Sense of Direction
Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 24:36-44
The Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 

The 2nd International “Come to Your Senses” Conference was held in May of this year in Toronto.  This gathering primarily focused on opening the sensory world to children and adults with complex disabilities.  I believe that this includes all of us. We all have dis-abilities, barriers, challenges, distortions of perception that close us off from the sensory world. Sometimes, to protect ourselves, we close ourselves off from the world.  The organizers of the Toronto conference describe reality this way:

“Life is a sensory experience.  Every moment, we take in sensory information from our bodies and the world around us.  Are you too cold?  Is there too much noise?  Do you like the sensation of a certain fabric against your skin?  What about the smells around you?  Do you like what you see?

“Our brains are programmed naturally to organize and integrate the sensory information we get through our senses and make it meaningful.  This is called sensory integration.  Integration allows us to respond ...appropriately and efficiently to the specific sensory inputs we receive.”
“Come to Our Senses” is our theme for Advent, as we prepare for the celebration of Christ’s birth.

Advent ... the season of four weeks leading up to Christmas ... is filled with all kinds of expectations, information and messages. Input both sensory and subliminal can be hard enough to perceive, let alone to integrate.

It is the brain’s job to integrate messages received through the senses.  But it is the soul in community ... as a matter of mind and heart and being... that integrates and gives meaning to our lives.

I hope that as we “come to our senses” this Advent Season, we might in some way integrate ancient stories, our stories, news and new experiences into patterns of meaning that will strengthen and empower our lives for the sake of the world that God so loves.

We begin with words of the prophet Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
The prophet brings words of God’s promise to a people who long for restoration, who hunger for peace ...

We are such a people.  There is an urgency in Advent.  Not the urgency of threat or fear ... though we live in threatening and fear-filled times.  There is an urgency of promise being fulfilled here and now, the urgency of vision being realized if we can perceive and participate in it. There is an urgency in Advent of clarity rather than crisis.  

The Gospel urges us to wake up, to be watchful, to pay attention, to be alert, to be prepared for the coming of Christ, the fulfillment of God’s promises, the coming of God’s kindom... within us, here and now. We enter Advent with all the urgency of a child waiting for Christmas morning – for a gift of great joy for all peoples!

I’ve share with some of you a story of our youngest son Andrew at Christmas.  When he was five years old we had to make a rule that he could not come in to wake us on Christmas morning until he could see the sun.  That night, long before dawn, I went into Andrew’s room, and saw him sitting at the window, silently staring intently into the dark. Waiting.

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the end of war and the establishment of peace. He announces a vision of “the mountain of the Lord’s house” being established as the highest of the mountains ...”  He calls the people to walk in the light, to join in a pilgrimage to this holy place.

That is the urgent invitation that comes to us ... to sense our direction as heading always, in the best ways we can discern and understand, toward that path and place of peace, and wholeness, and healing.

I am convicted by the 95 United Methodist Bishops that joined in a statement last month, repenting what they called their silent “complicity” in the “unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.”  Although church leadership has opposed the Iraq war in the past, this is the first time that individual bishops have confessed to a personal failure to publicly challenge the build up to the war.

The Bishops said, in part, “We confess our preoccupation with institutional enhancement and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die, while poverty increases and preventable diseases go untreated.”

Our Gospel text from Matthew is filled with bursts of story that call us to stay awake here and now, to be ready, because no one knows the hour or date of the fulfillment of God’s promise. Matthew describes people at the time of Noah – eating, drinking, marrying –not because their actions were wrong, but because they went about their “limited agenda” and did not perceive what was taking place.

The Bishops’ public words of repentance were an acknowledgement of a mistaken sense of direction, and a commitment to move in a new way. They pledged to pray daily for the end of the war, for American and Iraqi victims and for our leaders to find “truth, humility and policies of peace through justice.”

A United Nations report stated that over the past twelve years, well over 2 million child soldiers were killed and 6 million permanently disabled.  The report names nine countries whose governments conscript and use children in combat.  Some of these children are as young as eight years old.  Eight of the nine nations receive military assistance from the United States: Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda. A Senate bill, 1175, has been in committee since April of this year, introduced by Progressive Democrat Dick Durbin and Conservative Republican Sam Brownback.  This bill would restrict military aid and help “disarm, demobilize and rehabilitate child soldiers...”  May our children’s song, welcoming us to “Hope for the children,” call us to action on behalf of children around the world.

If we do not pray for peace, if we do not pray for those whose lives are lost, or pay the cost, if we cannot identify nations on a map to which we send our sons and daughters, to which we send weapons, let us repent.

This Advent, may our spiritual practice of Advent Calendars include reading and praying the daily news.  If I am not able to articulate the history and current realities of conflict, or participate in the democratic process, while my money is spent to arm and make wars, if I do not make peace, I need God’s instruction to change direction to paths of peace.

There is urgency to our sense of direction. To listen, and see, and feel the truth of what is going on around us ... to change our direction to move toward the “holy mountain of the house of God” where war is no longer the inevitable instrument of human will and power, where instruments of war are transformed into tools to feed a hungry world.

A dear friend, Wes Yamaka created a lithograph of an ancient Chinese saying ... “Unless we change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.”

As we come to the table we pay urgent attention to our sense of direction ... and with whatever steps we can take ... move in the direction of God’s holy mountain.