“Praying Twice: In the Bleak Midwinter”

Philippians 4:4-8

Sunday, December 9, 2018
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

I spent most of this past week in rural northwestern Oklahoma with my extended family, preparing for and attending the funeral for my father, who died somewhat unexpectedly at home on November 30th. My siblings and I divvied up tasks and one that fell into my hands was creating the playlist for the visitation at the funeral home. I know there are some folks who just have silence or quiet instrumentals playing in the background as people gather to pay their respects, but we knew right away that my dad would have wanted some specific songs in order to make it feel just right. So I crafted a playlist filled with loud rock and outlaw country….Queen and Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Waylon and Willie and the boys.” And as the sounds of Slash’s guitar filled the chapel at the funeral home I thought, well, maybe it’s a little weird to have Guns N Roses playing at a visitation...but my dad never did much of anything in a “typical” way, so we all just smiled and said, “He would have loved this.”

Music has the power to take us where words cannot go. It moves our spirits to the depths and heights of holiness. The movement of the Holy can be felt in the quiet singing of a parent as they rock a baby to sleep….and in the voices of mourners who gather at a graveside signing “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound.” Music makes us laugh and cry. Music helps us find stillness and makes us jump up and move.

Music binds us together across generations, cultures, time and space. This is why we carefully choose music for all those important moments in our lives...weddings and funerals, holidays and celebrations. Music moves us gently and fiercely through miraculous and mundane moments….singing in the shower, candlelight at Christmas Eve.

It is that presence of the Holy in both the miraculous and the mundane that is on my mind this second Sunday of Advent as we light the candle of peace. Because our lives are made up of all of these moments - miraculous and mundane and everything in between. We move through our days….the alarm clock sounds again, the coffee pot is turned on once more, there are bills to pay, e-mails to read, floors that need to be swept. So much of what we do is routine, ordinary, mundane. But then there are those moments where time seems to stand still. The phone rings and it’s someone delivering bad news. A letter arrives and the course of your life is changed. A child laughs and you suddenly remember a part of yourself you had forgotten. The Sacred breaks through, reminding us that the Holy has been with us all along...even in the sweeping and dusting and typing and driving. There is nowhere we can go where we are far from God’s presence….the trick is finding some way to remember this truth.

I have a working theory that perhaps what we humans need to do the most in this life is learn how to be aware of God’s presence. For if we can find God in the face of the person we are talking to, surely it will change the words that come out of our mouths. If we can find God in the soil and water, surely it will change the way we live on the Earth. If we can find God in ourselves, surely it will change the voice inside our head that is so demanding, right? If we knew - really knew - that we were accompanied by the Holy everywhere we go, then we would be seeking peace in every thought, every deed, every moment of our time here on earth.

Advent is a time of preparation and waiting. A time to intentionally cultivate practices that bring about that awareness of God’s presence in the moments both miraculous and mundane. It is a time for seeing peace and a time for pondering the great mystery we call Emmanuel - God with us.

As we wait, we sing songs that help us prepare. Last week the choir shared a not-very-well-known Christmas carol called “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” and Pastor Sue shared a reflection on it. This week, we examine a song that’s probably better-known to you because we sing a verse of it every Sunday during Advent and Christmas. “In the Bleak Midwinter” is a poem written by Christina Rossetti in 1872, set to music by Gustav Holst in 1906.

The text brings our attention to that interplay between the miraculous and mundane, as Rossetti paints a picture of God being with us in ordinary and extraordinary ways. The first verse is so very down to earth….”In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen...snow on snow on snow.” You can feel the dreary sameness of day after gray day that Rossetti would have experienced in December in her native England. We know this feeling. It’s familiar, typical, mundane.

But into this bleak sameness, God breaks forth. The prophet Isaiah speaks for God, “Behold, I am about to do a new thing! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

God enters into the ordinariness of our everyday. “Angels and archangels may have gathered there. Cherubim and seraphim thronged the midnight air.” When a child is born it is both the most ordinary thing in the world and the most miraculous thing imaginable, isn’t it? Every day in every place babies are being born...and have been for millions of years. There’s nothing unusual about it. And yet….each and every birth is a miracle...hard to believe, hard to understand, breath-taking in its glory.

And so before we fly off with the angels and their harps winging through the air, Rosetti brings back down gently to earth….delicately dancing us between the miraculous and the mundane. She writes, “But his mother only, in her maiden bliss, worshiped the beloved with a kiss.” Suddenly we are back in the warmth of a simple home….livestock chewing their hay, night settling in, fire glowing in the hearth. Angels bend low, an exhausted mother sings a fierce lullaby of love, a weary and proud father leans in close, a midwife brings more water and hums along with the lullaby. The whole world in this particular moment revolves around this small new life….miraculous and mundane wrapped up together in swaddling clothes.

You know, it occurs to me that our two highest holy days in the Christian faith revolve around Jesus’s birth and death. At Christmas, God comes to us in human form…miraculous and mundane and snuggled in tight with Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem. At Easter, we witness Jesus’s brutal death and bear witness to the claim that even death cannot separate us from God’s love through Christ Jesus. Birth and death - sacred moments that cause our spirits to sit up and pay attention to God.

It is often in these sacred moments that we feel God’s presence….and where we find peace in the midst of a chaotic world. But, you know, we don’t have to wait for these major, earth-shattering events to remember Emmanuel - God With Us. We can seek peace in each and every ordinary day, too. I think this is what Paul meant when he said we are are “pray without ceasing.” It’s not just about bowing your head and having a little talk with God. It’s about living our whole lives in such a way that we are consistently oriented towards the Holy. It’s about seeking peace in the miraculous AND the mundane parts of being human.

Advent is a great time to practice this. Despite the hustle and bustle of December, we who follow Jesus are compelled to find some space to turn inward, center ourselves, and do the work of preparing the way for the Christ child. My friend, the Rev. Ashley Harness said it this way, “The spiritual practices of Advent are really about gestating the divine here and now.”

God calls us to do the important work of bearing Christ to the world this Advent season. We are invited into practices that cultivate and honor peace. You may pray without ceasing as you listen to the music of the season. You might dive more deeply into creating places for quiet and stillness as you pursue a prayer or meditation practice. You may feel led to spend more time in nature or take up a practice of journaling or daily Bible study. Or perhaps God’s peace will be found in the mundane everyday tasks of chopping vegetables, doing laundry, raking leaves….all of these things can become prayer if you approach them with an awareness of God’s presence. I was at a retreat with the Benedictine sister in Atchison a couple of weeks ago and the spiritual director who led the retreat told a story about her mom. Mary Kay was one of eight children and every morning her mom ironed the kids’ uniforms for school….and each and every morning she used that brief moment of ironing to pray for each child by name as she ironed their clothes. I found that so touching….if a mother of eight can find the time to pray for each of her children each morning then surely each of us can find a way to seek peace this Advent, can’t we?

Friends, peace lives among us. It may be covered up by all the noise and violence and pain, but you can rest assured that it is here. The peace of Christ is seeking us this season and we are invited to nestle in close with Mary and Joseph and the angels as we await the return of Emmanuel - God With Us.

May it be so. Amen.