"Advent: Season of Darkness;
Season of Hope"
A Sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
December 14, 2008
ANCIENT & MODERN READINGS:
Our first reading is from Chapter One of the Book of Matthew:
When … Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived
together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her
husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her
to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when
he had resolved to do this, an angel … appeared to him in a
dream and said, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take
Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy
Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for
he will save his people from their sins.
Our second reading, The Guest House, is from the 13th Century
Persian poet, Rumi:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
SERMON: Advent: Season
of Darkness; Season of Hope
I'm pretty sure that many of you are familiar with the words to
one of my favorite advent songs: "California Dreaming"
by The Mamas and The Papas
All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day
Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Oh, I got down on my knees
And I pretend to pray
You know the preacher likes the cold
He knows I'm gonna stay
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day
In olden days, no matter our heritage, our ancestors were a rural
people. The whole world operated on an agrarian calendar. Seasons
of festival or fasting were tied to cycles of human husbandry with
the earth and its animals. Liturgical calendars - the ecclesiastical
schedules of spiritual life, developed to keep religion in sync
with the more natural rhythms of bodies - of men and women, of the
earth, the moon and the sun.
In olden times, when the harvest was brought home and safely stored
for the season ahead, when the darkness of night stretched to cover
the edges of the day, when the rhythms of plant life slowed, the
paces of the people eased, too, in a kind of Mamas' and Papas' syncopated
harmony.
In olden times, this twilight season was a time for healing, a
time for the mending of harness and plow. It was a time for solitude,
for turning thoughts inward, and for remembering. It was a time
for discovering the wear and tear from another year of aging, for
uncovering losses and restoring strengths. It was a time to gain
perspective, as the season just past settled into place among the
other pages in the flow of history.
In olden times, in our provincial, ancestral past, this was a season
for lingering on one's own or gathering around the stove or the
fire, for contemplation or long conversations. It was a season for
solitude, or for sharing solitude and memories with family and community.
It was a time to share discoveries, and losses, and insights. It
was a time for individuals and households and communities to review
the season just past and to brace for the beginning of the one soon
to arrive.
In some parts of the world, this season was, and still is, known
as Advent, a time of marking time, of putting things away, and waiting;
a time of emptying out and of growing expectancy. To everything
there is a season, and this one holds both a time to seek and a
time to lose. It is a season of twilight, heading into darkness,
heading into light.
This is Advent, on the Christian calendar, a time of expectation
and waiting. In Judaism this time is a reminder of the dark days
of Syrian oppression leading to the Festival of Lights. In Islam,
these are the days just past Ramadan, a time of fasting and soul
searching, of spiritual and physical discipline, days of turning
inward.
Because our human spirit requires it, in all cultures there is
a time - represented by this time - when the world is dark and inviting,
when the soul leans into darkness and remembering and preparing,
blending together in an experience of yearning, longing for hope:
for the birth of a child; for the deliverance of a people; for the
healing of a soul; for reunion with All-That-Is. This is a season
that is marked by music defined in minor chords: Come, O Come, Emanuel;
California dreamin' on such a winter's day.
In our culture and in this season, we are drawing near to the winter
solstice. It is a season of cold and darkness, of almost momentary
days and interminable nights. It is a good time, still, a natural
time, a spiritual time - this season of darkness and yearning and
hope. It is a good time, for looking inward to meet our innermost
selves - there waiting to meet us - like the germ of a seed waiting
to yield to the plant it is destined to become.
Most of us can't remember it so well, but I've got to think that
as we each came into being, as we gestated in our mother's wombs,
it had to be the most wonderfully comfortable experience. In ignorant
bliss we were one with All-That-Is: one with our mother, one with
our mother Earth, one with the entire universe. And then, before
any of us knew it - bang - it was our birthday! For most of us,
our first response to that experience was to cry, loudly and wildly,
"Whoa! I liked it where I was. I want to get back there."
We've got to get ourselves back to the garden, wish I was in L.A.,
back to last year, back to sometime when I wasn't such a stranger
in a strange land. I've got to think that's what the stories of
the Bible are all about - being at one in the garden, being at one
with the universe, stumbling upon ourselves, and then forever trying
to find our way back. We want to get back to the Garden, back to
the oneness of everything, back to what we knew, back to comfort,
back on track.
The spiritual quest is a journey of atonement, a search for a way
of being at one. We ate from the tree of knowledge though, and learned
that oneness is not so simple. What we came to know was… ourselves.
It's our self-knowledge that separates us from the womb, from the
garden, from universal communion with All-That-Is.
Redemption of the human soul occurs when we are born out of naïveté,
and even with growing knowledge of ourselves, we go on to choose
to reattach the pieces of the world, the universe and our lives,
as we encounter them along the way. We grow our souls when we do
this kind of remembering with love and with gratitude for each guest
we meet along the way. The first and most difficult step of this
journey though, is self-love. If we are to grow our souls, it is
in learning self-love that we become able to love the world around
us, and those in it. To learn self-love, which is not womb-like,
not naïve, we need to remember the womb, so that, even though
we have to be or may choose to be alone, we don't have to be disabled
by loneliness. We need to remember the garden, the oneness, so that
as we envision the kingdom of heaven on earth, the beloved community,
we might have a model of what it could be like.
