Advent 4B, December 20, 2020. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God in whom is heaven, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

This Advent, Emmanuel Church has begun repenting of – turning-around from — theological and liturgical words and images that set up “darkness bad/light good” teachings, because language is a powerful tool, which we can use in dismantling white supremacy in the Church, especially the unconscious kind. We have stopped using darkness as a metaphor for sin or for evil, because the Bible teaches us that to God, darkness and light are both alike. [1] Therefore, darkness cannot be only profane, and lightness only holy. Dark and light can both be beautiful and grace-filled. Dark and light can both be terrifying and terrible.

Furthermore, in the southern hemisphere, in Advent the days get longer;  near the equator, the length of days and nights changes very little or not at all. We often sing and pray in Advent through Epiphany as if our messages about the growing darkness and coming light are universally “true,” when they are actually quite particular to people of Northern European descent. Certainly, it can be good to contextualize our understanding of the Word of God, but Northern Europeans and their descendants have such a bad track record of generalizing and worse, inflicting our understandings on others. We really need to see other people. So it’s a good discipline to practice mindfulness with our language and call attention to our faulty assumptions.

The Wendell Berry words that Jim Primosch set to music, speak so beautifully to the idea of darkness and light being equally desirous. [2] “At night make me one with the darkness.” As I have reflected on the beauty and goodness of darkness this past few weeks, I’ve found that I have a completely new relationship with the shorter days and the longer nights. I’m not feeling the growing sense of despair about the increasing darkness this year. To my surprise I’m curious about it and I’m relishing it.

Fifteen years ago, I visited a village in Honduras in the mountains along the Nicaraguan border. Living there were about 50 households of subsistence farmers, and they were struggling mightily. The parish I was serving had developed a relationship with them through the Episcopal priest who served their community. Their most urgent need was reliable, year-round access to clean water. Securing their access to water meant laying a few kilometers of pipe from a mountain spring into the village and connecting it to a pump, building a community latrine for the village for improved sanitation, and teaching the people to use simple water-filtration systems for drinking and food preparation. We raised the money for the materials and labor, hired skilled laborers, and provided some of the unskilled labor ourselves. By the time we had accomplished that, we were excited to learn about what their next priorities were; we were eager to help some more.

“What about electricity for lights and refrigeration?” we asked. “No, thank you,” they said politely. “We don’t need refrigeration, and we don’t want to extend our days. When it’s dark, the day is over; it is time to rest.” And boy was it dark there in the mountains, far away from any city. If there was cloud cover, the darkness was inky. Sure, there were torches (and we Americans had flashlights), but they weren’t for steady use. When it was night, it was night. Perhaps you know the night prayer from the southern hemisphere in The New Zealand Prayer Book , which goes: “Lord, it is night. The night is for stillness. Let us be still in the presence of God. It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.”

“In the morning make me one with the light.” In that village in Honduras, it was the roosters that signaled that dawn would break. Being a city girl, I had always thought that roosters crowed at dawn, but oh no. They crow so that you’re wide awake for the dawn. They crow anticipating the dawn, expecting new joys and new possibilities. “In the morning make me one with the light. When I rise up, let me rise joyful like a bird.”

Advent, as you may know, means emergence, rise, development, dawn, approach, appearance, arrival, coming. The feeling evoked by Advent reminds me of the annual ritual my family participates in when we go to the Delaware shore for a week in the summer. I think I’ve confessed to you before that most days we sleep through the sunrise. But for one morning in the week, when the sky is likely to be the clearest, we set our electric roosters to call out and wake us up while it is still very dark. We make a pot of coffee and walk a couple of blocks to the beach to watch the sun rise. Already skittering in and out of the surf, the shore birds are busy finding their breakfast. We sit still and watch the horizon go from grey to pink to orange, waiting for the edge of the sun to slip into our view. We know it’s already there; we know that others farther east of us have already spotted it; that across the ocean, it is lunchtime; that across Asia, the day is already coming to a close. We know all of that and yet, it is utterly thrilling to keep watch so that we can see the spectacularly beautiful sunrise for ourselves and become one with the light.

