The Call to Adventure

The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house
to the land that I will show you.”
Genesis 12:1

A number of years ago, just after I finished university, the well-respected Bill Moyers held a series of interviews with Joseph Campbell. With these eight interviews on national public television, this relatively obscure author and professor at a private college was skyrocketed to prominence with the velocity of a 19 year old gold medal athlete. Only Joseph Campbell was at the end of his career and, as it turned out, reaching the very end of his life. When Moyers interviewed him, Joseph Campbell was a man who had survived struggles and losses and had come through the other side with passion in his voice, a smile on his face and light beaming from his eyes. Joseph Campbell was a mythologist, or whatever it is you call somebody who studies the stories that bring meaning to a civilization. Those stories are associated with religion because it is a function of religion to guard the stories that tell us who we are, and then to recall them verbally and with dramatic action so the source of meaning will always be available to us.
The amazing thing about these stories Campbell introduced to people like you and me sitting in our living room is that the stories share common themes. There is a sameness between the ancient stories and the modern stories, between those that come out of primitive society and those from sophisticated or so-called advanced religions, south, north, east and west. We all seem to be telling the same story. There are things that separate us and make each religion quite distinct. That is true. So we are different. But in this one respect, we are all alike: we tell the same story.
It’s the story of a hero. The hero can be a man or a woman. The hero is someone who is called to take a journey. Sometimes it’s a journey outward to a new land, and sometimes it’s a journey inward into a new awareness. And along the way they meet many dangers, toils and snares. And finally they enter into the promised land, or the Kingdom of Heaven, or climb the mountain to find the treasure, or awake to a new way of being human that is sometimes called enlightenment.
But the story is not over yet. Now they have to return to the normal world, to the everyday world. They return the same, but different. They remain human beings but they’re now fulfilled and complete and whole. They’ve experienced salvation. They’re back where they were before the journey, but they’re different. They’re different in a way that would never have happened if they had not taken the journey.
That’s the story, the story of the journey. Campbell has divided the story into phases, and the title of this sermon is the description of one of the phases of the journey. It is called “The Call to Adventure.” Campbell wrote that all hero stories have a call to adventure, in one form or another. The film director, George Lucas, came upon Campbell’s book A Hero with a Thousand Faces and it significantly influenced how he wrote Star Wars. Someone else used Campbell’s work to make a practical guide for screen writers, and suddenly the fingerprint of this mythologist was on Indiana Jones, The Matrix and The Lion King. Campbell tells us we recognize these stories, because they are our own.
It is our shared story, and it is our personal story. There’s no doubt that at this turning point in the life of this beloved community, we are invited – whether we stay or go – onto a journey of faith. And each one of us, personally, has a destiny. We are put on the earth not necessarily to be an accountant or a teacher or to live in Vancouver. Our destiny is to be who we are. And if we’re to fulfill our destiny, if we are to engage what we’re put on the earth to learn, then we’re invited on the journey.
The hero is not someone else. These great stories are true because they are mirrors of identity. We hold them up, look at them, and they point out who we are and where we’re going.
What was so helpful for me in coming across Campbell and the call to adventure is that the events that he describes are events that have happened to me in one form or another, but I would never have recognized them as calls to adventure. I saw them as unwanted experiences. I thought they were merely embarrassing moments, or painful losses, or reminders of my mortality, things like that. Things that annoy me or make me angry.
How come this has happened to me?
Things that make me feel persecuted –
What have I done to deserve this?
These are events that expose my limitations. Evidently, everybody else was aware of them all along, but I wasn’t able to see them. I was able to deny my limitations until the event happened that revealed them to me.
Or, it’s an event that reveals our mortality. For some that comes in a very specific way. The doctor says you have six months. And for others, they know it’s coming. They don’t know when, but it’s coming. It’s like waiting for the phone to ring, or the knock at the door. You don’t know when, but you know sooner or later it’s going to come. That knowledge changes your life.
You and I don’t cherish these kinds of experiences. In fact, if anything, we try to avoid them. Once you’ve sat on a stove you’re not likely to sit on it again. But sometimes in spite of our best efforts to avoid experiences that expose our limitations, something still happens to shake our world, or shatter our complacency. Do you know what I call such times? I call them “bad news.” But do you know what Joseph Campbell call such times? He calls them, “the call to adventure.”
Campbell has a marvelous description of what he says these stories can mean for any culture or civilization. He says they can “render the modern world spiritually significant.” What a marvelous phrase – “render the modern world spiritually significant.” The presupposition is that in our attempt to be scientific and rational about the world in which we live, we have created a flat and meaningless universe, and a terribly lonely one, one in which we must invent our own meaning.
In other times and other cultures the world was spiritually significant because they let the stories give meaning to the events in their world. They didn’t necessarily take those stories literally, but they took them seriously. And when they took them seriously they discovered that they have a power to put order into life, to provide a spiritual approach to what we might call “bad news.” It is the purpose of all these stories to reveal meaning and therefore to reveal that life itself has a purpose. It’s not the purpose that we make up. It’s the purpose that is there. And the purpose of our lives is to discover it. And the means of discovering it is called “the journey,” on which we pass through many dangers, toils and snares, until we come at last to the treasure or the kingdom or the enlightenment.
That just happens to be what the stories in the Bible are about – revealing meaning and being mirrors of identity. In fact, there is really only one story in the Bible, the story that was read from Genesis, the story of Abraham and Sarah, who are called from a comfortable, carefree, laid back existence in Ur of Chaldees, sometimes called Haran. Living in Haran is like living in West Vancouver.
Abraham is fairly old: about 75 when this happened to him. Sarah was nearly that old, probably in her middle or late sixties. They will be much older when the story is finally over.
