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First Sunday in Advent
For today’s Gospel reading, we have a passage from Matthew that is the basis for so-called Rapture Fiction, where readers get to fantasize about being raptured off to Heaven while their benighted neighbors are “left behind” to suffer apocalyptic destruction along the lines of Noah’s flood. That the Left Behind series has sold over 65 million copies worldwide shows how pervasive the fantasy is, but it’s probably not what Jesus had in mind, especially since the fantasies are often laced with resentment and thoughts of vengeance. More on that after we examine the passage:
Jesus said to the disciples, “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.
In an essay posted on the Journey with Jesus website, Amy Frykholm writes that Jesus is pointing to an experience that exists outside of our known parameters. It is a time outside of time, Kairos rather than Chronos. Whereas Rapture Fiction operates comfortably in the realm of the familiar—we are invited to smugly identify with those who are taken and to feel superior to the wretched souls who are not—Frykholm says that Jesus has something far more challenging in mind, something that he himself can only glimpse. Because poetry can take us further into realms where language itself is inadequate, Frykholm turns to W.S. Merwin’s “Gift” and Mary Oliver’s “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” to help her out. Kairos time, she says,
introduces us to our wild and unpredictable God. This is not the God of The Bible Code, where everything can be deciphered if we just apply the right numerological formulas. This also isn’t the sentimental God of commercial Advent, where we go through the cycles of Christmas preparation. This is a God that the poet W.S. Merwin calls “Nameless One, Invisible, Untouchable Free.” This is the God of the owl in a Mary Oliver poem, “Coming down out of the freezing sky/with its depths of light.” The God of kairos time is terrifying. If we’re afraid, it’s because God exceeds our understanding and often does not seem to have our best interests at heart. Like the people of Noah’s time, we might like to avoid the presence of this God. But this God is the God of now. The God of here. The God coming to be in our midst.
Think of the Matthew passage, then, as more about spiritual awakening than physical relocation, which is only a hackneyed metaphor anyway. “If the Gospel is a message of love and not a message of fear,” she writes, “then love is always, already, the moment of now.”
In “Gift” Merwin is striving to give voice to this God in our midst, this gift, and imagining how to respond. “I have to trust what was given to me/ if I am to trust anything,” the poet writes, but that is difficult as the gift refuses to be held down. “I have to let it open its wings and fly among the gifts of the unknown,” Merwyn says. The various names he bestows on the gift are ultimately inadequate because it is nameless, and when he calls to it, it responds like God to Moses from the burning bush:
I am nameless I am divided
I am invisible I am untouchable
and empty
Yet as elusive as it is, there is still a role for the poet and a role for all of us. We are to be led by this gift
as streams are led by it
and braiding flights of birds
the gropings of veins the learning of plants
the thankful days
breath by breath
Calling us “nomad,” the nameless gift tells us that we are to be
my eyes
my tongue and my hands
my sleep and my rising
out of chaos
In the end, we are wanderers who are to come and be given to the world as a gift is given.
Gift
By W.S. Merwin
I have to trust what was given to me
if I am to trust anything
it led the stars over the shadowless mountain
what does it not remember in its night and silence
what does it not hope knowing itself no child of time
what did it not begin what will it not end
I have to hold it up in my hands as my ribs hold up my heart
I have to let it open its wings and fly among the gifts of the unknown
again in the mountain I have to turn
to the morning
I must be led by what was given to me
as streams are led by it
and braiding flights of birds
the gropings of veins the learning of plants
the thankful days
breath by breath
I call to it Nameless One O Invisible
Untouchable Free
I am nameless I am divided
I am invisible I am untouchable
and empty
nomad live with me
be my eyes
my tongue and my hands
my sleep and my rising
out of chaos
come and be given
In the liturgical calendar, Advent signals the movement from the “ordinary time” of Pentecost to apocalyptic time. Poetry can play a powerful role in this transition that defies understanding.
