First Advent

Luke 21: 34 – 36

Jesus continued, “Be on your guard. So, whatever you do, don’t go to sleep at the switch. Pray constantly that you will have the strength and wits to make it through everything that’s coming and end up on your feet before the Son of Man.”

It’s hard to imagine the end-of-the-world cataclysm described by Jesus in Luke’s gospel. A glimpse comes from the 2019 film Don’t Look Up. I’m still haunted by the movie’s final scene: a group of scientists, choosing to spend their last living hours together, gather around a humble table to share a meal and stories. Finally someone says: “We really did have everything, didn’t we?”

The scene and line remind me of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town – the part where dead Emily gets a chance to depart the afterlife to relive a single day on earth. She’s warned to “choose the least important day in your life,” for “it will be important enough.”

But Emily doesn’t last an entire day. The ordinary rituals of breakfast cooking and family members waking fill her tormented longing. “Take me back … to my grave,” she cries out. And: “Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me.” As Emily leaves, she says: “Goodbye, Grover’s Corners … Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realise you. Do any human beings ever realise life while they live it – every, every minute?”

Perhaps it’s enough, this Advent, to focus on the little things. Perhaps it’s enough to look up from our mobile phones, TVs, newspapers, and computers a lot more – to truly grasp what it means to say “God so loved the world …”