But one day, something happened to that peaceful existence in Haran. All we know is what Abraham said happened to him, the way he interpreted the experience. Abraham said, “God told me, it’s time for you to begin to move into a land where you will create a nation, and you will be a blessing to others.” So Abraham up and left his comfortable life when he should have been enjoying the fruits of retirement.
Now that’s the controlling paradigm in the Bible, the journey to the Promised Land. And that story, that same story, is told over and over again in different settings. We don’t know what happened to Abraham in Ur of Chaldees. We only know that God said to him, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
We don’t know what happened exactly, but I think this is what happened. I think something happened to Abraham when he was 75 years old, something terrible in which he lost everything. It was one of those devastating experiences. It shouldn’t happen to anybody, especially to someone who should be able to take a cruise or go visit grandchildren. But it happened to Abraham. And it was then that God said, “Leave what is familiar. Leave this life you know like the back of your own hand, and I will show you a new way of being, a new dawn.”
That’s the same story that Joseph Campbell said is everywhere. You find it told in all cultures. That’s why he calls it the story of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It’s found everywhere, and everywhere it follows the same formula: The Call, which is the call to take a journey. And along the journey there are many dangers and challenges to overcome. And then the destination is reached, which is the new land or a new awareness. Then the return as a new person.
You can read Jesus’ life that way, by the same formula: The Call, which is his baptism – and then right when he should be able to enjoy for a moment the lingering blessing from God, he’s driven by the Spirit into the dangers of the wilderness, which is followed immediately by the challenges of his prophetic ministry, which leads him to Jerusalem where he suffers the cross. And then the return in the Resurrection.
But what I hope we learn here is that Jesus says the Christian life follows the same pattern. If we are paying attention to this stuff, we might notice that Jesus invites us all to take this journey, to become disciples. It’s a call to adventure.
It may not sound like much of an invitation to us, perhaps more like a threat, but it is a call to adventure when Jesus says to the multitude, “If any one would follow me, then you must lose your life in order to save it.” In this context, that means whoever refuses the call and tries to cling to the comfortable existence that they have, the one who refuses to shift when God is calling us to start anew, whoever does that is going to lose it. But whoever loses his life for the sake of Christ, whoever lets go, will find life.
Jesus says the same thing by drawing a distinction between getting rich and finding life. This is the next verse: “…What does it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?” By that he means that you are not going to find life by gaining the world. You are not going to find life probably until you lose what obstructs you from God and distracts you from what really gives life meaning. It’s only then that you will be able to see that the events that take away a familiar life, the events that can cause you to lose part of the life that is given to you, are the very events that can lead you into a new life. That is why they are called the call to adventure.
And evidently, it has always been that way because that story is central to every religion, ancient or modern, primitive or sophisticated. First, something happens, and it usually looks like bad news. In fact, it is bad news. But it is also a call to adventure. It looks like the end of a way of being, and in a sense it is the end of a way of being, the life we have enjoyed up to this point. But it can also be seen as the beginning of a new life.
Jesus is calling Christians to see their life in that way. But he is also saying that all of life is that way. The text is careful to point out that Jesus addressed “the multitudes” as well as his disciples. So this is not just insider information; advice for advanced professionals. It’s general wisdom about how you are going to find real life in the time that is allotted to you.
So when you find yourself in a tough situation and your first response is “why this, why now, why me?” shift your attention and consider it a call to adventure. Because anyone who tries to save his life or hold on to her past or dig in their heels and refuse to change, that person will lose the very thing they hope to protect.
But the person who is willing to let go of it all in faith as Abraham and Sarah did, and make a journey to a new land or a new way of being, that person will find new life.
One of the great musicians of our day, Wynton Marsalis, understands this. Wynton is a brilliant jazz musician and also a great classical musician. When he was only 22 he was the first person ever to win a Grammy in both jazz and classical in the same year.
This internationally acclaimed musician volunteers his time and shares his passion with music students. He’s a scholar of jazz and brings his knowledge to young kids, kids who never knew anything about jazz, kids in the Bronx, for example. He tells students to sit up in their chair because when they’re playing jazz they’re playing their culture and they should be proud.
On Dizzy Gillespie’s 70th birthday, Wynton put on a concert in honour of the great jazz trumpeter. Marsalis opened the concert with compositions written by Gillespie. Then he played his own composition written in honour of Dizzy, called “The Source.” A jazz critic reviewed the concert and wrote that Marsalis played with brilliance, his technical skill obviously impressive, but there seemed to be something missing in the music. What was missing, he finally discovered, was joy; the kind of joy he heard when Dizzy played his music.
At intermission the jazz critic went backstage to visit Gillespie in his dressing room. He talked with the old man about the concert to that point. Gillespie said some nice things about Marsalis, how he studied hard. The critic asked, “Can he study how to put joy into the music?” Gillespie didn’t say anything. He just laughed. But one of his friends, who was also in the dressing room, said, “That’s age. That’s how it happens. He hasn’t experienced enough.”
Dizzy Gillespie had been through it all. He had been through the pain, the toil, the sorrow. He had been through all the suffering life puts in front of us. He’s climbed the mountain, found some treasure, and came back with joy. That’s the way he got it. He responded to the call of adventure. There is no other way. You can’t study joy. You can’t buy it or borrow it. You have to take up your own cross and find joy on the journey.
A short while later, someone shared with Wynton what the jazz critic had said – a lot of technical brilliance but lacking in the joy that comes with maturity. Marsalis, at the time only 27 years old, indicated his genius when he said, “I’m not even close to what I’m going to be.”
None of us is. Because life is a journey. Life is a journey outward to a new life, and inward toward a new awareness. That journey never ends. At 75, God said to Abraham, “leave this land and I’ll take you to new promise. Because you are not even close to what you are going to be.”
By the grace of God. Amen.

