One of the things I find difficult about campus
ministry is the disconnect between the academic calendar and our liturgical
calendar. For example, with a six week long break that splits up Advent and
Epiphany, it’s hard to trace the narrative arc that moves us as a community of believers
through the darkness of waiting in Advent and into the light of Christ’s
arrival in Epiphany. There is a certain continuity and buildup that seems to be
interrupted during those weeks when we are away in January. But for me, this
year, these seasons have been especially profound, and I wanted to take a
minute to slow down, to back up, and to think about the implications of Advent
and Epiphany, and the place where they touch. And as I do this, I also want to hold
in mind that in just a few weeks, our Lenten journey toward the Cross will
begin.
Back in Advent, I was having tea with one of
our community members, Andrew, whom some of you may know. Andrew and I were
reflecting on current events, thinking and talking about how the symbols and
signs of Advent and how they seemed to be speaking so clearly to the moment we
found ourselves in: the waiting, the uncertainty of the political climate, and the
hope that emerges, slowly, slowly, in the midst of the darkest season of the
year. He shared with me a quote by a man named Alfred Delp that had been passed
on from a friend. I did not know who Alfred Delp was at the time, but later
learned that he was a German Jesuit priest who was imprisoned in Berlin and hanged
by the Nazis on Candlemas, February 2nd of 1945. The quote struck a
deep chord with me, and I went home and immediately purchased the book where
the quote appears. The book is called Advent
of the Heart, and is a collection of Delp’s Advent meditations, written in
Tegel Prison in the weeks leading up to his execution, and smuggled out of the
prison by being tucked inside the hems of his dirty laundry. Miraculously when
you stop to consider what sorts of threats were being imposed at this time, these
little scraps and sermons not only survived the journey out of the prison, but
were copied, distributed and later published, to our great benefit.
Here is
the quote that Andrew read to me that left such an impression, and it comes
from Delp’s sermon, Figures of Advent, written
in Tegel Prison in 1944. He writes:
“The sounds of devastation
and destruction, the cries of self-importance and arrogance, and weeping of
despair and powerlessness still fill the world. Yet, standing silently, all
along the horizon, are the eternal realities with their age-old longing. The
first gentle light of the glorious abundance to come is already shining above
them. From out there the first songs are ringing out…They do not yet form a
song or a melody…it is all still too far off.” Delp continues, “Still, it is
happening. This is today. And tomorrow the angels will relate loudly and
jubilantly what has happened, and we will know it and be blessed if we have
believed in Advent.”
You’re probably wondering, why on this fifth
Sunday after the Epiphany, I am beginning my sermon with this Advent imagery,
and if you are, it’s a fair question. One reason is that Alfred Delp’s
writings, which I have really only plunged into in the last few weeks, have
given me a deeper appreciation for the ways in which our liturgical seasons
reveal “eternal realities,” or things which are always true, no matter the
month. Delp’s book is called Advent of
the Heart, because he firmly believes that all of life is Advent, and that
the symbols and themes of the Advent season speak to us in December, but also
in March, in October, in June. All of life is Advent, he says, and I would add,
that all of life is Epiphany, all of life is Easter, if we cultivate an
awareness and an appreciation of the eternal realities, as Delp calls them, of
light and dark, of death and renewal, of promise and fulfillment, that each
liturgical season points toward. In the same way, while it helps us to mark
time and to make meaning by traveling through these seasons with predictability
each year, I think single hours and moments of our lives can bespeak these
age-old truths and the tensions they represent.
I find that each season, however I experience
it, challenges me to discern where God is showing up in my life. And Alfred Delp’s writings, penned at such a
perilous political time, connect me to the eternal realities of Advent. They point
to the ways that God is showing up to me and to us, as God did to Alfred Delp, even and
especially during this season of political turmoil, amid the erasure of the
values of humility, kindness and justice that we heard Micah champion so
compellingly in our lesson last week.
