Second Sunday in Advent, 12/09/07

Trinity Church, Staunton

Roger Bowen

-Let’s be still for a moment together –

Lord, change our hearts.

Help us to allow you to be our Master so that we can be the servants of others.

Take our eyes and help us to see.

Take our ears and help us to listen.

Take our mouths and you speak through them.

Take our hearts and set them on fire with the love of your Son, our Savior,

Jesus Christ. Amen

Our spiritual ancestors, the ancient Hebrews, were the very model of orderliness in their faith – all those laws and commandments and specified forms for rituals and life transitions, and specially-designed vestments and worship space and seasons - - But even with all of that, they always kept one foot in the wilderness the harsh wilderness, where their journey with God had begun.

Think about it. In their creed, they remembered the "wandering Aramean" (Jacob) who was their ancestor… and they always remembered the difficult times in Egypt and their tough liberation journey in the wilderness to Canaan. And even after the grand Temple was built, they remembered the little shrines they had built from stones, way out in the countryside. Truth, discovered in the wilderness.

So, it’s no surprise, when John the Baptist comes out of the wilderness this morning, preaching like a wild and crazy kind of guy….a locust –eating, rawhide wearing character for some for some, a scary Truth-teller for others. At some level, Truth always came out of the wilderness.

Jesus, of course, began his ministry by going to the wilderness and dueling with those terrible voices.

So, Israel's wilderness (and our own wildernesses today) are nothing to enter lightly. Our wildernesses are very scary …. war and illness and dying and anxiety… addictions and injustice and fear. In them, our need for order is dashed. We love control? Gone. In the wilderness it seems like God is absent.

And yet …and yet those wildernesses are most often where we find God …where we find the Truth.

[A]

I sometimes thought the classrooms in which I taught were the wilderness. Students’ vacant looks. Some kids just having to act out. Oh, there were some very funny moments too…hilarious sometimes -

One day in Bible class at St. Alban’s School – I think they were 4^th grade boys – we were discussing covenants and their signs. You know, like the rainbow being the sign of the covenant between God and the people through Noah. Then came the covenant with God through Abraham; “…and it’s sign was circumcision. Right, boys?” Vacant looks in the wilderness.

“OK, class, come on, guys, does anyone know what circumcision is? “

Some savvy ones elbowed and winked at each other … but mostly they were deer in the headlights.

…except for the brilliant Oliver there in the back, hand waving, (there’s always an Oliver)….“Oooo, oooo, I know. Mr. Bowen, I know.”

“OK, Oliver, what is circumcision? Tell the other guys.”

“Circumcision. Well, that’s when they cut off your old testaments!!”

Funny moments in the classroom wilderness….

But Truth can come from that same wilderness too. I have received glimpse of God from the wilderness of adolescence. I was given a gift, really, which can change my heart, change my whole perspective. Teenagers taught me this centering chant… this beautiful, centering chant……they taught me this on a mountain, in the wilderness…not far from here….a long time ago. It goes like this.

In our hearts, Lord, be glorified,

Be glorified

In our hearts, Lord, be glorified today. (Let’s try to singing it together.)

[in our homes, in our church, in our world, in our hearts]

[silence]

In our hearts…be glorified, set our hearts on fire…and from that spiritual perspective everything changes, from that place - the wolf will live with the lamb, just like Isaiah said.

Take our hearts and set them on fire.

[B]

One time Mother Teresa was visiting New York City, another kind of wilderness – and she herself was in the midst of - what we have recently learned - was her own spiritual wilderness of doubt and emptiness. Yet, there she was, walking down on the Bowery, where there are so many street people. She was surrounded by the media folks of course – but at one point she stopped…she paused in front of one, old, raggedy fellow who was squatting there on the curb, or in the gutter. And she touched his head and blessed him and then she moved on with that wrinkly smile on her face. Of course the TV and newspaper people swooped on this poor man, jammed cameras into his face…”What was that like, sir? What was it like to be blessed by a living saint? Tell our viewers…how did that feel?!” And the old man looked up at them with tears in his eyes and said, “That is the first time anyone in New York has ever touched me.”

Later, when Mother Teresa was interviewed, she was asked something like “How do you DO this all the time?! In Calcutta, here…you deal with such ugly suffering every day.”

And she answered, even out of the wilderness of what we now know was a dark time for her…” I see the Christ in them. I try to see Christ…I see God in their eyes,…in their hearts.”

In other words, she was saying that when our hearts are changed, when we are One in the Spirit…when we are at our best like that…from that perspective, we expand our understanding of “me….” of “we.” If there is Christ in me – and I can see God in you – it’s there…then there is no more “you.” No more “them.” It becomes “us.” We are One.

Take our eyes and help us to see.

[C.]

One of my seminary professors, Dr. Cliff Stanley, used to write the word on the blackboard. He was so “prophet-like….” Bushing eyebrows flaring up, long fingers…and he’d write…

”s…Big I….n” up there on the board. And he’d point to it with those long, boney fingers

“That’s the essence of it!!” he’d say.

“Look at the way it’s SPELLED!

“I” is in the middle!!”

“When “I” am in the middle, when I’m in the center at the exclusion of everyone else….THAT, my friends, THAT is the essence of SIN!”

“We must change our hearts!” he’d roar.

I am not sure if Dr. Stanley ate locusts. Maybe he did.

[D].

There was an Episcopal school alumnus who explored another wilderness…the wilderness of space. Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin where on that historic moon mission…and Mike was the one who stayed in the lunar orbiter as the other two descended to the moon’s surface. He has written about that lonely, solo experience in a book called “Carrying the Fire” ..and he described his God’s Eye view of the earth from out there. When he would come back to his old school would speak about that rare perspective of our planet from the wilderness of space…and he would describe it this way…the earth looked like a fragile, blue and white marble hanging in deep, black space…blue and white, blue and white [those were the school’s colors….he kept saying “blue and white, blue and white” …and the boys loved it….”Yes!” They’d say!]

And then he described his important learning... the Truth …he discovered from that wilderness…he said that the lines on the globe, the lines on the map had disappeared. They just weren’t there. It was just blue and white. WE had drawn the lines on the map…the lines that separate. They were created by US…but the Truth is, there ARE no lines. No “we” and “them” from there. It’s all “us.”

Take our eyes and help us to see

Sometimes I wonder if Mike had listened carefully in the silence of space…I wonder if he would have heard the echo of a voice from the dozens of services he attended in his old school’s chapel…the voice of the one who saw it, who was preparing a path for the One who was it…”repent…repent…for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” Or the voice of the earlier prophet we heard this morning – “and a shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding….and the wolf shall live with the lamb…and a little child shall lead them.”

Take our ears and help us to listen

[Conclude by singing]

In our hearts, Lord, be glorified, be glorified.

In our hearts, lord, be glorified today.

Amen