“Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.”

 I first read those words about 20 years ago, and I haven’t been able to get them out of my head since.  They’re not from the Bible; they’re from an ancient Chinese spiritual text called the Tao Te Ching.  But  reading them, as a Christian, I felt they spoke to my experience.  Of course, I was in school, at the time, and ceasing to study sounded pretty appealing!

 In a moment, I’m going to read you the rest of that passage from the Tao Te Ching, so you can see what you think.  But first, I want to set the scene a little bit.

 Here we are, on the first Sunday of Advent.  The Christmas tree lots are doing a booming business.  The malls and streets are all decorated in red and green, and holiday music is blaring cheerily everywhere you go.  “Happy Holidays!” and “Merry Christmas!” people are saying:  everybody—even those who don’t celebrate Christmas—thinks the Christmas season is here.

 And we followers of Jesus are gathered together.  Our worship space is decorated, yes—but the color is . . . blue.  We’re not singing Christmas carols.  And we’re reading Bible passages of longing, and lament, and doomsday predictions.  Is there some memo that we didn’t get?!  What is wrong with us?

 Okay, that’s the scene.  Now here’s that bit from the Tao Te Ching:

 Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.

Is there a difference between yes and no?
Is there a difference between good and evil?
Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense!
Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial feast of the ox.
In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace,
But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am.
Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile,
I am alone, without a place to go.

Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.
I am a fool. O, yes! I am confused.
[Others] are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
[Others] are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea,
Without direction, like the restless wind.

Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.*

 Do you get it?  “Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.”  Wouldn’t it be easier to just give in, and stop resisting, stop asking questions, stop doing things differently, stop being weird?  We could let ourselves be swept up in a tide of red and green.  We could play Christmas carols, and be happy, happy, happy.  We could talk only about Baby Jesus, and comfort—not about repentance, and suffering, and death.  Good grief!  We could finally be normal.

 Except we can’t ever be normal again.  We are different.

 There are experiences that change you.  The Bible readings for today were written by people who knew that.  There’s a reading from Isaiah, written to a people who had been exiled from their home, and wondered where God was:  Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!  There’s a psalm, written in another time by a people who had also known exile:  Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.  There’s a reading from one of Paul’s letters to the people in Corinth—we’ll get back to that one in a moment.  And there’s a gospel reading from Mark, written to the early church, which had already experienced horrible things, and needed encouragement:  don’t give up hope; Jesus knew that all of this would happen; keep awake; you will see the Son of Humanity coming.

 We are different.  We have experienced things that have changed us.  We were asleep, but now we are awake.  We are different.  We know that Carlleta McIntire died recently, and her family is grieving.  We know that people in Darfur, and Congo, and Iraq, and many other far-away places, are suffering things we would rather not know about.  We know that people and animals are imprisoned, and shamed, and tortured, and abused, every day.  We know that right here in Napa, the food bank and homeless shelter serve hundreds of people.  We may want to turn off all that knowledge—to give up learning, if you will—and comfort ourselves with the happy-happy message.  But it’s really too late for us to go back to sleep.  We have been changed, awakened.  Our hearts have begun to open.  We are different.

 These days, the mornings are a little wintry.  You know that feeling you get, when you’re warm in your bed, and you wake up?  Maybe the alarm sounds, and you just want to toss it across the room, and go back to sleep.  Sometimes we have that feeling at other times in our life.  But (except sometimes in our beds in the morning) going back to sleep really isn’t an option for us.  We are awake.

 We know that, hey, in this wounded world, you can’t have happy without sad.  We know that we can’t have a Baby Jesus without a crucifixion.  In fact, we know this important thing:  that the holy birth, the incarnation of God, is about God’s entering into our experience, including and maybe especially our suffering.  We know that the Christmas message isn’t a divine “There, there;” it’s more like the Holy One’s saying, “I am there.”  And in this case, the “there” isn’t necessarily some cozy living room; it’s a filthy back alley, or a manure-filled barn.

 We have experienced things that have changed us.  We have encountered not only the Child Jesus, but the grown Jesus, who loves this whole world so much that he won’t stop challenging us to wake up!  “If you want peace, work for it; if you want justice, fight for it; if you want love, demonstrate it.”**

 We are different.  We have encountered, in this Christ, the Holy One, who doesn’t look away from our wounds, or cover them with happy niceness, but instead heals them, from the inside out.  We have become acquainted with a strange, deep joy, which is so much different from mere happiness.  We are nourished by grace.  We are different, because of that.

 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Paul wrote that.  You are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait, Napa Valley Lutheran Church.  So why pretend?  Why pretend that you don’t have something here that the rest of the world needs?  Why pretend that our faith is one-dimensional, that God hasn’t entered into our pain just as much as our gladness?  We don’t need to be afraid to be different.

 The Holy One woke us up.  Keep awake.  God is faithful, and will strengthen you to the end.  We have all the spiritual gifts we need, as we wait.  We are nourished by the great mother.

 So, we’ll march to our own drummer during this season we call Advent.  We may listen happily to Christmas carols through the season—I, personally, plan to play a few of them—but in our worship, we’re going to make room for the whole range of human experience:  fear, and pain, and lament, as well as joy.   We will practice waiting and hoping.  I hope we’ll stay awake!

Here’s a benediction from the Franciscans, for different people like us:

 May God bless you with DISCOMFORT ...
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with ANGER ...
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless you with TEARS ...
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough FOOLISHNESS...
to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Amen