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AT 88 A FEW KEYS STILL STRIKE A CHORD
Click here for the Sermon by Arnold Westwood


An Advent 2008 Sermon

Stephen Philbrick, December 2008

Parents: You have worked so hard to develop qualities in your children: honesty, courage, humility, boundaries (who they are; where they end; how they fit in the universe; that they matter.) And children, you have also worked so hard to develop these qualities. In some cases you’ve needed to encourage honesty, courage, humility and boundaries in your parents: To remind them that you exist, that you matter, but that you are not a suitable object of worship.

BUT, on the whole, the culture we contribute to, and partake of, doesn’t value honesty, courage, humility and a sense of self. The culture rewards defending, protecting, amassing, winning . Oh, the world may pay lip service to them, but the world doesn’t give up money or power or privilege for these virtues.

Look: Your honesty doesn’t make the world stop lying.
Truth doesn’t make the world listen. Sure doesn’t listen to truth. (you’ve been that voice in the wilderness.)
Your courage doesn’t stop people or governments from lashing out in fear.
Boundaries? Made to be invaded.
Humility? There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

All that we treasure individually (like our kids) doesn’t seem to matter collectively in the world we send them into. But we send them: out to play, out to work, off to school (the yellow bus that first time!) into battle, into life.

And it can be discouraging. We may turn back, turn in. The culture tempts us to become selfish. Sometimes the greater the cause you dedicate your life to (peace, nonviolence, justice) the more it feels like wasting your life on its opposite (war or prejudice or violence.)

Hold on; remember, it’s a paradox. You have what it takes to save the self-destructive world, as well as your self: that same truth, honesty, humility and courage. The world needs it; you have it; the world flees it.

And here is our great cultural offer of hope: that the country valued truth, courage, honesty enough to elect a black and white man with a Muslim name born in the furthest, newest, most multi-colored and cultured state.

Here is the great annual confession of hope: that the world is worth Jesus/ is worth every child/is worth your child/ is worth you; that we are worth the earth we live on; that the darkness is worth the candle. That life is, finally and fully, worth living.That’s the conundrum where parents live. That’s the heartbreak of caring-and-trying that children inherit.

But don’t give up, children or parents: you’ve been here before.
And you know the way:
The way is dark and leads to light.

Hearts must break and waters must break and the body must give to the point of breaking. And the body must compress to the point of breaking --- and then light breaks into the eyes and air breaks into the lungs and lives open into each other.

When we celebrate baptism, we acknowledge how thin the difference between life and death is -- for mother, for baby.
When we celebrate Christmas or solstice, we acknowledge the dark, the cold, the way the story goes --- and the hope it nevertheless contains, like the grain, the kernel, the acorn, the egg which contains the future and can feed upon itself to start.
That’s what the hope is: the self-contained start, the gesture toward/ that links us to the future.

So it is neither strange, nor easy that the way in, the way out, the salvation, the transformation, in this damaged world is through the broken-open heart, the opened mind, the lost hope, the abandoned plan, the dis-illusion. And when assumption and judgments and expectations are lost: why, YOU know what to do:

Tell the truth, however painful.
Hear the truth, however humbling.
Keep the boundary, however frustrating.
Don’t give up, however easy that would be.
Love, however frightening.And give and give and give, until you receive.

That’s how it seems, sometimes, but it’s really: “receive and receive and receive until you can give.”

YOU are what the world fears, what the world yearns for, what the world needs -- each of you. It’s a heavy burden.

On you, it looks good. Bless you.