Sermon 10/25/09
Job 38 (excerpts)
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Work of the sight is done . . . now do heart work on the pictures within you. - Rainer Maria Rilke We are entering the season of lessening daylight and increasing night. Let's celebrate the gifts of darkness. Mystery The word "mystery" usually carries a positive sense for me. It bears witness to those hidden depths of life that words cannot contain. It expresses the unknown, uncontrollable and indescribable aspects of life with can evoke fear or wonder. Yet in the history of Christianity the term mystery has often been used to end inquiry, stifle debate, disperse doubt. When the church found itself proclaiming something irrational, mystery was often the defense. Don't ask me how it could be true, it just is - it's a mystery! The word was usually connected to either creed or dogma. This is not the way I am using the term today! Rather than shutting us down and shutting others out, mystery can acknowledge the unknown in a manner that encourages curiosity and critical inquiry. It is a good thing that every answer brings with it at least ten new questions! Our spiritual lives are nourished by mystery. To express mystery a poet usually turns to metaphor and paradox. Today I am going to turn to music. Chopin's Nocturne in B flat minor Nocturne = night music. A short musical piece that expresses and evokes the mystery of the night. This nocturne is in a minor key which evokes a more somber, sometimes even melancholy mood. Darkness can reveal the sadness of life and allow us to receive this without being overcome by depression or terror. It brings us into the dark womb where new life begins. (Rasmussen, p. 225) "It is the sadness of life that took Jesus into the wilderness, even for long stretches, and eventually to Gethsemane, just as it can take us beside still waters to listen, with God, to the sorrow that has no name, the sorrow of the world that is our own soul's sorrow. . . . Listen deeply, and offer it to God in the large or small Gethsemanes, wilderness wanderings, griefs, exiles, and estrangements of our lives. . . . Then , out of this very darkness, life itself may emerge as it always has, from a womb where no light is, but where all life begins." Larry Rasmussen, EARTH COMMUNITY EARTH ETHICS, p. 225 (Play Chopin Nocturne) Debussey's Clair de lune The title means moon light. Impressionism and the art of suggestion. Debussey uses music to paint a picture of moon light.
Sabbath beings at dusk. The day began at dusk, not dawn! Sabbath comes as a gift of darkness, and not light and day. For it is by night and candlelight that we cease our cravings and are taught to open ourselves, allow ourselves to be empty and receptive. Our egos, busy all day and all week, somehow miraculously recede in darkness, darkness with prayers centuries old and chants without composer's names, prayers and chants known only by the smooth tones of a communion of countless saints gathered in quiet worship over umpteen centuries. Of course Sabbath comes with night and candlelight, when spite and quarrels somehow seem badly out of place and hatred a very wrong emotion. Soul knits to soul in the dark, against all the daytime impulses to unravel them. Of course Sabbath comes at eventide, when the soft touch of hands held in prayer, or subdued conversation over a good meal, says "welcome," "shalom," and "be well" to every tired cell in the body. Sabbath may in fact be the one gift that could save this society, because it is the gift of rest and inefficiency, life at ease well before life is morning and new light. Larry Rasmussen, EARTH COMMUNITY EARTH ETHICS, p. 225 (Play Debussey's Clair de lune) Job 38 (excerpts) [From out of the whirlwind the voice of God speaks to Job and says;] Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, where were you? Who decided its dimensions? Who laid its cornerstone, when all the morning stars sang, and all God's children shouted for joy? Who set the sea behind closed doors, when its water poured forth from the womb? Who clothed it in a mist and swaddled it in darkness? Who set the bounds it could not cross, restraining it behind a wall? Have you ever been in charge of morning? Have you ever had to summon the dawn, command it to cling to the edges of earth and shake the wicked from its fold? Have you ever been to the source of the sea, or walked in the silence of the deep? Have you ever seen the deep, deep dark? Can you find your way to the dwelling of light, trace the pathway to its home? Translation from Miriam Therese Winter, WOMAN PRAYER, WOMAN SONG |
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