FIRST SUNDAY in ADVENT

November 27, 2011

Text: Romans 12:2

Rev. Dale G. Bauer

It’s that time of year again. We sometimes call it the holiday season, full of celebrations and parties and family gatherings. Lots and lots to do.

It is a paradoxical season. We are supposed to be happy, but for many holidays is a sad time. It is a family time, but many are separated from their families. We’ve got to buy, because, after all, we live in a consumer-driven economy. And consumers haven’t been that good to the economy over the last few years. Everyone is hoping for a good, better-than-last-year season. We’ve had
black Friday, which puts most businesses in the black. Now we are inventing black Thursday. We need to spend more, but many haven’t got more.

The pressures are enormous. I will never forget the Christmas of a friend. She did everything within her power to make it perfect. The setting was perfect: a little white clapboard house in a high valley of the Colorado mountains, complete with a couple feet of snow and a warm coal fire. There were perfect guests: mother was there from Canada; a son from college; close friends. The meal was perfect. But when it came to opening the perfect presents, she unraveled into a bundle of tears. She didn’t have the emotional or physical energy to move.

So how do we keep the light of Christ from being snuffed out by the busyness of the season?

The church in its Spirit-driven wisdom has provided us with an alternative and a discipline. It’s called Advent. Each of us has a choice: we can yield to the busyness of the season or we can open our hearts to the little baby in Bethlehem. We’ve got four weeks and four Sundays to prepare a place for him in our hearts. The discipline is a spirituality that comes from the fourth and fifth centuries, A.D.

Today I’m beginning a sermon series about making a choice for a season and a discipline. Of course, this isn’t something I’ve cooked up in my brain. It comes from the Word of God.

Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. (Good News Bible)

To be able to focus on God this Advent season I’m going to stand on the shoulders of some men and women in the fourth and fifth centuries, A.D. We call them the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
They have names like Arsenius, Anthony, Theodora, and Syncletica. They left the chaos and darkness of the Egyptian cities and went into the Egyptian desert. And to understand the Desert Fathers and Mothers I am going to stand on the shoulders of Henri Nouwen. Stephen Ministers know him from reading his book, The Wounded Healer. He became famous in the 1980s and 1990s as a spiritual guide and writer who could focus his listeners on the lordship of Jesus Christ.

One of the Desert Fathers, Arsenius, was praying to God one day, using these words: Lead me in the way of salvation. He heard this answer from the Spirit—and it is the key to an Advent discipline.

Flee, be silent, and pray always. This is the way of salvation.

This is translated into the formula of desert spirituality and it can be our discipline through the weeks ahead.

Solitude

Silence

Prayer

Remember these words. They are the words that can liberate us from the slavery to this season.

Let’s turn first to solitude. When I hear solitude, I think of privacy. Time alone. A place or the time to recharge our batteries. I remember an old T.V. commercial that featured Carol Lawrence as a busy mother and homemaker. At the end of a very busy day, she puts the children to bed and makes one of her favorite International Coffees and sits down to enjoy a few moments of quiet. While we certainly all need those times of rest, the solitude of the Desert Fathers and Mothers is something different, something more.

This solitude is more an attitude. Or a shift in attitude. Solitude is the desire to be with Christ and him alone.

True solitude is a place of transformation. It is where we are transformed from the Old Adam or Eve into the New Adam or Eve. Now, we all know the Old Adam and Eve very well. It is who we think we are. It is that insecure and shriveled part of us that takes all it cues from everyone and everything else. It is to be liked; it is to be praised; it is to be admired. It is to be successful. It is the place of “more.” More work, more money, more friends. I was watching the news the other night. There was a piece on Christmas shopping. It focused on a young couple who was buying
their Christmas presents for their kids before the rush. They stood near a shopping cart full of presents. Last year, they explained, they were short of money, but this year they had more. And they were going to have “more” of a Christmas for their kids this year.

The solitude of the Desert Fathers and Mothers is the place or attitude where we struggle with the Old Adam and Eve in each one of us with the New Adam and Eve that Christ wants to create in each one of us. There is a little story told by one of the Desert Fathers about a man living in an old temple in the desert. Demons came and tried to evict him from the temple. When he refused, one of the demons grabbed him by the hand to pull him out of the temple. Reaching for the door frame, the man yelled out, Jesus, save me!” And the demon left immediately.

Solitude is the attitude, life position, where we meet Christ Jesus in our life and be with him alone. It is a place, an attitude, that the grace of God allows us to will for ourselves.

So what is the solitude we need so very much this season? Not privacy, even though we get precious little of that. Not release from the demands of the Christmas season. Believe me, we have all bought into how everyone around us tells us to celebrate the birth of the Christ child. Not the lack of struggle, because the peace we have in Christ comes from a struggle of the old Adam and Eve and the emerging new Adam and Eve.

The goal of our life is not pleasing people. Or enough money. Or success. It is God, in every season, but this one especially. It is our devotion to finding the light of the season; that is the solitude we seek.

Amen.