St. David’s United Church
Rev. Dan Chambers
January 22, 2012
John 1:35-51

The Invitation

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus, Son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth.” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
John 1:45-46

It must have been something really amazing, some kinda show-stopper that inspired Philip to run to his skeptical friend, Nathanael, and say in effect, “You gotta see this!”
In the United Church, we’re polite to a fault. We’re not inclined to run out and tell somebody about a recent experience of mystery or wonder. We’re not inclined to talk to a neighbour in the grocery isle or a friend in the locker room about our church. It’s too personal. Religion shouldn’t be imposed on others. We want to be respectful of different attitudes. Leanne, our Administrator, who is part of a more overtly evangelical tradition, recently exclaimed, “You all are so polite!”
That said, we know how to be evangelical about some things. When we tell someone about a great movie or a fabulous restaurant, evangelical words can issue from our mouth: “Go!” Well say. “Don’t miss it!” Or we’ll say passionately about an excellent book, “When you have the time, read it!”
I think Cal Stead is the most natural evangelist this congregation has. He’s evangelical about anything he loves. A few nights ago he was telling us about “the world’s best sandwich shop” located right by Victory Square. He recently gave me a CD of a friend whose music “is amazing” he said, and he was right. If Cal tells you about something he loves, chances are you’ll be curious or interested to see if you may love it too. You’ll want to bite into that sandwich from the deli called Meat and Bread, Inc. You’ll want to listen to that CD. You’ll want to go to that church. He’s evangelical in the very best sense because he just wants to share something he loves with you, hoping it will give you joy, too.
I can learn from Cal. I share the Canadian qualities of being reserved and polite and extremely cautious when it comes to talking about my faith with others. But there have been times when I’ve been so excited about something, or so moved or so inspired that even I have broken through the sound barrier and said to someone, “Come and see. Check it out for yourself. I think you’ll love it.”
My guess is that Philip must not have been Canadian. Or if he did share Canadian tendencies of being polite and shy, reserved and cautious, he sure got over them when he met Jesus. It seems without hesitation he approached his friend, Nathanael, who questioned everything. “I’ve just met this amazing man; a holy man. A rabbi, it seems, from Nazareth.”
“Oh, really?” Nathanael responds. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
It’s interesting that Philip was not put off by his friend’s disinterested response. He didn’t apologize and slowly back away or quickly try to change the subject to something more comfortable. He didn’t seem to be hurt as I would have been or respond defensively. He simply says, “Come and see for yourself.”
I think Nathanael, the skeptic, is a great caricature of our society. “Oh, really?” we ask with one eyebrow raised in question. “Can anything good come from a church?”
And our job, our job as a church community, a God-centered community, a Jesus-filled community, is to be a place so genuinely inviting that people are willing to overcome their negative Christian-stereotypes, and come. We are called to be a place where people want to come because here, with us, they find life. They find a community that cares about others, that tends to the broken, that addresses injustice, that cares about the environment, that provides community and a place to grow.
People in our society are very likely to respond to an invitation to church with severe skepticism, “Oh, really?” But what I’ve noticed is that often, not always but often, people not grounded in the practices of a sacred tradition don’t have a strong root system to hold them up when things get tough, or to give them a depth of joy and gratitude when life is otherwise going very well. The majority of our society, if they think of spirituality at all, want to design their faith. And it makes sense: we buy designer fashion, we design our own music stream with ipods, we design our own facebook page – why wouldn’t we design our own religion?
The problem is, a little bit of that and a pinch of this isn’t likely to hold us when the winds howl. Because one way or another we need to go beyond ego-centrism and the desire to be in control of everything from how we load the dishwasher to how we encounter God.
Lillian Daniels is a UCC minister in Glen Ellen, Illinois. She remembers how her mother absolutely loved daffodils and shares this delightful story:
When I was a kid, my mother planned a big garden party, where her yard would be filled with blooming daffodils that she had planted in anticipation. But as the party date approached, the weather stayed cold and no daffodils were even close to blooming.
Yet on the day of the party, our lawn was filled with daffodils, just as she had dreamed. The guests marveled. No garden had any springtime action like that.
But then after the guests went home, the daffodils drooped and my mother went through the yard carefully removing all the cut daffodils she had bought at the florist, that she had painstakingly attached to chopsticks with wire twist ties, and stuck in the ground.
Those daffodils weren’t fake, but they were short-lived and flimsy, with no bulb under the earth to allow them to survive the rough weather. On the surface and for a short while, they looked like real daffodils, but they didn’t have enough going on underneath to last.
Isn’t that usually how the life of faith works? You can go to the bookstore or attend a yoga class or listen to a lecture or go on a retreat and pick up a little of this and a little of that, and decorate your life with little bundles of acquired wisdom.
But deep participation in a tradition greater than our own invention is the bulb under the earth. It will live through the cold, to rise again, long after our self-made bouquet has faded.
That’s why, even in the face of skeptical friends, we need to say, “Come and see.”
And what did the first followers of Jesus see? Who was Jesus for them? Who is Jesus for us, now?
Hold that question as we turn for a moment back to the story. Notice two odd things in this passage. Here’s the first odd thing: Nathanael comes to see Jesus, to check him out, but Jesus sees first. It’s as if Jesus sees Nathanael and in the seeing, knows him.
An Israelite in whom there is no deceit!
Nathanael is startled by this declaration and asks, “Excuse me, have we met?” Jesus says that he saw him under the fig tree.
In that exchange, Nathanael recognizes the holy identity of Jesus. Then Jesus says, Do you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
Now, in the Jewish mind, and perhaps in our mind too if we’ve heard the Biblical stories, we hear about “angels of God ascending and descending a ladder” and we think… “Jacob’s ladder.” Jacob, the fugitive who ran from his brother who wanted to kill him for stealing his rightful inheritance; Jacob, who collapsed from exhaustion and fell asleep on the
ground in the middle of the desert. He dreamed of the gate of heaven opening with angels ascending and descending on a ladder and when he woke he exclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. This place is awesome. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
What did those first disciples see in Jesus? What was their experience of him? I think this was it. They experienced him as one who housed God. Infinite Love dwelled in Jesus. The fancy theological word for this is “incarnation”. But it simply means that this rabbi from Nazareth was filled with a holy and powerful love.
For the person with an open mind and an open heart, an encounter with Jesus was like Jacob waking from his amazing dream. As you looked into the extraordinary eyes of this otherwise ordinary looking man from Nazareth, you might have echoed Jacob, “Here in this man is none other than the house of God, in him is the gate of heaven.”
I don’t think Jesus carried a special-effects machine around with him that hinted at his holiness. No extra lighting for that holy aura. No smoke and fire to convince people of his power and glory. He was just a guy with dirty feet and tangled hair.
But those without guile, those who were open to the way of God noticed something more. Something remarkable. Something awesome that they just couldn’t quite describe.
“Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
“Don’t take my word for it. Come and see.”
Jesus isn’t walking around anymore. But we can still encounter that Spirit, the Christ. It might happen when you’re reading the Bible, or in prayer, or talking with a child, or walking in nature. One way you know it is when you have that feeling that you’re being seen, and in being seen, you are known.
Now here’s the second odd thing: Two of the disciples of John the Baptist began to follow Jesus around. He noticed them, and asked, What are you looking for?
They said to him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”
Note: the Greek word for “staying” means more than “where are you sleeping?” or “in what hotel are you staying?” It means, where do you dwell, spiritually?
Come and see, Jesus replied.
The reading continues, “They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.” Then there’s this odd little detail thrown in like a sprinkle of salt: “It was about 4:00 in the afternoon.”
What? Who cares about the time of day? But in John’s Gospel, nothing is just casually thrown in. It all has symbolic meaning. Here’s the possible meaning of the time, 4:00.
In the Jewish tradition, the Sabbath is the high point of the week. The Sabbath is like having Christmas every week, except without the presents. The house is cleaned and decorated. Family and friends come together. People are in a good mood. There are special meals, candles are lit, stories told, songs sung, blessings offered. The Sabbath is the day of rest. It’s the “do nothing” day. It’s the day you don’t need to be productive, don’t need to strive, don’t need to achieve anything. On the Sabbath, you set aside your to-do list for a change, you slow down, take a deep breath, relax and give thanks to God. It’s a day to worship, eat, read, make love, nap, play. And it begins at sunset. Perhaps the twinkle of it around 4:00 in the afternoon.
It’s unfortunate that we’ve lost this practice. But I bet you know the feeling of Sabbath. That feeling of freedom when you approach a long weekend. Or that feeling of excitement when you prepare for a trip to someplace warm and you’ve packed a swim suit and a book. That
feeling of being back home with family and now you don’t have to cook for yourself anymore and you relax into the familiar smells and voices of home.
I think it’s something like this that Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael experienced when they first met Jesus. He was the gateway to heaven. He was the dwelling place for Love. He was the embodiment of the Sabbath. Amazing! Come and see.
Even though people in our society often project a tough exterior that says, “I have it all together,” on the inside I think we’re desperately searching for something: for success, for riches, for acceptance, for love…Even still, Jesus turns to ask, What are you looking for?
A Canadian captured the echo of the one who embodies the Sabbath and is the dwelling place for Love. She lives in Toronto, and many years ago studied Social Work at Ryerson University and Philosophy at U of Toronto. She was debilitated by chronic fatigue, has struggled with that condition, and now writes and speaks and leads workshops on healing and life’s meaning.

