December 16, 2007 Third Sunday of Advent
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Luke 1: 26-56
Everyone knows the wisdom saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”
There is a less well-known one that goes, “Be careful what you preach.” This
Advent I have been preaching about the kind of hope and peace we can have that
are not dependent on external circumstances, the kind that can well up inside us
even in the worst circumstances when we let go of everything else and turn to God
in trust. I said that hope and peace are always available to us because their source
is always within us, and that through fearless patience waiting in the darkness and
silence typical of Advent, Christ will come with the hope and peace we need. I
should have known what would come if I preached that.
I was doing pretty well at practicing what I preached until this week when
all of a sudden circumstances became considerably worse. The hit-and-run death
of 24 -year old Eric Frost grieved me deeply, sharing his father Erhard’s pain and
imagining suffering such a loss myself. Then I got some bad news about my
family. Adding insult to injury, I buried my truck half way up the door in a snow
bank when I was plowing on Friday. I struggled all week with a cold.
In Bali my nation was obstructing progress on stopping climate change.
And then I heard that fateful forecast that predicted “impossible” white-out
driving conditions for today. That set off the postponement of the Christmas
pageant and a whole blizzard of phone calls and emails and rearrangements,
throughout which I continued to doubt the wisdom of my decision. In the process,
on the week before Christmas, I picked up two new services to write that I thought
were being filled up with other things.
I share all this not to whine, and certainly not to gain your sympathy. First
of all, I have only to think of Eric Frost’s family to put my problems in
perspective, and second of all, I know many of you are suffering, too. But that is
why I share my experience—because my circumstances sent me into a place
where I felt overwhelmed and disheartened, where I felt absolutely no hope, no
possibility of peace, where I lived for a short while in the pit of depression and
despair. I share this because I think this is a territory many of us know well, and
we know it particularly at this time of year, as Christmas draws near.
I have little positive to say about depression. I can say that I believe that
God is there with us. I believe it helps to know that loving people are around us
supporting us. But there are pits so dark that light from those beliefs cannot
penetrate. Any benefit from them cannot be felt. I cannot put a silver lining or
rosy spin on that place of utter hopelessness.
But coming out of that place back into the same world that heaved up like a
wave and threw us down and rearranged everything we thought solid and set;
coming back aware of our powerlessness and dependence on God and loving
community—that coming back has qualities about it that I will praise. They are
the qualities of humility and inner poverty.
Great emptiness opens us to great miracles, because then we can experience
the hope and peace that rise out of the nowhere and nothing within us—the gifts of
life flowing into us from the source of all life. Thomas Merton and other Roman
Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians have pointed out that this is the quality
that makes Mary so worthy of our attention, if not devotion. It is not her power or
queenliness but rather her humility and emptiness—so complete that God could
fill her with the life of Christ.
Mary could have been distraught, if not depressed to be an unwed teenage
mother. In that society it could have meant being shunned, exiled,
impoverished—or worse. Mary could have been filled with fear and anxiety at
what could happen to her and her child. She could have responded with rage that
this was happening to her. But, instead she had the ability to accept the
devastation in faith. She was able to let go and trust and say, “Here am I, the
servant of the Lord; Let it be with me according to your word.” She was so free
from holding onto anything for herself that God could fill her completely. In her
humility and poverty she found interior love welling up inside of her—so that her
soul magnified her God.
One of the nice things about a terrible storm is waking up to find yourself
in a new world, the old one buried, reshaped, painted. If you are lucky, you get an
unplanned snow day when you are free simply to be in it and marvel at it without
knowing exactly what will come next.
After my fall into the circumstantial depression of no hope and no peace,
and after drowning awhile in the addictive and toxic cocktail mix of guilt, shame
and insecurity (depression’s chaser), I came back out of that pit into the world that
had thrown me down. I don’t know why—I had not done anything to improve
matters, and the world had not changed in any way for the better. In fact,
circumstances kept getting worse. But something inside me had changed of its
own accord. I no longer had the hope of a peaceful, relatively light and joyous
time ahead. Sorrow and struggle were accumulating like snow covering
everything. But I felt that unreasonable, inexplicable, Advent inner hope and
peace rising up through the silence and darkness. Most of all, once the shame
subsided, I felt love.
I do not know what will happen to the members of my family who are
struggling, but I know more than ever that I love them, and I know I can give them
that gift, if nothing else. I do not know how I will get through what is always the
hardest week of the year, I do not know what will come to me to say, but I feel
deeply how much I love this church and love celebrating Advent and Christmas
here, and how much I love you who come out of the storms of your life to this
beloved place. So I know that even in my humility and poverty, I have something
to give.
In fact, especially in our humility and inner poverty we have something to
give, because with all our plans and props stripped away and with all our self-
generated hope and strength null and void, it seems as if the conditions have been
created for God to do in us on a small scale what God did perfectly in Mary. To
the extent that we let everything else go and let the devastation flow around us and
through us without fighting or clutching at vain hopes of security, to the extent
that we say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to
your word,” to that extent we allow God’s love to swell within us to bear to the
world. Perfect love drives out fear, but the letting go of our anxious self-concern
helps make perfect love possible. Let go of your ego’s agenda, and love’s agenda
becomes clear.
I wish no one the experience of depression and despair, whether situational
or chemical. I wish no one the experience of an addict’s rock bottom. But I wish
everyone the humility and poverty of accepting powerlessness and letting go of
expectations and ambitions and delusions, making ourselves completely open so
that God can fill our emptiness with hope, peace and love. Pain is not the only
tool that can accomplish this self-emptying; traditional Advent disciplines like
Centering Prayer and time spent in spiritual pursuits can reach the same end,
although they, too, may lead through the pain of the of the dark night of the soul.
The point is not to seek pain or devastation, but to endure it faithfully, hoping in
God enough to keep going even when feeling hopeless.
Whatever darkness or storm you face this Advent, may you have the grace
of endurance, if not fearless patience; may you have the faith that God will guide
you safely home, even if you cannot sense God’s presence; and may you find, in
any place of devastation you may encounter, the mysterious springs of hope,
peace, love and joy rising up within you—the life of Christ you carry in the womb
of your soul. May you find ways to bear those gifts to the people around you here
and in your home and workplace and community. May you bring your share of
Christ’s love and light into the world.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 12/16/2007