SERMON PREACHED BY

THE REV. PAUL MULLEN

AT

SCARBORO UNITED CHURCH, CALGARY

DECEMBER 2, 2007

    “The Hope of Audacity”

____________________________________________________

THE NIGHT IS FAR GONE

The cat is restless

Pacing back and forth

By the window,

A shadow against the first, thin light

Of the day which is yet to be.

The smell of coffee

Seeps down halls and under doors,

Whispering its gentle alarm.

This night

Is far gone.

We are still tangled in darkness:

Worries tear at us like wind.

The blighted world is sinking,

The weapons boom like thunder,

The boys and girls die in streets

Where others sleep.

No pillow is soft enough

In this long nocturnal restlessness.

But, there,

In the east,

A rose blooms in the sky,

Soft as a promise.

Advent is like that:

A hope beyond reason,

Coming like the song

Of the first sparrows

Who always

Trust that there will be morning.

(Timothy Haut, Minister and Poet. 2007)

Advent is not just about waiting. It is, to a degree, about active waiting, preparing -- the readiness is all. But even more than active waiting, Advent is about faithful waiting.

The days are not yet getting longer – they still ebb shorter. The night is not becoming shorter – it grows longer. Advent waiting is being faithful even as the darkness increases, even as the night lengthens and the possibility of sunrise seems increasingly far away if it is going to happen at all.

Faithful waiting is about praising God in the hungering dark, praising God anyway. It is about knowing in the face of death that God's story and our story is not over and will not be over even if it were all to end this very day. “No one knows, however, when that day and hour will come . . .” .

Faithful living is about being as fully alive as you can be in every moment, even the darkest moments, fully aware that even in your aloneness you are not alone. You are living in unity with everyone in any time who has been alone, and you are one with a solitary God whose very aloneness is the unity of the cosmos. “So then, you also must always be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you are not expecting him”.

About a week ago I saw part of a TV documentary called The Suicide Tourists. Anybody see it? It was about people with progressively debilitating diseases like ALS arranging to go to Switzerland and seek legal, assisted suicide when their disease had progressed to a certain point.

One terminally ill man spoke of what his day-to-day life was like and told the Zen story of a monk who was being chased by a tiger and fell over the cliff but managed to grab onto a solitary branch growing out of the cliff face. Hanging on for dear life he could see the face of the tiger looking down at him. He thought of letting go and dropping to the ground when he saw another tiger waiting below him. Then he looked over and saw a strawberry bush growing within reach with a single, perfect strawberry growing on it. He let go with one of his failing hands and reached out and plucked the strawberry and ate it. How sweet it tasted!

Faithful living is living into death. Who isn't dying? Faithful living is living into hope with audacity. Faithful living is not wishful thinking but living in the certainty that even though things are getting worse, God has not abandoned us and that life and love are possible. One of Dr. Rona Jevne’s many terminally ill cancer patients puts it this way, “hope is the art of living”.

Dr. Alan Wolfelt, defined hope this way: hope is the expectation of a good that is yet to be!

Jurgen Moltmann, in his Theology of Hope, echoes Wolfelt's definition. Moltmann says that hope is "a passion for what is possible" and adds, "...the [one] who hopes will never be [reconciled] with the laws and constraints of this earth, neither with

the inevitability of neither death nor the evil that constantly bears further evil. ...Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering. . . . Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest; not patience, but impatience." The impatience that cries out “How Long, O Lord?!"

It is this kind of faith that leads to audacious acts – acts which seem out of character or at least beyond expectation that keeps hope alive and passes it on to others. It leads to acts which serve notice to all that the old story doesn’t work anymore. It allows for acts which increase the level of hope in the world.

Doug McNalley, retired Police Chief of Edmonton, was asked to come to the church at which I had served to talk about crime prevention. He very bluntly told us that if we had come to hear about how to lock our doors and bar our windows, he was going to disappoint us. Instead he very emphatically told us, backed up by years of solid research, that the way to prevent crime was to befriend a young person. Research has shown, he told us, that most people in jail through their formative school years never had an adult outside their own families take an interest in them and form a healthy relationship with them.

Daring to prevent crime by befriending a young person outside your family is an audacious act -- but one which will bring hope to the world.

Daring to challenge the global corporate agenda by meeting together in small groups is an audacious act -- but one which will bring hope to the world.

Daring to witness your faith by going to church on a Sunday morning, or by getting involved in a Bible study, or by signing on to a church committee or social group, or by trying your best to both deepen your faith and live it out where you work and live every day of your life -- all these are audacious acts which will bring hope to a troubled and troubling world.

The Very Rev. Dr. Bill Phipps writes in his recent book, A Cause For Hope: Humanity at the Crossroads (Copperhouse, 2007, Kelowna, BC, p.43) "Amazing things can happen when we discern the signs of the times as holy conversation; when we discern them as grace spaces in which the cosmic divine energy speaks to us, just as it did to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Esther, Mary, Jesus and countless prophets and elders of all traditions. These crossroads present us with opportunities to learn who we are in this great planetary enterprise, where we belong in this vast web of life that shares our earthly home, and how we can express the very best in human nature.”

Bill is right in identifying that the cause of many of the problems that overwhelm us in the world is the old story by which too much of society lives. It is a story of fear and the need to dominate to provide security, a story of winners and losers, us against them, rich versus poor, in versus out. He is also right in identifying that hope for this battered world in which we live is about changing the story to one of healthy and healing relationships, inclusion, sharing, journeying together, mutual respect and positive regard.

I mentioned Dr. Alan Wolfelt earlier. He is a psychiatrist who specializes in grief counselling. Over many years he has developed a Guiding Model for Counseling the Bereaved (www.centerforloss.com/caregiver.php) that can help us to understand the shift from an old story to a new story not just in counselling the bereaved but in addressing the profound grief we all share when faced with the seemingly insurmountable problems of the world.

He notes that, “The word ‘treat’ comes from the Latin root word ‘tractare,’ which means ‘to drag.’ On the other hand, the word ‘companion’" when broken down into its original Latin roots, means ‘messmate’: com for ‘with’ and pan for ‘bread.’ Someone you would share a meal with, a friend, an equal. I have taken liberties with the noun ‘companion’ and made it into the verb ‘companioning because it so well captures the type of counseling relationship I advocate.”

He elaborates:

“Companioning is about honoring the spirit; it is not about focusing on the intellect. Companioning is about curiosity; it is not about expertise.  Companioning is about learning from others; it is not about leading. Companioning is about walking alongside; it is not about leading. Companioning is about being still; it is not about frantic movement forward. Companioning is about discovering the gifts of sacred silence; it is not about filling every painful moment with words. Companioning is about listening with the heart; it is not about analyzing with the head. Companioning is about bearing witness to the struggles of others; it is not about directing those struggles. Companioning is about being present to another person's pain; it is not about taking away the pain. Companioning is about respecting disorder and confusion; it is not about imposing order and logic. Companioning is about going to the wilderness of the soul with another human being; it is not about thinking you are responsible for finding the way out.”

With the breaking of bread Jesus invites us into companionship, to become meal mates, with our creator and all creation, with our fellow creatures and with all that we were created to be. In the sharing of the wine Jesus invites us into the audacious, costly risk of bringing God’s sacred hope to life.

Amen