Sermon for the Advent
of Hope;
Rev. Alison Longstaff, Dec 7, 2014
Bath Church of the New
Jerusalem
Isaiah
11:1-2, 6-9; Luke 1: 5-14; HS 8165:2
It was deeply profound to be writing this
week's sermon about “Hope” as the nation raged and despaired in response to the
acquittal of Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. My Facebook
feed was alive with outrage on the day the news broke. One cousin posted report
after report about the injustices experienced by dark-skinned Americans, and
the obscenely high number of unarmed black youth shot dead by police every year
without any hope of justice for their families.
The despair among my friends and connections
was palpable. Outrage and anguish, futility and frustration—more and more
stories in the news telling tales of humankind’s regression from integrity,
moral courage, or any sense of interconnectedness and accountability. While there
are many voices out there speaking truths that need to be heard about justice and
compassion, there seem to be just as many proclaiming a rhetoric that harnesses
blame and entitlement to reinforce a fortress mentality, barricading the
entitled from any sense of compassion or “there but by the grace of God go I.”
I have had to work hard to maintain a sense of
optimism since moving to the United States. While I am sure there are many
other factors figuring in, I genuinely believe that it is a harsher psychological
climate here than I experienced in Canada. There is more fear and mistrust in
the air. The news is darker, the rhetoric more polemic, and “belief
perseverance” (which is rigorously sticking to one’s original beliefs despite
all evidence to the contrary, and is now a known, named, and studied phenomenon
in the world of psychology) is everywhere. The truth simply cannot set us free
if we put our fingers in our ears and hum so that we cannot hear.
My Facebook feed shows increasing frustration
and despair among my cyber friends. It is as if a great madness has overtaken
this country we love, and we do not know how it has happened or how to correct
our course. And as the group anxiety ramps up, our intelligence and ability to
work together deteriorates. For under distress, humans regress. It is just a
fact of life. Is there any hope at all?
The loss of hope is called despair. And the
loss of hope is perhaps one of the most terrible losses of all. To quote modern
day prophet J. Michael Straczinski:
“There
is a darkness greater than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul
that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and
principalities...it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of
flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril, we can
never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition
to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or
where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”
I found this quote peculiarly resonant with
today’s words from Swedenborg. But while Straczynski exhorts us never to
surrender, Swedenborg says that the very surrender itself is the turning point in
a spiritual temptation. The same way any addict must first admit powerlessness
over the addictive substance before recovery can happen, God allows a spiritual
temptation to progress beyond our ability to fight back, so that we might re-experience
that it is God that does the fighting, not us. Because it is the ways that we
separate ourselves from God that create hell to begin with, even so it is the
“healing crisis” or turning point in a spiritual temptation that reconnects us
to God's strength and God’s love. Though painful, this is the only way to birth
us back from hell into heaven (connection with God).
Our spiritual existence is a paradox. We live
as if we are independent and yet must remember
that God does everything. Our sense of independence from God is a vital part of
our ability to receive life and experience spiritual freedom. But it can be a
curse too, for that independence is made possible by our ego, and our ego pretty
much just creates hell. This is because the minute we think it is all up to us
(ego), life starts to get hellish. The minute we think we have all the answers
and God should just listen to us (ego), we have manufactured misery. We don’t
mean to. We can’t help it. It is what the ego does until we learn to master it.
So we both feel
like our life is our own and yet
we need to remember it is really God’s power and strength that accomplishes
everything. God allows us to experience spiritual temptation when we forget
that God’s help stands ready at every second. Despair is the extreme suffering
that occurs when we feel as though
God is nowhere around and not helping at all. (Jesus Himself experienced this
in Gethsemane and on the cross, so the next time you go through this, don’t
beat yourself up. Even Jesus couldn't escape this illusion.) Despair is
inevitable. But staying stuck in it is optional.
And so, on this Sunday of HOPE, let us look for
the hand-grips and toe-holds we might want to use when we next find ourselves stuck
in the pit of despair. On the same day that I felt bombarded by the depressing
news coming out of Ferguson, such that I wanted to renounce membership in the
human race, I caught the edge of an MPBN radio show devoted entirely to good news stories. So I turned it up. After
less than half an hour, I had tears of joy in my eyes. In fact, some of the
stories of ingenuity, collaboration, and human kindness were so beautiful they
would have made Scrooge himself a bit verklempt even before the three spirits
visited. I went from disgust and despair, to hope and joy in half an hour, just
by changing my internet feed.
There’s a lesson in that. What we pay attention
to affects our state of mind. While my morbid curiosity pulls me towards bad
news like a fly to, well, things flies like—I can intentionally steer my mind
towards the things that uplift and feed my soul as well. Not only did the MPBN
show transform my day, its web-page had a link to the Good News Network.org—a
site dedicated completely to good news stories, yes, round the clock, seven
days a week. And so now, now,
whenever the regular news feels too heavy for me to bear, I tune into the good news and get an instant spiritual boost.
