Today's Sermon

 

“Making Room” (Hope)

 

            This can be such a special time of year.  I don’t even mind the commercial side of it.  Running through my head these past weeks has been the jingle, “Holidays are coming.  Holidays are coming” from an ad featuring requisite snow, squirrels, and soda, now with real sugar.  On the more spiritual front, I still remember going to church as a child and, and while I may not have had the liturgical calendar memorized, I knew what time of year it was when the paraments, the cloths that hung over the pulpit, changed to a velvety purple (now the color of the season is blue), the Advent wreath came out, another candle lit each week a visual crescendo to that day of light. In our sacred stories program, we use this calendar to show what time of year it is.  Here it is…We are getting ready, waiting for this…

            Growing up, at least when we were with one set of grandparents, we opened our presents on Christmas Eve.  Having to wait all day was a test of wills.  I must have been a pill through dinner for that was the last hurdle to be cleared before what I longed for was finally here. 

            As we get older, what we wait and long for changes, but we often still carry within us the notion that we just need to add something or another to our lives and then things will be better.  Sometimes it’s true, whether or not that something is material.  However, there is a preliminary step that is often overlooked. Before adding anything, or knowing if we need anything, we may first need to do some sorting out and clearing out. 

            This Advent, the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, we are doing a series in which we imagine ourselves as part of the Christmas story.  That might be a good exercise for you, to go through the season prayerfully considering which character in the drama you are.  For our series here, imagined by liturgical artist Marcia McFee, we are invited to imagine ourselves as the inn, or innkeepers.  We are exploring how to welcome Christ into the world, not by pointing judgmentally “out there.”  I’m less interested in whether you can trick your barista into writing “Merry Christmas” on your coffee cup, than I am on how we can embody the Sermon on the Mount.

            How can we make ourselves into welcome dwelling places for Christ?  The first thing we may need to do is consider what is currently filling our space, leaving little good room left?  What unruly guests—material, psychological, emotional, spiritual, relational—have been living rent free within us that might need to be moved along?

            In scripture, we get ready this time of year by reading from the prophets.  These were the ones the New Testament writers drew upon as they framed the Jesus story, making a case for who they believed him to be. Hear these words from today’s prophet, Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 33:14-16
14 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 15 In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 16 In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

In light of our theme, the “fill” have of “fulfill” is catching my attention this morning.  Maybe it’s because I edited this with a belly still full from a Thanksgiving feast.  It can be hard to be in touch with our true hunger when we are stuffed.  McFee reminds us that in the Eastern church there is a practice called the “Nativity Fast”, the birth fast.  Usually, we associate fasting with the time of Lent leading up to Easter, mirroring Jesus’ time of fasting in the dessert and facing temptation.  The Nativity Fast is about ridding ourselves of if not temptations than preoccupations, occupants, we need to release in order to be a proper inn for the holy?  Jeremiah speaks of a righteous branch springing up from the line of David.  Is the garden too overgrown with weeds?  Has the soil been worked?  Would we rather not get our hands dirty with the work of righteousness, justice.  Jeremiah says when the Branch springs forth we will say “The Lord is our righteousness” (33:16).  Is God our righteousness or have we sought our righteousness in the wrong things?

             For many Christians, Anne Lamott or “Annie” Lamott is a kind of distant rock star of edgy Christian writing.  For us here in Marin County, she is also our neighbor.  One of this congregation’s own, Jim Allen, who we lost just this past week, taught Lamott here in Tiburon.  In her book on writing, Bird by Bird, she tells the following story. It was about a month before her friend Pammy’s death from cancer, Lamott was going out to a nightclub and needed to buy a dress.  She brought Pammy along in her wheelchair.  When Lamott emerged from the fitting room, she asked, “Do you think it makes my hips look too big?”
            Pammy responded, “Annie?  I really don’t think you have that kind of time.”  Not, “I don’t have that kind of time,” I who am dying of cancer, but “I really don’t think youhave that kind of time,” meaning none of us do. There is so much more that’s precious to attend to.  I’m all for being healthy, but rather than spending all our time trying to make our bodies smaller, we might do better to enlarge our hearts and minds for the Christ to have space to enter in? 

