Foundational Spaciousness, Essential Voids
“Foundational Spaciousness, Essential Voids”
Isaiah 64:1-9 Mark 13:24-37
First Sunday of Advent, Year B, November 29, 2020
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
Welcome to the First Sunday of Advent of lectionary year B, the middle year of a three year cycle, each having a “controlling gospel” to guide them. This year we focus on Mark, although John’s Gospel also gets lots of focus during various seasons. The Advent Season is a time of preparing, of starting over again as this is the first Sunday of the Christian Year. Like a garden plot after the growing season, following winter storms, the spring newness turns the soil, plants the seeds, and everything starts for a new year of growth. Today is that first day of clearing the weeds, of loosening packed ground to create an opening, one that allows air and water and light to warm and entice seeds that look so humble as they’re placed with care. Some seeds, like sunflowers and beans, go an inch deep, some, like radishes and lettuce, only a quarter inch is needed, lightly firmed on top. But here at the end of November as fall yields to winter, we’re a long way from actual gardening here in North Idaho. But as the days get their darkest, it’s a fabulous invitation to go inside, to find the fire in our heart and allow inner work that uncovers the radiant glow of our soul.
Notice that our position is now fixed. On the calendar, we are late November. For the church, the beginning of the year, in Advent season, year B. I mentioned North Idaho, so for geography this puts us in the Northern Hemisphere of planet Earth, the North American continent. In geopolitical terms, we are about 30 miles from Montana, 30 miles from Washington, in the Panhandle region of Idaho 60 miles from the Canadian border, a border that is largely closed to most people right now due to a global pandemic and a mix of rising case numbers and increased denial as evolution unfolds.
Notice that most of these descriptions, from location to calendar to context, are all in reference to our self. This is how we roll as 21st century Americans. If you doubt this, then go around telling people you’re a Socialist. That word has been demonized, even though in the 1900’s many mayors and governors were part of the Socialist Party and did great work. Since then, a two-party system has come to dominate American politics, which structurally has an inherent oppositional dynamic as each party tries to put their own version of reality into the mainstream. No collaboration, only competition, and even compromise is viewed through the lens of win/lose dualism.
The word, Socialist, has crashed pretty hard, with direct proportion to the increase of the importance of the individual. The loss of the commons, the diminishment of our shared life in community parallels an increase in the desire for individual freedom in an absolute, individualistic sense. Once again, my point here is that life for us, like water for a fish, involves self-referential living. We put ourselves at the center of everything, and we use our finger to point at other people and other things which we assume are external, objects to be used and manipulated to our own advantage, either to benefit us individually or whatever group we assign our identity. We keep ourselves separate and superior, and you see this illustrated in the headlines as President Trump calls for America First, American greatness, as winners over all others; and as President-elect Joe Biden says to the world, “America is back, ready to take our position at the head of the table.” Both of these arrogant statements presume American exceptionalism, the need to keep others submissive, using the Earth as an object, a resource for our, human purposes, and they lack humility and contentment.
This is why Advent starts with apocalyptic words about the end of the world. Or are they? Mark describes an amazing scene, with angels gathering ‘the elect’, the sun darkened, the moon not giving light, even stars falling from heaven, which is itself shaking. There’s lessons from a fig tree, a generation that witnesses it all, even as heaven and earth pass away but divine word does not. A call for alertness, no one knows the time, so keep awake. When the Master comes, you want to be ready.
It sounds like the end of the world, yet as exceptional as we’d like to make it, Mark is ordinary, simply using imagery to communicate a very standard lesson of religion. Each moment is the end of the world, if you give up self-referential living. If you succeed in what every major world religion starts with: the need to die before you die. The grain of wheat must fall, and in doing so it provides much fruit. It doesn’t do this if the grain of wheat doesn’t fall to begin with.
This type of humility is not usually voluntary. As Mark says, “But in those days, after that suffering,” because suffering is usually needed for this type of dying to our sense of self. Suffering has a way of changing everything, like opening a chasm in our life, an insatiable void that wants filled. What we allow to flood in is optional. Many people simply cover the pain with more pain and North Idaho is filled with grumpy old men and women circling the wagons, defending their way of life, their worldviews, their fears and loyalties. But a void can also invite spaciousness, openness, expansive trust, that in giving oneself over to mystery, even through grief, when light shines, it takes on a new heugh.
I don’t make up the terms, but they seem helpful. Terms like enlightenment, awakening, mindfulness, spiritually grounded. Mark is calling us to “keep awake.” The Psalmist calls for God’s face to shine, for in this we are saved. Over and over, shining light is sought, God’s self shaping us into an image beyond our own limiting designs.
In my garden, one of the projects I’m working on is to build a portico, a cover over a small deck off the end of my bee house. I have a shed with bee hives that I call a bee house, in the European sense of this traditional beekeeping technique using Slovenian hives, A-Z hives to be exact. To put that structure up, holes need dug to hold the posts. In North Idaho, during winter, the ground freezes and frost heaves rise and fall depending on the weather, the amount of moisture in the soil, and the temperature. For a sound structure, getting below the frost line is helpful, tapping in to a more stable layer of Earth.
For a post, two or three feet ought to do. For foundation footings, you might want to go a little deeper. Part of my property has TransCanada’s high pressure gas lines; they’re buried four feet deep. Up behind my house there are some woods, and literally over the hill there’s a cemetery. Many, many people, our beloved dead, are buried six feet under.
Die before you die. You don’t have to wait for the end of the world to give yourself over to the mystery. The divine Master already invites awareness. Living in and practicing spiritual unity, in Christ, God’s love shapes our lives like a potter shapes clay. If you do not consider yourself a child of God, there is no way you will ever be content enough to see others as children of God, let alone get to the point where grace reveals there is no other. As Isaiah’s passage ends, “Yet, O LORD, you are our Father,…we are all the work of your hand…Now consider, we are all your people.”
During this Advent season, may we prepare ourselves, looking deeper than the self we think we are. God meets us in the fire of our soul; may love transform everything, humbly growing grace and peace. Thanks be to God!