This year we are preparing for Xmas in a different way. Instead of waiting for the coming of Jesus which is what advent means, we are talking about waking up to Jesus who has already arrived. He arrived 2000 years ago. The tragedy of Christianity is the lack of awareness of his arrival. So today I like to talk more about awareness, which is the same as consciousness or waking up. I also will talk about the importance of waking up and the process of waking up.
But before that, let me share with you a conversation I had last week with a friend of mine who is a priest. I told him that I am replacing the word advent with awakening. His first question was who gave you permission to do that. Because in his thinking, he has to get permission from his bishop to do anything like that.
It is usually children who need permission to do something. If you want your child to go on a school trip you have to sign a permission slip. Permission is also about control. You want to be in control of your child's whereabouts at all times. But true spirituality will never flourish in a childish, controlled environment. The holy spirit is a free flowing reality. That is why Jesus said, “the wind blows where ever it pleases. Your hear its sound. But you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with every one born of the spirit.(John 3:8). So, if you are constrained, consigned and cocooned in our life, the Holy Spirit may not be working in you.
So when I put the permission issue to rest, he raised another point-the issue of tradition. For 2000 years, the church has designated the four weeks before Xmas as the season of advent. The word advent is printed on all calendars. We have advent candles, advent wreath, advent liturgy. Who gave you the authority to change that. So, it is actually permission issue related to control.
Basically what he was asking was who gave you permission to think outside the box? How dare you Paul V. paint outside the frame? My answer to that is if you don't think outside the box, you will always live inside the box and such a life is a limited,controlled, constricted existence., a life devoid of spirit.
Let us say, you purchased a refrigerator. It was delivered on a Saturday morning. The guys installed it in your kitchen. And left the huge box in your garage for you to dispose of on garbage collection day. Instead of putting it on the curb, imagine you get into the box and living in it.
Your heart muscles will grow weak because it doesn't need to stretch to pump blood for a body that is actively living in the world. You will never know the beauty and elegance of the larger world out there. It is a suffocating existence smeared with drudgery, boredom and predictability. Religious life is like that for many people. There is no excitement or feeling of abundance in a choreographed life punctuated with rules, rituals, rubrics and traditions.
Speaking of traditions, I am always inspired by these words of Jeroslav Pelican who was a Lutheran pastor. He said; “tradition is the living faith of the dead and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Now think about it for a moment. What we call tradition is something that was done in the past by our forefathers. Notice the words, past and forefathers.
They lived in the past and they did things that they found meaningful then. It was their living faith then. They are dead now. We cannot and should not just cut and paste their traditions into our life without examining and understanding it. When we do that it is called traditionalism and it becomes dead faith of the living. A lot of that is happening in religion and that is why even though the world is filled with religious people the world is not a paradise. The ISIS terrorism is an extreme example of this. They want to establish a caliphate based on the customs and traditions established by Mohamed in the 7th century.
A lot of people are going thru the motions. They are sleep walking thru life. They need to wake up. There is a famous 18th century bedtime prayer for children that goes like this:
I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
Bless me Lord my soul to take.
I think we should change one line of that prayer. Instead of "If I should die before I wake" we should pray: "Wake me up before I die." Waking up in the morning implies, opening your eyes, shaking off the blanket, sitting up in your bed, then standing up and walking to the bathroom or kitchen or where ever you wan to go. So waking up requires a little shaking up. It requires coming out of the safety and comfort of the so called security blanket and out into the open. There is some discomfort involved in that. Unless we are willing to undergo that discomfort, we can't wake up and do what needs to be done such as get ready for work and go to work and earn a living and maintain a family.
Spiritual life is not any less different than that. If you want to have a vibrant spiritual life that brings love and peace and joy and hope into your life—which by the way, are represented by the four advent candles, be prepared to wake up and be open to some shake up. It is a good thing. It is a sign of life. Because the only place there is no movement, no sign of life, is when you are in the coffin.
Awakening is so important in life because, you are only affected by what you are aware of. You are only influenced by what is within your awareness or consciousness. Nothing else matters regardless of what it is or how much it is. It is like 2 trillion dollars circulating in the US economy any given day. What matters is what is in your savings or checking account. Awareness is like that. If you are not aware of something, it makes no difference for you.
If you are not aware that Jesus has already arrived but you are still looking for him on Xmas day, nothing changes for you. If you are unaware that the person standing in front of you is Jesus in disguise, you are unlikely to treat him with love or respect.If you are unconscious about the availability of abundant life now, you wont experience it now. You will expect it only after you die.