God is showing up in the ways that Christians
all over the country and the world are standing with our Muslim neighbors and
saying “not in our name” to the implicit and explicit violence being carried
out against them. God is showing up as God always does, in the words of our
scriptures week after week, and especially this evening as we are reminded in
the words of the prophet Isaiah that our God loosens the bond of injustice,
lets the oppressed go free, and desires that we do the same.
Even in the midst of what feels like an Advent
time in our country, a time of darkness and waiting, I can see the in-breaking
of the light of Christ all around us, in what I would call Epiphany moments,
declaring that we are blessed if we can hold fast to the promise of liberation,
of abundance, and of fulfillment even in the midst of bleak times.
The texts that we hear tonight all take up this
theme of illumination, and especially about what it means to be light-bearers,
or disciples of Christ, in a dark world. The texts especially seem to hone in
on the difference between knowledge and action when it comes to following
Christ. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that he “does not
proclaim the mystery of God in lofty words or wisdom,” but instead seeks to follow
the wisdom of God, which is totally unlike the wisdom of the rulers of the
world.
I think there is an unsettling trend in our
current culture, and one that I find myself participating in, at times. Maybe
it is what Paul was noting back when he addressed the people of Corinth. It
seems that we mistake knowledge for action. As an example from my own life, but
one I imagine some of you can relate to, there are days when I find myself
practically glued to my smartphone, refreshing the news feed over and over,
while also listening with one ear to the radio and texting with friends about the
day’s unfolding events. This often contributes to a sense of overwhelm and
hopelessness.
Yes, it is good to know what’s happening in the
world, and especially not to turn one’s attention away from our neighbor’s
suffering. And yet, simply absorbing information about the news of the day, in
its increasing complexity and distortion, does not a good disciple make. As we
were reminded last week, God desires us to do
justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly. These are verbs of action,
and gestures that require us to put something of ourselves on the line and to
risk getting it wrong, over and over again, knowing that the stakes are too high
to hide out.
Our Gospel tonight is a familiar one to most of
us, and it also seems to me to be about this relationship between discipleship
and action. As Paul reiterates when he says that God has bestowed gifts of the
Spirit on each of us, Jesus tells us as his disciples that we are each the salt
of the earth and the light of the world, which ought not to be hidden. Illumining
that which is obscured and shining a light on suffering, being salt and refusing
to let our flavor be lost for the sake of blending in.
I think about how Alfred Delp made of his life,
and yes, even his death, a window that the light of Christ could shine through.
He stressed that his friends and neighbors must stay alert and ready to act,
reminding them through his words and actions that following Christ is not always
smooth sailing, but often requires us to navigate choppy, brackish waters. It
sometimes requires us to command attention with our zeal and our zest for
justice, and mercy.
Father Delp was executed on February 2, 1945.
But four years earlier, on that very day, he wrote a sermon for Candlemas in
which he wrote extensively about light, and about candles. Candles, he wrote,
“give a peaceful, reticent, but constant shining. [They give] light at the cost
of [their] own substance, so that they are consumed in the process. Anyone who
wants to comprehend Christ’s message of light,” he continues, “must comprehend
this one thing: the mission, the duty to shine, to draw others, to seek, to
heal, to do good at the cost of one’s own substance.”
The amount of information we take in on any
given day, through various channels, is astounding. Delp wrote in prison, cut
off from the news of the day, but able to convey these truths, able to be true
salt and light. His discipleship both responded to the political climate he was
embedded in, but it also rooted itself in the age-old reality of light emerging
from the darkness.
Our discipleship may not look extreme or
heroic, but we are all, no doubt, called to act, through the means we have
available to us. We are not all activists, but each of us have gifts that can
be deployed to do good. After all, Jesus doesn’t seem to be looking for
disciples with the most sophisticated political analysis, Jesus is looking for
those who can carry out his mission of reconciliation.
Like Alfred Delp, many of us probably feel as
though we are living in an Advent season. However, the task before us seems to
be to participate in, and call attention to, Epiphany moments. These moments prompt
us to realize that God is with us, here and now, and that even if we can’t
quite make out that light in the distance, we can ourselves be light to others,
helping to illumine pathways forward.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment