Finding Those "Unbaptized Corners"

PROPERS:          ADVENT 3, YEAR B                                              

PREACHED AT ST. ST. JOHN’S, PASCAGOULA, ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2023.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        Advent is a season of preparation; of turning inward.

 

            Some years ago, I was serving as rector at Church of the Resurrection in Starkville.  Like today, it was Advent – the weeks preceding Christmas and the Nativity.

 

            I preached a sermon that emphasized Advent and, some might say, castigated the congregation for premature celebration of Christmas.  Some might even say it was harsh.

 

            After the service was finished, I did as I usually did:  I stood at the back door and greeted congregants as they left the nave.

 

            There was one congregant, Babs Deas, who, it was said, you should go see if you needed a dose of happy. She was perpetually upbeat and always had a smile on her face. Her internal joy radiated from her.

 

            She approached me in the line of people whose hands I was shaking.  When she got to me, she looked up at me with big puppy dog eyes and said, “Well, bah humbug to you, too.”

 

            I got the point. 

 

+ + + 

 

            The problem was not the message – which we get in these four weeks of Advent – it was the manner of delivery.

 

            As Episcopalians, we know this on some level: No, this is not Christmas.  This is Advent.  I want to thank Hope for selecting hymns which emphasize that fact. We are in a season of preparation.

 

            But what does it mean to prepare? Let me share this thought with you.

 

            I have a very good friend who is a retired priest in Austin, Texas.  We talk weekly and text almost daily. He and I were discussing the puzzling combination of goodness and brokenness in each person. St. Paul describes that internal wrestling between good and evil in his Letter to the Romans: “Wretched man that I am!”  That was St. Paul – even hewrestled with his dark side.

 

            My friend from Austin shared this thought: “We all have small unbaptized corners of our souls.” Bingo.  That’s it.  Carl Jung, the Swiss psychotherapist, called those dark corners our shadow.  The more we deny its existence, the more it controls us.

 

            Some folks may say that they don’t need to prepare their hearts for the coming of God into our world – there are too many details that need to be tended to.  I would say all of us to prepare – some to a greater extent than others.

 

            A bumper sticker I have seen in Fairhope says simply: Critical thinking – The Other National Deficit.  I would say human deficit.  

 

This is the season – these four weeks – for each of us to go inward, really examine ourselves, and name the shadow or unbaptized corner of our hearts that need the redeeming grace of God. The Roman Catholic Jesuits – a deeply spiritual monastic order – have a series of prayers they call the Examen, which they pray twice daily.

 

            Find a place where you can quietly look deep within.  Acknowledge the good and be prepared to turn the broken part over the God’s redeeming power.

 

            Then – in eight short days left in Advent – you will be able to welcome the coming of God into this world.