Metanoia and the Other
Sermon delivered at Church of Our Saviour,
Mill Valley, California
on the Second Sunday of Advent, 2006
You might have noticed that the Episcopal Church was in the news a fair bit this week. Our own bishop led a peace march and Eucharist in
While we were together outside the
And not even the Episcopal Church is immune from this ongoing divisive discomfort. A week ago yesterday, our brothers and sisters meeting in special convention next door in the Diocese of San Joaquin voted overwhelmingly to take the first step forward in eliminating the Episcopal Church from their constitution and canons. If this decision is confirmed next year, it would mean their Diocese secedes from the Episcopal Church – a possibility we haven’t confronted as a community of faith since the Civil War.
And two large parishes in
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the old Chinese curse, “May you live to see interesting times. . .” I suppose these are interesting times in which we live. But also divisive. The “middle,” as so many pundits have opined over the past few months, seems to have disappeared, not only in the Episcopal Church, but across the nation and in the world. We live on a divided planet.
Our own sense of unease, of feelings running high, means we take on such issues of war and peace, communion and schism with a great deal of fear and trembling. People are leaving over such things – departing from community. Friends are becoming bitter enemies. Neighbors we thought we knew and loved become hostile and threatening, as we are tempted to hurl abuse at each other across the chasm between us. And we, liberal or conservative, theologically or politically or both, or even if we count ourselves amongst that shrinking and increasingly invisible group of moderates, are tempted to batten down the hatches, count our losses with those who disagree with us most, and shut out anyone and everyone who is different. . .shut out the other.
It’s into this divisive context that we hear the words of Isaiah, quoted in today’s gospel reading:
The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'
No, John understood something in his bones about where metanoia would most likely occur. And that was on the edge, with a radical encounter with the Other. By “Other” I mean something or someone wholly different from who we are ourselves. . .a different place, a person with whom we radically disagree, or a strange God who comes to us in unexpected ways.
The wilderness was a forsaken place for John’s contemporaries. It’s why he went there to find God and draw others into new relationship. We will also see Jesus, if you stick with us long enough. . .we will see him go to the wilderness for metanoia, for transformation. It’s because out there, in the strangest places of our lives, meeting with the strangest people or even the beasts, where all bets are off, where we are made uneasy and uncomfortable – this is where we find true conversion, true metanoia – a changing of our hearts and minds, and even new eyes to see our own world in unexpected ways.
This Advent, we often gather here, some of us for the first time, some as we have over many years past, for some comfort. . .sometimes for the familiar. But the journey of Advent calls us outside of what makes us comfortable into the edge, into our own wilderness, so that we might encounter with John the metanoia of the soul, where the valleys are lifted up and the mountains laid low. Where our relationships, just in time for Christmas, are remade, and our eyes see the world in a new way. Where our divisions cease and new horizons for the human family become visible.
This Advent, when we are called to busy ourselves with holding up the old and the familiar, when we are tempted into the divisions of a fractious age, take time to go out into the wilderness and seek the transformative presence of the Other. Make time this Advent to get to know a complete stranger, or sit down for coffee with someone who sees the world completely differently than you do. Or head out to a new place you’ve never been before, a new wilderness for you, if only for an afternoon. Or seek an empty place, devoid of all the distractions of the home, the office, and the familiar. Step out of the known and comfortable and invite God in, laying bare all those things that the familiar protects and shields. And be transformed. . .making room for the One who is coming. . .to set us free from division, and sow the seeds of a new community and a new creation, where “all flesh will see the salvation of God.”
*Sheila Andrus, while she did stand with Bishop Marc in the civil disobedience action, was not among those arrested, as had been reported in some of the articles about the event. I left before all the arrests were made and regret stating this error in fact. (12/14)
1 comment:
You write a good sermon.
Peter
Post a Comment