Lent 3

First let me say what a privilege it is to be here today, embarking with you on this next leg of the journey-yours and mine-here at St. Augustine’s.  Last week, you said goodbye to your beloved Vicar David, and his wife Jane, and then barely with a breath in between, you welcome a new Vicar.  What I am mindful of, from my own various leave takings, is how important it is to have some time to tend to your grief.  You and David shared a spectacular and special 5 years together.  I look forward to hearing about all that you dreamed up and shared together, as well as the sadness you now feel over letting him and Jane go.  As you know, we need to tend the losses in life before we can fully embrace the new.  The writer Alice Walker, a longtime favorite of mine, talks about the importance of the pause …and so I encourage you to honor and live into the pause…as you continue to say goodbye to David, and as you prepare to welcome me.  Frankly, Advent is all about pauses…the liminal time between what was and what is and what is to come.

And so, the season of Advent is at hand, (one of my favorites) and with it comes the familiar word of end times, signs and portents, and Christ coming on the clouds. When Luke wrote his version, some 40 years after Mark, things were not quite as tenuous or urgent…and so in this passage from today’s Gospel he focuses less on-WILL we live?-and more on HOW shall we live?

In fact, Luke’s account is less about judgement and much more about what I would call an embodied watching.  Luke asks: HOW do we remain faithful when the very ground beneath our feet seems to be shaking.  Great question, isn’t it?!  And let’s face it- some 2000 years later, today’s signs do indeed shake us:  mass shootings even in synagogues, people worldwide, fleeing violence and looking for safe haven, bloodshed and strife on most continents, simmering racial unrest, hate crimes, a widening divide between rich and poor, floods, wildfires and drought, more people living on the streets, and our own personal griefs.…and the list could go on and on.  So, how DO we bring to life this embodied watching that Luke invites us to, in the face of the all of the unsettling challenges?  

First, I think Luke asks us to dig more deeply into our center, our heart, our core.  Luke says-pray. The word for prayer he uses is not the usual one and is best translated “beg”.  It implies an urgency that we don’t often feel when we are praying.  Luke says “be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with the worries of this life”.   Easier said than done. But prayer, for Luke, is the very key to not being weighed down.  Pray, implore, shout, beg, reflect, confess, rant, forgive, receive, let go of, ask, give thanks, surrender. ALL of this is praying…and Luke reminds us that praying helps.  But not just praying.  We must DO the things that nurture our souls, because the things outside of us are ever shifting, impossible to hang onto, and mostly unsettling, at best.  Cultivate a spiritual practice that helps you to stay grounded and centered, for it is in this work of the soul that we find rest, and comfort, and strength to face the demands and rigors of the day. One year, my spiritual director suggested I read a poem a day during Advent because she knows how much I love poetry.  That, on top of praying, reading and journaling, is in fact part of what keeps me centered.  And being in nature, walking my dogs and my parrot.  Doing yoga.  Seeing and making art.  And being with old friends, many of whom are here in RI, where I lived for 14 years before going to San Francisco in 2011.  In these times of uncertainty, we need to remember to do the things that recharge us, and keep us clear and present, grounded and focused. Fortunately the prayers we pray and the faith we embrace is imbedded in the belief-the fact- that God is somehow-miraculously and mysteriously and sometimes obviously-bringing all things to completion. During Advent, and this is what makes the season so rich and so complicated, we juggle the reality of change and unrest with the hope of completion and shalom.  Somehow we traverse the path-the tension-between those two by digging deep, pouring out our hearts to God, and doing the things that nurture us and keep us on track.

Another aspect of Luke’s embodied watching is charting a course that is true, just and compassionate. Responsive and open.  A few years ago, I was camping with an two old friends in Florida. While walking amidst a forest of giant Spanish moss laden live oaks, I found a waterproof box attached to a tree.  In it were compasses meant for people participating in a thing called geo-caching…kind of a treasure hunt meets geography challenge.  Although not a part of that geo-caching quest, I was drawn to the idea of being in the wild and being guided by a compass, so in spite of not being a part of that group, I confess I grabbed one of those compasses.  Given that it was my birthday, I also liked the symbolism that compass offered-of me having help navigating the twists and turns of my own life.  My little plastic compass is currently attached to my backpack….a reminder of how I need to be mindful of staying on course.  SO… how DO we find and make our way-as individuals and as a community-in a time when fear, distrust, and revenge seem to be the rule of the day?  How do we call forth our best selves-as individuals, as groups, as a nation-instead of allowing our differences and our suspicions to be the guiding principles?  Advent is a time of testing where the needle of our moral and spiritual compass is pointing.  In what ways are we going off course? This rich and beautiful season is meant to be a time to point the light at ourselves-again not just as individual but also as communities- and to name the shadowy places that we live in that take us down a path that is far far away from the love of Christ.

The Celts called Advent the twilight time, or the time between the times.  It IS the season of living in between: in between what is dying and what is being born; in between the already of Christ’s kingdom come, and the not yet of Advent.  A liminal time.  And as we stand on that very threshold, that in between, Luke asks us-in essence-to keep bearing fruit.  There is a Greek word in the NT:  prolepsis, which means acting as if what we expect to happen has already happened.  Embodied watching is about enacting this prolepsis-bringing to life-by word and deed- the Good News of God’s love in Christ Jesus.  In the face of a culture that is so self-absorbed and often lacking in kindness, our acts of compassion and righteousness stand in stark contrast, and speak to a reality that is lasting.  As we wait and watch, as we stand on the threshold of what was, and is, and is to come, we keep partnering with God to bring about God’s reign of justice and righteousness NOW.  Advent is a time to soften our hearts, to touch our own pain because knowing those places of vulnerability within us softens us.  Advent is a season about becoming tender hearted servants, truth tellers, lovers of justice, purveyors of mercy and compassion.  ALL of this is Luke’s embodied watching.

I make periodic trips to Florida, because my brother and his family live in Orlando, and a dear friend lives in northern FL, in FB, a sleepy little beach town in between the Atlantic Ocean and the marshes of the St. John’s River. Whenever I go to FB, I walk a sandy beach where 300 year old ballast washes ashore. Ballast provided excess weight in ships-weight that enabled those ships to maintain balance and stability.  In this particular place in N. Florida, as the ships came in for commerce or safe harbor, they sometimes got caught in the dangerously shallow water, and the ballast would have to be thrown overboard to lighten and lift the boat so that it didn’t run aground.  In the case of Fort Clinch beach, this particular ballast-from old Spanish sailing vessels-was made of clay tile.  So, while I walk the beach, I collect small pieces of the broken up tile; often the pieces you find are decorated with stars, butterflies, or other flourishes.  One December when I was there, as I re-enacted this ritual of collecting the ballast, I began to think about how ballast is an apt metaphor for what we are about in Advent.  We try to pay attention to the things that give us balance in the midst of life’s complexity, we seek stability and clarity as we strive to be faithful, courageous people of character and integrity, AND we toss away the things that weigh us down and keep us from being clear eyed and open hearted.  ALL of this is the deep deep work of Advent.  And so I ask you-Are you ready?  Are you preparing for the One who is coming? The beautiful and challenging season of Advent awaits you.