The other day I went out and bought some Christmas lights, already on sale, almost two weeks before Christmas! As dusk faded to night I was up on a ladder stringing them around an evergreen tree in our yard. They were the same kind of big, old-fashioned bulbs that my father in-law used to put up on a tree next to their garage in Baltimore, and it made me glad to think of him. 

I love this kind of seasonal getting ready, mostly. There’s joy in these tangible hospitable tasks, and the memories they evoke, and the anticipation of celebrations to come. In this darkest time of the year, decorating, lighting candles and, as Joni Mitchell put it, “singing songs of joy and peace.” Even shopping can be fun, in small doses, can’t it?

You may have noticed that lately I’ve been leaning into the Hebrew psalms and prophets. These ancient writings can use some interpreting and improvising to be accessible in the context of our days, but can be prophetic and poetic and helpful , can’t they? Like in the words we just sang—did you notice that they come from Isaiah, chapter 55? I love that the ways these psalms and prophets addressed the challenges they faced back way then— 2500 to 3000 years ago—can still speak to our human condition today, even though the context of our lives is so different.

This Sunday feels like a threshold to me. Thanksgiving just behind us, and December, with all that entails, just beginning. Do you know what I mean? We are here, in these darkening days, three weeks from the longest night of the year. We are here, companioned by these panels of the AIDS Quilt, and the lives that these panels, lovingly created, represent. We are here, in this sanctuary where people have gathered for 130 years now, companioned by the spirits of those who have gone before us. And we are here, on this first Sunday in Advent, these four weeks that lead up to Christmas. 

Last week the choir sang a song I was really sorry to miss. Even though I wasn’t here, that song has been in my heart all week. It’s a song about listening for your calling in life and responding positively to it.

For a long time I thought a calling was something you had to seek and find, like it was something outside yourself, that you had to search for it. And if you missed it, you missed your chance, and it was gone. Like it was a one shot deal.

Fred Rogers’ widow, Joanne Rogers, once wrote that the three words she thought best described her husband were “courage, love, and discipline - perhaps in that very order.” When I first read that, I found it quite surprising, to be honest.  Surely love came first, right? But then I got to thinking about it.

I really don’t want to talk about the election, or politics today. You can find plenty of that from sources that are smarter than I am. But how can we not be mindful of the state of our nation in these days? How can we not be troubled and concerned, especially for those who are most vulnerable? How many of us gathered here have reason to worry, for ourselves, and for those we love? Our faith and our politics are inseparably intertwined; it was Gandhi who said, “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.”

And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving north from here up into New Hampshire, heading from Plaistow into Atkinson, and all of a sudden I was on a stretch of that two-lane road where there are trees, a solid mass of trees, on both sides of the road, and they arch over the road, making a leafy canopy overhead. For a stretch of at least a few hundred yards you are literally surrounded by trees, above you and around you. Our dear church member Delight Reese for many years lived a little farther up that road, in Hampstead with her husband Don, until she died in April of 2020. Well, Delight had a name for that stretch of trees; she called it “The Cathedral.” And it is just that—a place that feels holy and special and good, a cathedral of trees.

One of the challenges of the modern era is that we tend to take things literally. When we ask, “Is it true?” we mean, “Is is factual?” We see things as either true or false. And there are certainly places where telling the literal, empirical, factual truth is important and essential. Science is one of them, politics and government should be another, but you know that’s not always the case. It should be ok, and even expected, that journalists will fact-check politicians. That’s how the system works!

But one of the pitfalls of the age of science is that it has caused people to create this false dichotomy between science and religion that says, if one is true then the other must be false. When we need both, because they perform different functions and offer us different ways of understanding our universe and ourselves.

That’s a great old hymn we just sang: “O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” I love how it addresses the transitory nature of human life: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears us all away.” And how it assures us that, in the midst of change and loss, the presence of God remains: “A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone.” 

Or as Whittier put it: “The letter fails, the systems fall, and every symbol wanes; the Spirit overseeing all, Eternal Love, remains.” Apparently, change and impermanence are near to my heart these days. Maybe to yours too? We are in this season now that reminds us that what has been is going to fall away.