We need to remember in order to envision. One of the challenges
is to remember or try to remember without getting lost in the past,
in a world of memory that leaves no space for a hopeful vision of
our time yet to be. Our longing must carry the past along with us
as we go about finding and creating a future that satisfies the
longing.
Love is a guiding light as we travel along the way. Love is the
garden where we began, naïve as it was. Love is the discovery
of our self at the beginning and at each stage of the journey. Love
is picking up the pieces, connecting with others, working for justice.
Love is what holds us through the process of holding on to the experiences
and the people, the guests we encounter along the way. Love is what
leads us back home again, only this time not in naïveté,
but with the meaning of our lives intact.
Love is never lost, but sometimes we lose ones that we love. The
companion of loss is grief. In many ways there's a close connection
between the experience of grief and the experience of this season
of longing. Grief is a process of recovery that brings us back to
living. Sometimes people in grief are afraid that it will last forever.
I know it can feel that way, because I have surely felt it. I know
it can feel that way, because on many occasions several of you have
told me that's how you have felt. Sometimes grief does take a very
long time to make its way through a person's experience of it. It's
hard. But that's the way it is; that's the way life is. Grief is
an extension of our human experience of the separation that begins
at birth.
Grief can only last forever though, if it is denied. But memory
- remembering -- however grief-laden it might be, can eventually
provide the ladder necessary for us to climb back into our lives.
It's about learning how to pick up the pieces, as lovingly as we
can, moving out of our past and into the part of our life that continues
to unfold.
There is a time to be born, a time to die… and a time to be
born again. We might see advent - this season of darkness and of
hope - as being symbolic of a time just after dying, before we are
born again. We might see it as a time when one year comes to a close
and another is about to begin. Or we might see it as a time when
a chapter of our life has ended, and we are about turn the page
on a new chapter. It is a time of longing for union or reunion connecting
us to our past and holding open the door to our future. It is a
time of longing for wholeness and moving towards it. Both the longing
and the moving can be our advent prayers.
I had the realization of a more social aspect of Advent this past
week. I mentioned to you last Sunday that my work on the New Jersey
Civil Union Review Commission would come to an end this past Wednesday,
as our final report, based on extensive testimony we heard and received
over a nearly two-year period, was officially made public. And,
yes, for any of you who wondered, the Commission unanimously and
strongly recommended to the Governor and the State Legislature that
access be provided for all couples in the state of New Jersey to
the institution of civil marriage. We assured them that this was
the only way that equal rights and status for all New Jersey couples
could be accomplished. And we recommended that they act quickly
to pass legislation extending the right of marriage to gay and lesbian
couples in order to establish justice and end the many injustices
that have occurred since the passage of the Civil Union Act.
I had a realization this past Thursday evening, when in Collingswood,
New Jersey, I had the opportunity, along with some other members
of the Commission, to address a primarily gay and lesbian crowd
of a few hundred people. They had gathered there to rally their
energies and organize their strategies in taking the next steps
towards gaining marriage rights. I started thinking about the whole
history of gay rights.
It began in the absence of any rights at all, and in the dark silence
of the closet. To become known was to risk one's career, or safety,
or even one's life. I have to wonder about the amount of grief that
was in that closet. And I have to wonder about the yearning of gay
folks back in that time, the yearning and longing to return to an
earlier time in their lives, an innocent, naïve time, before
they were even aware of sexuality, let alone their sexuality.
In the darkness of that fear and grief and longing there was a
sort of Advent. And within that Advent there was a moment, or a
series of moments in which the fear and grief and longing began
to move, to give way to hope of a new day, and a new way in which
the GLBT community, would not only come out of the closet, but come
out and claim the same rights that are sanctioned by that State
for any other lovers who wish to commit their relationships. And
the straight community around them would recognize those rights
as legitimate. And the straight community around them would recognize
their own sons and daughters, grandchildren, cousins and aunts and
uncles, parents and grandparents, and neighbors, and there would
no longer be reason for fear. Reconnecting the pieces; greeting
the visitor.
The energy in the theater in Collingswood the other night was something
like I've seen with the birth of an infant. It's painful, and it's
hard. But it's very determined, very hopeful and that baby is going
to be born.
The advent of civil rights, the time of waiting for gays and lesbians
is nearly over. Justice will be born. Hope will be realized. All
of us are called to be midwives to the birthing of that day, by
doing what we can to bring it about and support it. Social justice
movements in which those who have been seen as less human than others
by the dominant culture or not human at all, have always gone through
a dark advent before the dawn has even begun to break. There is
a time of longing for wholeness and a time for moving towards it.
Advent is a time for the mending and growing of the human soul
as much as it is a time for saving the soul of a whole people. There
is a time to be born, a time to die…and a time to be reborn.
The medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart wrote:
This word is a hidden word
and comes in the darkness of the night.
To enter this darkness put away
all voices and sounds
all images and likenesses.
For no image has ever reached into the soul's foundation
Where God herself
with her own being is effective."
Go gently into that darkness, good people. You will find her there.
She is waiting, always waiting to be born again.
California dreamin' on such a winter's day.
Take the time in this season for the mending of your soul;
Take the time in this season, for that which does not yet even exist;
Take the time this season to learn once again - who you are becoming.
Take the time this season, to be still, so that you might feel it
when the spirit begins to stir and move toward the dawning of a
new day.
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