Jesus asked those first disciples, What are you looking for?
And if we still listen, we might hear the whisper of Love, as Oriah heard an inner-voice say:
What you are looking for is right here.
Open the fist clenched in wanting
And see what you already hold in your hand.
There is no waiting for something to happen,
No point in the future to get to.
All you have ever longed for is here in this moment, right now.
You are wearing yourself out with all this searching.
Come home and rest.
How much longer can you live like this?
Your hungry spirit is gaunt, your heart stumbles. All this trying.
Give it up!
Let yourself be one of the God-mad,
Faithful to the Beauty you are.
Let the Lover pull you to your feet and hold you close,
Dancing even when fear urges you to sit this one out.
(“The Call” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

That’s our invitation. That’s our call from the One who dwells in Love, the One who is the gateway to heaven and the embodiment of Sabbath joy. Amen.

(scroll to the bottom to view or add comments)

What Are You Waiting For?

“And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
Jesus (Mark 13:37)

“Keep watch,” it says. “Keep awake.” For what? Falling stars and the heavens coming apart at the seams? Jesus, at this point in the story, seems to be warning his disciples about the end of time, and it’s not a pretty picture. Doom, gloom, falling stars, shaking heavens, and all the rest. It’s pretty vivid, to say the least; the stuff of fantasy novels or Hollywood films. And that’s the problem. What are we to do with this kind of passage? It may have had some pull with early generations of Christians who expected Jesus to return at any moment, or perhaps during certain panic-ridden times of the middle ages, but do we really think it still makes sense today?
Clearly there are those who take these things very seriously and are constantly watching for signs of the end. “The end is near,” we’re told, so repent.
And the world either laughs or yawns and one can’t blame them because over the centuries so many have predicted the end is near, so many have shouted the warning and sounded the alarm, so many have brought thousands with them to the hillside to wait for the second coming of Christ or to wait for the rapture and you know how it has ended every, single, time. The clock ticked to the next minute, then the next hour, then the next day arrived and nothing had changed. The moon still shone, the world still spun on its axis turning toward the light of the sun, the cows still needed milking, the chickens needed to be fed.
We may be more forgiving of those in the 4th or the 12th or even the 18th century for getting all excited about what they thought were signs of the end, but surely that wouldn’t happen today, not in our scientifically enlightened society, would it?
Well, there seems to linger an echo of fascination or fear about the apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it. It was only a few months ago that Harold Camping predicted — and heavily promoted! — that Jesus would return on May 21st , and then when that failed, on Oct. 21st . And it was only a generation ago that Hal Lindsey wrote and spoke about the Late, Great, Planet Earth (and continued selling his book long after his prediction proved wrong – what does that say about the human psyche?) Just over a decade ago it was the Y2K scare, and next year we’ll worry about Dec. 21, 2012, the predicted end of the world according to the ancient Mayan calendar. Even today, speculation about the end of the world still seems common enough. And that’s part of the problem. So many have predicted the end of the world and Jesus’ return with great fanfare and failure that both the predictions and the people who support them have become the butt of jokes.
In the meanwhile, we’ve grown weary of predictions and warnings of the coming of Christ. By extension, we’ve grown dull to the practice of waiting for God. Several years ago, the New York Times reported this amusing incident: It was just before Christmas when David Storch, a music teacher, borrowed a copy of the score of Handel’s Messiah from the Brooklyn Public Library. Through a clerical error, however, the transaction was not recorded. There were several other requests for the score, and the library staff, unaware that it had been checked out, spent many hours searching in vain for it through the stacks. On the day that Storch returned the score, placing it on the circulation desk, he was astonished to hear the librarian spontaneously, joyously and loudly shout, “The Messiah is here! The Messiah is back!” Every head in the library turned toward the voice, this herald of glad tidings, but, alas, the Times reported, “A few minutes later everyone went back to work” (as found in Thomas Long’s Something Is About To Happen, p.50).
So when we hear the occasional voice cry out, “The end is near! The Messiah is coming!” we look up momentarily, roll our eyes, and perhaps with a chuckle or a croak of annoyance return to our work.
Of course the passage clearly says that we don’t know the time. Neither the angels in heaven nor Christ himself knows the time, so stop guessing. Don’t fret about what you may or may not interpret to be the signs, because you’ll be wrong. No one but God knows the time. Let it go.
If then, we’re not meant to be watching for the dimming of the sun or the loosening of stars, what are we waiting for? What are we supposed to be watching for?
The birth of Christ? God? A chorus of angels? What are we waiting for this and every Advent?
I suspect it might be helpful to look not to the planets and stars nor to the heavens above, but to our own life here on this complicated and beautiful earth. We don’t know the time, but it might be worth asking, “What would you do if the world were to end tomorrow? This is not meant to ignite a scientific debate about the end of the world. It’s meant to ignite an existential consideration: if the curtain fell tomorrow and the whole shebang came to an end, what would you want to do today?
Would you reconcile with a long lost friend or family member? Would you finish a project you started years ago? Would you tell your children, or maybe your parents, that you love them one last time? Would you wrap your beloved in one long, tender embrace? What would you do?
Asking and answering this question has a way of clarifying our values and sharpening our priorities. From time to time we receive reminders of the fragile quality of life: whether it’s the falling leaves of autumn, the death of a dear friend, an illness that took longer to recover from, or reports of global warming, and the fragility and impermanence of our world and of our lives penetrates the cocoon of denial we’ve carefully woven. Wake up! Keep alert! Pay attention to this life, this person, the task at hand. Nothing lasts forever.
And this truth is terrifying. We’d rather stay busy as we careen from the chaos of Black Friday or the festivities of the Grey Cup to the headlong dash toward Christmas. Look around you. I suspect you’ll see lots of bustling activity, lots of people watching for the sale, but not many who seem to be awake. Not many who seem to know how to wait or what they are waiting for.
We grow weary waiting for God, for the birth of hope, for a light at long last to shine in our darkness, so instead we get busy. Keep awake! the ad company tells us and we listen: be watchful for the best deals on flat screen televisions, for they will come and go like a thief in the night. Keep awake! Two will be shopping, but only one will be taken into the paradise of door-busting discounts. Pack your pepper-spray to increase your chances of bargain-hunting success. Keep awake! And the peace of a peppermint mocha and the grace of our Starbucks will be with you always, for the coffee shop will remain open all night to fuel the delirium of fevered consumerism.
The exhortation to keep awake remains one of the few commands of Jesus that our 21st century society still manages to keep in our own way. We keep awake as much as possible—and more. Statistics from the Centers of Disease Control show that about one-third of Americans are sleep-deprived. We are an exhausted people.
And yet, we keep awake. Indeed, we need to keep awake as we work longer hours for less while trying to balance our family and spiritual lives. Thankfully, there are whole cottage industries devoted to keep us awake, and the success of coffee shops, energy drinks, and even caffeinated water are all based on the need to keep our overworked, sleep-deprived population awake, alert, producing, and consuming to keep our economy humming.
But the command of Jesus isn’t to keep distracted and keep moving. Rather it’s to keep awake. And to wait. And wait. And still to wait.
This is the discipline of Advent, and it’s a tremendously difficult practice for our society to do. We’re trained to be active and productive. It’s in our bones.
Time is money and waiting is costly. The Industrial Revolution and much of our current economy is predicated on the idea of streamlining processes to eliminate waiting along the production line. Yes that child in the cotton mill might lose a hand in the Cotton Ginny, but who has time to slow things down to make it safe?
It’s no surprise that the popularity of tea and coffee spiked around the time of the Industrial Revolution when workers needed to be kept awake in order to keep up with tireless machines so they might work longer hours at menial, repetitive tasks. And now there are computers, robots, and outsourcing to keep pace with. Keep awake!
We worship speed. Fast is good, faster is better. In a gigabyte world, waiting is not a virtue.
Advent is so out of step with the world, it’s no wonder we find it challenging to embrace the spirit of waiting. It’s terrifying to wait, exposed by our need, our emptiness, our humanity. It’s hard to wait when we feel like nothing we have or do will ever be enough. It’s so very hard to wait in the dark.
It is much easier to scramble even as we complain about being so very busy. But the call of Advent is to watch and wait for the coming of Christ. It’s a call to keep awake and keep trusting in the coming of the light. No matter how long the delay, no matter how ill-prepared we are or how insufficient our faith, we watch and wait.
What are we waiting for? For now, perhaps we wait for the ability itself to wait. Perhaps we wait for that stillness of soul at the center of all whirling activity.
Perhaps we wait for the patience to hold still, even in the dark, for the dawning light. Perhaps we wait for the ability to see each other as brother or sister, or for a heart so generous another’s joy is our joy, another’s grief our grief. What in this season of Advent are we waiting for? Perhaps we wait for the flicker of Christ’s presence to become a flaming reality that transforms our lives and in the end the world.
Amen.

