November 15, 2009
The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Hebrews 10:11-25;
Mark 13:1-8
We are nearing the end of the Pentecost season and there is talk in these lessons of childbirth and birth pangs. And that is our sign that even though we are absorbed in liturgical endings, indeed the end of the longest liturgical season, we can see the promises of birth. But the messages are mixed. The gospel speaks of false witnesses and stones being upturned in the same context as though birth pangs. In the Old Testament Hannah laments her barrenness, and sings the hymn we recited together when she conceives.
Most of us are good at dealing with birth, but few of us are good at dealing with the endings that must come to make way for the birth, the new, the direction God would have us go.
When I read the story of Hannah, it is as if she is telling my story. I am sure you are wondering how that can be. I have four children and five grandchildren with another on the way, but for a very long time I was one who could not and did not get pregnant.
In our culture there isn’t the stigma attached to barrenness that there was in Hannah’s day. But when I saw everyone – and I do mean everyone, because that is all you can see when you want a child so much – it seemed everyone was pushing a baby stroller and it seemed like I was the only one who could not have a child. Well, I am certain the feelings I had were not much different from Hannah’s.
I know that I am not alone in this experience. In this parish there are many families who could not have children and many have adopted; many have remained childless; and many, like me, for no apparent reason or for reasons of medical technology that advances so much each year, miraculously conceived and bore children, the way that Hannah did. But I do believe that the time of yearning for a child and knowing absolutely you will not have your own, before such resolution as any of these is made, whatever it is, can be as difficult a time in a family’s life as any other.
It is almost akin to accepting a death of someone you love. For the future as you imagined, hoped for, planned for, is irreparably changed and the world goes on its merry way doing what it always does. And it seems everyone ELSE has a child and the question of why God has singled you out for such disgrace and unhappiness haunts every quiet reflective moment.
I find it so appropriate that this time of terrible grief, unresolved yearning, and the chaotic promise of stones upturned is what precedes Advent. It is this sort of time, this sort of experience in our lives that can best be described as living in utter desolation. We know it when someone we love dies. The finality of knowing we will never see the smile that has warmed our heart ever again, or feel the touch of the hand that was always there to steady us in the darkness. We know it when someone we love leaves us, when we lose our job, or when a friendship is broken and we are told there is no desire for reconciliation. We know it when we have done something we wish we had not, and our apology is not accepted. We know it every time it seems like the only answer to our prayers is a huge “Cosmic NO!” It is such days as these, these last days of Pentecost, the days that seem to be without hope, that are described in today’s lessons.
These days are different from Advent when we are hopeful and expectant. Advent – expectant days are coming. We know that by faith, and by the yearly remembrance that we live and relive each year. We know it not only in our liturgical cycle but in our own lives. We know that endings are really beginnings. But we also know that when we are in the desolation of an ending, it’s hard to remember that there could possibly be a beginning around the corner. From the point of desolation, one can forget that, one can be distracted from that reality. In times of endings this desolation is what we know every day. And I have come to believe that it is all that we would know if we did not know Jesus. Without Jesus and his testimony to the promise of birth, the promise of life, the promise of resurrection, in these desolate times we would have nothing. But because Jesus is who he is, we are not alone in our desolation, and even on the darkest days, we have hope.
It doesn’t mean we can predict the future any better, or find a job any faster, or bring back a loved one who has died, or change the science of conception every time to guarantee a pregnancy. It doesn’t mean we will win the lottery, or get to define what new birth is for us, or that we will never know desolation, or even the tomb that follows persecution ever again. But because Jesus is who Jesus was, is, and will be, as we go through each day of our lives, even these end days, these days that are marked by desolate pain, we have the smallest light of hope that defines us more than all the destructive endings and “cosmic NO’s” and loss that seems to enfold us.
I don’t know when the pain of loss and desolation becomes the first pain of birth that the gospel speaks of. Birth pangs are often indistinguishable from desolate pain. But I have come to know, by faith, that trusting that such desolate pain is truly as Jesus said in the gospel, birth pangs, such faith dulls the pain. It allows the healing light of hope to get stronger and brighter within us. And at some point that cannot be planned for, or predicted, or most lamentably controlled by our own sheer will, at some point we recognize the pain as part of the beginning, the promise of life, the gift of forgiveness, the dawning of joy.
We are stronger; we are more faithful; we are more forgiving; we are more resourceful; we are more willing to serve others; we are more able to love and be loved because we have known such desolation in the company of Jesus.
We are living in tough times. But it is in these times that we can so easily recognize the light of Christ. It shines purer and brighter than when all is sunny and warm. It is in these times that faith is grown.
May your winter and desolation times be a fruitful gift to your faith. May all the desolation that seems to come only with endings, be for you a sign of the coming birth of joy and new life and expectant hope. May we, with Hannah, sing, “My heart exults in the Lord! My strength is exalted in my God.” And mean it!
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd