 Rev. Rod Quainton |
Mind
the Gap
Sermon:
Scripture: |
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“Mind
the gap! Mind the gap, please!” the voice over
the public address system in the London Underground alerts.
That is the word heard by the passengers standing on the
platform awaiting the next train to roar into the station. A word to
those of you who were expecting a sermon on the sales at a
certain clothing retailer: you will be disappointed. As for
the passage from Mark I just read, when the worship bulletin
lists a passage from Matthew, you might have been wondering
how in the world the sermon will connect those two passages.
It won’t, since I failed to mind the gap between Mark and
Matthew. We’ll leave the Matthew passage for another sermon.
How then can I be reading such a passage from the Gospel that
does not have any mention of Jesus’ nativity during a season
when we are all preparing for Christmas? What’s Mark 13 got
to do with the season? Advent, you
see, is the time when we contemplate the end times and our
preparation for it, as well as our preparations for the coming
of the Christ child in our hearts; hence the Lukan passage on
the annunciation. Herein lies the fundamental Christian gap.
The gap stands as a metaphor for our lives as exemplified in
this Advent season, which is a time of watching and
waiting—paying attention, if you will, or minding the store,
so to speak. Imagine
standing on a platform waiting for a train. Note the gap
between the train and the platform. Sometimes we stand on the
stationary platform and other times we need to board the
soon-to-be-moving train. Gaps are to be minded; not fallen
into. Sometimes we need to get off the train onto the
stationary platform. The Christian message is about being
grounded in the solid platform of Jesus Christ who invites us
onto the train of life for our journey in His way. Look at
today’s scriptures. One is about the end of times and the
apocalyptic coming of Jesus, and the other is perhaps the more
familiar annunciation passage of the birth of Jesus. Advent is
the season the church chooses to celebrate these two
seemingly-contradictory events. Both are about Jesus’
coming. As some traditions say at communion: “Christ has
died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We also
remember the coming of the Christ child through our
celebration of Christmas. We live in the in-between times. Consider how, here at First Church, we opened Advent with Advent by Candlelight last Monday evening and will close our observations of the season with a candlelight service at 11:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve. In between we are invited to ponder the wonders of the season, remembering that it is into light that we are born. When
I was growing up, I used to go to the Saturday morning Western
serials to watch the good guys avenge the bad guys—“blow
them away,” in contemporary parlance. High Noon and Shane
were (and are) two of my all-time favorite movies. When
justice was done, Shane’s triumph was mine. When the
Marshall (played by Gary Cooper) takes out the bad guy (played
by Jack Palance), his triumph was mine. I cheered. This view
of the world was undone in a film by none other than Clint
Eastwood in his seminal movie of 1992, Unforgiven. The
title tells it all. The good guys triumph, but it is an empty
and hollow victory, as the title suggests. Violence
begets violence. Clint Eastwood has returned to that
theme in his most recent movie, Mystic River, raising
issues of justice and forgiveness. I always want the good guy
to win. That is human nature. God always wants love to win,
and therein lies the gap of our own experience. The
Arbon Dennis Men’s Group, which meets on Wednesday mornings,
is reading a provocative book by two Quakers entitled If
Grace is True: Why God Will Save Every Person. Their
thesis is that all are saved without exception—no ifs, ands
or buts. They make a wonderful argument in support of their
thesis. One of their most interesting arguments illuminating
the difference between our human understanding of revenge and
Jesus’ response to his crucifixion is the retelling of the
story concerning the resurrected Jesus. You know the story:
“Jesus was arrested, convicted on trumped up charges,
flogged, beaten, crowned with a crown of thorns and nailed to
a cross, and left to hang and die a hideous death. You
remember his loyal followers. They bailed out while his
enemies celebrated his demise.” Jesus’ resurrection, the
authors go on to say, “shouldn’t surprise them, as heroes
never die”—as I had learned on Saturday mornings during my
formative years. “Heroes return to destroy their enemies. If
the disciples had been raised on Saturday matinees, they would
have waited at the tomb, confident of Jesus’ triumph.” How
would Hollywood have ended the greatest story ever told? With
Jesus portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenagger as Terminator of the
End Times, who would have returned to the Temple and
blasted/wasted his enemies and then moved on to the Roman
authorities to encounter Pilate, a la High Noon. Then
all of Jerusalem would truly have proclaimed Jesus the
Messiah, the new King David. Clearly, Jesus would never had
made it in Hollywood, because instead of vanquishing his
enemies and parading in triumph, Jesus met with his friends
and encouraged them to mind the gap until he returned.