I appreciate the following authors whose work provided insights and illustrations for this sermon:
Thomas Long, “They Also Serve Who Wait,” found in his wee book Something Is About To Happen, p.47f., 1996).
David Lose’ commentary in “Working Preacher” a blog from Luther Seminary, November 20, 2011.
David Hanson’s commentary for Patheos, a blog for Progressive Christians, November, 2011.
 
Pastoral Prayer
Patient and loving God, it is not easy to wait. We’re so easily distracted. We like to be busy or at least like to feel busy. We tell each other how busy we are and wear our busy-ness like a badge of honour. We walk with cell phones attached to our ear. We interrupt meals to read the incoming text. We’re in a hurry so get our coffee to go or our meal from the drive-through pick-up window. We’re rushing out the door, down the hall, down the highway.
And now we’re asked to wait? It takes a while to slow down. We’re out of practice. And what’s more, this is a very difficult season to watch and wait. There’s so much to do. So much needing our attention.
And perhaps that’s the point, God. So much is needing our attention. The world needs our attention. Our loved ones need our attention. Our life needs attention.
So we pray to be given the ability to watch and wait. To watch for those moments when we can see another’s perspective; when our anger melts into forgiveness; when our self-centeredness is replaced by empathy; when our ignorance fades into understanding; when our apathy is transformed into action. May we watch for signs of the coming of your light, O God.
The holiday season can be a beautiful and joyful and rich time, graced by friends and family, music and festive decoration, food and good cheer. This time of year can also be hard. We especially hold in prayer those who feel more keenly the pangs of grief; those who struggle with depression and feel trapped in the dark; those who are lonely and without friends; those who are impoverished and even the best sales are way beyond their means; those whose life seems to be careening out of control. Through the power of your Spirit, communities empowered by a vision and individuals energized by compassion, may all who suffer be encouraged by kindness and given reason to hope again.
We’re mindful of people in the world who are shaped by violence and oppression, who consider aggression a necessary survival skill, who have long ago let their light of innocence and tenderness and concern flicker and dim. We hold in prayer those who suffer from greed and economic injustice, for the 2 billion people who make less than $2 a day, for the children who go to bed hungry and the parents who lay in bed wondering how to feed their family.
On a weekend of Black Friday shopping, may we keep perspective of what we have and what so many need. We pray that we’re not ruined by a sense of entitlement, but are lifted by gratitude. But more, may we also act on the knowledge we have that while we may not be able to end hunger now, while we may not be able to end global warming, we can do our part. We can start where we are. We can make a beginning. We can keep alert.
And not only us. May we be part of a movement of Christians around the world who watch and wait, who prepare in their heart and community for your unbridled joy, O God.
So we join with Christians of every time and place who in many voices and languages offer this prayer of our tradition,
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

(scroll to the bottom to view or add comments)

The Point of It All

Then the righteous shall answer him, “Lord, when was it we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it we saw you in prison and visited you? And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Matthew 25:37-40

