December 9, 2007 Second Sunday of Advent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Matthew 25:1-13
Bridesmaids and the night watchman waiting for the bridegroom to
arrive…
Shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night…
Magi on their towers studying the stars…
Joseph waking to messages from angels in his dreams…
During Advent we remember all these keeping their night watch. We also
remember others not in the Bible but in our world.
A mother watching over a sleeping, feverish child, in Thetford or in
Darfur…
A father waiting up for a teenager late coming home…
A husband or wife sitting up by a spouse’s hospital bed…
A keyed up child trying to stay awake for Santa Claus…
A Vermonter’s 20-year-old child in Iraq on a night patrol…
An Iraqi’s 20-year-old child watching his dark Baghdad street for U.S.
soldiers or rogue militias so he can wake his family in time to hide…
And we remember all those keeping a sleepless night watch on their grief,
missing ones who are no longer with them this Christmas; or keeping a night
watch on their anxiety or depression or emptiness or despair.
Then there are those blessed Advent night watches: going out under the
stars to look with wonder at Orion and Mars; sitting in front of an Advent candle
having a meal with people we love; or praying silently, sinking into the warm,
luminous vastness within us where we watch for the coming of Emmanuel, God
with us.
We have all kinds of night watches that we keep. During Advent we
become more aware of them. We go into them more intentionally and think about
what they mean. One of the things that happens when we peer into the darkness
awhile is that our eyes adjust, and we begin to see more than we did. We step
outside and see stars, but after fifteen minutes we see the stars behind the stars.
We look into our heart and see the uppermost feelings of pain and joy, but after a
while, we start seeing deeper levels of feeling, some long repressed. We stare into
the darkness of war or poverty or environmental degradation or a host of other
upsetting problems, and after a while we can feel overwhelmed by all the trouble
in the world. Looking patiently into the darkness can reveal greater beauty, but
also truths that can disturb our comfort and make us afraid.
This may be part of the reason why our society slides into indulging its
addictions during the six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Years, this darkest
time of the year. It seems like one long national binge of consuming frenzy,
binging on shopping, food, alcohol—whatever activity we habitually turn to for
distraction from the things we are afraid of in the dark.
Our nation is addicted to war partly for this reason, and though war may be
no worse at this time of year, it feels worse. Some Americans look out into the
darkness of the world and all they can see is threat. Today the threat is in the form
of terrorists. Not long ago it was communists, a hundred years before that it was
northerners or southerners, and before that the British or French and Indians.
Always there seems to be some threat in the darkness for our nation to fear.
If we looked long enough, our eyes would adjust and we would see that our
enemies are people just like us, and are the very people Jesus commanded us to
love. But most look only long enough to see the threat, and unable to stand their
discomfort, they turn our nation to the drug of violence to make them feel safer.
You could argue that violence does make us safer, and yet you would have
to admit that it does not do so for long, because soon another threat arises and we
need another fix of war.
I am over-simplifying of course. There are other addictions that lead to
war. There are people addicted to greed and gain. Maybe they have looked into
the darkness of their souls and feared the emptiness they found, or have looked
into the darkness of their mortality or ultimate powerlessness and feared their
vulnerability. They have become addicted to wealth and worldly power. War
feeds their addiction with the profits, markets and resources it brings, or with its
opportunities to dominate others or its promise of undying glory.
“War and peace start in the hearts of individuals.” That is the first line of a
book that Eleanor Zue gave me entitled Practicing Peace in Times of War. It is by
Pema Chödrön, a former Christian who has become a Buddhist teacher and nun,
and the author of several books.
Chödrön tells about a letter she read from a U.S. soldier in Iraq. He talked
about how after seeing friends die he wanted revenge against the enemies who
wait in the dark, full of pain and hate, to kill soldiers like him. He said that now
he and his fellow U.S. soldiers have become just like the enemy—full of pain and
hate, waiting in the dark to kill another human being. He wrote, “We think that by
striking back we’ll release our anger and feel better, but it isn’t working. Our pain
gets stronger day by day.”
Pema Chödrön writes, “ Amidst the chaos and horror of war, this soldier
has discovered a profound truth: if we want suffering to lessen, the first step is
learning that keeping the cycle of aggression going doesn’t help.”
She goes on to apply this idea more generally to our everyday lives. The
first step to peace in our hearts as well as in the world is learning not to react
aggressively against fear or rage or whatever emotion afflicts us when we look
into the darkness within and around us. She talks about our need for a kind of
fearless patience that is willing to put up with feeling pain or hate or any
discomfort without acting out or indulging in addictive distractions or illusions.
Here is how she puts it:
In working with patience and fearlessness, we learn to
be patient with the fact that not only us but…all of us
as a species are naturally going to want some kind of
resolution to this edgy, moody energy. And there isn’t
any. The only resolution is temporary and ultimately
just causes more suffering. We discover that joy and
happiness, a sense of inner peace, a sense of harmony
and of being at home with yourself and your world
come from sitting still with the moodiness of the
energy until it rises, dwells, and passes away.
- from Practicing Peace in Times of War
As Christians we can agree with this Buddhist teaching whole-heartedly.
The Centering Prayer that we practice on Thursday evenings at Prayer of the Heart
teaches us to do just this—do not resist your thoughts and feelings, but do not
retain them either, and do not react to them. Just let them come and go and they
will pass and peace will take their place.
But as Christians we go another step beyond the Buddhists. As we let the
“edgy moodiness” pass—the fear or craving or rage or whatever it is that comes to
us when we face the darkness—as we let that pass, we turn back to God. We
return to this very Advent practice of watching and waiting for the bridegroom, for
the coming of Christ and all he brings.
Thomas Keating wrote the book the centering prayer course just studied,
Open Mind, Open Heart. Keating says that “the intuitive knowledge and love of
God is not so much a gift as a given. It remains a gift, but a gift that
everyone…already has…as part of what it means to be human.” (p 120)
We already have the source of peace within us and around us, right here, right
now—everywhere in all circumstances. What we do not all have is the fearless
patience to watch and wait for our eyes to adjust and peace to appear.
The wise bridesmaids had what it took to keep their lamps trimmed and
burning, beyond the point where the foolish ones ran out of oil. The wise were
able to keep watching beyond their sleep. Like them, we need to keep returning to
our night watch every time we wake up and catch ourselves reacting in our old
fearful and addicted ways.
We need to be prepared for a long night. If we keep turning back to watch
the flock or the stars, or to watch over those we love; if we can sit through our
fearful discomfort until it passes; if we can stay faithful to the watching, then
beyond the midnight when others have run out of oil or run off, we will be awake
and ready to see the coming of Christ in our hearts and in the world. We will see
the dawning of the light that is the source of all hope, peace, love and joy. That
source is within and around us all the time, but only through keeping and enduring
the night watch do we come to see and fill up with its light.
And then as the bridesmaids found, and the shepherds in the field, and the
wise men in their tower, and Joseph in the stable, all the beauty and joy that
Advent promises can be ours.
Let us pray in silence as if we were keeping a night watch, looking into our
hearts, fearlessly patient in the dark, waiting for the coming of the presence of
God. Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 12/09/2007