|
Reality
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 3rd December 2006
Revd. Matthew Vernon
"Advent helps us face up to reality".
Two friends were walking down Queen's Road Central (Hong Kong).
It was hard to have a conversation thanks to all the noise and bustle around them:
• cars and buses; taxi horns;
• many other people out doing their Christmas shopping;
• bright lights and distractions in the shop windows.
One of the friends suddenly stopped.
"Wait!" he said, "I can hear a grasshopper."
"What!" replied the friend. "All this noise and think you heard a grasshopper?"
His friend was a monk who lived in the countryside.
• His ears were attuned to natural sounds.
The monk friend looked around, listening intently, then bent down and picked the cricket from between the cracks in the pavement.
His friend was amazed.
The monk said "lend me a coin."
He threw the coin in the air.
It landed on the pavement with a jingle and all the people nearby stopped to look at the money.
The two friends looked at each other and the monk said
• "What we hear depends on what we value and on what is real to us."
I went to Bethanie this week –
• with Archbishop Peter, Bishop Paul and my clergy colleagues.
They were very impressed,
• and, I think, a touch jealous!
We saw lots of people getting ready for two corporate parties.
Piaget and Chloe were holding parties this week on successive evenings.
They expensive is incredible.
The security guards around the building looked very cool in their black suits!
Piaget put up a temporary structure next to the main Bethanie building.
• A grand piano at the entrance.
• At least 10 mirror balls from the ceiling.
Upstairs they were converting one room into a trendy bar.
All for one night!
Seeing these things being set up, I was struck by how artificial it all is.
Constructed reality.
With bright lights, smoke and mirrors to fool us.
We might not get invited to these celebrity parties –
• at least I don't!
But we're all affected by the culture of merchandising and brands.
It affects our reality more deeply than we care to admit;
• and more than we are aware.
More than that, we are all very skilled at constructing reality.
Building artificial little worlds to live in.
Weaving webs of fantasy that usually have us as the big spider in the centre.
Making little assumptions about the people we meet.
• Filling in the gaps to complete our image of them.
Like the man on the Lamma ferry who was sitting next to a student who was obviously a hippy.
He was wearing only one shoe.
"You've obviously lots a shoe, kid."
"No, sir," came the reply. "I found one."
Or the woman in the supermarket.
She bent down to pick up some tomatoes and suddenly felt a sharp pain in her back.
She let out a shriek.
A shopper standing next to her leaned over knowingly and said,
• "If you think the tomatoes are expensive, you should see the price of the strawberries!"
"Advent helps us face up to reality".
It's a season when we reflect on truth and reality.
When we try to cut through the frills and wrapping of our lives to find God's truth.
Facing up to reality is not easy –
• the reality of who we are, what we are, where we are.
The hardest thing in the world is to be where we are.
To live in the present, as the wise call it.
To focus on the sounds, the sights, the people around us.
Rather than flying off somewhere else in our minds.
It's hard enough on its own.
But we make it more difficult with our modern living and all our technology.
We surround ourselves with better means of communication and information:
• TV; internet; mobile phones.
These are good things, not bad.
But they don't help us as much as we think.
They actually dilute reality.
Watching the news of TV.
It starts with the opening credits and music:
• grand images and sounds to make increase the sense of importance.
Then the news items speedy past our eyes.
No item is in front of us long enough to be really disturbing.
The war in Iraq quickly moves to the floods in the Philippines and then to some Hong Kong news.
It moves so quickly that sometimes the pictures and words don't match –
• giving the game away.
And after the news, another programme comes on immediately.
We feel we are aware of what is going on in the world,
• but in fact have no clear awareness of the present moment.
A favourite of mine is jumping in the car and turning the radio on –
• more news!
No chance of any white noise or time to reflect.
It's good to turn off the car radio.
To be aware of the sensation of driving or the beautiful day light.
Its hard to do that on the bus with those wretched TVs on the whole time.
It's so easy to persuade ourselves that knowing about a lot of things is good.
That's how we enter their reality and even making a difference.
No.
Being where we are requires a lot of switching off.
Switching off those systems and stimuli that claim to make sense of our environment.
And why should we try to live in the present?
Because that is where we meet God.
When we let go of our little fantasies about ourselves,
• when we let go of the images we construct about the world,
• then we are free to meet God undistracted.
"Be still and know that I am."
It's where we find inner peace.
It's the fountain where we can quench our thirst.
Where we find joy.
Notice that joy is not the same as happiness.
But the deep joy that comes from being in tune with reality.
It's hard to find time in our busy, busy lives.
It's hard to have space to be calm, to flop, to waste time!
Isn't ironic?
That Advent is a time to reflect on these things,
• yet with the build up to Christmas it's the busiest time of the year.
But it's so important to waste time with our friends, our children, our partners, ourselves.
What about our Gospel reading?
These strange words about the coming of the Son of Man: the signs in the sky and the nations confused.
Let's be honest: it's difficult to make sense of there words.
Did Jesus believe the end was coming soon?
It seems that he did.
The Gospel writers have Jesus speaking about the end times a number of times.
Yet we are still here.
So what are we to make of these sayings?
The Church continues to focus on these words during Advent because of their spiritual value.
It's a way of thinking that keeps God's values at the front of our minds.
This is how we can make sense of them today,
• despite their strange apocalyptic language.
They speak of being ready,
• of being alert to reality,
• of living in the present.
"Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life … Be alert at all times."
"Realise deeply that the present moment is all you ever have." (Eckhart Tolle)
Whatever does happen at the end of time,
• if the Son of Man does show up at some point,
• "the only thing you can know for sure is the present tense."(Dennis Potter).
But that is all we need to know for it is where we meet God
The present perspective is God's perspective.
This has been described in a number of ways and I'll end with a couple of those.
St. Benedict, we are told, near the end of his life saw the world "as if gathered into a point."
He caught a glimpse of that full vision of all things.
Julian of Norwich famously saw the world in its wholeness held like a hazelnut in Christ's hand.
They are trying to describe that feeling when you are connect with the source of the whole universe.
Trees do it for me sometimes. When sunlight pierces through onto a few leaves and they shine brightly amongst the shadows.
A nun was asked if she had seen God.
She said you don't see God as if by appointment, at a given time on a given day.
But you know by the results.
Nothing is the same afterwards.
Everything has a special luminosity.
You are able to see existence shining in things.
Such passing glimpses of the full vision give us hope,
• a glimpse of reality.
|
