November 27, 2005, First Sunday after Advent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Isaiah 64:1-5; Mark 13:24-37
We like to look for signs. Red sky at night or red sky at morning. Corn
knee high by the fourth of July. The ratio of orange to black on the wooly
caterpillar. Snow before seven, end by eleven. Sundogs. We like to look for
signs to tell us what is coming.
People have told me many times that they wished God would give them a
sign, something to reassure them that they were on the right path, or to point out
the path God wanted them to take next. Something clear and dramatic like sky
writing would be nice, like “Surrender Dorothy” in the Wizard of Oz.
Human nature needs hope, so it is understandable why we search for signs.
But placing hope in signs is dangerous, because signs are easy to misinterpret and
often are not really signs at all, but accidents or irrelevancies, mere rumors or
superstitions.
Hope based on signs can be dangerous when we convince ourselves that the
signs’ evidence is sound, and the future is certain. We can become dependent on
the sign. We can lean on it as if it were a solid fact, leaning way out, off balance.
Then when the sign turns out to be an illusion, we can fall, and that fall can be far
worse than if we had not built up our hope.
The psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote about this in his book, Man’s Search
for Meaning. He saw the effect of rumors and signs that convinced his fellow
prisoners in Nazi death camps that liberation was coming by a certain date. A
prisoner would interpret a dream to mean that he would be out of the death camp
by New Years, and he would begin to build his life on that hope. For a while he
would flourish, sharing light and strength with others. Then on December 29th he
would not get out of bed. And by New Year’s Eve he would indeed be out of the
camp, but as a corpse—death by disappointment. Sometimes many who shared
hope in a rumor or sign would die this way at one time.
Hopes based on signs can be deadly, but so can hopelessness. People who
have no hope are the walking dead. We need hope to live. If hope dies in us, our
spirit dies, even if our body keeps on going through its motions. The key to life is
to have a kind of hope that enables us to have a spark of inner light no darkness
can overcome and no glittering tinsel dream can overexcite.
This kind of hope is nothing like the usual hopes we feed with signs or
rumors, nor the little hopes of happiness or comfort we use to get us through daily
drudgery or suffering. It is nothing like the hope of a little comfort food or
something diverting on the TV or computer screen or a glass of wine at “attitude
adjustment hour” at the end of the day’s work.
Not that these hopes aren’t useful, but they do not create much spark. They
may get us through a day, but they do not create lasting inner light. Often they act
insidiously, seeming to give us life, but in reality deadening us. Sooner or later a
doctor tells us we have to stop eating our comfort food or else we will have a heart
attack. Sooner or later we may realize that we have become addicted to alcohol or
the internet, or wake up to find that we have lost thousands of hours of our lives
spent pleasurably distracted but not living or loving as Christ calls us to do.
There is a kind of hope that does not deaden us, but it is not to be found
where most people look. The signs we call hopeful lead us astray from this life-
giving hope. The little easy pleasures and material happiness that we hope will get
us through our boredom or pain actually block our way to the harder but deeper
hope.
The secret to finding the best kind of hope is that the pain we are trying to
escape is the hidden door to it. The real, deep, joy-bringing hope is within or
under the sorrow of life, like a door to a beautiful garden hidden behind
overgrown thorns. We cannot find it if we are looking for signs of hope for a way
out of our pain. The secret to the best hope is that it comes to us when we have let
go of all other kinds of hope of escape.
The source of this hope gives us a sign, a sign of love and power that can
save us, that can bring us peace, freedom, joy—and the sign we get is hope where
there is no sign of hope, when all seems hopeless. This sign comes to us when we
have stilled our restless grasping after some hope or other to lean on, when we
have returned to the balanced, centered stillness of patient waiting, when we have
surrendered and turned into the darkness and pain with acceptance and trust. Then
after minutes or weeks or years, this different kind of hope flickers in our hearts,
and we know it is real, and we know we can lean on it, and that is just about all we
know about it. It may not be hope for anything we can define, yet just having that
light in our heart is enough to guide and empower us to gain things for which we
might not have dared to hope.
