Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, December 1, 2019
Here we are, now that Thanksgiving is past, we’re officially in what’s called “the holiday season,” this time of of shopping and parties, of standing in line at the Post Office, of holiday concerts at school and pageants at church. This time of heightened expectations. Even if you’re not a list-maker, this is a time of year when you may feel compelled to make a list so you can keep track of all the things you have to do between now and December 25.
And it is right here, at the beginning of this time when you can sense a growing frenzy and edginess among people, that I want to ask you: how are you going to spend these holy days? How are you going to order your time? Are you going to get caught up in all the craziness, or are you going to try a different way? It won’t surprise you that I’m going to suggest that we stay in Advent for now, that we put into practice what we just sang, that we try to making a daily practice of putting our hearts in a holy place. That’s the invitation of these days, and if you do, you will find that they are “blessed with love and amazing grace.”
What is the invitation of these December days? Is it to move faster and do more? If that’s what makes you glad, then go for it! But if you sense that there’s something missing in all that running around, if you find yourself wondering, “Why don’t I feel the Christmas spirit the way I used to?,” then I hope you will listen to that longing of yours, and follow where it leads.
In these darkening days I feel such a longing to slow down and be still, to be open to the Mystery that is all around, but hard to sense when I’m moving too fast. As T.S. Eliot wrote,
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God….
I love this purple season of Advent, that is about waiting for what is not-yet, getting one’s self ready for what might happen, what might be born in us; not by doing more, but by waiting and watching. If you wanted to do one thing in this season that could make a difference in how you move through these days, what if you did just this: what if you made a conscious effort to move more slowly? In a time when most people are speeding up, what if you just slow down, and see what happens?
A few more lines from T.S. Eliot:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
It’s why I love being in church on Sunday, and why I love our Advent Vespers services that begin this Wednesday, because they aren’t about doing or hurrying at all—this time is about being: just being here, being still, being present, being open.
When I started thinking about our theme for December, my heart sank a bit. Because how am I going to talk to you about that Mystery that some of us call God? That Presence which is beyond words, beyond our ability to adequately name or describe?
When we modern people try to talk about God, most of the time we like to use our big brains and we talk about what we think. We try to convince each other that our perspective is the right one. I have nothing against this kind of intellectual exploration; it can be interesting and enlightening, even, but it’s not how I get closer to that Mystery. No, what I long for is what the mystics of every age have sought, and found, a deeper experience of the holy, beyond words and ideas and images. Like Meister Eckart, whose words I put at the top of the order of service: “There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence.”
I like silence. I start every day with sitting in silence, or at least trying to. My brain likes to chatter on about things, so it can take a while for it to settle down. But when I get to that place of silence, and it doesn’t happen every day; there is a peace there, and a presence there, that is beyond words, beyond my ability to describe, but where I know I am in the presence of that which is holy and good. As the psalmist wrote, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
The last thing I want to do is try and convince you of something that you can’t believe in. When it comes to the Mystery some of us call God, we have to start off by acknowledging, if we are honest, that none of us know for sure. None of us can prove or disprove the existence of the Holy. And I don’t want to waste my time, or yours, trying to. What I want is to spend more time in that Presence, in that Mystery.
This is what Paul Tillich said back in the mid-20th century: “If that word (God) has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about God.”
The trouble is, these times we live in, and these brains we have been gifted with, they make it hard to enter into these depths. Because it’s in our nature to question everything, to have more doubt than faith. And this may be a necessary corrective to the unquestioned authority the church enjoyed in an earlier age, but sometimes I wish we could turn our thinking minds down for a while, so we could better be in touch with the Mystery.
The English poet William Wordsworth thought it was just our human condition that we forget where we come from, and the older we are, the harder it is to be in touch with those depths. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” he wrote, “…trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.”
But as we get older, we are less able to apprehend the light, Wordsworth said, until at last one
“…perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.”
The good news is that the light isn’t gone from our sight, no, Wordsworth says, it’s just faded into all the light and activity of our days and our lives. It’s still there—we just have to find ways to see it. The poet Wendell Berry writes about the “day-blind stars,” that are still up there, “waiting with their light.” We just need for the other lights to go down so we can see them.
We don’t have a little built-in dial to turn down our chattering minds, but we do have meditation, and prayer; we do have the mystics, who, in every age, show us how to wait in the darkness and turn toward the light. We do have this season, and its invitation to light candles in the darkness, and sing songs of hope and peace. If you want it, we do have an antidote to the busyness of these days, and it is Advent’s invitation to slow down, to just slow down.
Over the years, one of my spiritual guides has been the singer Van Morison, who is a contemporary mystic, and whose songs invite us to get beneath the surface, to travel into the mystic and sing our hymns to the silence. This week I found myself remembering one of his songs, that goes:
I'm a dweller on the threshold
And I'm waiting at the door
And I'm standing in the darkness
I don't want to wait no more.
This is the invitation that is before each of us: to be dwellers on the threshold of the holy. These days are a particularly good time, but the invitation is there all the time, to be open to the wonder and the mystery that surrounds us. To be awake to, and mindful of, that Spirit in which we live and move and have our being. To not see it as apart from us, as out there somewhere, but right here.
You don’t have to go off on a long journey. You don’t have to have special knowledge or say the right words. You just need to have the desire, the longing, to be in touch with these depths. With this mystery. So will you do yourself a favor this week, and take some time to put yourself in its presence? Sit down with a journal, or light a candle in the darkness, or listen to Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.”
Because we are here, on the threshold of the Holy. In this season that invites us to be open to wonder. And this is the promise of these days, that we are about to behold a new thing. Let us be mystics for the living of these days, so that we will be able to see, as the hymn puts it,
“all earth a blessed garden and God the god of peace.”
Amen.