Call to Worship: “Toward Peace” by Rosemary Whatolla Trommer

First Reading: Luke 1:76-79; Matthew 3:3-11

Second Reading: “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

Sermon:

I’ve said for a long time that I love the season of advent, but really I think what I loved was the idea of advent. I liked the picture in my mind of slow, cozy nights - lighting candles and being contemplative and quiet and anti-consumerist. Journaling and making dried orange garland as a kind of meditative prayer.

But the thing is, that never actually happens. Late November and December are always more frantic and hurried than I want them to be. I get busy and forget to light candles, and I abandon my spiritual practice by December 15th or fall asleep while trying to re-read the Gospel of Luke. The nights where I stare contemplatively out the window watching a picturesque snowfall with a cup of tea never materialize. I end up cranky, feeling like I’m doing it wrong no matter what choices. And yet, despite my best efforts at sabotage, at some point during this season some small grace or some unexpected lesson usually breaks through. Advent always bears fruit, even amidst the imperfect chaos. “Writer Anni B Jones says, “I (almost) always come limping into Advent, desperate for light, but almost too tired to look for it. Then I remember: the light came looking for me and that’s the whole point.”

So, it’s taken me a while to begin to appreciate not just the idea, but the reality of advent. Yes, advent can be a time of deep quiet and contemplation, but it is also a season of paradox and paradoxes tend to make us feel a little nervous and out of sorts. It’s technically the beginning of the liturgical year, but unlike the “lets get moving” motivations of January 1st, the emphasis of advent is on waiting. We begin the year in the dark, not with new birth but by waiting for something new to be born. And the thing we’re waiting for already happened over 2,000 years ago. Jesus was born. And every year, December 25th rolls around and we tell the story again. The problem is that the promises haven’t fully materialized. As far as I can tell, the mighty have not yet been cast down from their thrones. The hungry have not yet been fed. This is why theologians say advent is a time of “already and not yet.”

So to love advent as it is, and not as I wish it was, means to love its lessons in contradictions; to live in the uncomfortable tug between contentment and impatience. In December we feel ourselves pulled in different directions. Stay home with the mug of cocoa and a book… or go to the party? Give to charity and offer gratitude for what we have… or spend time and money shopping for the perfect gifts we know will delight our loved ones? That tension I often feel during December, that I thought was keeping me from enjoying advent, is inherent in the season. It’s part of the lesson. How do I love the world as it is while working for the world yet to come? How do I hold in my heart the idea that hope, peace, joy and love are always already present AND remember that I have to work to make them manifest in our world? Advent, it turns out, is all paradox.

And so, it makes sense that on the second Sunday of advent, the day for contemplating peace, the associated gospel reading is John the Baptist’s fiery call to repentance. Because this reading does not inspire in me a feeling of peace. Zachariah's song predicts that John will guide feet onto the path of peace but what we get in Matthew is this guy in fur and leather eating locusts and honey and living out in the wilderness yelling some frankly pretty offensive stuff at people. If some guy came in here right now looking like he just finished hiking the Appalachian trail and shouted “You Brood of Vipers!” at us, I doubt we’d feel a deep sense of peace.

But, ‘tis the season of paradox. We do not get a peace that makes us cozy and comfortable. We do not get the peace of rain sounds in a meditation app. We get the peace of one crying out in the wilderness.

We get the peace of Wild Things.

Wendell Berry’s poem was not, as far as I know, written as an advent poem but I make a habit of returning to it during this season. This contrast between peace and wildness fits so well with the advent themes and scriptures. And for those of us who might feel little connection to Christian scriptures, or feel alienated by centuries of scriptural abuse and misuse, Berry’s poem serves as another door into the beautiful paradoxes of this winter season.

The wild things in Berry’s poem are simply doing what animals do. Resting, wading, feeding. They are untamed, undomesticated, unbothered by Berry’s presence. And the peace he finds in their presence comes from their unanxious sense of at-homeness in the world. The ease and contentment of doing exactly what it is they were made to do. How often we forget that we too have a place and purpose here among the wood drake and great heron.

