Reading the Signs
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Luke 21:25-36
11/29/15
In today’s lesson from Luke, Jesus is talking about a new day
coming. He is announcing what that will
look like when the new earth begins. But
the pictures that he draws are not pretty.
“On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring
and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror,
apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be
shaken.” These catastrophes, these
crises, these traumas, they are the sign of the new world coming, a new life
coming. They are the sign that things
are changing.
Do we experience these things now? Of course we do, as did the Israelites in
their time as well. People are scared,
people are angry. We hear a lot about
fear, anger, and hate. At some level
this happens in all times, but right now it seems particularly acute once
again. And the scriptural message to us
is two things. First, when horrible
things are happening, these are invitations for us to rely more fully on God,
to trust in God knowing that God is with us in these changes, in these
challenges. And second, these difficult signs
and hard times are actually fertile ground for new birth, for new life, for a
resurrection that comes again and again, and again. These hard times provide an opportunity to
approach life differently, to do it again, right this time, to truly seek to
live in LOVE rather than fear or hate.
To work towards good rather than towards polarization and enmity. Again, to live as we are called to do, in
gratitude, hope, and love rather than in anger and fear.
Today we begin the new church year. Today is our New Year’s day in the
church. And we begin the new church year
with anticipation of the new life that is coming, as we look towards Jesus being
born anew into our lives. We remember
that out of whatever chaos we have and do experience, new life will come. And yet, Advent is not the time when that new
birth has happened. It is a time of
waiting for the birth of Christ. We wait
for God’s presence to show us how to live and what to do. We wait for God to come anew among us. We wait for the new thing God is doing.
Waiting is hard. We
aren’t a people who wait easily. In our
instant gratification society, it is especially hard to wait. We don’t want to wait for food so we get
“fast food”. We don’t want to wait for
the mail, so we do our correspondence instantly through email, or even faster
through texts. And yet, advent calls us
to do exactly that. We start the year by
doing the thing that is hardest for us to do – to wait.
I can’t think of a more appropriate thing to do when the
world is in chaos. I know we want
answers now, we want solutions NOW. We
want it fixed now. But wisdom does not
come instantly. The beginning of the
church year teaches us, right off the bat, that there is great learning to be
done and great gifts to be found in being patient, in waiting for God to come,
as God does – at Christmas in the form of a baby, but among us as well, in
many, many forms. Waiting does more than
this as well.
Jack Shriver shared with us at lectionary group this last week
that according to Buddhism there are really only two emotions and we have to
choose which one we go with. There is
fear, and there is love. There is a
reason that throughout the bible God’s angels say, “do not be afraid” again and
again and again. It is in our scriptures
over 100 times, and out of Jesus’ mouth
over 20 times. Why? Because when we are in fear, we cannot
love. We cannot have compassion. We move towards anger, which moves towards
hate, which causes suffering, as Yoda would say. But when we are in love, we see with eyes of
compassion, of grace, we see with an effort to understand the other rather than
judge the other. We see with eyes that
move towards wisdom and deep solutions.
When we are in fear mode we tend to be reactive. Psychology tells us that when we are afraid
or angry, certain parts of our brains, in particular the higher thinking, actually
get shut off. There was an article out
about that just this week of a study done at Bangor University that showed this
to be the case. Do you not experience
this yourselves? The stupid things we
say tend to only be said when we are angry or afraid. The really dumb things we’ve done tend to be
done in times of fear and anger. As a side
note, for some reason this doesn’t come up in conversations about easy access
to weapons and it should. It isn’t just mental illness that causes people to react in violence. There was a story out this week about a
waitress shot to death after asking a man to not smoke in the Waffle
House. He got angry. And when people become fearful or angry,
those higher processes that say, “don’t do this really stupid thing” - they
literally turn off. The angrier or more afraid
we become, the more fully they turn off – for ALL of us! Obviously we all need to work some on anger and fear management, but we will get angry, we will become afraid. And in those times our higher thinking will shut down. That is not where we
want to be when we are making the difficult decisions about how to deal with crises
like we are facing as a world today. But
those feelings of fear and anger cannot be turned off immediately when we are
in crisis. It takes time, and often
prayer and meditation, or quiet listening, to still our hearts and minds to the
point where we can move more towards love and from there make good decisions. In other words, waiting, the call of Advent
to WAIT, allows us to move out of our fear and into the more rational, logical,
helpful, loving and wise parts of our brains.
There is an old Cherokee story in which a man told his
grandson, “My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil.
It is anger, it is hatred, under all of that it is fear, and from those places it does evil. The other is
Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope,
humility, kindness, compassion and truth. and from those places does good.”
The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf
wins?” The old man quietly replied, “The
one you feed.” Waiting is taking the
time before feeding either wolf to listen for God, to be led by wisdom, to
watch and hope.
I like very much that Advent follows immediately after
Thanksgiving. Because I think that
wisdom and waiting also have to begin with gratitude. Being grateful, focusing on the good, remembering
that God has blessed us with so very much in every day also quiets the heart
and mind and stills the fear.
Some of you, I know, have begun
gratitude journals. These take different
forms. In one gratitude practice, at the
end of each day you are asked to list 5 things for which you are grateful. In another there are specific areas you look
at each day over 30 days in which you name something for which you are
grateful. It doesn’t matter how you do
this. A recent study showed that taking
time each day to be grateful improves our overall outlook. It improves our sense of well-being. It makes us calmer in the face of crises. It lifts depression. And it increases our ability to make good
decisions rather than panicked, fearful decisions.
It also reminds us to live in
hope. We don’t just wait. We watch and we hope.
The God we wait for, the Jesus that we anticipate coming came to
give us LIFE so we could LIVE. He called
us not to live in fear, but to aim for love in all things. Gratitude helps us to wait, to watch, to be
hopeful.
Psalm
140, translated by Nan C.
Merrill reads like this:
Deliver me, O Giver of Breath and Life,
from the fears that beset me;
help me confront the inner shadows
that hold me in bondage, like a prisoner
who knows not freedom.
They distract me from all
that I yearn to be,
and hinder the awakening of
hidden gifts
that I long to share with others.
from the fears that beset me;
help me confront the inner shadows
that hold me in bondage, like a prisoner
who knows not freedom.
They distract me from all
that I yearn to be,
and hinder the awakening of
hidden gifts
that I long to share with others.
For are we not called to make Love
conscious in our lives?
You are the Light of those
imprisoned in darkness.
Surely You will guide us
into the new dawn,
that we may live as co-creators
with You.
conscious in our lives?
You are the Light of those
imprisoned in darkness.
Surely You will guide us
into the new dawn,
that we may live as co-creators
with You.
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