There was a time in my life when I resisted taking a bath. I think I was in grade 4 or 5 and I thought my natural scent was quite acceptable and the dirt on my body a proud display of the day’s accomplishments: dirt from the tree I successfully climbed so high I could see over our neighbour’s rooftop, and dirt from a great tackle in the football game in my friend’s front yard or from plowing through the forest in a game of kick-the-can. These were the kind of accomplishments I didn’t want to easily wash off and watch slide down the drain. This was the age when I would have been in complete congruence with Charlie Brown’s famous line when he spoke to Freida of Pig Pen’s “dust.”
“Don’t think of it as dust,” he says. “Think of it as maybe the soil of some great civilization. Maybe the soil of ancient Babylon. It staggers the imagination. He may be carrying the soil that was trod on by Solomon, or even Nebuchudnezer.”
I shared a certain respect for dirt. It marked where I had been that day and who knows what great civilization I carried into the house with me before supper.
I have a strong suspicion that it was right about this time in my life when my mother insisted on checking to see how clean my hands were before dinner. “Did you wash?” she’d ask before I zipped into my seat at the table.
“Yes,” I’d say as obviously as if she’d asked if the sky were blue and the grass green.
One would think “wash” is a fairly straightforward term, perfectly clear in its meaning. But perhaps at one time in your household as well as ours, there develop enough nuances and interpretations of the simple verb “wash” to keep a lawyer happily active. When my mother asked, “Did you wash?” how did I know she meant with soap? That takes so long. Couldn’t ‘wash’ also mean running your hands quickly under a running faucet and then drying them briefly on a towel?
Not according to my mother.
When we die, some of our more conservative Christian brothers and sisters believe we’ll be asked, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Saviour?” (c.f. John 3:16). But based on this parable, at least, that’s not the question. According to Matthew 25, we’ll not be asked to spout a creed or recite a particular doctrine. We’ll be asked what we did. I suspect that when we die, we’ll be asked to show our hands.
If we can use cartoon images, I imagine St. Peter (of course) standing outside the pearly gates (of course). As you approach and stand by him, I suspect he’ll say, “Show me your hands.” But he’s not wanting to see if you washed first with soap before entering the gates and sitting at the banquet table. He wants to see if you got your hands dirty. He wants to look at the accomplishments of your life. Where have you been? And with whom?
Did you make time to tend to the poor?
Did you visit the sick, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit a person in prison, welcome the stranger?
Did you bother to get your hands dirty in this life? In this parable, that’s what Jesus is interested in. It seems it’s not so much what we say we believe, but what we have done in our life.
For those of us born centuries too late to meet Jesus of Nazareth in person, the closest we can come to a transformative face-to-face encounter with the Christ is to aid and be fully present to people who are impoverished and marginalized in our society and in our global community (Carl Gregg, Patheos blog on Matthew 25). If you got your hands dirty this way, stand over there with the valued sheep. If you spent most of your life tending your own comfortable nest, stand over there please, with the goats. Sheep over here, goats over there.
Naturally we begin to wonder: who’s in and who’s out; who made the grade and who didn’t? But I think there’s a more important point. I’m drawn to the fact that neither the sheep nor the goats recognized Jesus in the face of the stranger or the poor and the destitute.
Often we’re encouraged to be good to the poor because…
a) in so doing we’re serving Christ,
b) in so doing we’re earning credit for our ticket to heaven, or
c) because Jesus liked and cared for poor and sick people we should like and serve them too.
But each of these approaches is flawed. None of them attends to people who are impoverished or suffering because they are inherently worthy. And none of these approaches recognizes the fact that a person might have compassion for others without accruing a self-interested benefit. Really, the parable is not about doing something because that’s what we’ve been told to do and we want to be ‘good’, or doing something because that just may be the ticket we need to get to heaven.
It’s pretty clear the parable is about God’s love for those who suffer. Where do we find Jesus? With those who are hungry, naked, impoverished. How is our life transformed by the light and love of God? Feeding, clothing, caring, welcoming, reaching out. I suspect Jesus wasn’t intending to provide an exhaustive list. The naked, hungry, poor, and imprisoned are examples of those who suffer. But I think we could also include those who grieve, those who are sick, those who are pushed to the margins of society, and any who have a real and genuine need.
While we’re busy getting our hands dirty attending to those who suffer, it’s very possible we do not recognize the hidden Christ in the face of the other. We might simply be moved by another’s struggle and therefore, out of empathy and compassion, offer care. Love is a verb, and faith needs to be put into action to come alive, whether or not we immediately see Jesus in the picture.
What if the point of the parable is that while the goats are uninterested in the plight of the poor, the sheep are disinterested in what others (including God) think about their care for the poor? Those on the sheep team are not serving others to impress anybody, to earn credits, or to prove themselves in any way. While serving a meal to someone hungry or helping a refugee family get settled in Canada, they’re not looking over their shoulder to make sure Jesus is noticing what they’re doing to make sure they get class credit. They’re moved by compassion. As Jesus says earlier in Matthew’s gospel, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Mt. 5:8)
Later this morning Janet will share some stories with you about her time in Dharamsala, India, with the Dalai Lama. The conference she attended was called “Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence.” I wonder if this parable is a Christian example of interdependence? When another’s suffering moves us and we see that their reality is not separate from our reality, and that their well-being is intertwined with our well-being, we act without need for a further why. We put our faith into action because we see that “me” and “she” or “we” and “they” are connected.
So who are the sheep? The ones who act not to earn heaven, but because it’s their nature to respond, somehow, to another’s suffering. A good tree naturally produces good fruit. It doesn’t have to “think” about producing fruit. It just happens. The bearing of fruit is simply part of the tree’s nature. In the same way, neither the sheep nor the goats are aware of the fruit they have produced. Rather than a parable of “The Final Judgment”, one commentator suggested a better title would be “The Great Surprise”. Both groups are surprised when they hear about their good deeds (or lack thereof).
The sheep were the ones who just saw people in need, and they served them. They were just living their lives of faith the way that they always did. They were living their lives focused on God and the needs of others instead on themselves and their own needs.
Where do you land? Where do we land? On the side of the sheep or the goats? Another point of the story is that we don’t know. It’s always a surprise. But if we snuggly believe that without a doubt we most certainly and for sure are a sheep, definitely a sheep fully embraced in the good graces of God…we may be in for a rude surprise. Like the devoted Pharisee who prayed, “Thank you God that I’m not like that awful sinner over there beating his chest as he prays for mercy…” and Jesus said to his disciples, “which of these is closer to the kingdom of heaven? The one who is humble and asks for God’s mercy.”
Are we sheep or goats? I suppose it’s possible that the parable is not so much about whether or not you have what it takes to get into heaven. Once we start looking around and counting, “She’s a sheep, he’s a goat…” we’re living out of our goat nature. Once we start calculating our good deeds to make sure we’ve secured our ticket to heaven, we’re stepping into our goat clothing. Whenever we ignore the suffering of another we begin to sprout goat features.
In truth, I suspect we’re all goats. I know that I’ve welcomed the stranger and have fed the hungry and helped clothe the naked and visited the sick and the whole list. But I also know there have been lots of times I’ve walked by the homeless person on the street without sharing a coin in my pocket; and that there have been many occasions I’ve been so preoccupied with my own life that I’ve had no patience for or have not even noticed or have refused to have my life interrupted by one who is in need. Somehow, I suspect I’m more typical than rare in this way.
How about our church? In terms of our time and resources, how actively are we tending to those in need? Are we a congregation of sheep or goats?
I don’t know. I don’t know how God measures this or exactly how Jesus determines who steps to the left for the doorway to hell and who steps to the right for the doorway to heaven. But I suspect we’re all goats. That is, until we encounter the grace of God. Because it’s God’s grace that gives us eyes to see and ears to hear another’s struggle; it’s God’s grace that moves us to respond with a kind embrace or a warm plate of food or kind word or gift of money or conversation. It’s God’s grace that takes us from the goat to the sheep team which is why it comes as a surprise. Who, me? I didn’t do anything.
That’s so very right. The love of God has acted through you. All the way to heaven where you may well be asked, “How dirty did you get your hands?”
Amen.
 
Benediction
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done

(scroll to the bottom to view or add comments)

The Soundtrack of Victory

Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?

