Sermons

Sermon, The Rev. Brian Taylor, November 27

November 27, 2011, the 1st Sunday of Advent
Awaken to God
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

The other night, we were on the plaza in Santa Fe. It was the first night they lit up the trees with lights. Christmas hymns and holiday songs were performed by a fine little folk band. We were surrounded by a festive crowd, people of all ages. Santa Claus rode a classic old fire engine, luminarias were glowing, and the smell of popcorn and hot chocolate was in the air. It was a reminder of that part of humanity that is heartfelt, generous and kind. It was a magical way to begin the holiday season, and we loved it.

But the season of Advent, which we begin this morning, is beloved for other reasons, too - especially by quiet, reflective types. They like to embrace the darkening days and crisp, starry nights with a pregnant, joyful expectancy. They sense that in the depths of the world, a divine light is waiting for its time of birthing. Each week, every new candle that is lit on our Advent wreath brings us closer to that light.

What is going on in nature reflects an inner winter solstice. In the hidden womb of our soul, we look for the triumph of light over darkness, for the birth of a new day. During Advent, we allow ourselves to feel what is always true: that God is just beneath the surface, about to break forth.

This is why the gospel we have just heard is chosen for this Sunday. In it, Jesus tells us to be like a doorkeeper during the night watch, awaiting his master’s imminent return. Wait, keep watch, stay alert, Jesus tells us. For the revealing of God is about to take place. You don’t want to be asleep when that happens.

This was written by the early church as an encouragement, because they were in hard times, hoping for the imminent return of Christ in their lifetime. The Romans had plundered Jerusalem, all hell had broken loose, and the faithful were scattered. Keep watch, stay alert, they told themselves, for Christ will come soon and set everything right.

But scripture mysteriously operates on more than one level at once, and this passage is no exception. It is a lesson, perhaps the primary one, for the spiritual life in any age.

Waiting and watching are hard for us, especially for impatient, can-do Americans. We think of it as passive. The human will is a gift from God, right? Nothing wrong with that. Don’t we have the responsibility to act, when we can, to improve things when possible? Why sit around watching and waiting?

True enough, but then we apply this indiscriminately to our spiritual life as well. We assume that it is always up to us to find our way to God. Nobody else is going to do it for you, right? Get going! And so we work our way through prayer, study, and faithful church activities, chasing after a distant God, hopefully getting closer over time. We think of other “more advanced” in the spiritual life, and how hard they must have worked to get there.

Many parts of scripture, including today’s gospel, paint a different picture. Yes, there is a place for effort in our spiritual journey, but it is also true that God comes to us. This is, after all, the story of God’s relationship with Israel - a God who pursues, visits, and even intrudes; a God who comes to lure, even to seduce. This is also the story of the Incarnation - a God who comes to us in human form. As it says in the ancient Collect for today, Now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.

Isaiah says the same about God in our first reading today. O Lord, you work for those who wait for you...you meet those who do right, who remember you in your ways. God works for us, God meets us where we are.

But it often seems that God is the master who never returns, and we are the disappointed doorkeeper. Isaiah voices our frustration in today’s reading, O that you would tear open the heavens and come down! Where are you?

Our problem may be that we are waiting for God to do something. We are watching for a change - perhaps a breakthrough, sense of direction, or at least some comfort. We want God to intervene in a way that we can see and feel. We dutifully watch and wait, but nothing happens.

But God’s coming is sometimes in the waiting, in the watching, in the keeping alert - not as something additional that comes afterwards. As we watch and wait and stay awake, the God who was always there might be revealed. Our circumstances may not change, but our change in perspective can make it possible for new things to come into being.

One of my spiritual mentors is the late composer, John Cage. Cage dared to call all sound “music,” and challenged us to listen with an open heart, and to find beauty in whatever we heard. Jet noise, a snatch of song from a passing car’s radio, fragmented conversations around us, the siren of a distant ambulance - all of this as a beautiful symphony of sound.

In one of Cage’s writings, he said this, and I’ve quoted it to you before: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all. Cage advocated a way of approaching the world with attention, wherein everything could be experienced in its uniqueness.

This is what Jesus was talking about in today’s gospel. We wake up, we watch, we listen, we wait, and lo and behold, the depth of this moment reveals itself. We don’t have to chase after God. When we pay attention, God comes to us. God is always at the gates, always about to enter. It is only a question of whether we are asleep or awake when God arrives.

It is easy to be asleep. We can be asleep by being preoccupied with our work, more present to its demands and its worries than we are to the people around us. We can put ourselves to sleep with alcohol or drugs, trite entertainment, inactivity, or too much unhealthy food.

The most common form of remaining asleep may be allowing ourselves to be determined by attraction and aversion. We are happy if things are going the way we want them to; we are upset if they are not. The Buddhists call this samsara, a state of mind where we cannot see the reality of life, only our own projections onto it. We’re stuck in a self-centered dream, and this causes us suffering.

So how do we wake up? How do we stay alert to the revealing of God? We start wherever we need to, wherever we can. It could be with exercise and diet, seeking physical alertness. We might want to change our mental habits, by spending our evenings reading in a new area of interest, for instance, instead of doing what we normally do. It might be by undertaking a form of mindfulness meditation and prayer, where we settle down beneath our thoughts and stay present to God in our breath as it goes in and out.

But waking up is not necessarily always a pleasant thing. It also might include being present to those things we would rather avoid in ourselves or in our relationships - to boredom, or sadness, or conflict. By attending to these things, by not distracting ourselves from them, we may not like what we experience, but we will be more awake. And as we open our heart to God, right there in that darkness, we discover that God’s light begins to dawn.

God is present in all of life, not just the moments we identify as spiritual, not just in the people or experiences that we like. This is the message of the Incarnation - God is revealed in the very stuff of this life, all of it. And when God is revealed - that is to say, when God arrives in our awareness - everything changes, everything is possible.

So why not start anew this Advent, at the beginning of our liturgical year? Why not wake up? For God is about to arrive.