Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, November 28, 2021.
I’ve been struck lately by how early the sun is setting these days; how quickly the afternoon gives way to evening. Why am I surprised? It happens this way every year! Maybe I’m just dense. When my wife Tracey was about to give birth to our second child, and her labor was going a lot faster than it did the first time, just before our daughter was born I found myself struck by where we were, and what was happening. “Oh my God,” I said, “we’re going to have another baby!” Like it was some kind of surprise! Like we hadn’t been down this road before, or it hadn’t been obvious for months that Tracey was pregnant!
Like I said, maybe I’m dense. I do have this habit of assuming that, the way things are right now, that’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Even though we know that’s not how it works! Change is a constant in life. Like it or not. And even with its challenges, change is good for us, isn’t it?
Think about the seasons. Even if you love summer, would you want it all the time? Isn’t there something invigorating about the coming of fall, after summer’s heat and humidity? I love and need the change that the turn of seasons brings us, and I love how the seasons shape and inform my spiritual life, with their dance of light and shadow, beginnings and endings, growth and death.
In the church calendar, today we enter a new season. Advent, the four weeks that lead up to Christmas, is a time for waiting and watching and getting ready, making room in our hearts for Love to be born. I picture our Advent Vespers services, which begin this Wednesday at 6 pm, a simple and spacious time for slowing down, lighting candles in the dark, being open to what is stirring in us and around us.
This evening at sundown, the Jewish festival of Hanukkah begins. And I love its invitation, especially in hard times, to imagine that things could go better than we expect. To expect a miracle even.
Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of Israel’s holy temple after it had been desecrated by invading troops who ruled the land back then. Jewish fighters managed to take the temple back from those who had wrecked it, but discovered there was only enough holy oil to light the menorah for one day. The miracle of Hanukkah is that, against all expectation, that oil lasted eight days, until more oil could be produced and consecrated.
My question for us today, as we enter this new season, is this: what are you expecting? Are you expecting life to be more of the same? Or are you expecting that it’s going to get worse? Have you’ve lowered your expectations after all we’ve been through these past twenty months. Or maybe you’re expecting something new, something better, a miracle even?
Living with the challenges of this pandemic has certainly changed me, and I expect it has changed you too. It’s certainly made me more flexible and adaptable; it has also made me more hesitant and cautious. About life in general, and human nature in particular. And so I need the invitation of this season, to expect something better than more of the same. And this is the image Rev. Lynn Ungar lifts up from the Hanukkah story. I invite you to hear her words as speaking to you, especially if you’re needing some encouragement these days:
Come down from the hills.
Declare the fighting done.
Be bold -- declare victory,
even when the temple is wrecked
and the tyrants have not retreated,
only coiled back like a snake
prepared to strike again.
Come down. Try to remember
a life gentled by daily acts
of domestic faith -- the pot
set to boil, the bed made up,
the table set in calm expectation
that when the sun sets
we will still be here.
One of the things I love about the Jewish tradition, and you hear it in this poem, is how much of it can be practiced at home. Who among us couldn’t benefit from “a life gentled by daily acts of domestic faith”? A life grounded in, and nourished by simple pleasures like the pot put on to boil, the table set; these little acts of affirmation that life is good; that in the midst of all that changes, there are things which endure.
Rev. Ungar’s words feel right and good for this moment we’re living in, as we’re trying to find our way out of this pandemic, even as we live with its limitations. Especially as we enter this season, which invites us to imagine a new way. So if you’re weary or discouraged, take heart—we’ve done this before:
Come down and settle.
Unlearn the years of hiding.
Light fires that can be seen for miles,
that dance and spark and warm
the frozen marrow. Set lamps
in the window. Declare your presence,
your loyalties, the truths
for which you do not expect to have to die.
It would take a miracle, you say,
to carve such a solid life
out of the shell of fear.
I say you are the stuff
from which such miracles are made.
There’s a hymn, written by Brian Wren, called “Bring Many Names,” that takes expected images for God and turns them around, in ways I find moving and liberating. One verse goes like this:
Strong mother God, working night and day, planning all the wonders of creation,
setting each equation, genius at play…
The next verse is:
Warm father God, hugging every child, feeling all the strains of human living,
caring and forgiving till we're reconciled…
I wonder, how do you imagine that great and fathomless mystery called God? Is your imagining open for discussion, or is it carved in stone? Have you closed your mind on God, or are you open to it being changed? Are you willing to explore and update your theological understandings?
I hope that this month’s invitation, to be on the way of imagination, won’t end when December comes. That we will continue to explore and wonder about and invite what is not-yet, but which could be. That “we will not cease from exploration,” as T.S. Eliot put it, that when it comes to matters of the spirit, this will be our aim: to boldly go where we have not gone before.
There’s another verse in “Bring Many Names”:
Young, growing God, eager still to know, willing to be changed by what you've started,
quick to be delighted, singing as you go…
This verse was rejected by some denominations, because a changeable God was too much for some folks. In a world where people are wearied by change and uncertainty, they often want the church to be an unchanging refuge of safety and stability. It’s understandable, but is that who we are called to be, as people of faith? No! Nor is it the kind of God I hear speaking in these words from the prophet Isaiah:
Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
Our days, and our lives, are this combination of some daily sameness and repetition, with seasonal patterns of ebb and flow, punctuated at times by dramatic change—whether brought on by choice or by chance. As we get older, we tend to become less excited by change, and more resistant to it. But it’s good for us! It’s essential, I believe, that we remain awake and engaged, really alive; open to change; willing to imagine what might be!
We are coming into this season when we hear the age-old promise: a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. This season when we hear the story of the Holy come to earth, as one of us. This season when we are invited to imagine and see that heaven is not out there somewhere, but here, right here, with these companions on this beautiful and broken earth. To imagine the Holy in ourselves and in others. To embody that Love and share it as best we can.
It would seem a miracle, you may say, to imagine yourself as part of such wholeness and holiness. To picture yourself as a bearer of God’s Love. But I say you are the stuff from which such miracles are made.
Amen.