In his award winning book, The Education of Little Tree, writer Forest Carter writes of life with his Cherokee grandparents. He tells of sitting with his grandfather watching the morning sun rise over a mountain one winter morning.
"... we watched the mountain while we ate. The sun hit the top like an explosion, sending showers of glitter and sparkle into the air. The sparkling of the icy trees hurt the eyes to look, and it moved down the mountain like a wave as the sun backed the night shadow down and down. A crow scout sent three hard calls through the air, warning we were there.
And now the mountain popped and gave breathing sighs that sent little puffs of steam into the air. She pinged and murmured as the sun released the trees from their death armor of ice.
Grandpa watched, same as me, and listened as the sounds grew with the morning wind that set up a low whistle in the trees. 'She's coming alive,' he said soft and low, without taking his eyes from the mountain."
'Yes sir,' I said, 'she's coming alive.' And I knew right then that me and Grandpa had us an understanding that most folks didn't know." [1]
Little Tree learned from his Grandpa how to read the signs of nature. Reading signs, not the printed ones we see on our streets and highways, but the signs of nature and life and living is an art that takes time, practice and patience. The reward is what Little Tree called, "...an understanding that most folks don't know."
In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus talks about "signs of the times" and particularly the signs of his coming. In effect, he says to us, "Pay attention to signs of the times and be prepared for my coming."
We are right at the threshold of another Advent Season. It is the "advent" (in the Latin "ad-venio - to come to,") or arrival of Christ we are preparing for. Historically, Advent has been a period of prayer and fasting when Christians prepare themselves for the coming of Christ as the love of God incarnate. There are all kinds of signs in the world around us that Christmas is coming. You would have to be a hermit to miss them. Your Sunday newspaper is stuffed like the turkey you had at Thanksgiving and merchants are once again gearing up for the time of year that brings in the majority of their annual profits. And if all the "signs" are right - this will be another banner year. Of course, the signs in the world around us are not so much signs of the coming of Christ as they are of the coming of incredible sums of money into the economy. And this Christmas season will once again see a time of great prosperity. And yet, we need to be clear that the season of preparation we call Advent ( in the historical sense) does not much resemble the celebration of the holiday season we are entering.
An NBC Dateline program was reporting on problems families who have benefited from the booming economy are encountering. It seems they have too much money and have come down with a syndrome or sickness some psychologists have called "affluenza." This disorder is brought about because these people have gained too much wealth in the new booming economy and their children are bored with things. One young father in the Silicon Valley lamented, "We got our son a new Porsche for his birthday and he doesn't have a clue what he wants for Christmas." (Kind of gets you right here, doesn't it?)
There is a plus side to the fact that we are increasingly a diverse culture. The season that is upon us is more often than not called the "Holiday Season" rather than the "Christmas Season." Public schools have increasingly come to call the traditional "Christmas Break" a "Winter Break." In our pluralistic culture, holidays of other faith groups are celebrated and it is no longer Christmas and Easter that dominate the calendar of public institutions.
Perhaps all of this will help us to be more clear about the difference between the coming of Christ as we celebrate it in our Advent preparations and the coming of the Holiday Season as it is celebrated in our culture. The one thing I find it hard to wrap my mind around - and I suspect many others face this too - is the fact that when people go to K-Mart to buy one of those fake evergreen trees, it is still almost always a "Christmas Tree.”
In the midst of all this seasonal hubbub the season of Advent calls us to read the "signs of the times" and pay attention to our spiritual life. In the most simple way I know how to express it, the primary question to each one of us on this Sunday is a question that comes from Christ himself: "Are you ready for me to come to you?"
In our gospel reading Jesus tells his followers that they must always be ready for his coming. It is a peculiarity of our lectionary readings that the readings for the first Sunday of Advent always come from the end of the gospels where Jesus is talking about readiness for a second coming when he will come in glory as Lord of all. In our Advent preparation and Christmas services, the theme and the scriptures will turn to the birth of Jesus. Yet, the theme of "readiness" for the coming of Christ is the main point of our Advent preparations. And so it is appropriate and important to ask: "Are you ready for Christ to come to you?"
There are three ways that reading the "signs of the times," can speak to us as we enter the preparation time of Advent once again. [1] It is time to look at our relationship with God, [2] It is time to step away from the worries of daily living, [3] It is time to center ourselves spiritually.
[1] Forest Carter, The Education of Little Tree. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1993 (ISBN 0-8263-0879-1) [We highly recommend this book]