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Sermons at Saint Mary's
The Second Sunday of Advent Once upon a time, a young man went to his rabbi and asked him: And his rabbi replied: “Our God, blessed be he, is always speaking to you if you have ears to hear.” “But I never hear a voice, Teacher,” the young man said quietly. “Yahweh spoke you into being as Yahweh spoke creation into being: as God spoke the covenant to Abraham; as Yahweh spoke our fathers and mothers through the wilderness,” the Rabbi answered. And the young man whispered: “But, why can’t I hear?” And his Rabbi replied: “When your heart becomes as quiet as your whispered question, you will hear the still, small voice of God. Blessed be God.” In the deafening cacophony of this holiday season, it is often difficult, if not impossible to hear the still, small voice of God. We are only human, children of Adam and Eve, we are like grass, here today and gone tomorrow, and the distance that separates us from our Creator can seem like an eternal abyss. God can seem so far away that it appears there is no way back to the One who gave us life and breath, the One who spoke us into being. That is why, in this Season of Advent, it is important for us to still our hearts, to look for quiet moments amidst the din, and embrace them when they come to us. As much as everything this time of year conspires to make us search for joy and peace and hope in the things and people around us, we must turn ourselves in a different direction, toward the quiet, toward our hearts. For this is when God speaks, this is when God acts, this is when we receive comfort and consolation. You know, I received a wonderful gift from one of you the other day. In a few short weeks, I will embark on the longest journey I have ever taken from all that I know and love, and so I have been spending every available moment busily making preparations with visas and plane ticketing and reservations, etc. to get ready for this sabbatical journey. And there is a great temptation in this to lose myself in the mad rush to get through all of this preparation. But , just in the nick of time, one of you reminded me that the greatest journey is the journey within. The journey within: Yes, this is where we are invited in Advent. We are invited ever more fully into the depths of our own lives and that of the Divine. We are wooed into the rough places, those hidden places, those fearful, wild places in us to prepare a way for the Lord. We are asked to exalt the depressed places in us, and to lower those that we have exalted. We are invited to receive God as God comes to us: as the Prince of Peace, in a time of war; as a rose among thorns; as a child fearless before peril; as the firstborn of a new heaven and new earth. Time is precious. And times of quiet even more so. Someone estimated that there are about 620 hours between the end of the First Sunday of Advent and the first worship of Christmas. Most of us will spend about 200 of those hours sleeping, 200 of those hours at our jobs or commuting, and about 200 of those hours at the routines of life: cooking, eating, cleaning, shopping, dressing, banking, and whatever. That leaves about 20 hours to do the work of Advent, or since we are one week into the season, 15 hours more. That works out to about an hour a day, not even a tithe of your time. Wouldn’t it a blessing if we could spend one hour a day, getting your soul ready for Christmas? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could quiet our hearts enough to listen to the still, small voice that animates the Universe, that quickens of our lives and purposes? And wouldn’t it be a supreme joy if this Advent, at least one hour in our hectic lives, we heard God when God spoke? top | home | site index |
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