One of my favorite Advent stories is actually a Hanukkah story told by
Isaac Bashevis Singer (The Power of Light, page 53).
“During World War II, after the Nazis had bombed and burned the Warsaw
ghetto, a boy and a girl were hiding in one of the ruins—David, fourteen years old
and Rebecca, thirteen.
“It was winter and bitter cold outside. For weeks Rebecca had not left the
dark, partially collapsed cellar that was their hiding place, but every few days
David would go out to search for food. All the stores had been destroyed in the
bombing, and David sometimes found stale bread, cans of food, or whatever else
had been buried. Making his way through the ruins was dangerous….But if he
and Rebecca did not want to die from hunger, he had to take the risk.
“This day was one of the coldest. Rebecca sat on the ground wrapped in all
the garments she possessed; still she could not get warm. David had left many
hours before, and Rebecca listened in the darkness for the sound of his return,
knowing that if he did not come back nothing remained to her but death.
“Suddenly she heard heavy breathing and the sound of a bundle being
dropped. David had made his way home.”
David had found food, but also a surprise. After they had eaten, he pulled
out a candle and some matches, something he had not found before. Then he told
Rebecca that it was the first day of Hanukkah. He said the Hebrew blessing and lit
the candle. Rebecca blinked. For the first time in weeks she saw David—saw his
matted hair and dirty face, but in that light she also saw his strength and the joy in
his eyes.
“They had both lost their families, and they had good reason to be angry
with God for sending them so many afflictions, but the light of the candle brought
peace to their souls. That glimmer of light, surrounded by so many shadows,
seemed to say without words: Evil has not yet taken complete dominion. A spark
of hope is still left.”
They had thought of trying to escape from the ghetto, but it seemed like
certain death. Nazis guarded every way out, day and night. Rebecca had been
afraid to try it, even though she knew they could not survive if they stayed. They
had heard there were partisans fighting the Nazis in the forests outside of Warsaw.
David wanted to try to reach them.
“Now, by the light of the Hanukkah candle, Rebecca suddenly felt renewed
courage. She said, ‘David, let’s leave.’”
By one miracle after another they made their way out of the ghetto, and
then out of the city, and finally, on the last day of Hanukkah, they found the
partisans. That night they sat in freedom in the brilliant light of eight candles.
The prophet Isaiah was writing in another hard time for the Jewish people.
Many of the Jews of Warsaw must have thought of these words as they suffered
the Nazi persecution. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down so
that the mountains would quake at your presence,…to make your name known to
your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence.”
Isaiah wanted a sign, dramatic and clear,—sky writing. But a few verses
later he says that God works for those who wait, those who gladly do right and
those who remember God’s ways.
Similarly, Jesus begins in today’s gospel passage with the sun being
darkened and the moon not giving light and the stars falling from heaven and the
powers shaken, and the son of Man coming in clouds of glory, but Jesus ends by
saying simply, keep awake. Wait. Watch. Remain faithful. Signs may say that
hope is near, but we do not know and cannot know when the hope will be fulfilled.
The signs that matter are not what we would call hopeful. The signs
scriptures point us to are apocalyptic cataclysms. They are darkness, pain, the
collapse of our world order, our individual life falling apart. It is within these
things that we can look for hope. But better not to count on anything. Better not
to lean on those signs and get out of balance. The best we can do, when we see
these things, is wait. Stay awake. Light a candle. Hear what its light whispers in
your heart: Evil has not yet taken complete dominion. A spark of hope is still left.
Wait in the hopeless surrender of trust founded on no sure sign, and feel the
courage and power that come to you from the source of the light that shines in the
darkness. It will surely come. You cannot know when. But when you see these
things, darkness and pain, you know the light is near.
Let us pray in silence, not hoping, not looking for signs, but a prayer of
wakeful, watchful, waiting in silence. Let us pray…Amen
Sermon 11/27/2005