There will always be bad news. This good news site focuses on the myriad stories
of hope and triumph happening in the midst of the tragedies—which stories the
big networks can’t be bothered to share.
There is the story of the over $175,000 that has been donated to the tiny Ferguson Library. That
library is creating "healing kits" for kids that include books
dealing with trauma, and a stuffed animal that they can keep. And there is the
story about Natalie DuBose, a Ferguson baker and mother of
two who was left trying to clean up and figure out how to fill her Thanksgiving
orders after rioters smashed her bakery windows and damaged her equipment. A
friend suggested she set up a fund-raising page so DuBose decided on a goal of
raising $20,000 to get back on her feet. Two days later DuBose had received $252,000
from more than 7,000 doners. “I’ve never felt such love,” she said. “The
outpouring of support … has been amazing. I was in tears.”
And
in these stories we see a mirror of both our scriptures: life side-by-side with
death. Long after all hope is lost for Elizabeth and Zacharias, their prayer is
answered. Her womb quickens with a healthy, viable baby. Where once was a
long-dead dream, a complete resurrection is happening.
We
see a “poisonous serpent”—the angry voices of blame, the lies, the cover-ups,
and the twisted versions of events—creating confusion, and paralyzing the
process of justice in Ferguson, and seeking to kill our innocence; yet somehow the
innocent and vulnerable people caught in harm’s way—the “infant”—transcends and
survives despite the venom and violence. Here is the lion and the lamb; the
wolf and baby goat, side by side. It is telling us that life and hope will
always transcend death and despair. For in God’s holy mountain, which is the
realm of all that is good and true within the human spirit, nothing can be hurt
or destroyed. The part of each one of us that is created by God and lives
forever can never be hurt or destroyed no matter what happens to us in this
physical world.
Despair,
and joy; darkness and light, death and life side-by-side. The one is born in
the other, like a new baby born in the midst of pain. They are actually two
faces of the same thing. We would not despair so intensely if we did not love
so deeply, and the depth of our love is a manifestation of God with us. In fact
the comfort and consolation that God delivers after we come through a dark
night of the soul will be in direct proportion to the depth of the despair. Beautiful
new life after every death.
It
is our old ideas and attachments that die at the height of temptation, not
anything that is doing us good. This hurts. We may cry out in pain like a woman
in labor, but we are undergoing the birth of a new self—a new understanding. The
relief and joy and transformed life that rises from this small death will be so
rewarding that we won’t even remember the pain. God puts before us death and
life and says, “Choose life!”
And
so, as we celebrate this advent of Hope, let us always look for the new life
amidst the ashes of old dreams. It is always there, waiting to burst into
vibrant expression like the sun is behind the storm clouds and the spring
flowers from beneath the frozen ground.
In
closing I offer you this poem by Joyce Rupp.
It is called,
“A Closer Look at
Thanksgiving.”
If you look at a sunset,
you might see only the disappearance of daylight.
If you look
beneath, you may see darkness opening the splendor of stars.
If you look at
illness and disease, you might see only physical diminishment.
If you look
beneath, you may see it as a teacher bringing you vital wisdom.
If you look at a
broken relationship, you might see only a harsh ending.
If you look
beneath, you may see the courageous seeds of new growth.
If you look at
lost dreams, you might see only disappointment and doubt.
If you look
beneath, you may see the stuff that new dreams contain.
If you look at the
death of a loved one, you might see only pervasive sorrow.
If you look
beneath, you may see that love lives on forever in the heart.
If you look at the
planet’s pain and creatures’ woe, you might see only despair.
If you look
beneath, you may see hope woven in the compassionate care of many.
If you look at
yourself, you might see only tarnished unfinishedness.
If you look
beneath, you may see your basic goodness shining there.
If you look for
the divine being, you might see mostly unresolved questions.
If you look
beneath, you may be astounded at the availability of divine love.
The Readings
Isaiah 11:1-2, 6-9. A shoot shall come out from the stock of
Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall
rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel
and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. The wolf
shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the baby goat, the
calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead
them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down
together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child
shall play over the hole of the poisonous snake, and the weaned child shall put
its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy
mountain; for the earth will be as full of the knowledge of
the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Luke 1:5-14. There
was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias,
of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron,
and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God,
walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they
had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in
years. So it was, that while he was
serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the
custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the
temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside
at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on
the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias
saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid,
Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a
son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and
many will rejoice at his birth.
Heavenly Secrets 8165 [2] Paraphrase
The
final phase of spiritual temptation is despair. During
this phase we feel as if we cannot stop ourselves from sliding into hell. Temptations
compel us to experience our powerlessness, for a temptation pushes
us beyond our endurance until we cannot hold on any more, at which point we begin
to tumble into hell. But the Lord catches us right at that point,
stopping our descent. This brings relief and comfort and
even joy. The only reason God would allow us to experience such terrible despair
is so that our beliefs and our attachments can be reformed, and then by means of
new insights and a deeper sense of interconnectedness, we are strengthened, and
become even more deeply integrated.
“A Closer Look at
Thanksgiving.” 
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