Interestingly, none of the resurrection appearances “suggest
that Jesus made his resurrection known to his enemies. Nor did
he urge his disciples to avenge his suffering. He told them to
preach, teach and heal and to spread the gospel of love.
Instead of using the resurrection as evidence of his power, he
used it to serve, cooking breakfast for his followers. Instead
of using the resurrection as an opportunity to wreak revenge,
he used it to offer forgiveness, pardoning Peter for his
betrayal. It is an odd ending. After his resurrection, having
already forgiven his enemies, he saw no need to destroy
them.” How’s that for a gap to be minded in our daily lives when we want vengeance masquerading as justice? Thus we live as fallen humans between God’s bountiful love and mercy, which knows no bounds, and our desire for justice. This is what the Advent/Christmas season has to offer us: how to mind the gap between our limited capacity to love and God’s infinite capacity to love. Grace and mercy do, in fact, trump revenge and judgment. Thus we live in a quandary between the scriptures which describe a day of judgment, not unlike today’s little apocalypse passage from Mark, and the good news of God’s salvific love contained in the birth of Christ. Mind the gap. (If Grace is True by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland, pp. 75-77, 80 and 105.) This
past Friday, I had a wonderful experience volunteering for the
DIA through a program called Thinking Through Art at
Bennett Elementary School in southwest Detroit, near Jeff
Nelson’s old ’hood. There, in a decrepit 1910 building,
God’s work is being done by a dedicated teacher whose class
of 24 fifth graders of mostly Hispanic parentage was thirsting
for knowledge. The teacher told me stories of her dedication
to her students to foster the ability to think, not just
absorb facts. Here is a bilingual woman who chooses to teach
in this inner city Detroit school, lives in Highland Park, and
is white, non-Hispanic. The children wore uniforms and were
well behaved. She reported that she spends over $1,000 of her
own money outfitting her class with supplies. I was fascinated
as she said each child gets issued two sets of textbooks, one
to keep at home and one that stays in the classroom. She told
me touching stories of parents as I asked about the
demographics of the neighborhood. Most of the parents are from
Mexico or Puerto Rico and work construction, which was
seasonal during the Michigan barrel season (otherwise known as
summer), with winter being leaner times because of the
weather. One of the issues she faces is that the parents often
move to Texas in the winter to follow the seasonal
construction jobs. She told of lives of hard work and
dedication to family. One
story was of a woman who lived in the neighborhood. When she
was ten, she remembers her family left Mexico to move to
Chicago to seek construction work. She grew up with her family
moving from Chicago to Texas as the jobs were seasonal, being
shunted from one school to another and never completing her
high school education. She married a construction worker in
Detroit and was determined to break the cycle so her children
could have a stable family life and a proper education, which
she accomplished by finding a job for herself to enable the
family to have an income in the off season. I
was astonished by the dedication of these people to work and
family. Talk about the work ethic. I came away from this
experience with shattered notions of stereotypes of Detroit
schools and now know that there are oases of hope and promise
thanks to dedicated teachers. I came away realizing that there
was a gap to be minded between Bennett and Birmingham. I saw
Jesus on Friday in the faces of one dedicated teacher and 24
eager students. Thursday
evening, I encountered another gap worth minding at The Max.
Nanci and I went to the Kathleen Battle DSO concert to open
Advent for us. On one side of the stage sang the primarily
white choir of boys and girls from Christ Church Grosse Pointe
in their uniforms of blue blazers and gray skirts or slacks.
