A Sermon
Presented by Rev. Merlin T. Batt,
Interim Pastor of St. Matthews’ United Church of Christ
At Maiden, North Carolina,
On the Third Sunday of Advent,
December 17, 2006

Scripture Lessons: Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7
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I read this week an interesting article about a freshman course taught at Duke University. The course had to do with the search for life’s meaning. And, as you might imagine, the students filled the large lecture hall in anticipation of getting help with an issue which typically begins to demand attention around this stage in life. At the first class, the professor put the students put through an exercise known as “The Fable of the Deserted Island.” Rather than merely tell you about this exercise and its results, I thought I would lead you through it this morning. Are you willing?

I want you to imagine that you are on a voyage of discovery in the 18th century. You are on a sailing vessel somewhere in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds if not thousands of miles from civilization. A great storm arises, and after a tumultuous night of riding the mountainous waves and being thrown this way and that by hurricane force winds, your ship is torn apart and eventually sinks.

All on board are lost, except for you! You cling to some planking from the ship’s deck for many hours. Eventually you wash up on the shore of an island. After some exploration, you discover to your great dismay that there are no other human beings on the island, but to your relief and amazement there is plenty of fresh water and ample food, enough to keep you alive indefinitely. The weather is mild, so you have no need for protection against the cold or the heat. There is an abundance of raw material with which to build a shelter against the frequent tropical rain.

In other words, all you need to maintain your physical well-being is there on the island. But you are utterly alone, isolated, left to your own resources, and you are in a position where you and you alone are responsible for putting things together in such a way that you will have a reason to wake up in the morning.

So, here’s the question: In this situation, what would you do for the rest of your life? Think about that! Stranded on that deserted island, what would you do for the rest of your life?

Well, let me tell you what some of the students at Duke said in answer to this question. Some said that they would get to work building a boat. Others said they would try to adapt to their situation as best they could – maybe take up shell collecting and classifying, maybe write poetry on the back of a palm frond, or maybe just sit and watch the sun rise and set each day. Then there were some who would find their situation so horrible, the prospect of being alone for the rest of their lives so unthinkable, that they would simply take their own lives.

I admit it’s a far-fetched idea, being washed ashore on some far-off, deserted island and having to live there the rest of your life alone. But isn’t there something about this scenario that rings true to life, true to your life, my life? We are alone in this world. Surrounding ourselves with people, busying ourselves with work and volunteer activities, scurrying about keeping things straight and clean, going on vacations, watching television, listening to recorded music, reading, surfing the Internet, and staying occupied with hobbies and interests, we avoid thinking about the fact that we are alone in this world – both in the sense of all of us together alone on this spinning blue planet in the vastness of interstellar space, and in the sense of each one of us alone on our little journey through time. 

The awareness of our aloneness, our lostness,  sometimes dawns on us when we awaken in the middle of the night and lay there in the quiet dark thinking, or when we’re in the midst of a crowd of strangers and feel out of place, or when we lose a job or retire from our life’s work, or when our children grow up and move out to live their own lives, or when we become ill, or when someone who is much beloved to us dies – a husband, a wife, a child, a parent, a brother or sister, a dear friend. These and other experiences allow us to peek behind the curtain of our suspiciously full and busy lives, and see the truth which hides there, the truth we would prefer to remain hidden – that you and I are alone in this world, lost, as if we lived on an island. I have a hunch we can understand more about addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, work and other things by seeing them as vain attempts to hide from this unpleasant truth of our human aloneness, a truth we must one day face in all its terrible reality if we are to mature.

The Spanish philosopher and essayist Jose Ortega y Gasset puts it this way:
  
The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from  fantasy and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost (and alone). And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. Whoever accepts this has already begun to find himself to be on firm ground…He who does not feel himself lost…never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.

Well, if that’s the way it is, if looking life “in the face” and finding oneself alone and lost is a necessary step in becoming fully human, in finding for oneself “firm ground” on which to stand, then we must go on to ask, If that be true, then wherein is our hope?

For an answer, put yourself back on that deserted island in the Pacific for a moment. There in your aloneness, your lostness, your hope is found neither within yourself, nor is it found on the island. Your only hope is in the possibility of something, or someone coming to you from beyond. Your hope is dependent upon something or someone from beyond the confines of your little island world coming to save you. In other words, your hope in this life is not to be found within yourself, nor is it to be found by merely busying yourself with the business of this world. That is to say, hope is not found in oneself; hope is not found in others, and hope is not found in the things of this world. So, wherein is our hope?

Were you listening earlier when I read these words from the prophet Zephaniah, words spoken to a desperate people alone and lost in exile? Through the prophet, God spoke to these exiles, saying, I will bring you home. Then did you hear what St. Paul wrote to the Philippians? From a prison cell, Paul wrote to them and called them to live joyfully, free of anxiety, and prayerfully because, he said, The Lord is near.  And if I had read you the Gospel lesson assigned for today, which I didn’t because last Sunday I promised you I wouldn’t (!), you would have heard John the Baptist speaking about the coming of the Messiah who will deliver his people.

So, according to our scripture, wherein is our hope? Our hope, our only hope, is in God Almighty reaching out to us, bringing light to our darkness. Our hope is in God coming to us over a bridge from the Creator to His creation, a bridge which we ourselves cannot build.This, my friends, this is the grand and majestic claim of the Christian faith, a claim we can only begin to receive when we “come up against our own reality.” This claim of God’s coming to us we can hear when we realize how alone and lost we really are. The Gospel is based on the news that God Almighty has reached out to us who are lost and alone, built a bridge to His creation, come to us, and dared even to become one of us, one with us in Jesus Christ, so that we no longer must remain lost or alone.

We have a name for what God did in coming to us. Do you know what it is? Incarnation! And we have a name for the place where God did it. Do you know the name of that place? Bethlehem! That’s what prompted Philips Brooks, the Pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church in Copley Square, Boston, to write these words:

 O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie;
 Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by:
 Yet in thy dark streets shineth the Everlasting Light;
 The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

 For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above,
 While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.
 O morning stars, together proclaim the holy birth!
 And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth!

 How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!
 So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven;
 No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
 Where meek souls will receive Him, still the dear Christ enters in.

 O Holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray;
 Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
 We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
 O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

Wherein is our hope!