when the Kingdom of God breaks forth over us. But, of course, we are talking about one and the same thing. Stopping to help a woman in a White Oak parking lot, or assisting a man fallen among thieves on the Jericho Road, is really how the Kingdom of God breaks in upon us. To respond to such challenges is to see them as those very opportunities to enter the Kingdom of God.

So remember this: God is about to dramatically enter your life. Stay awake, be alert. Seize every opportunity to respond to human need with compassion and righteousness. For the King is coming and on his return will say "I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; and was sick and in prison and you visited me. As you did it to the very least of your brothers and sisters, you did it to me." Amen.

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