Fear and Foreboding?

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist


Luke 21:25-29


“I’ve been out here for thirty-seven years,” he said, when I sat beside him on the bench in the park across the street as your ambassador two weeks ago.

“Nothing ever changes.”

I asked him to explain.

He said he had spent most of his adult life employed as a cook nearby, serving folks who needed a hot meal every now and then. He liked his job. Met a lot of interesting people. Got to know the neighborhood inside and out. Better than I do, to be sure. Maybe better than all of us, who tend to drive down here from somewhere else and then drive back home to somewhere else.

He is retired now, this man from the neighborhood I met two weeks ago. But he still comes to sit on that bench week after week, year after year, and watch it all unfold before him. I would go so far as to call him, in Christian language, a “martyr.” Which we often associate with being a victim, but in Christian tradition simply means a person who “bears witness.” And surely this man bears witness from his perch on his bench in the park across the street.

And what has he witnessed, I asked? People going in and out of the hospital for treatment across the way. Or going into the pharmacy next door for more treatment. Or taking their pets for an afternoon of ‘catch’ at the dog park on the others side of the street.

Or, yes, coming together to make drug deals. Or drown their sorrows in alcohol. Or beg for money. Or bum a cigarette. Or claim a bench to sleep away the night.

All of which this man on the bench has witnessed over the past thirty seven years.

They also come just to sit in peace for a while, along their way to someplace else. Which is what he was doing when I stepped into his space with a cup of coffee and an invitation to communion two Sundays away . . .

“I’ve been out here for thirty-seven years,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing ever changes.”

I thanked him. Then found another man on another bench and offered another cup of coffee. And then I went on my merry way and went on about my merry life . . .


But he got to me. And I think we all need to hear what he has to say as we prepare for what we do hope will be a true “communion”—a true “joining with”—the world Jesus came to serve. Because if we take seriously the Gospel insistence that our neighbors may have something to teach us in the name of Christ, even as we embark on this mission to share with them the “welcome home” we have known within these walls for so many years, we need to heed the warning of this truly wise martyr, who knows this neighborhood far better than any of us.

Which is that if we think we can fix the problems of the park in one small communion service, we had better get our heads examined!

In fact, if we think this communion in the park we are about to experience is about what we are doing at all, then we have entirely missed the point.

The point is about what God is doing! Or, to be more theologically correct in this Season of Advent, it is about what God has already done in the coming of Christ. And it is about what God has promised to do in the fullness of time with “the coming of the Son of Man,” as described in our lesson from Luke today. 

John Dominic Crossan calls it “The Divine Cleanup of the World,” this apocalyptic mythology of chaos and confusion at the end of time, with distress and fear and foreboding, and the shaking of the powers of heaven.

And as much as we want to be a community of grace, the truth is the “Divine Cleanup” that really does hold humanity in judgment for the ways in which we have completely and utterly messed up this good creation God has given us from the beginning. With our greed and our hoarding and our empire-building. And our division of the world into those who gorge at a table of gluttony and those who are still yet begging for one small crumb.

The truth is we are moving farther and farther away from even knowing our neighbors, much less loving them. And maybe we are even moving farther and farther away from knowing and loving ourselves.

Which is why the “Divine Cleanup” apocalyptic mythology of the coming of the Son of Man swooping from the heavens in a cloud with power and great glory to finally make it right again is simply one more way that Scripture calls us to admit how far we have fallen from who we were created to be. And to admit we cannot un-do this mess ourselves. Which is exactly what this First Sunday of Advent is all about.

We need a Savior. We cannot do it by ourselves. Because if it were up to us, nothing really would ever change.

The good news is that we have one. The good news is that we can say, in some mysterious way, the “Divine Cleanup of the World ” has already happened in the coming of Christ, even as we wait in hopeful expectation for its final fulfillment in the fullness of time.

The good news is that we can say, in some mysterious way, the table of Christ to which we come this morning has already been spread in the park across the street for these past twenty-seven years, or one hundred thirty-five years, or even before Madison Square Presbyterian Church ever dreamed of planting itself on this corner of Camden and Lexington . . .

And the good news is that we can say, in some mysterious way, the table of Christ to which we come this morning has always spread out from the center of the great hungering crowds who will never stop pressing in upon Jesus for a word of hope and healing in a world gone terribly wrong. Whether we are living in the first century or the twenty-first century. And our invitation is to join them.

And the really good news is that we can say, in some mysterious way, the table of Christ to which we come this morning has always and forever been a taste of that heavenly banquet that is already prepared in the fullness of time. Beyond the “Divine Cleanup of the World” where violence and addiction and economic injustice and hopelessness and despair and gluttony and homelessness and greed and hunger really are no more. And the last really have already become first. And—woe unto so many of us who think we’ve got it all together—the first really have already become last.

The point of the communion we celebrate today, that we celebrate any time we receive the Sacrament, is that in the fullness of time at the heavenly banquet we “taste” at the communion table our neighbors in the park are already there! Waiting for us! And we have all finally come home to God’s good news for the poor and recovery of sight to the blind and release to the captives and liberty for the oppressed. Because we have finally listened to one another. And loved one another. In the same way Jesus did . . . 

And the point of the communion we celebrate today, that we celebrate any time we receive the Sacrament, is that in the meantime—as we keep waiting and watching and preparing for that fullness of time when all really is made well—we go ahead and get to work on knowing our neighbors and knowing ourselves over and over and over again.

And so we join that wise martyr on that bench in the middle of the park. Watching and witnessing. And learning from him what it means to cook a hot meal for folks who need one every now and then. Only to find out we need one, too . . .

I pray it may it be so. Amen.