As Rev. Amy has shared with all of us, instead of the four traditional Advent candle themes, we are walking with four movements from the New Zealand Night prayer this year:
- Releasing Expectations
- Releasing Fear
- Finding Stillness and Peace
- Reclaiming Hope
The prayer begins,
“Lord, it is night. The night is for stillness. Let us be still in the presence of God.”
As we approach the third Sunday of Advent, I don’t think I am saying anything profound here when I reflect on how difficult it is to be still at this time of year. Stillness is the absence of movement or of making a sound. Just let that land. How often do any of us just simply and completely stop moving?
Remember when you played freeze tag in elementary school during recess? Uhhh, were you any good at it? If you didn’t play this game, and you’ve seen it, pull up to mind the image of one child yelling “Freeze!” and everyone stopping immediately in place where they are on the field. For most children, it’s nearly impossible to just stop moving and stand in place on a dime in the midst of frenetic, giddy running. They run a few steps past the moment of “freeze!” and, if the rules are followed, can get disqualified for failing to stop on command. Sometimes, the strategy is to not run so fast during the running time so that one can stop when the moment requires it, a strategy I used to employ at times on the playground…I liked the stopping part back then!
You see where I am headed? While I do not believe there is a Great Disqualifier on the ground or in the sky, I do feel that it is incredibly hard to “get still” when we are running at a frenetic clip, whether the hard charging is with joy or fear or both. But here’s the fun fact of the season: the night is for stillness. The dark will help us to get still, if we let it be dark. If we let it be quiet sometimes. And in that stillness, so counter-cultural in this moment, there is peace.
I preached on Sunday last weekend, and in my sermon, I asked a few questions:
- What has been growing in you lately that just bears thorns, noxious berries, poisoned fruit? Root it out.
- What has ever grown in our church that serves up watered down, tasteless produce?
Take it down.
- What is thriving in our culture that is fed with racism, fear and superiority and fertilized by the terror and sorrow of the poor?
Take an axe to it, if you can.
But start with yourself. Sit still. Do not be afraid. You are loved so completely that it is safe to do this, it is time to make these changes, time to make room for the one who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
We cannot release our fears – the work of this week – if we will not calm down, sit down, stop moving, stop over-stimulating ourselves with communications, codependencies, consumptions and catastrophizing. We have to get still. I want to boldly suggest that releasing our fears, starting with ourselves, and getting still is something we all might do as if our lives depended on it, or at least the quality of our lives. If I speak only for myself, I will say that I believe the quality of my life does, in fact, depend on doing a fear inventory and getting still. I can’t be the only one.
From her poem A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark, the poet Jan Richardson advises us in this darkness to:
Go slow
if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark
or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.
Richardson ends this poem by asking, on behalf of her reader, “that in the night / you be encompassed / by the Love that knows / your name.”
Releasing our fears is the only way to make room for this Love that knows your name.
The best place to name those fears and let them go, is in your next moment of real stillness.
In that space where you find yourself in time and out of time, there will be peace. I promise.
Fear crowds our Love where Love wants to shine.
Pick one fear, an easy one. Be still. Let it go. Don’t move until it really leaves you.
Make room. Amen.
Sarah Christopher
Associate Pastor
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