Today is the first Sunday of Advent which is also the first day of the Christian New Year. This year, the Christian Year, marks and celebrates the presence of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Advent proclaims the coming of Jesus the Christ at Christmas, the incarnate presence of God in human flesh, whose life is fulfilled in his resurrection on Easter Day.

And to celebrate the beginning of this wonderful season, we have this strange passage from Mark which is sometimes called the “Little Apocalypse.” It doesn't seem very focused on the holiday, now does it? Instead of joyful cheer, we get this passage about the future and destruction and the coming of Christ. While we are waiting for this momentous event, we have a call to keep awake!

Keep awake? We can do that. We're down right good at keeping awake, staying long hours at work and play. We stay awake on Black Friday to buy more or to stand in more and longer lines. On other days, we stay awake to surf the Internet mindlessly, check our work e-mail from home while we give our children dinner, or work a few extra hours because the house feels too lonely. We keep awake, keep moving, keep consuming as much and as quickly as possible so we can get lost in the succor of noise and department store lights that masks our deep spiritual lack, our profound loneliness and our agitated listlessness.

But the command of Jesus isn't to keep awake and keep moving. Rather it is to keep awake and to wait. And wait. And wait still. This is the discipline of Advent, and, in some ways in our modern culture of frenetic activity, it is more difficult even than the penitence and denial of Lent. Advent is about waiting actively.

So what does it mean to “keep awake?” Being spiritually awake is a state of awareness. This awareness sees life as God desires us to see it, full of its hopes and possibilities; as well it’s suffering and longing for completeness. It is an active waiting and watching. Buddhist thought calls this an attitude of mindfulness.

In Living Buddha, Living Christ Thich Nhat Hahn writes, “In Buddhism, our effort is to practice mindfulness in each moment – to know what is going on within and all around us. When the Buddha was asked, ‘Sir, what do you and your monks practice?’ he replied, ‘We sit, we walk, and we eat.’ The questioner continued, ‘But sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats,’ and the Buddha told him, ‘When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating.’ Most of the time, we are lost in the past or carried away by future projects and concerns. When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, we can see and listen deeply, and the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy. When our beautiful child comes up to us and smiles, we are completely there for her.”

Have you ever waited for someone when you weren't quite sure when they would arrive? When any passing car might be them? In our world of cellphones this is something that not everyone has to go though. But when I was a kid, waiting for my parents to pick me up at the community pool, I didn't have the luxury of a phone call. I would pace and watch and keep all of my attention focused towards the road I knew they would be driving down. Every time a car would start down the road I would tense, looking to see if it was my folks. All of my senses were focused in one place. That is active waiting.

That’s the kind of waiting this passage has in mind, an active waiting that has come to know full well that the one who is coming is recognizable, even before fully arriving. Jesus’ message about his appearance encourages advocacy, not idleness. Expectancy means looking alertly for opportunities to come alongside Christ and embody Christ’s purposes in the present, as well as in the future. We expect he’s all around us.

And here's where Mark's otherwise confusing and alarming passage has something to say. Because after all the predictions about the end, Jesus says that no one will know the day or the hour and so we have to keep close watch. He goes a little further, actually, and compares our situation to that of servants who do not know when their master will return and yet are expected to be prepared for it. One way to read this mini-parable is as a call to constant vigilance. And I think there's something to that. We are indeed called always be on the look out for our Lord – whether at the end of time or, as we noticed last week, in the face of our neighbors' need.

Because Christ is coming. But Christ is always coming. Christ is always here. Christ is present when we gather. Christ is present in the hungry that we feed or the poor that we clothe. This passage is a reminder of what it means to prepare for Christ. Advent is more than just a time of decorations and presents. Of festivity and cheer. It is a time when we are actively anticipating Christ. A time when we seek to get ready for him. Christ is coming! And the world is far from being in good shape for him, is it?

On this First Sunday of Advent the Church chooses readings which concentrate on theme of watchfulness and staying awake and aware. We begin a new liturgical year by reflecting upon the ultimate reason for our existence, the journey back to God. We do not like to think about death, do we? It can leave a bad taste in our mouth. Yet, it is only through death that the great Christian paradox, that eternal life comes through death, can be experienced.

We remember Jesus' words: "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." In order to appreciate fully the significance and power of the Incarnation, the Church asks us to consider our mortality and need for God while exhorting us to vigilance and preparedness in our day-to-day Christian journey. The parable of the doorkeeper challenges us to wait patiently and be ever watchful for Jesus' coming, for we do not know the day or the hour.

Just for a moment here at the beginning of advent, I want to take a moment to ask what if. What if we all needed to prepare for the end? What if you knew you had only one month left in your life? Would you finish up important matters at work? Would you travel to a place you always wanted to go? Would you pray more, go to church more, do that generous act you always wanted to do for others? Would you find ways to leave a mark on the world? Would you reconcile a fractured friendship?

When we start answering yes to these questions, we indicate that in our last days we would be better stewards of all the things God has given us in this life. We would be better at it than we are now. In the intensity of last days, we would live better, be better. We would be more generous, more focused on the most important things in life. The question is: Why do we need to be under threat of death to prepare for Christ?

Yes, there’s an impracticality to living as if it were the end when it’s really not. If I knew my life would really be over in a month, I probably would jump on a plane and visit some places I’ve longed to see. But since as far as I know, I’ve got much more than a month, I know I have bills to pay and obligations to tend. Living entirely as if it’s the end would be irresponsible. But does our best stewardship have to exist only in our imaginings of 'what ifs'?

I think we find here that Jesus calls us to do both: to live with the intensity of last days while living our regular lives. He reminds us that we are not just for this world, and he liberates us to work with courage, with hope. End times, whether personal or world wide, call for tall towers of hope. They call for a complete reordering of priorities. End times call for alertness, sharpness, a mindful awareness. They tingle with expectation. The way this passage tells us to live all of our lives. It’s not about the end of world, but about the living in it.

Once asked what he would do if he believed the world would end tomorrow, Martin Luther is said to have responded, "I would plant a tree today." Luther knew that preparing for Christ meant taking care of the world around him. We also, confident of God's love and sure of God's promises about the future, can also invest in the present, in the everyday and the ordinary, in the people and causes all around us. For we have God's promise in the cross and resurrection of Christ that in time God will indeed draw all of God's creation not just to an end, but to a good end.

What I am trying to get at is this: Rather than get bogged down trying to describe final events in detail, rather than cringing in fear or going to excess in the pursuit of pleasure while we have a chance, we are to continue living each day no matter what may come. But we are to move ahead wide-eyed, using our gifts, talents, abilities as fully as possible, flexible enough to be molded by the circumstances and opportunities and challenges that may be part of an uncertain future. We are called to live lives of joyous mindful awareness. “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”