            “I really don’t think you have that kindof time.” The gift of Advent is that it’s a different kind of time.  It’s a time to get ready for what you really want, what your soul truly desires, and it’s a time that should feel different.  Accept the gift that it is. 

            The second reading today is from the 25^thPsalm.  It reads:

Psalm 25:4-5
4 Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
    teach me your paths.
5 Lead me in your truth and teach me,
    for you are the God of my salvation;
    for you I wait all day long.

What if that became your prayer mantra from now until Christmas.  “Make me to know your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.”  We may fill Christmas with gifts; the gift of Advent is its nothingness, the time and space to clear out, to make room, and to recognize the path God has for us, the path the Christ is taking to us. 

            In fact, maybe the holy family is already on the way.  They are wondering if their reservation will hold (and whether it’s really we who have reservations about them).  After all, there are better paying guests to be had. 

            Is Christ really coming?  To that, I’d say, Christ came once.  Who’s to say Christ won’t come again.  There’s this notion, certainly it was there among some early Christians and it persists to this day among some still, that Jesus would come back. Why hasn’t he, at least in the form some anticipated?  Maybe you laugh at that notion, a so-called second coming of Christ, but just work with it for a moment, this belief in a prophecy of Jesus’ return.  Was it simply wrong?

            Contrary to popular belief, prophecy to the ancients was not simply about predicting the future, telling us what would happen. According to scholar C.A. Stine, prophecies were conditional more than they were temporal.  They tell us what couldhappen if we do certain things. He says, “Predictive prophecies explain what is on offer, not what has already been decided.”[1]They can be promises or warnings, but either way they depend on our choices as much as God’s. 

            In the case of Christ coming back, then, we’re not just waiting for God who seems to be late, God’s waiting for us who seem not to be ready.  Whether you believe in a literal bodily return of Jesus, or some materialization of the mystical body of Christ.  Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “The next Buddha will be a sangha,” a community.  Maybe the return of Christ will be a body of people who fully live into Christ’s ways.  Whatever you believe about it, the question remains of whether we want to make room.

            What do we want, for others, for ourselves?  You may know I have been going through training to be a coach.  It’s something a lot of pastors are doing.  Among other things, it makes us more effective pastoral caregivers as people come to us seeking direction and helps us host more strategic conversations.  What a coach does is help people clarify what they want, what it would mean for their lives, what the obstacles may be, and what next actionable steps they can take to get there.  What’s amazing is if you make room, and you make time, the answers just show up, like an unexpected guest. 

            The other gift of coaching is a deep trust that you know how to do this.  You already know.  All we really need to do is just tell our bodies it’s time.  It’s time to get the house ready for the holy family.  We can learn from how we do that already, with our spiritual and secular traditions—the two are so intertwined.  Today, in fact, after the service, we will do a “hanging of the greens” when we’ll adorn the church with seasonal décor.  That’s how we begin Advent, getting into the spirit. I can still smell the pine and the hot chocolate and cider we had when we did this at my church as a child. Join us.

            And, if you can’t, don’t miss the opportunity to make meaningful the decorating of your own home. It’s not a superficial activity even if you use snowmen and squirrels and sugar.  Pull out your favorite decorations, play your favorite music of the season, throw on a Christmas classic.  Think about what you’re doing when you decorate:  You’re clearing out the ordinary for something special.  You’re inviting in a different spirit.  Don’t we need it?  Don’t we all need it?  Lean into it. In this physical act, you are engaging in a spiritual one.  You are doing a makeover of the inn of your heart. 

            Now, let’s imagine something.  Close your eyes or whatever helps.  The holy family is coming.  You’re in charge of the inn and the holy family is coming.  How would you decorate it?  What would it have and where?  What would you put away or throw away? 

            Now, what if the world were the inn?  What would you do?

            Take a few moments and let the images come…

-Silence-
            (Turn to your neighbor and share?/Tells someone today.)
            What did you see?  What’s in the way of that dream coming true?

“Holidays are coming.  Holidays are coming…” The good news is we have time.  There’s our hope.  Take it and put it to good use. 

            Amen.

[1]https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/prophecies-arent-predictions-of-the-future/