We spend our lives working toward one end. We are all building something, and for the
most part, that something, by the very temporal nature of life, must ultimately be left behind. The question we
are being asked to wrestle with this morning is simply: What are you building?
A great truth found in our lections on this fourth Sunday of Advent is that we are not called to be the builders
at all, but instead to recognize that we are the ones being built. We are not to be the movers but the ones being
moved. We do not get to decide where God dwells and moves, God does.
Perhaps the logic behind that is that when we build the temple, we get to determine its dimension. We get to image
God in it; maybe even make God in our own image and likeness. God may look white, powerful, and male, if that's
what the ones in charge of the design look like. A comfortable community may also want to have an image of a comfortable
looking God in its temple, one who is high above the troubles of this world and life, and one who will not upset
the status quo. We will also build the walls; keeping some out, but also shielding ourselves from outside influences
we choose not to deal with. We will build doors, locate the entrance points into the temple, lay down the rules
for admission. Such are the dangers of temple building.
I know that most of you are thinking…if I were in charge I wouldn't do that. But we do...even as we build our own
temples.
Most of us have built our lives on the principle of action. We think, even if we don't express it, "If I cannot
do anything, what good am I?" And so we spend our lifetime "overdoing," trying to live through our
own accomplishments. It's actually one of the reasons why the Christmas season has become such a hassle for so
many, and such a depressing time for so many others. It's all about getting so many things done, the shopping,
the cooking, the decorating, the cleaning, the card list, and for those who feel they have no one left to do for,
it becomes such a sad time, heightening the sense of isolation and lack of purpose.
Throughout our lives, when something incapacitates us to any degree we feel useless, and that is exactly the message
we send out unintentionally perhaps to everyone who becomes unable to do. To the stroke patient, the disabled,
the mentally challenged, the unemployed, the feeble, we send a silent message that we ourselves have bought into…"You
can't do therefore you really have no purpose."
But what's the alternative? Are we simply meant to be, to allow God to take life, our life, and move through us?
Have we no role to play? Mary is a good role model for answering that question.
When confronted with a situation that seems out of control, or on the verge of same, or a person who seems overwhelmed,
a logical response would seem to be "How can I help? Such a request has become a source of meaning to many
people. If you think about it, it really opens the questioner to possibilities they themselves may not have grasped,
and if asked sincerely implies a need for direction from the very one who seems to be out of sorts. But perhaps
the deeper question, and this is more than just semantics, is not "How can I help?" at all, but "How
can I serve? Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between
equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I'm attentive to what's going
on inside of me when I'm helping, I find that I'm always helping someone who's not as strong as I am, who is needier
than I am.
And people feel this inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever
give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, their integrity and wholeness. When I help
I am very aware of my own strength, but we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from
all of our experiences.
Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness
in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship
between equals.
Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one, they owe you "big time." But serving, like
healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the person I am serving. When I help I have a feeling of
satisfaction. When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude. These are very different things!
Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires
me to act. When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them.
When I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It is what I am responding to and collaborating with.
There is distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing. Fixing is a form of judgment, and all
judgment creates distance, disconnection, an experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of expertise
that can easily become a moral distance. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are
profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This was Mother Teresa's basic message. We serve life
not because it is broken but because it is holy.
If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery and expertise. Service, on the other
hand, is an experience of being casual. A server knows that he or she is being used and has a willingness to be
used in the service of something greater, something essentially unknown. Fixing and helping are very personal;
they are very particular, concrete and specific. We fix and help many different things in our lifetimes, but when
we serve we are always serving the same thing. Everyone who has ever served through the history of time serves
the same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and mystery in life.
The bottom line, of course, is that we can fix without serving. And we can help without serving. And we can serve
without fixing or helping. I think I would go so far as to say that fixing and helping may often be the work of
the ego, and service the work of the soul. They may look similar if you're watching from the outside, but the inner
experience is different. The outcome is often different, too.
Our service serves us as well as others. That which uses us strengthens us. Over time, fixing and helping are draining,
depleting. Over time, we burn out. Service by contrast is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will sustain
us.
Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an
unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. Fundamentally, helping, fixing
and service are all ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak; when you fix, you see life as broken.
When you serve, you see life as whole. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is
like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way
of seeing.
Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing. I have seen people helped by many and fixed
by a great many others, none of whom recognized their action as bringing wholeness. All that fixing and helping
still leaves us wounded in some important and fundamental ways.
Only service heals.
So how can we honor God? How can we show our gratitude for what God has done, and promise our obedience for the
future? By giving up our selves as willing servants. It's the only real offering we have. Our other offerings more
closely resemble that mauled mouse that the cat brings in and lays lovingly at our feet. One can see pride in the
cat, the knowledge that she has brought something that she herself desires and expects us to desire too, and isn't
that what our offerings to God are sometimes like?
In our Old Testament lesson David is offering God something out of the fullness of his own heart. At last the kingdom
is safe and settled, and David has a home.
The shepherd boy from the hills, who has lived an unpredictable and endangered life since first the Lord called
him into his service, is now a King. No more tents and caves for him. A home no longer has to be something that
you can pack up or leave at a moment's notice. His house represents safety, security, it's the fulfillment of a
deep need for David. And so he assumes that God would like a house, too!! David's desire to honor God is genuine,
and he has thought carefully and lovingly about the best way to do it. We do that as well.
But he has gotten it wrong. Yet there is no anger in God's tone in the speech to Nathan. In fact, you can almost
hear affectionate laughter in the words. But the fact is that, although David's deepest need may be for security,
God has no need of that at all.
Is some small, unacknowledged part of David trying to domesticate God? Does he think that, if he builds a home
for God, he will know where God is and what God is up to? Does he hope that a safely housed ark will represent
a safely tamed God? If so, he soon learns what we all have to learn: that God cannot be tamed, and that recognizing
what God wants might mean relearning the desires of our own hearts.
Patiently, God explains that it is not our job to make him a home, but his job -indeed, his joy - to make this
world a home for us! That great work began at our creation, it continued through God's calling his people away
from Egypt into a new community, and it was completed when God came to makes a home with us.
Patiently, the angel comes to negotiate with Mary for the kind of home that God has always been in the process
of making. God, whom the whole world cannot contain, waits quietly while the angel talks to Mary. And despite how
gentle the angel is, as they talk, Mary is confused, bewildered, uncomprehending, but not afraid of God's messenger.
How he must have muted himself so that she can ask the one question she needs to know.
Mary's one question is the clue to her nature, and perhaps the very reason why she is the chosen one. She does
not demand to know exactly what God hopes to achieve; she does not ask what it will cost; she does not want praise
because she is the one God is asking. All she asks in a modern paraphrase is: "Am I not a bit of a problem?
Are you sure I fulfill your requirements?" And when the angel replies: "It's all been taken care of,"
then, and only then, Mary says: "Fine." She has become the handmaid of the Lord, a servant.
God chose the right person to be the mother of Jesus. Someone who would be willing to accept as much as she could
understand and leave the rest to God.
It has been said that the first trimester of pregnancy is so vulnerable virtually no one can see it save for those
blurry sonogram images. The 3rd trimester by contrast, is the most uncomfortable and just actively waiting to get
the job finished. It is the 2nd trimester that is filled with potential. Everyone can see the beginnings of a promise,
that what was a hope has become a surety, but it is still unborn!
No matter what our age, even on this the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Love, much of our faith is meant
to be 2nd trimester faith. Our prayer on this day should be something like: May the One who broke into this earth
as a servant, and who has called us to be servants in his name, be incarnated in all the ministries that we have
been graced with. Amen |