Journalist and poetry lover Krista Tippet says the power of this poem is in how it reminds us of our creatureliness. She says it re-roots us in our place as “creatures among creatures.” When we go into nature, when we rest by the still waters and day-blind stars, we are called back to our truest selves. To quote another poem about holy wildness, Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” we are reminded of our place in the family of things.

Encounters with the wild call us back to ourselves, call us back to our place in the interdependent, interconnected web of life. It is no wonder then that John, who is supposed to set us on a path to peace, cries out from the wilderness. If you can remember back to the Jewish high holy days, we talked about how repentance isn’t about a guilt trip. The words for repentance in Hebrew and Greek used in the Bible are about a return or a turning towards that which is sacred. John the Baptist, like Wendell Berry, is calling for us to return to our sacred purpose. That is where we find peace.

The Peace of Wild things only seems like a paradox because we have managed to so thoroughly disconnect ourselves from the beautiful wildness of that sacred purpose. We were created for connection, for mutual flourishing, for wholeness, beauty and creativity and life lived abundantly, and each step we take to return to that is a step towards peace. Martin Luther King said that “Peace is not merely the absence of some negative force—war, tensions, confusion but it is the presence of some positive force—justice, goodwill, the power of the kingdom of God.”

But we’ve so often been taught the opposite. Those who protest in the name of justice and love of neighbor or act in defense of the planet are charged with “disturbing the peace.” We’ve convinced ourselves that order comes through individualism, embracing a “good fences make good neighbors” ethos that furthers disconnection. We try to fix children we see as too rambunctious or too precocious, too wild. My heart breaks a little whenever I spend time with spirited pre-teen girls or children who don’t conform to gender norms because I know it’s only a matter of time before the world tries to tame them into conformity. I’m sure we can all think of a time where we squashed some wild, sacred thing deep within us because it made someone uncomfortable. Who we love or who we are, a call we felt to right some injustice, a dream to be a poet or an artist, a question about the beliefs that had been passed down to us. It may have brought a temporary absence of tension or discomfort for those around us but lord knows it did not bring us peace.

Advent invites us to embrace a truer kind of peace, holy in its wildness; a lasting peace that can’t be tamed or domesticated by powers or principalities because it exists in a protected place deep in our souls, at the very core of our being. Advent is an invitation to return to our most sacred purpose, our truest selves.

So perhaps this year we begin a new practice to mark advent or yule, these winter seasons that invite us into return and renewal. Let’s try every day to engage in one small act that helps us re-remember who we are and whose we are. Do one small, wild and holy thing that restores our relationships with people and planet and honors our interconnectedness. Watch a bird, play in the dirt, visit a neighbor, resurrect a childhood hobby, ask a good true question that makes someone around you uncomfortable. Go to an ICE protest and experience that peace that comes with following your conscience even when the state calls it disorder. Donate to organizations that help others live into their sacred purpose, support school art programs and LGBTQ youth. Make something that can’t be sold for profit.

Advent tends to be a time of personal reflection and I invite that, but I’m also contemplating how we can bring this practice into our community as we begin the process of developing our mission and vision as a church. What is the sacred purpose we are called to return to as a community? What is our place in the family of things? There is a unique holy wildness at the heart of this community and my goal as we begin this process is not to tell you what your mission and vision should be, but rather to ensure it’s coming from that place. To ensure that we peel back the layers of what others think we should be doing or what other, different churches are doing or what might look the most impressive or en vogue or palatable on paper to reveal the sacred center that is wholly yours, where you will find your calling.

This is my prayer for us as a community and for all of us individually. That we might have the patience and imagination to rediscover and the courage to live into our sacred purpose, the purpose that will bring us that deep sense of ease and at-homeness in the world that only the most untamed of creatures seem to possess. The beautiful, paradoxical peace of wild things.

May it be so. Amen.