Huge Silence

Christ the King Sunday, Year B
November 26, 2006

(Sorry these are out of order!)

Well, the season has started…Thanksgiving, Black Friday. Holiday travel, overeating, sweet food, credit cards, family events, too much shopping. Shopping at ungodly hours. Newspapers that are 75% advertising. By January 2 we will be carrying hundreds of dollars more debt, approximately 2 more pounds around our waistlines, be tired and ready to enter into the dark depths of a quiet winter.

Well, that might be a bit dire. But we just finished political ad campaign season, and now we will be spending 1/12th of our year preparing for Christmas, and I bet I’m not the only person who gets a bit weary with all the hype and business.

As the old joke goes, Jesus is coming, look busy. We don’t have to. We will be.

Isaiah, hundreds of years ago, said to his people, Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

But you don’t need another pastor preaching to you about the evils of consumerism and commercialism this season, either from 2500 years ago or today. So let me give you an invitation instead.

I invite you to make space for your spirit this season.
Advent is the time of making ready for Jesus, of making space for the unexpected.
We are terrified of emptiness but we need emptiness so there is a little room.
We fill our homes with clutter but we love the emptiness of the lake and the sky above it.
We need a little space for God. Huston Smith says there is a God shaped space inside each of us, and we often try to fill it with anything we can find. But only God will fit.
How much space did Mary need in her heart, in her life, to welcome the Christ Child?
We need a little room.
So take a walk on the lakewalk
Go out at night and look at the stars.
Come sit in the sanctuary sometime during the week when it is empty.
Clear out one little space inside your house and don’t put any decorations in it except a candle.
Think about what you can let go of this season to make more room inside your heart,
what angers or grievances have grown old, what habits can be released.

I invite you to make time for your spirit this season.
I know most of us have extra parties, church events, tasks that take up time.
But a little time can make a difference in our spiritual lives.
Father Thomas Keating, who teaches Centering Prayer, says that
twenty minutes of meditative prayer can change us deeply.
He’s not interested in how it lowers our blood pressure or slows us down,
but how it heals our spirit, deepens our relationship with God.
Take a little time.

So get up twenty minutes earlier for a month.
Skip something (but not church, of course.)
Go sit in a deershack.
Take the long, prettier way to work and keep the radio off and cell phone off.
Turn off the TV and light a candle and sit quietly before bed.

I invite you to find silence for your spirit this season.
It is in the silence we can hear the angels speaking to us, in the silence we find God is nearer than we thought.
In the silence we discover new ways to think about things, and find new hope.
Silence is a way to remember how alive we are, how God might work in us,
how new life might be possible.
We are a thirsty people, and God knows how to quench our thirst, if we allow it.

Pablo Neruda has a poem, found in your Meditations this week
about the healing that might happen if we were all quiet for a bit…

And now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines,
we would all be together in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with ire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade,
doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused with total inactivity.
(Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death.)
If we were not so single indeed about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve, and you keep quiet and I’ll go.

So let’s be quiet, for a few minutes

(we sat in silence as a congregation for 4 minutes after this, in a deep silence only held by a room full of people...)