Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, December 1, 2024.
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.
I tend think of Advent as a kind of antidote to the harried days of the commercial Christmas season, a counter-cultural call to slow down, just when everything is speeding up. And it does offer that invitation, which is good and needed in these days.
But this year I’m wanting more than just slowing down. Or trying to slow down. I want to go deeper. I want more depth, more feeling, more connection, a more intimate sense of the Holy, that’s all around us, but so easy to miss. Is this too much to ask? Isn’t it what we are made for, and how we’re supposed to live? In touch with the simple joy of being alive, awake to the wonder of it all, ever mindful the ways we are connected to one another, and to it all?
Our worship theme for December is “Wonder,” and at the start it’s feels to me like both an invitation and a challenge—to live more deeply, in these days; to be open to the mystery that’s all around us, if we will notice; and to make a practice of wondering.
But some days I get tired or discourage—do you, ever?—and to bring myself to a place of wonder can feel like another thing I ought to be doing, like going to the gym. You know what I mean? I’m not even sure you can will yourself into a place of wonder. It’s not something you can achieve by effort. That’s not how it works.
But if you slow down, if you sit still for a change, then who know what might happen? Rumi describes our human condition, and the antidote, in these few lines:
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
I’m pretty sure the way to open up to wonder is to do less, not more. To listen to the silence, to wait and watch. Which is what this season of Advent is all about.
So how do we practice this? Wednesday nights right here, come to mind: our quiet Vespers service, and the warmth of gathering around a table for supper. I imagine turning off the tv and reading more. Writing in my journal, taking walks at dusk, being more attentive to the present moment. What about you? How might you turn your face to wonder?
Wonder is an experience, an expansive feeling that can come upon you unexpectedly, like a gift. Just looking up at the dark night sky almost always evokes in me a sense of wonder. Being here with you does too—whether we’re singing or in silence, praying or lighting candles—I love and need what I feel here in our gathering for worship—that there’s more going on than we can see or describe. It feels like presence, and sometimes like absence, this sense of mystery, and wonder—do you know what I mean?
And wonder is also something that you do: an act, a practice, an intention—any time you say or think, “I wonder…” It’s taking the time to sit with a problem or a mystery, exploring what you sense but don’t understand, being willing to live in the tension between things, without rushing to fix it or resolve the differences. Wonder is more about hints and guesses than answers. It’s a kind of living on the threshold, holding what can seem like opposites, but which are really parts of the whole: like light and dark, sorrow and joy, doing and being.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most influential Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century. Listen to how he oriented his life; these words of his we put at the top of the order of service: “Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and God gave it to me.”
What is it that you want in your life? And what are you asking for? Are you listening to your longings, and trying to follow where they lead?
We all need reminders to come back to what nourishes and sustains us, to come home to ourselves and to the Holy. As we sang earlier, to return to the home of your soul. This season is a good time for that. So how about we try a practice of wondering as a way into these depths? How about we wonder our way into Advent? Waiting and watching for what is yet to unfold.
The theologian Richard Rohr knows something about this; he’s a smart guy, he knows plenty, but he lifts up not-knowing as part of authentic spiritual experience. He says,
“People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It’s the people who don’t know who usually pretend that they do. People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.”
This is what I’m trying to talk about, these depths that are beyond our ability to name or describe. Though that doesn’t stop me from trying!
You hear this in David Whyte’s poem, “Threshold”:
We stopped
to say a simple word
of thanks that we could walk
to this place and find itlike a promised understanding,
like an intuition long held,
that it stood always
at the end
of the long road
we took to get here
as if to welcome us;
as if to teach and hold us
in this time, now,
to understand at last,
how close the threshold
is that takes us
like a blessing
from a world
we think we know
and turns our face
to wonder
We cross a threshold when we come into this building, another one when we come into this time for worship. We cross a threshold today as we enter this month of holy days and holidays, and another one as we enter this purple season of Advent, a color which reminds me of the sky, just before dark. “How close the threshold is, that takes us, like a blessing, from a world we thing we know, and turns our face to wonder.” This is the invitation of these days—to be awake to and mindful of these thin places; dwellers on the threshold.
In the Christian calendar Advent is the start of a new liturgical year, a new beginning, a good time to be mindful of how we want to to spend our moments, and our days. To ask, what are we going to do? How are we going to live?
There is such a hunger these days for what I’d call the life of the Spirit. I hope you can trust that when you do something to care for your own soul, this is not a selfish act. That when you open yourself to mystery and wonder, the blessing that comes to you will not stop there, but will move through you to bless others as well.
I hope you can take heart that when you extend your hand to another, when you reach out in compassion or care or understanding or acceptance, you are doing something to help heal and bless our world. When you take a stand for what is good and right, you are inching us closer to the just society we long for, and that we all deserve.
There will be plenty for us to do in the days ahead, but if we are going to be up to the task, don’t we begin by doing our own inner work? Putting our selves in the place of wonder, resting and strengthening our souls for these days, and the ones to come.
Let us take heart, dear companions, and take courage, that there is always more going on than we can see or know. We are part of a great and abiding Love that will not let us go. And the promise of the prophets and sages, that justice will roll down like waters, and that righteousness will flow like a mighty stream, that promise has not been revoked and will not be denied. You might not be able to see it right now, but can you trust that we are part of a long arc that is ever bending toward justice and righteousness?
Now and forever,
Amen.