Paul constructs an image of what victory is like. In God, death does not have the final word. What is mortal is transformed into immortality. What is perishable and open to spoil and decay becomes an imperishable good.
On Remembrance Day, this is not a bad image of Victory. To remember all those who have fallen and, in this image, how they’re not only pieced back together and restored, but transformed. I imagine soldiers crawling out of their graves not as zombies with stitched together body parts, but with transformed bodies, or what Paul calls elsewhere a “spiritual body.” And with the body perhaps the soul is also transformed and the soldier becomes a warrior for God, an angel of light.
I don’t know how this works in the great economy of God, but I suspect those who fought against each other, called each other ‘enemy’, shot, stabbed and killed each other, would crawl out of their muddy graves and recognize each other as long lost brothers. In my opinion, when this happens, that’s the true Victory Day.
When old hatreds and prejudices have evaporated, leaving room for God’s transforming love, isn’t this the true Victory we’re all waiting for, longing for, hoping for? Isn’t this, really, what we hope all wars will lead to? “The war to end all wars,” they said of WWI. And though it was unfortunately a naïve and short lived hope, it points to the yearning we have for the true Victory of an all pervasive, never ending peace – of shalom.
In this case, I don’t think God wants us to be patient. God doesn’t want us to be patient when violence and oppression are running through the streets, along with their friend rampant greed, kicking over garbage cans, smashing windows. Maybe God has seeded in us a holy impatience with physical or emotional violence.
Of course our first step is an honest account of ourselves. When we discover the temptation to group people together for simplicity and convenience, we should notice a waving red flag in our conscience. When we say, “Oh, they’re all like that,” take note. When we hear ourselves or someone else say, “women are bad drivers, girls are bad at math, boys are rambunctious, red-heads are hot-tempered, blonds are dumb, gays are weak, Jews cannot be trusted, Blacks/Hispanics/Aboriginals are lazy and Muslims want to convert the world or are terrorists, we need to notice a flashing red light in our soul – Stop! Is this not how divisions are created, people are turned to objects, and the path toward war initially paved? The prophets were not patient with injustice. Perhaps there are times when God inspires within us a holy impatience with the cruelty and ignorance of the world.
Though in this passage from I Corinthians Paul is clearly speaking about a transformation that happens after our physical death, I wonder if God doesn’t want us to wait that long to taste this Victory. Maybe we’re not meant to wait for the trumpet blast to be part of resurrection living. Maybe we’re supposed to turn toward it now. Today. Why wait until we’re dead to step into this radically new way of being and let it take you on a ride of transformation?
In his play, “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder expresses this impatient prodding that God has placed in us all. He has one of his characters say:
“I don’t care what they say with their mouths, everybody knows that there is something eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t land, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even stars. Everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All of the greatest people that ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years, and yet you would be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There is something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
I wonder if God doesn’t prod us with a holy impatience to sense the eternal in each one of us, to keep hold of it; to look for it in each other and listen for it in our own heart.
And what is this transformation of God’s Victory like? I imagine it has a lot to do with the kind of giddy, ecstatic joy that lets you look at another person as brother or sister, relative or friend.
It’s the kind of joy that makes you want to sing and dance in the streets as they did on Victory Day, 1945 (music from the era played here in the background). Even if you were too young to remember those first days right after the war, we’ve seen pictures and documentary films and have read books. We can see in our mind’s eye images of war-tired soldiers grinning like boys in a candy shop while riding on top of a tank as citizens – where would it be? a village in France or Belgium? — lined the streets waving, cheering, throwing flowers. We remember photographs of a young soldier kissing an equally young woman in a burst of pent-up love. We remember photographs of soldiers returning to New York City or Toronto accompanied by marching bands and important politicians and tens of thousands of people welcoming them back, throwing confetti, cheering wildly from the sidewalks and leaning out of buildings decorated with flags. In 1945, this is what Victory sounded and looked like.
For everyone, the end of the war was an immense relief, but more, it was an immense release: a release from unrelenting sacrifice, a release from black-outs and the whistle of bombs, a release from terror and the low hum of anxiety, a release from severe rations of food and clothing and coal. So when the day finally came, when Victory was finally at hand, there was spontaneous and contagious celebration that made our best Olympic celebration seem tame in comparison. How incredible to have flowers tossed at you instead of grenades,
to hear the roar of a crowd rather than the roar of tanks and planes,
to hear birdsong rather than the groans of the wounded,
to hear the sounds of peace rather than the ugly grind of war…
How liberating it must have been to shift from destruction to reconstruction,
to move from alienation to reconciliation,
to shift from taking life to finding ways to enhance life.

I’m imagining that God’s Victory must be analogous to that. A sense of relief from fear, release into liberation, being cloaked by the sounds of peace and lifted into the hope of a new day, a new life.
I suspect a significant difference is that in God’s Victory, there’s no sense of triumphalism. No one is saying, “Wow! Look what I did!” No one is gloating over another’s loss, there are no winners and losers, no one is dominating over another. In God’s Victory, we belong to the Victory, the Victory does not belong to us. We’re caught up by it like a wave of peace that everyone has longed for and has finally arrived. It’s here! At last!
This is what we long and hope for. Why wait until we die to turn toward this Victory? Why wait to get on this ride? There’s a Victory train rolling through town and you have a ticket. Step on and you’ll be changed. Step on and soon you’ll recognize everyone on that train is a blood relation, a fellow traveler making their way to the same destination – a powerful and life-changing peace. Step on and be carried by the steam of a holy impatience, nourished by the humble bread and cup, guided by the light of an eternal fire burning within. Amen.

(scroll to the bottom to view or add comments)

Then Moses ordered Israel to set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness
of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water…
Exodus 15:22

