Darkness, Even in the Light of Day...

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One of my fondest memories from childhood is of lying in my yard watching the stars. The sky, in rural Idaho, offered a breath-taking array of stars that glittered in the night. My brothers and I would lie on our backs, staying awake long after our bedtime to watch the sky. Looking up at this vast, dense display of stars made me dizzy. I had to view them lying down or risk losing my balance.

I often wondered what was out there in the universe; what world existed for me to see as a light glowing in the night, but never visit?

The Season of Advent begins today; traditionally a dark and mysterious time. Advent - a season that hints at things unknown. A time of waiting for a child to be born. A time when we are invited to ponder the ways we know God in our lives and in our world. Advent is a season of darkness; literally and spiritually. Literally because it is winter in the Midwest of the Northern Hemisphere and the sun has moved to the far south end of the sky. The spiritual darkness of Advent calls us to slow down and pay attention.

This call is completely at odds with the reality of our lives, busy, hectic, And - with way too much going on. Many people around us are already living in the Christmas season, but we Christians are asked to wait.

The day, the hour, of God’s arrival in the world is not yet here….

In these days of long nights many of us yearn to hunker down – to hibernate inside our warm homes. But often we end up in shopping malls, busy with our preparations for Christmas. Or perhaps we spend hours shopping on-line. We have our lists and our budget and limited time.

In these short days of dim gray light, many of us head off to school or work in the dark, and return home in the dark. And the daylight in between has a shadowy cast to it. It is not the bright light of summer. Winter has its own dull monochromatic hue. The dim daylight and long nights stir in me a primal impulse to go to sleep early and sleep a long time.

The darkness of these days is an invitation to ponder the dark places of our lives. For some this means a time to be more prayerful. To explore the caverns of our being What needs to be brought into the light? To wonder about hidden hopes and desires…

how is God calling us?

What might God want of me at this time in my life?

What do I need to pay attention too?

Stay awake!

For some the darkness is filled with anxiety. Our instincts tell us to be afraid of the dark, of the places and times where our vision is limited and we cannot see.

We know not the hour.

We fill the darkness with artificial light and push the darkness out.

As we enter the season of Advent we also enter into a new liturgical cycle, a year in which we will reflect on the Gospel of Matthew. Loosely, Matthew is an “historical narrative,” which means it focuses on cause and effect. The events in Matthew deal with the transcendent God, - God with us, God, the creator of all things. All creation, because God created it, is good. However, human beings, while created good, often stray from God. Humans tend to be self-centered, Living with a sense of personal entitlement, And - violent, ultimately rebelling against God’s purposes. The influences of this world are toward power and wealth which are often gained and retained through violence and oppression.

We rarely see the global effects that radiate out from the lives we live…

Violence and oppression were true in the days of Matthew’s gospel, and still true today. We need to ponder the ways we blindly participate in the various factors that cause the problems of this world.

In this season of Advent we will be praying about and reflecting on the Millennium Development Goals. These goals, created by the United Nations urge all people around the world to work together to eradicate poverty and disease. They point us to ponder how we can fix the social imbalances of who gets an education and who does not, of who can earn a living wage and who cannot. We will pray for these goals in our Prayers of the People. Plus, I have created stations around the church and in the hallway outside my office, and in the chapel. Each station focuses on one of the eight goals, offering some statistics, a verse of scripture, and a prayer. I urge you to pray these stations, not once, but often. There is a booklet of evening prayers for lighting the candles of the Advent wreath. These prayers also focus our attention on the MDG’s.

My hope is, that in this season of gift buying, in a time of abundance and sometimes overindulgence, we will remember that we are members of a global world.

A world in which there are many people who live with nothing.

A world in which we can choose to participate as members working to make a difference.

One way we can do this is by purchasing gifts for our families and friends through Heifer International. We will have available, all December, a catalogue and gift cards from which to make a purchase. An entire community can be changed by the gift of one animal.

We can also do this by purchasing Bishops Blend coffee. A great gift basket can be created using coffee and a gift card for Heifer.

Of course we can always close our eyes and pretend that what we don’t see does not exist. Then, we will be like the two who are in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Or like two women grinding meal together; one will be take and will be left.

We are called to do ordinary work in this world, but in so doing, we are to pay attention to the hidden dimensions, the areas we cannot easily see, especially in our comfortable suburban life. Pay attention to the world around us, to the imbalances of justice, wealth, and food;choose to be informed and involved.

Don’t be left in the dark.

In this season of darkness the Gospel of Matthew points us to see God as the light, the one who has come to live among us, a God who is the cause of all existence, a God who inspires all goodness, restores wholeness, and gives life to the dead. God chooses to work in and through us; we are living examples of the incarnation. Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection within this context of cause and effect, good and evil. This Gospel actively strives to prove that the promises made in scripture are fulfilled in Jesus.

Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, for all people, Jews and Gentiles,

rich and poor, black and white, male and female.

God, as the human Jesus, shows us that God intends to work in and through the lives of human beings. God is not going to do abstract cosmic magical things. Rather, God creates new life in the events of ordinary every day life,

two were in the field, two were grinding meal…

stay awake.

Pay attention.

God is with us.

This reminds me of the story about an absent-minded professor who became so absorbed in his work that he forgot the simplest details. One morning his wife said, "Now Henry, remember, we are moving today. Here, I'm putting this note in your pocket. Don't forget."

The day passed by and the man came home to his house. He entered the front door, and found the place empty. Distraught, he walked out to the curb and sat down. A young boy walked up to him, and he asked him, "Little boy, do you know the people who used to live here?"

The boy replied, "Sure, Dad, mom told me you'd forget."

Stay awake! Pay attention…

Today’s reading reminds us that although we do not know when, we do know something about how Christ will come again into the world. It will be like in the days of Noah with everyone caught up in the affairs of everyday life –

- nothing wrong with that -

except that everyday life can be all consuming. And the busyness of life has a tendency to prevent people from knowing something deeper – about ourselves, about our world, about our God…

So, it is not about quitting the tasks of everyday. It is about how we live in our interior lives as we go about our everyday lives.

In Matthew the text uses “falling asleep” as the metaphor for becoming lost in the everyday and forgetting that we are called to a deeper level of living. It’s the question so many ask: “How can I be so busy, and yet so empty?” It’s about our awareness of who we are and whose we are and what our lives are meant to be about.

Paying attention can be as simple as developing spiritual exercises into the activities of everyday. For example, a Jewish doctor says a Hebrew prayer of purification every time she washes her hands. Not to purify her, but to remind her that the person she is treating is more than a disease. In other words she says the prayer in order to stay awake to the spiritual dimensions of the whole person even as she attends to their illness.

Spiritual exercises help to ground our lives and keep us awake.

This season of Advent, we are invited to pray through the Prayers of the People,
the Stations, and the lighting of the candles on the Advent wreath. These prayers are an invitation to stay awake.

It is a vast world out there, our earthly home, filled with places many of us will never visit.

In the busyness of life,

pay attention, be informed,

understand what is happening around us…

because

Darkness can exist even in broad day light.