On the other side of the stage was Vision, the all black,
tuxedo-clad male vocal ensemble from the Detroit High School
for the Fine and Performing Arts—once again, shattering
stereotypes of urban black males. Minding the gap, Kathleen
Battle stood as together they sang “Rise Up Shepherd and
Follow.” What a beautiful image of the Kingdom. This is the
Christmas message in a nutshell. Again we need to mind the gap
between Grosse Pointe and Detroit. Bridges can occur over the
gap. They did occur one glorious evening in Orchestra Hall. Another
increasingly important gap requiring minding is the phenomenon
of globalization and the economic encounters between different
cultures with different values. From my firsthand experience
working as a banker in Japan, I can attest to the fact that
not minding the gap can be fatal for successful dialogue and
business dealings. The Harvard Business Review, in its
October 2003 issue, ran a series of articles on doing business
in China and Asia. The article was essentially about paying
attention to the culture gap. What fascinated me in one
article was a chart which outlined “the views from both
sides.” For example, the chart points out that the basic
American cultural values and ways of thinking are in contrast
to the Asian way. Ours being “individualist,
information-oriented, sequential, argumentative and truth
seeking in contrast to Asian values of collectivist,
relationship-oriented, circular reasoning, seeking the way and
haggling.” Think about how the two cultures approach
business negotiations: “quick meetings versus a long
courting process, cold calling versus use of intermediaries,
direct exchange of information versus indirect.” Consider
the means of persuasion: “aggressive versus questioning; impatient versus enduring.” Examine the principles of terms
of agreement: “forging a ‘good deal’ versus forging a
long-term relationship.” My
own experience corroborates this culture gap. In negotiating a
loan with the Japanese, which turned out not to be so good
from my employer’s perspective, I employed all the American
values above without considering how the other side was
approaching the negotiations. I remember vividly that at one
point in the heat of the negotiation process, there were long,
or so it seemed, silences. Rather than minding the gaps, which
were part of the communication process, I plowed right in to
fill them. I fell into the gap. Whenever there is a lull in
the conversation, how often do we try to fill rather than mind
the gap? Other
examples of minding the gap come from my Tuesday DADS group,
Dialoguing About Dads Stuff, over the issue of being versus
doing. We live in a society that defines our worth by what we
do. The Fresh Perspectives ministry drives that home to me
daily. The first question we often ask a stranger or new
acquaintance is: “What do you do?” My dads are often asked
that question, and give the answer that they are stay-at-home
dads. Then follows the silence and a change of topic because
that doesn’t fit the stereotype of the American family.
Which underscores that we are what we do. Yet the gospel
message is one of calling us into being the unique children of
God that we have been created to be. How do you answer that
question? We are called to be human beings, not human doings.
We need to mind that gap. Advent is a good time to do that. Think
of other gaps you need to mind. For many, there is the gap
between the joy of the season and the despair of the season.
Note that Lisa is holding a worship service, The Longest
Night: A Service of Light in the Midst of Darkness
on Sunday evening, December 21—an attempt to mind the gap
that not all persons experience Christmas as a time of joy and
hope. Perhaps
the greatest gap of all to be minded is that time between Good
Friday and Easter, between Crucifixion and Resurrection, which
the Church has called Holy Saturday, the ultimate day/time of
waiting—truly a time of already and not yet. Advent
commemorates a similar time, between now with the breaking in
of the kingdom through the coming of Jesus and not yet having
reached its final consummation. The ultimate gap is our time
from birth to death. How do we mind that gap? Jackie Onassis
was quoted as saying to her priest, the Rev. Richard McSorley,
as reported by Lolita Baldor in the Detroit Free Press
(Friday, November 14, 2003): “If only I had a minute to say
goodbye. It was so hard not to say goodbye, not to be able to
say goodbye.” Take this to heart. It is never too early to
say what you need to say to someone. We all need to mind the
gap in our relationships. Advent, then, is a time to consider the gaps in our individual and collective lives, a time to examine where we need to be attentive and watchful, i.e. minding the gap. Life is lived in bridging the gaps. The train of life is only at the platform a few precious moments before it moves on. It is never too late to mind the gaps between our personal agendas and God’s agenda for us. What gaps do you need to mind? We each have our own. This is indeed the season of waiting, watching and minding. Mind the gap, the train of life is pulling into the station. Mind the gap, please.
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