Let me tell you a story to prove to you that unless you are conscious of something, it has no no impact on you. In other words, only what you experience, understand and are conscious of can affect your thinking and behavior and ultimately your life. That applies to all areas of life-physical, emotional and spiritual.
We have a dog. Her name is Sally. She is a young, energetic, beagle mix who loves to run. If she gets a chance she will bolt thru the door and run wild thru the neighborhood. When that happens, and it has happened a few times until I put up a fence in the back yard- we become very anxious. We are worried that she would bolt across the street and get hit by a car or she would bite somebody and we will get sued.I am not a happy camper when that happens.
My wife would get into her ca and drive around the neighborhood looking for Sally. She will spot her somewhere, stop the car and call her ...the dog will come close and as soon as my wife tries to grab her, she would bolt again. She is playing. What do you expect from an unconscious animal? Every time it happens, it is a forty five minute to an hour of anxiety, anger, frustration and pure pain in the neck experience. And it is no fun.
A few months ago, I was home alone. My wife and son had gone shopping on a Saturday afternoon. I hear this noise outside the door and I see Sally standing there panting heavily..apparently she had escaped thru a hole in the fence and was gone for a while...running around the neighborhood. Since I had no awareness of her escape, I had no heart palpitations, no anxiety, no anger..I was just relaxing and watching TV the whole time. The point is that only what you are conscious of can make a difference in your life.
So on this second Sunday of awakening, I like you to wake up to the purpose of Jesus's birth as it is stated by Apostle John. Because that is the one you are most familiar with. Jn 3: 16. Every Christian, knows that phrase by heart. You see them as bumper stickers. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Have you seriously thought about it or are you just repeating it? If you are just repeating it without understanding what it really means, if you are not conscious of its meaning, it won't transform your life and that seems to be the case with a lot of Christians. They will put it on their cars and proudly drive around town, but if you stop and ask them what it really means, they are unlikely to give a conscious answer.
Very often it is used as a statement of exclusivity..that Jesus is the only son God. If you don't believe in him, you will perish. But if you do, you will have eternal life. Believing in him is usually understood as believing in certain doctrines about Jesus..that he was born of the Virgin Mary, that he is the son of God, that he died on the cross for our sins, that he rose again and will come again to judge us at the end of the world. And if you believe all that, you are eligible for eternal life, which his usually life after death.
If that is all you know about that verse, you are unconscious. Understanding John 3.16 like that will not give you the Xmas experience of love, peace joy and hope.
You have to wake up to the real meaning of that verse. First of all, focus on the first line: It says,God so loved the world. It doesn't say, God loved America, Israel, India, Canada or God loved the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims;God loved the world which means the whole world with its 7 billion people and the entire creation. If your love is exclusively for only certain group of people, or let us say, you dislike some religions like Islam or some groups like the gays, you cannot have full Xmas experience of love peace and joy.
If you think that those who don't believe in Jesus will perish as as John 3.16 implies, you won't enjoy the Xmas experience because more than half of humanity does not believe in Jesus. If you take john 3.16 literally, you will have to sent 1.2 billion Chinese into hell because they don't believe in Jesus. What kind of Xmas experience of joy and peace do you expect to have after consigning the entire Chinese population to hell?
Look at the current refugee crisis in light of john 3.16. The Syrian refugees who flee their homes with the clothes on their back and the kids on their shoulders are part of the world that God so loved. We know that 31 state governors including ours have told the president, we don't want them here, because we are afraid of them..some of them could turn into terrorists...
How can we celebrate the birth of the son god of we are afraid of other sons and daughters of God who are suffering in this world that God so loved? If you are unsympathetic to the refugee crisis you will sleep walk thru the advent season. I like you to wake up to the fact Jesus is the son of refugees.Mary and Joseph were like refugees in Bethlehem because they had no place to go. They ended up in a manger and gave birth to Jesus. But he was not safe there because King Herod wanted to kill him like Asad is killing hundreds of Syrians now. So Mary and Joseph had to pick up Jesus and escape to Egypt.
The irony is that during the Christmas season, Christians will display manger scenes in front of their homes without realizing that they are displaying a refugee family...
They will pay homage to baby Jesus in the crib who is the son of refugees and at the same time oppose admitting Syrian refugees into the country.
It is that disconnect that makes our Christmas so meaningless. That is why I am talking so much about the need for awakening.
When we wake up to the truth that every human being—all 7 billion of them-that includes the terrorists and the refugees-- is part of a world that God so loved and we open our hearts to love them as God did, you will start experiencing Xmas in a whole new way... and that is my prayer for our congregation this year.
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