St.
Hildegard's Community
Sermon for Advent 2006
by Judith Liro
Judith Liro is the
priest of the St. Hildegard's community, an innovative liturgical
community located at St. George's Episcopal Church.
In Advent we are continuing to reflect upon Incarnation
as embodied Divine Presence recognized in Jesus and experienced
in our own bodies and in the Body of Christ through community.
The first Sunday we spoke of the deep trust that we can feel
in our bones when we are aware of being in where we live and
move and have our being. The second Sunday was about the heart
and the flow of circulation, the way that Love is the lifeblood
of divine life in community and personally. Now on 3Advent, breath
is our focus. Breath is a very ordinary thin place. With each
breath spirit and matter meet and embrace, are together yet different.
The good news is both the ordinariness and the
closeness of two things that can seem so distant. Divine possibility
is as close as our next breath. It's here now and can be taken
in. We can open to God in the very places where are lives are
a mess. It is a very tender reality that God often chooses to
meet us in our stuck and dysfunctional places. Julian of Norwich
has a wonderful image of a person who has fallen into a pit and
experiences being utterly alone and abandoned. Yet the royal
one who has come to help is as close as a breath but not yet
perceived by the senses. Although it tells of a graciousness
that is similar to the Prodigal story, in Julian's fable the
suffering is totally undeserved; the person fell into a pit in
the midst of serving and of doing good things.
In the Gospel reading we hear more of John's message
that he calls Good News for the crowds that came out to the wilderness.
At first glance it doesn't sound very promising. His words of
welcome sound harsh. Pack of snakes! Brood of vipers! Who warned
you to escape? Like rats leaving a sinking ship people are desperately
pouring out of Jerusalem turning to John for guidance. Yet isn't
it good news that they are waking up and seeking? Their complacency
and fatalism has been shaken and finally they are turning to
God.
John warns them bluntly that their religious heritage
counts for nothing. Their own lives must show signs of transformation,
of being aligned with God's ways. Don't waste any time John warns.
Any tree that's not bearing fruit is going to be chopped down
at the root and tossed into the fire and burned. Before we dismiss
John's stark language as a fundamentalist rant about hell, let's
see if we can find connections with our own experience. I've
known times when my own life was like a sinking ship and me going
down with it. While it was miserable, it was also clarifying.
I knew something had to change immediately, not later. I couldn't
put it off any longer. One memorable time was a depression that
was ultimately energizing. I was forced to take stock of my life,
to choose my true self, to align with God. My body was crying
out and my spirit languishing, locked together in a time of anguish.
I've heard stories of what happens after a forest
fire. The deadwood is consumed and within a year or so new trees
are abundantly sprouting. The fire has made a clearing and caused
seeds to burst open. Something like that happened to me. It was
a time of starting over, a fresh start, of endings and beginnings.
This was dramatic and intense. New life was breathed into me.
Body and spirit felt full of vitality, living from a well of
hope and joy.
John gives very concrete suggestions when people
ask what to do. The drastic spiritual realignment he's asking
for can be seen in the daily actions of people's lives. They
are embodied, not simply changed intentions. Don't cheat people,
he tells taxpayers. Don't bully and falsely acuse people and
demand more pay, he tells soldiers . They were to act their way
into a new way of being.
At the time I had to listen for my way of doing
things differently. I began to journal so I could hear better.
I had to change negative thinking that had taken root as a way
to manage uncertainty. It was obvious that these thoughts were
harming all of me including my body not good fruit but poisonous
fruit. When I remember this time in my life it is easier for
me to see the Good News in John's message. How freeing it would
be to have my current deadwood burned up so new seeds could sprout!
How healing if my current poisonous habits could burn away and
go up in smoke making room for a steady self-love and true-self
ways of living!
Let's take a few moments for you to seek your own
connections. Like me you may recall a turning point in your life.
Or yours may be those daily conversions that are just as important.
It might be like Julian's story where you fell into a pit and
it wasn't anything you did wrong. It might be more like the Prodigal's
tale where you go down a destructive path. Or maybe yours is
a mixture. When you've found your connection take time to explore
how your experience was embodied physical, mental, emotional,
spiritual.
Silence
John assures them that one is coming who will baptize
them with fire and the Holy Spirit. The good news offers them
a role of faithful preparation instead of hopeless fatalism and
despair. Now they can live their lives in trust, love and peace.
The OT reading tells us to begin rejoicing even before the promise
is fulfilled. Desmond Tutu embodies that reality for me. In the
last years of apartheid in South Africa, he was so sure of God's
deliverance that he became an embodiment of joy. He wasn't hedging
his bets and thinking cautiously. His whole being was with what
God was doing. Come on over to the winning side! he'd lovingly
say to his opponents. He breathed out God's blessing on all.
The whole painful era of estrangement and injustice was already
healed in God's embrace even though it was yet to be fulfilled.
The first two Sundays we've looked at personal
and communal embodiment. Today we widen our focus to the Earth
as Body. Surely the Earth has done nothing to deserve what is
happening in our own time. Seas, oceans and rivers soil and air
plants and creatures cry out! Human beings are earthlings both
suffering with and bearing responsibility. While the rest of
the planet reaps what we sow, we humans embody a spectrum from
innocence to immense destructiveness. Sometimes much harm has
been done in an attempt to do good. In other instances there
is unmitigated greed, cruelty, and exploitation and what appears
to be a total absence of conscience. With John we wait in the
wilderness for the people to awaken. We are also the people beginning
to awaken. We try to open our own hearts and minds and to ACT
our way into a new way of being earthlings on behalf of all humanity
and all of creation. With God's possibility as close as each
breath, we draw in peace and prepare to align our whole being
with what God is doing.
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