Let me tell you a tale of two people, separated by twenty centuries. They are stories that bear many similarities, but also many differences. One of them I can tell quite well, because I live in the same century, the other I can only discern from other stories told about those times. As we gather in community on this day, what connects these stories to our story individually and as a community?

Life was hard for Benjamin, a twenty-something living in a small village in Palestine. Life had always been hard and now as a very mature adult, it did not get any easier. Twenty-something was a ripe old age for people in this village, and all across first century Palestine. Many of Ben's contemporaries had perished already because of the difficulty of life in this place. Survival was a constant worry and it occupied much of his daily life. In fact it did not leave much time for anything else. Even so, Ben had a bit more time for the contemplation of deeper issues than many others in his village in his time because he was a goat herder, and much like him the goats he was charged with tending were mostly occupied with finding something to eat, and therefore did not pose much of a problem for him in the tending department. He would sit and watch them sometimes and contemplate the world as he saw it. He particularly liked it when he was watching the goats at night. The sky at night was something that always drew him to think about the world as he knew it. In fact it drew his attention further than anything that happened in the daylight. At night, even though it was profoundly dark with only the occasional fire of a fellow goat herder to light up some place on the horizon, the incredible light of the stars and the moon allowed him to see further – although he could hardly regard it as “seeing”, as he did not understand where the stars and the moon came from – other than that they simply seemed like lights in the canopy of the sky that was pulled over the earth each night. The changing face of the moon was a particular mystery to Ben, and he did wonder how and why it kept changing. During the day, Ben's world was much smaller. The furthest he had travelled was a half-day's walk. There was no reason to go any further. He didn't even know anything further, although he wondered a bit. He occasionally heard of other places from travellers who walked the road through his village. They would come with some news of things that were happening in other places that sounded a lot like his village, but there wasn't much of that that seemed much different than his place. Life pretty much just happened for Ben – scrambling for the food that kept him alive, tending the goats that provided a source for some of the food that kept Ben and his family alive. Not that they had goat meat on a regular basis. Nothing like eating the limbs that feed you! No, they milked the goats, an occupation that took much of his time in the mornings. Some hand pressed cheese made from the goats milk and a cultured milk drink like yogurt was a daily part of their diet, along with the flat bread made from ground wheat and barley.

With such a slow and regular pattern of living, the twenty plus years of Ben's life would have seemed much longer – although of course he knew nothing different.

But what did Ben long for? What were the deepest desires of his life? What would Ben have named as his spirituality? Spirituality was not something to be separated out for Ben – it was just there – an integrated part of his life – wholly physical, emotional and spiritual without separation. Ben did not go to sleep at night thinking about each of these aspects of his personhood, they were all together who and what he was. He didn't really have time to do it even if he wanted to because as much as life was slow for Ben (in modern terms) it was also very fast. The daily chores and the grind to survive – to play his part in the preparation of the food took practically all the time he had. Ben mostly longed to live, to make it to the next day, to gather enough food for the few days ahead, to keep the goats safe and healthy and his deepest desire was the primal desire to care for himself and his family, to provide shelter and sustenance so that they could continue life for themselves and for their village and for the future. That was the main purpose of having children for Ben and his wife – to satisfy the unstated by deeply connected need to live into the future.

Life was a screaming vapour trail for Richard. A twenty-something Millenial. Richard still lived at home, because already in the third major career of his young life, he could not afford to live on his own. Life was hard for Rich, not because he didn't know where his next meal was coming from, but because it seemed that everywhere he turned, the world seemed headed on a course of destruction. Even so, Rich found it pretty easy to fill his life with things to do, many of them directed in such a way as to mitigate or curtail the destruction as much as he could in his own small influence on the world, which he recognised was small in one sense, but also large in that his actions when and if multiplied by the millions of others who lived on the same planet as him could truly change direction. Rich's world was larger than any planet. In the bit of star light he could see at night in a world which was so bright with fossil fuel burning artificial light he could gaze out and contemplate just how small and how large a place he occupied in the universe. It was both daunting and inspiring to him to think about these things. He had lots of time to spend on them. Living at home, he only had to worry about making meals every so often, and he was so wired and connected that practically any question he had about anything, including what to make for supper was no further than a two-thumb entry on the mini-keyboard of his Blackberry Curve – already a generation older than the current crop of so called smart phones. News for Rich arrived on his smart phone every time the tell-tale electronic alarm went off accompanied by the vibration that added to the signal whenever his phone was sitting on a piece of furniture. Sometimes the news was a piece of information about what his circle of friends were doing after work. Sometimes it was the latest details on the scary developments taking place on the Korean peninsula. Sometimes it was a Facebook status update from his friend who was teaching English as a Second Language in Thailand, or a link to a particularly hilarious Youtube video that one his university buddies who now lived in Nova Scotia had sent him. Even though any of these places could be considered a long way away for Rich, they seemed like his backyard because he had been to all of them in a year of around the world travel before he went to University.

One world, two different times. One time of unchanging, slow moving, hard living. Existence is a day-to-day concern. Finding food is a major pre-occupation, leaving little time for anything else. The universe is a half-day walk wide – perhaps a bit further. News comes slowly, change is plodding. Another time of change that occurs every second or faster, fast paced, hard living. Existence – not personal, but the world as we know it, is a day-to-day concern. Finding food is nothing, with enough money it can be found on practically every corner, but food supply is an issue, as is water. The universe is beyond the limits of our understanding. News is a constant stream of data, change is unrelenting.

We come to the season of Advent with these two worlds in mind – living in one, yet forcing our minds to try even just a little bit to consider the context and world view of the other from two thousand years ago. What ties Benjamin and Richard together over time? What does Advent waiting mean for Ben who spends every minute of every day just getting by? What does Advent waiting mean for Rich who spends every nanosecond of every day wondering how the world will get by - survive the pressures that seem to weigh upon it from every direction?

To be continued. Amen.