Alexandre Schmid is the night watchman of Lausanne, Switzerland. Five nights a week, he climbs 153 steps to his perch at the top of the cathedral tower and announces boldly to the city that he’s there. C’est le guet! Il a sonné dix…Il a sonné dix!” “It’s the nightwatch! It’s 10 o’clock! It’s 10 o’clock!” The night watchman has been on guard in the cathedral tower since 1405, following a disastrous fire. The position was created as a means of security for a pre-industrial age, a proactive response to a crisis. In former times, the night watchman would survey the horizon for fires or invaders, serving as the first harbinger of danger. He would also announce the time of day and ring the cathedral bells.[1]
But this position is, of course, a modern-day anachronism. We now have technological means of sensing fires and alerting others to their danger. Bells in church towers can be run on automated timers—that is, if they’re working, unlike ours! Few cities are worried about bands of threatening invaders approaching, and if invaders did show up, they would be detected by national security agencies, not a night watchman on top of a tower.
For the citizens of Lausanne, the night watchman may be an anachronism, but the position isn’t pointless. The night watchman is an institution, a valued part of society. Perhaps the real value of the night watchman isn’t practical but emotional and symbolic. The voice of the watchman crying out each night at the same time, regardless of the weather or wars or a pandemic, is comforting. C’est le guet! Il a sonné dix…Il a sonné dix! Maybe it’s like falling asleep in a thunderstorm, where the patter of rain on the roof is soothing and one is assured that inside the warm, dry house, all will be just fine.
The night watchman seems to thread a needle between overreaction and apathy. He will, of course, sound a warning should there be real danger, but he must also be careful lest he sound a false alarm. Nor should he become distracted or disinterested. No one wants a night watchman sleeping on the job. The night watchman is the bedrock of stability, of reliability, of vigilant presence. C’est le guet! Il a sonné dix…Il a sonné dix! In feast or famine, the voice continues to cry out.
The night watchman is a helpful metaphor for the ideal posture of Christian discipleship. The spiritual tradition has always invited us into a median place, where we must thread the needle between severe anxiety and chilling listlessness. A look at the contemporary Church isn’t always encouraging in this regard. We hear, more often than not, cries of alarm. The night watchmen of the Church are usually not simply announcing the hours with patient confidence; they’re frequently crying out in alarm. The Church is dying! The Church is dying! It’s the eleventh hour! Save yourself! Maybe this is simply an overcompensation for decades of malaise—the other extreme.
This alarmist desperation has hardly been helpful. For decades, this anxiety within the Church has fed a strange sort of neo-Pelagianism, in which we’re supposed to pull more and more rabbits out of hats so that the people will show up to church. We’re supposed to be endlessly creative, and perpetually novel. It seems that someone is always crying, fire, fire,!, and we must react. Those who are part of the supposed problem—that is, the ones who have left the Church—have been equally reactive. They’ve abandoned the pews because of one crisis after another, having lost faith in the ability of the Church to do anything good. The ones who flee and the ones who stay are equally reactive.
But on the other side, there are those who have failed to react. They’ve even failed to respond. It’s as if it doesn’t matter at all what the Church does. They stay away from the pews not because they’re angry but because they don’t care enough to be there. Some are in the pews or even in the pulpit, but they’re apathetic and content with the status quo. There could never be a fire of which to warn people. These night watchmen have neglected their duties. They’ve fallen asleep at the switch.
Rarely do we hear voices from within the Church threading the needle. What has happened to the night watchmen of the Church? What has happened to that predictable faithfulness of showing up both in feast and famine to watch with reliable confidence and hope, expecting redemption to draw nigh?
And yet, this is precisely what our Lord consistently calls us to do. Throughout the Gospels, he entreats us not to be anxious. He urges us not to worry about tomorrow or be consumed with fear over the drama or exact time of the end of all things. And in his final words before his passion—words that anchor this season of Advent—Jesus offers his disciples words of comfort: watch at all times. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. These are words of reassurance that are too often lost in hypervigilance. Watch at all times, Jesus says, and above all, pray. This is how we thread the needle. We remain alert. We stay vigilant. And more than anything else, we pray, and we pray, and we pray.
The most obvious solution to the Church’s current situation is the one that we’ve consistently neglected. When many of the Church’s watchmen are crying out in alarm and predicting fires that have never happened, taking time to pray seems like a waste of time. Anxiety has a strange ability to convince us that we should always respond with everything but prayer, regardless of whether it’s meaningful or not. But Jesus tells us that watching, waiting, and praying are the bedrock of how we live faithfully in the world as we await the Second Coming of our Lord.
Over four years ago when I came to this parish as your priest, many were crying out in alarm. I was told that it was a mistake to come here. I was told that if things didn’t change, the church would run out of money. I was told by others that in light of the parish’s drastic decline in recent years, I had more than my work cut out for me. And I admit that it was difficult for me to ignore those cries of alarm. I wrestled with demons as I tried to discern what God was calling me to do.
But I came here anyway, and I’m so glad that I did. Even after I arrived, the voices of alarm continued to sound. And frankly, there will always be voices of alarm in our midst, whether we’re trying to make decisions for this parish or for our family or for how to live faithfully in this world. But there’s one thing that we did in this parish despite the cries of fire! fire! We prayed. We tried as hard as we could to listen to God’s voice and to respond faithfully. We woke from a long sleep. But above all, we prayed. And your presence here is a testament to that prayer.
There’s a lesson in our parish’s own story for the wider Church. Watch and pray. Watch and pray because the strength we need to endure the difficulties of this life will only come from prayer. The Church needs her own watchmen to show up, constantly and faithfully, to announce, It’s the Church! Our redemption is drawing nigh! Our redemption is drawing nigh! Pray, listen, watch, and pray!
We’ll seem to some like an anachronism, rather like the watchman on the bell tower of the cathedral of Lausanne. What’s the point in announcing our presence? Who needs the Church when we have social service agencies and medical care and technology? But we show up anyway, despite any accusations of futility, and we watch and we pray. We’re needed less to predict the future or cry out in alarm than to give the Church and the world the comfort of Christ’s good news.
We’re the watchmen of the Church. Our Lord invites us to not to be anxious and not to worry about the future of our existence as his beloved Church. He encourages us to lift our heads when the cares of the world threaten to weigh us down. He tells us to be alert, to watch, and to wait, because our redemption is always drawing near. We’re to cry out when the Church and the world need to be redirected to good news. But our most important task is to show up and pray. Watch and pray. Watch and pray, always in hope and joyful expectation and with confidence. Look up. Raise your heads, because our redemption is drawing near.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday of Advent
December 1, 2024
[1] “The Watchman of Lausanne” by Michael Cervin (https://craftsmanship.net/the-watchman-of-lausanne/)