“When I fall, let me fall without regret, like a leaf.” Oh that we could fall without regret, like a leaf, knowing that the wind will carry us gently, and we will become the mulch for the growth that will come after us. Our scripture readings for the past three weeks have been full of prophetic calls to vast numbers of people for large-scale social and civil-engineering projects, leveling mountains, filling in valleys, clearing debris, building highways, making it easier for people and God to get together. The repentance called for is collective and institutional. It is a call for large-scale remediation, for reparation, proportional to the wrongs we have done and the wrongs done on our behalf (whether or not we asked for them).

Here’s the thing I want you to remember. The purpose of repentance is to experience joy. The point of reparation is to be freed from burdens of sin, and for our children and children’s children to be freed from the debts of their ancestors. The reason to repent and repair is to live with others in the peace of God. Our collect for today is: “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.” I’m not sure that mansion is quite the right word here for what Jesus is looking for: remaining place, abiding place, dwelling place – welcoming, secure, and dignified, yes — mansion, not so much. The point is to be so close to Jesus that it’s like we’re living in intentional community, sharing a love  is a prayer in the beginning of Holy Communion that changes according to the season, called the preface. It gets inserted right after, “It is a right and good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, God Almighty”, and it states our reason that it is so right, good, and joyful. The preface for Advent is my favorite: “Because you sent your beloved Son to redeem us from sin and death, and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life; that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.” That prayer to be rid of shame or fear is so moving to me. It’s not because we aren’t guilty of things done and left undone, or the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf, but because when we experience the enormity of God’s mercy covering our sins, we will want to repent and repair out of thanksgiving.

The other day, when a vestry member and I were talking, he reminded me of the Ignatian spiritual prayer practice called the Daily Examen, a review of the day before one goes to sleep. The Daily Examen always begins with gratitude. Where did I encounter the Divine today: in what love, in what beauty, in what provocations or challenges, in what losses or failures? For what am I thankful today? The practice emphasizes attention to emotions, prayer from or about one feature or part of the day that is past, and an opportunity to imagine tomorrow without shame or fear, so that when we fall, we can fall without regret, like a leaf.

“Let me wake in the night and hear it raining and go back to sleep.” Have you ever wondered, “Why Jesus’ mother was Mary and not another girl?” I bet she did. We don’t know; all we know is that Mary was the one who said yes. We don’t know how many were asked before Mary. Have you ever wondered why Gabriel and not another angel of the Lord? To this I have an answer:  Gabriel was known for providing sudden insight and guidance for the future, since the time he explained the prophet Daniel’s perplexing visions in the First Testament. While we don’t know how long this surprising encounter and understanding actually took, Luke’s story reads like Mary’s insight and guidance for the future came in a flash. Mary went from perplexed and afraid to “all in” within a few dozen words. I think this story is here not just to teach us about Mary, or to provoke our post-modern debates about what could or could not have really happened. I think this story is here to teach us about God’s surprising idea that holiness can be conceived in people.

Holiness can be planted and nurtured whenever we respond to Love with, “Here I am.” In biblical literature, this is the disclosure of divine availability, of presence and promise. Mary says it; Abraham said it; Jacob said it; Moses and Joshua said it; Samuel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah say it; and most of all, God says it. God says it in the revelation to Moses in the burning bush and throughout the books of the prophets: here I am. To say, “Here I am,” is to pause to make a statement of radical and intense availability for whatever impossible situation might come next. It’s deep calling to deep.

It seems to me that this year God has sent Gabriel calling on Emmanuel Church, to conceive, give birth to, and nurture something entirely new and as old as creation in the impossible situation of our time, in our context. Everything is waiting for us to say yes; everything happens next. So, “Let [us] wake in the night and hear it raining and go back to sleep,” with the assurance that we need not be afraid, that we are not alone, and that nothing will be impossible with God. Let us wake in the night and hear it raining and say, let it be with us according to your word, and rest assured of new joys and new possibilities.