Sermon for Sunday, December 3, 2023 || Advent 1B || Mark 13:24-37; Luke 1:26-38; Matthew 1:18-25
Today we begin again. We begin a new cycle of the church year, of services and celebrations, of feasts and fasts, that provide us the scaffolding for practicing our awareness of God’s presence in our lives. That’s what I’d like to talk about today on this First Sunday of Advent: practicing our awareness of God’s presence.
As the beginning of the church year, Advent is a time of recommitment. We recognize that in all the changes and chances of life, we often fall asleep in our lives of faith. We start sleepwalking through life, going about our days in a fog of tasks and to-dos, and we don’t pause often enough to practice God’s presence in the midst of everything. In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus implores his disciples and us to keep awake for the signs of God’s presence. You know by the blooming fig tree that summer is near, he says. You can read the signs of nature, but only if you keep your eyes open to seeing them. Therefore, keep awake!
As we begin again, God graces us with the opportunity to recommit ourselves to our relationships with God. And we nurture our sides of that relationship through the practice of awareness.
Thankfully, we have two wonderful examples to emulate over the next three weeks. During Advent, we journey with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, learning from both of them the power of awareness. For her part, Mary meets a divine messenger, who invites her to join God in bringing God’s child into the world. She listens carefully to Gabriel’s words. She asks thoughtful questions. And in the end, she opens herself to God’s presence, saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” With those words, “Here am I,” Mary states that she is fully present in that moment of encounter with God. It’s not, “Here I was” or “Here I will be.” This encounter is not happening in her past or future, but right now. “Here am I.”
We can all borrow Mary’s “Here am I” in our own lives of faith, for one of the most challenging parts of practicing awareness is simply being present in the moment. We are so often distracted by dwelling on what has been or brooding over what will be that we miss what is. But the thing about God’s presence is that God’s presence IS. Is now. Is the present. God exists in what we call the past and future, but for God all of that is still present. God exists in God’s eternal NOW, and every once in a while, we are aware of that presence in the moment. The more we open ourselves up with Mary’s prayer, “Here am I,” the more we ready ourselves to be aware of God’s Now.
Saying “Here am I” no matter the circumstances increases our awareness. We remain focused in the moment in such a way that whatever we are doing becomes prayer. Whether we’re serving in a soup kitchen or lobbying legislators about food insecurity or just standing at the counter doing the dishes, we can open ourselves up for an encounter with God by practicing being totally present in the moment. Benedictine monastics down through the ages have practiced this method of prayer by considering literally every mundane task that kept the monastery running as part of their devotion to God.
Let’s stick with doing the dishes for a moment. As we do the dishes, we give thanks to God that the dishes were dirty in the first place. It means we had food to put on them. We acknowledge our blessings and recommit to working toward a world where all people have the opportunity to have dirty dishes. We also recognize that in serving our families by doing the dishes, we are living out our devotion to them in this concrete way. And thus we are sharing God’s love. No one likes doing dishes, but next time you do them, start by saying “Here am I” to God, and see how your attitude changes.
Okay, that’s Mary. Let’s go to Joseph. For his part, Joseph meets God’s divine messenger in the midst of battling within himself over making an impossible decision. His family expects him to set Mary aside because of her pregnancy, and he has resolved to do it, as much as it pains him. But the battle still rages as he sleeps on the decision. The messenger speaks to Joseph in a dream, telling him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. Joseph has a part to play in raising God’s beloved child, this child who will be called “Emmanuel,” – a name that means “God is with us.”
When Joseph wakes, he chooses Mary over his family’s objections. The decision seems obvious to us who know the story, but to Joseph it is anything but. Both choices are right in a way, and Joseph listens to the voice of God within himself during his dream. In the end, he chooses the better of two rights. We can follow Joseph’s example when we are faced with challenging decisions. Choosing between right and wrong is fairly easy; but choosing between competing right answers is much harder. By practicing our awareness of God’s presence within our own bodies, we can choose the better of two rights. Listen to your body. Which choice leads to more expansion and less constriction? Which opens you up and which narrows you down? Which allows you to breathe a little bit easier. That breath is God’s Spirit leading you just as God’s messenger led Joseph in his dream.
Jesus’ earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, both practiced awareness of God’s presence in the days leading up to Jesus’ birth. Even though Joseph was technically asleep, they both remained awake and aware. Their openness to God’s movement allowed them to welcome God’s presence into the world in a new way. When we practice the spiritual discipline of awareness, we remain in the present. We meet God in God’s eternal NOW, and this encounter transforms whatever task we are doing into an opportunity to serve God. We also listen to God’s movement in our own bodies, these sanctuaries of God’s presence. We become aware of expansion and constriction. We let our Spirit-inspired breath teach us.
This Advent, I invite you into a season of intentional awareness. We begin again today. So keep awake. Let Joseph and Mary be your guides. And make these three words your breath prayer: “Here am I.”
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash.
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