Look around this
morning. Take a good look. If you hadn’t noticed, this is the best time
of year at Kent. The
best. We should have signs put up,
so you remember. Instead, our Advent
wreath hangs in the chancel, and you can see that two of the large candles are
lit for the season. We’re half way
through Advent, as we prepare for Christmas.
You may remember keeping an Advent calendar as a child. Those were good times--a time of wonder, but
the anticipation and beauty of the season are still here, reaching you in new
ways if you stop to look around. Sure,
the weather can be a little gloomy, like it was yesterday. But the cold can make you appreciate the
simple things in life: food, shelter, companionship. These two weeks are quite a few notches less
stressful than any other time. It is a
time to just be. And it doesn’t end with
final exams, or the goodbyes of spring, but rather a chapel service, one that
is different from the others. People really sing the Christmas carols. Vacation will hang in the air with the
Lessons and Carols service, before we go our separate ways.
One of the great
figures of the Advent season is John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a prophet, one of the
most significant in our tradition. He
left society and lived in solitude, in the wilderness. John went off the grid. In solitude, he sought God with all of his
heart, and society eventually followed him, seeking some small portion of what
he had. He had many followers, including
Jesus himself.
In
today’s gospel, John is shown preparing the way for Jesus: “The one who is more
powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the
thong of his sandals. I have baptized you
with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” What was John’s relationship with Jesus
really like? We don’t know, but it’s
certainly possible that they disagreed about some things. I’d be shocked if they didn’t. The God of John is a good bit harsher than
the God of compassion and love revealed in the teachings of Jesus Christ. But
the gospels don’t reveal these details, the relationship of a famous teacher
and his pupil, like Morpheus and Neo from the Matrix movies.
What
is perhaps most admirable about John is his fearlessness with silence. It terrifies most of us. Silence.
It is uncomfortable, awkward.
Though he is often crying out in the gospels, John’s normal state, in
nature, was silence before God. But he
isn’t remembered that way. He’s always
making a lot of noise, often railing at the establishment. John was a kind of spiritual detective, one
who could hear the voice of God in the silence of nature.
When I thought
about the John the Baptist figures in my own life, I didn’t have to look very
far. Pastor Nick. Nick was my supervisor for Clinical Pastoral
Education, a summer internship in a hospital setting. Every seminarian headed for ordination has to
do it somewhere. I did it at a mental
hospital. At Napa State Hospital.
There were lots of
rumors about Nick. I’ll bet John had
them too. I heard Nick had had trouble
in his denomination. What kind of
trouble? He had been tried for heresy,
on more than one occasion. A heresy
trial? How exciting, how delicious.
Episcopalians don’t have fun like that, unless you use the salad fork on
the wrong dish. Nick was found innocent
at his trials—not enough evidence was the determination. Apparently his primary problem, one that
attracted the attention of his denomination’s authorities, had been his
tendency to use profanity from the pulpit.
At my seminary, the
administrators steered students away from Napa State Hospital. When this counsel came to me—to stay away, I
knew I had found the right posting, and the right supervisor. I learned that Nick had spent most of his
career in the California Correctional System, as a Chaplain at San Quentin
Prison. In prison, at San Quentin, two
of his pastoral relationships were with Charles Manson and Timothy Leary. He eventually left San Quentin for Napa State
Hospital. Nick was described to me as
anti-institutional, non-hierarchical, and, as mentioned, some in his
denomination found him heretical. One
administrator at my seminary told me Nick was crazy, certifiable. Say no
more, I thought, this is the position just for me. Pastor Nick’s Clinical Pastoral Education
program was not even on the official list, so I had to get special permission
from my bishop to do it. Which I did. I can do bureaucracy when I need to.
Next came the interview
with my John the Baptist; and that’s when things took a strange turn. The interview lasted forty-five minutes, give
or take. During the course of the
interview, my future CPE supervisor said not a single word. Complete silence. We stared at each other for ten minutes to
start things off. Nothing. His eccentric behavior was incongruous with
the plain grey suit. He combed his eye
brows, I noticed. I love it when older
men do this. When I realized he was
going to play the silent Buddha for the whole interview, I just started
talking. Blah blah blah. Away I went.
When I was talked out, I got up, shook his hand, and left his office. Several weeks later, I got a letter from the Napa State
Hospital saying that I
had been accepted to their Clinical Pastoral Education program.
And so it
began. We were an odd couple, Nick and I. Nick distrusted words, except for the curse
words. I was in love with them. I met with him weekly. During these hour long sessions, he never
spoke. I learned to listen to him, and
for him, in the silence. I learned to
listen to myself without words.
Sometimes the silent treatment made me feel a little crazy, but it made
me look for my best, the best inside of me, beyond easy answers. I also learned to listen to God. I felt liberated doing it this way, without
talking. I’m still a beginner when it
comes to silence, but I’ve found this is a good thing to be. We’re all beginners when it comes to a God of
love. During this season, we feel our
way a bit as children, as beginners, in a way that belies our age.
In
the silence of our world today, John might hear the voice of God. He might hear a yearning for justice in this
Advent season: for Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, for Eric Garner in New York City; and for their families. For all the voices of injustice that we
ignore, or fail to hear. John would have
heard them, the crying of the creation. What
John the Baptist found in the silence, in solitude, he brought back into the
world. When it came to the voice of God,
there was perhaps no greater detective, except the one who followed him
I’d like to close this
morning with a passage from The Boy
Detective, by Roger Rosenblatt. In
this memoir, Rosenblatt walks the streets of New York that he first knew as a child, as a
boy pretending to be a detective. But
the child intuition and the adult reason work together, as do ours during this
time of year.
“Round
and round the park. Round and
round. My favorite part of being a
detective is just this—the walk, just taking in the world. Soon enough someone will engage us on a hunt,
a project. And off we will go, armed to
the hilt with whatever powers we possess, of reason, deduction, and style. We shall put our powers to use for the sake of honor, decency,
and justice. And that’s all to the good,
just as it should be in a life that yearns for honor, decency and justice.
But
before all that, life calls for nothing but itself. And we do not so much pursue it as let it
wrap around us, and just as quickly, unwrap, like the wind…
How
do you walk in the world? That’s no
trick. The how is easy. Or if it is not
always easy, it is at least clear. How
to walk in the world? Walk as the
private eye walks. Do right, play fair,
ignore the trash, and keep your nose clean.
But why does one walk in the world?
That’s another matter. Which
brings me to you, as ever, and you to me.
Will you be my partner? Shall we
do our walking side by side? What do you
say? See, I wasn’t tracking you, after
all—through the fog and screams and gunshots.
I might have thought I was tracking you.
But all I ever wanted was to face you, in the blessed, blazing light.”
So this is it, settle in for the
best time of year. It’s a chance to be a
beginner again. To listen to the silence
with John, and my own St. Nick, as we wait for the one who is coming.