I don’t mean to brag but there are some things I do very well. For example, getting lost. If frequency is connected to skill, I must be pretty good at it because I seem to get lost fairly often. They say that if you practice something 10,000 times, you reach master status. It’s possible I’m a master at getting lost and in my years of experience, I’ve discovered there’s more than one way to be lost.
• There’s an enjoyable way of being lost. It usually happens when you have some time on your hands, no one is expecting you for an appointment or is waiting for you at the café, you won’t be late for the concert or your child’s soccer game and you don’t have a child or a dog at home waiting for a hug and for dinner. It might happen on a rainy Saturday in a book store or the library and you allow yourself to get lost in the stacks, wandering through books. It might happen when you’re traveling and in a new city and you allow yourself to simply wander the streets and drink in the architecture and history and vibe of the city. When we’re not rushing from point A to point B we can meander; and when we meander, we can take in the world and be part of it in a way that makes us feel connected, grounded, grateful.
• There’s also a way of being lost that is no fun. You have to be somewhere. You’re running out of time and you have no idea where you are. Your GPS is no help because of road construction and 3 consecutive detour signs. You’re frustrated. Your blood pressure is rising by the second. And if someone is unfortunate enough to be in the car with you helpfully offering suggestions or pointing out where you took a wrong turn, it’s possible you might bark, snap or growl at least under your breath. By this time, every other driver on the road is an idiot and cars are constantly in your way. What are all these cars doing on your road?!? As time ticks away, Murphey’s Law kicks-in and it seems every blasted intersection has a red light.
(Personally, of course, I have no experience of this… but I read a lot.)
This way of being lost is disconnected, ungrounded and irritable.
These are two very different ways of being lost. When you’ve taken a wrong turn or hit a detour or find yourself on an unknown highway, it takes practice not to panic.
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I suspect that’s one of the reasons we practiced getting lost in the wilderness in Boy Scouts. So we would be less likely to panic. We learned that there’s a certain art to being lost and that’s it’s critical to know how to read the signs: where the sun is in the sky or on what side of the tree the moss is growing to point North. We learned certain tricks, like leaving trail marks so others could find you or you can trace your steps back.
Our practice of getting lost was really a practice of attention. Notice where
you are. Notice where you’re going. Remember where you’ve been. Though never terribly far from camp, even still I perked-up. Being lost summons all your senses and suddenly I smelled the trees and dirt of the forest, I heard the call or flutter of birds, the scamper of a chipmunk, I felt the air brushing against my skin. I didn’t clatter through the forest but stepped more carefully and even consumed more carefully as I rationed trail mix and water. Practicing getting lost was a practice of attention.
This was a fun way of getting lost because I never really got lost. It was
only practice. It was a way of honing a skill. But it wasn’t real. I wasn’t one of the Hebrew people who had followed Moses into the wilderness and, after three days, wondered if I might actually die of thirst. I didn’t have a child in my arms, or two or three, panicked that they might die there in the dust of the desert. The Hebrew people were not in a meandering mode. They were not enjoying the sights or window shopping as they strolled through foreign streets. They were wondering if they were going to die. And they got awfully cranky. Naturally. Three days prior they were thanking God and celebrating with music and dance. Somehow, the waters of the Red Sea had crashed upon the Egyptian soldiers in hot pursuit. The Israelites were now free. No more slavery! No more abuse! Liberated from Pharaoh’s choking grasp.
But now, more problems. A dry desert. No water. The situation was critical.
I feel our beloved community is in a wilderness time now. While we’re not dying of thirst or hunger or anything else, thank goodness, we are at a critical point. We’re wandering, unsure of what’s going to happen next, not really sure where we’re going to end-up. We might feel a little lost and there’s much on the line: we have children and elders to consider, our heritage to uphold, our community to protect. It would be easy to start getting cranky. It would be easy to start pointing fingers of blame or begin to snap at each other or perhaps to feel quietly irritable.
But, for the most part, you haven’t. You’ve remained gracious and appreciative, even in disagreement. You’ve been honest with your feelings and willing to share ideas. In other words, you’ve been faithful to each other and to the Christ in whose name we’re called together.
To be in the wilderness is a critical time, and as such, it provides us with an amazing opportunity. I can’t help but be reminded of the Chinese character for “crisis” which means both “danger” and “opportunity”. Our time right now and for the next few months is a time to watch for, sniff out and find the paths of opportunity. Will we somehow discover a way to stay here on Taylor Way as a vital community? Or will we become excited by some amazing opportunities that might unfold if we sell the property and partner with Highlands?
We need to make the most of this critical time so that we uncover the opportunity hidden in this wilderness. When Jesus was shoved into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted and put to the test, he remembered who he was and what he was about. In other words, in the wilderness he clarified his identity and his mission.
Underneath our exploring and conversation, our deliberations and hard work, we’ll be clarifying who we are and what we’re about.
And just as Jesus often wandered into the wilderness to pray, we too may find ourselves drawn more closely to the heart of God. In this time pregnant with possibility, we too might find renewed energy for important work. The wilderness is not only wild, it can be holy. It can bring us to those places of awesome wonder, sheer beauty and raw size. When lost, pay attention. Something may be happening that you don’t at first see or detect.
Carolyn Myss writes and lectures about why people don’t heal and how you can be more likely to heal. A few years ago, she flew to Russia to give some lectures. Everything that could go wrong, did. Flights were cancelled or overbooked, connections missed, her reserved room had been given to someone else. She kept trying to be a good sport, but finally, two mornings later, on the train to her conference on healing, she began to unload her pent-up frustration to the man sitting next to her about how infuriating her journey had been thus far.
It turned out that this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And he said – gently – that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it’s to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born – and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible. (This story shared by Anne Lamott in her book, Traveling Mercies, p. 107). Sometimes the Spirit of God is at work in ways unseen. Maybe we’re brought to this wild space so that we make room for something big and beautiful to be born that we have not yet imagined or seen.
Many of us grew up or remember well a time when the Church in Canada was the Church of the nation. We were top dog with a special hall pass in Parliament and generally respected in board rooms and school classrooms. In those days Blue Laws were enforced and there was no shopping on Sundays in respect of the Sabbath; The Eaton brothers wouldn’t even open the curtains of their downtown store windows so people wouldn’t be tempted to window shop. Christmas trees were not yet called Holiday trees and Santa still played second fiddle to the Christ child in a manger.
Our world is different now. Now religion is blamed for many wars, and many Canadians associate Christians as judgmental, anti-science, homophobic and closed-minded dogmatist kill-joys.
Otherwise, we’re pretty well liked.
In this terrain, nothing can be assumed anymore. Someone seems to have lost both the map and the compass and we just have to go by the stars and the sense of our nose. There are no easy answers. There is no obvious path ahead. Hopefully we already have some practice being lost. Hopefully, we know a thing or two about watching the signs and paying attention.
While fewer and fewer people are interested in going to church, you might be interested to know that God remains rather popular, though even God’s standings are slipping. An April 2009 Canwest News Service and Global National survey found that the nationwide proportion of Canadians who believe in God has dropped from 84 percent in 2000 to 71 percent today. According to pollster Ipsos Reid, the biggest decline was among men, which went from 86 percent to 63 percent. Perhaps most disturbing is that more than one in three – 36 percent – of those under age 25 said they did not believe in God.
So it’s no surprise that people just are not going to church anymore in anything like the same numbers as 30 or 40 or especially 50 years ago. Even the Crystal Cathedral in California has gone bankrupt and is up for sale. Now more people feed spiritual yearnings while kayaking or hiking with friends or doing yoga or practicing meditation or reading a soulful book. They’re just not sliding into a pew on Sunday morning.
By now we know that God isn’t confined to a box. Of course God is found in the wild, in meditation, in a good book, in relationship with others. Where else in the world would God show up but in our lives?
Of course, I also believe we deepen our understanding of God, our practice of compassion, our awareness of the holy, by being in a community of faith that grounds and supports and deepens us. At the same time, we who are connected to a Spirit-filled community need to pay attention to what’s happening around us. In this shifting spiritual wilderness, we need to sense where the Spirit is blowing. We need to ask, “How is the Spirit of love and justice wanting to break out and be born?”
Last year a few of us from St. David’s went to a regional event at Highlands on the future of the Church. Rob Dalgeesh from the national office spoke about visiting a cranberry farmer, showing off his cranberry bog. Cranberries grow best in marshes or bogs created originally by glaciers about ten million years ago. Apparently, once cranberries take root, they become exceptionally prolific. The famer enthusiastically told Rob, “Once the cranberry bush jumps the bog, you just can’t kill the suckers.”
Rob told the story to remind us that God is up to something. As a people of faith, we’re to ask ourselves, “Where is the Gospel breaking out, jumped the bog, and is at loose in the world?”
There’s so much possibility in this wilderness. We have to keep focused. We can’t get sidetracked by complaining or blaming or shouting at the drivers in our way. We simply need to attend to the work at hand; pay attention to the signs; keep in mind that something big and beautiful is waiting to be born. Now is the time to allow ourselves to be lost for a while, so that we can be in the end more thoroughly found in God.
Amen.