November 29, 2020 - First Sunday in Advent - Together Again

Living the Christian life appears to be about accepting certain ambiguities. Even as both my wife and I understand why, she often observes with humor the inconsistency and the capacity for what John Keats labeled, in a different knowledge pursuit, the "negative capability" which is increasingly becoming accepted in the postmodern church.

I believe Pastor Dave acknowledged this when he talked about the Gospel text did not want to cooperate with the Advent spirit he felt as he lit the first Advent candle. He started his sermon by cutting holly for Advent candles with log holders which he set up in his cabin at Welches. Interestingly my wife and I delivered Advent logs and devotionals  to a good number of Creator congregation members yesterday, so that felt like a strong, if coincidental, "homemade" connection this Advent.

As a Disaster Preparedness Program Coordinator, he spoke about how this Mark 13:24-37 Gospel initially hit him as he read these verses from our twenty first century cosmology, where this would be experienced as a disaster. Yet this is not the only cosmology we should be prepared to deal with in the Bible. Pastor Dave turned back to first chapter in the book of Genesis to lay out a different cosmology, one that Jesus' contemporaries may have shared. 

Pastor Dave preached that in Genesis the sun, moon and stars were created on the 4th day. In another coincidence I recently had read Genesis in preparation for Advent. I was trying to understand the different kinds of darknesses that are recorded in scripture after reading Lenny Duncan's Dear Church again for Creator's book group.

Pastor Dave went on to reveal how he reads this scripture now. This is a story of God ordering the dark chaos by the creation of the heavenly dome. With this dome God created a place for humankind to live. The stars, sun and moon function as beautiful decorative lanterns rather than a larger than life threat if they are taken away. 

He placed this context with the way we begin to gather again in Advent. The falling stars are a sign - a signal that we should come back together as a group. Pastor Dave compared us to an audience that is out for intermission after having watched the first act of a play. We are signaled back to our seats by the blinking lights announcing the second act is about to begin. The second act is where we also have our part to play in God's ordering of dark chaos through creation.

A great sermon with a good ideas that I accepted intellectually. He closed his sermon by quoting the opening line of the spiritual My Lord What a Morning. This kicked his sermon into bold, new, terrifying, and inspired territory for me. Suddenly my thoughts went back to when I was twelve years old. That was when I first heard When the Stars Begin To Fall sung by The Seekers. I didn't know how to feel on first hearing. Like Pastor Dave, the falling stars threatened disaster in my mind, being filled with a twentieth century cosmology. Yet here was this was sung with triumph, evident joy, and a gratitude that tugged my heart towards a different reaction. Verses like the following kept up this tension created by the chorus:

You will weep for the rocks and mountains
You will weep for the rocks and mountains
You will weep for the rocks and mountains
When the stars begin to fall 

The weeping could be in actual mourning for everything that is passing as the stars begin to fall or that the stars falling simply help uncover and express a gratitude that the rocks and mountains were created and endured in our world to appreciate.

My next encounter with the song was years later when I followed Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and many folk movement protest songs. I heard Joan Baez sing different lyrics  

My Lord, what a morning!
My Lord, what a morning!
Oh, my Lord, what a morning
When the stars begin to fall.

 

Oh, you will hear the trumpet sound
To wake the nations underground,
Looking to my Lord's right hand
When the stars begin to fall.

 

Oh, you will see my Jesus come,
His glory shining like the sun,
Looking to my Lord's right hand
When the stars begin to fall.

 

Oh, you will hear all Christians shout,
'Cause there's a new day come about,
Looking to my Lord's right hand
When the stars begin to fall

I listened to the song then and sang with the power and conviction I would now sing with a song like Canticle of the Turning. I believed in the new vision in these lyrics and felt part of a group that was going to make it happen somehow. Something like what John Lennon wrote about in Imagine.

As my record collection and interests grew I ran across this song again with additional Harry Belefonte lyrics:

No more grief and pain for me
I heard from Heaven today
Yes, my Lord's gonna set me free
I heard from Him today

 

On my way to the promised land
I heard from Him today
God's gonna give me His right hand
I heard from Heaven today

 

In these verses there was a lifting of an experience of a world weariness as the stars fell down. This is where the falling stars indicated a long-established order had reached an end.  And once this understanding was voiced I knew that at times this had welled up in me as well. Perhaps not as strongly as some, but when the struggle between what is and what should be felt too great in my everyday life these lyrics contained another moment of truth for me.

 

Since then I have explored the wisdom of the blues as well and this end-of-the-world triumphant exuberance I heard in all these versions of the spiritual was echoed in Blind Willie Johnson's Jesus Is Coming Soon about the 1918 pandemic. I had never thought of this song with as associated with Advent or that the lyric Jesus is coming soon could be combined with the birth of Jesus as well as the second coming. Yet that became meaningful and real today.

 

Great disease was mighty and the people were sick everywhere.
It was an epidemic, it floated through the air.

Well, the news was presented to the people, "You better close your public schools."
"And to prevent the death piles building, you better close your churches too."

 

We done told you, our God's done warned you,
Jesus coming soon.
We done told

 

Pastor Dave's sermon opened up this unique response to scripture that pulled in my individual past and present musical associations, and my lived present and the historical past, together with all my fears and hopes for the future.

 

Together again indeed.