A Baby Story and a Wolf or Two

Sermon                                            The Dover Church

December 9, 2012 – 1^st Advent                  

Scripture: Luke 1: 68-79, Luke 3: 1-6

Being in the church season of babies, I'd like to share with you a story about babies which I heard from Thich Nhat Hanh, a famous Buddhist teacher.

A mother has a beloved child, the light of her life. The mother is in the kitchen cooking a special meal. Her parents are coming. Her baby is sleeping in a crib in the nursery. The baby starts crying. The mother hears the crying. What does she do? She has one pot boiling, another warming, a pan simmering, a timer going on the oven, a pile of vegetables on the cutting board, food on her hands and her apron is soiled. What does she do? She hears her baby crying. She is very busy. Everything has to come off at a certain time to be just right, and her parents will be arriving shortly. What does the mother do? Her baby is crying.

The mother goes to her baby. She sees her angry, little baby in the crib, reaches down, picks up the baby, pulls her close in her arms so that the baby's head is nestled next to her cheek while resting on her shoulder. "There, there, baby. It's OK. Mummy's here," she coos. "Everything is going to be alright. Mummy loves you." She holds the baby as she rocks back and forth, pacing around the nursery. "There, there, my beloved baby. Mummy's here. Everything is going to be alright. Mummy loves you." She sings a little song that the baby loves.

As she comforts her baby, her full attention is on her beloved baby who is really quite angry. The mother knows her baby better than anyone else. She has seen her baby angry like this before. The mother feels for a temperature. She feels the diaper. She pats the baby's back for gas. She looks at her watch to see how long it has been since the baby last ate. All the while, she holds her beloved baby in her arms, rocks and walks, sings and coos, "there, there, baby. Mummy's here. Everything is going to be alright. Mummy loves you."

Eventually, because of her focused attention, she figures out why her baby is so angry. She was lonely and wanted to be held. She had a fever and needed some medicine. Her diaper needed changing. Her stuffed animal had fallen out of the crib and needed to be put back. She was hungry. Take your pick. It will probably be something else next time. Mummy knows now and is going to make everything alright.

All of us have an angry baby within us, a seed of anger which is just waiting for the right conditions to shoot up. That baby just starts crying and screaming from time to time. What do we do? What can we do? Even prize fighters, linebackers and hockey players don't want to be angry all the time. Being unable to control our anger leads to unhappiness and bad health. We know.

We have to be the mother to our screaming baby. We could do nothing, because we are too busy with important things, but the baby will just scream louder. Perhaps the baby will exhaust itself crying and go back to sleep, but that anger will smolder and be all the more eager to erupt for not having been held, erupt about something else or, even worse for both the mother and the baby, become dispositional and habitual.

We can go in and shake our angry baby in frustration, yelling into her little face, "Stop crying, baby. I'm very busy. I have had a long day. Stop crying, baby." The baby may stop crying out of fear and astonishment... love is violent? The baby may learn that anger and violence are normative ways to get what you want.

Or, we can do the only thing that will really help. We can love our angry baby with compassion and mercy and do as the mother in our story does; bring our full attention to our angry, little baby; tell our angry little baby that we love him as we sooth the emotions and discover why our baby is so angry. We can get to know ourselves, where this seed of anger comes from and what causes this anger to flare up, just as the mother knows why her baby cries. Only with attentive and compassionate love can we bring our angry baby back to wholeness, health and happiness.

With practice, through which we gain self-knowledge, self-compassion, and patience to not just fly off the handle or rumble angrily around through life lacking self-awareness, we can respond to our angry baby every time he or she starts crying, "Hello, old friend." Or "Hello, Mummy or Daddy who taught me to be angry as a child." Or "Hello, old school mates who treated me so meanly in recess all those years ago. Let's spend some time together."

By now you may be wondering what the point of this story and lesson are and what they have to do with Advent. Every year during Advent, we hear these incredible lessons of hope and possibility, of God's presence being born in our lives, of promises fulfilled, of deliverance from that which oppresses us, of knowledge of salvation: the way of salvation, the way of forgiveness, of light in our darkness and fear of  death, of guiding our feet into the way of peace, all so that we in turn might do the one thing we were created to do: to serve God without fear in holiness and righteousness, standing before God’s very face all our days.

We hear the words, we sing the songs, but I at least, until I got to know my angry baby, felt as if I have been handed a shovel at the foot of Mt. Washington and was told, now we’re going to level this thing out. This is just another way of saying that it’s hard to imagine light and salvation, and particularly peace, peace in ourselves, peace in our families, peace in our community, peace in the world.  Most of us are just so far from that that even bothering hoping for it seems to be a waste of spiritual and emotional energy.

Maybe I am being overly dramatic, but I do think about these things, God’s promises to us and the person of Jesus as my Savior, seriously and continuously. I do try very hard to be honest with myself about myself, who and how I really am. God does not ask for blind optimism or willful ignorance of reality about how things really are in the world. That is not faith. In all my thinking and praying and observing and reflecting, I cannot help but see, to quote John quoting Isaiah, all the steep valleys, all the high mountains, the twists and turns in the path, all the rough spots and pot holes standing between me and where I am in the lived reality of my life, and living the salvation of God. And that’s just me. God’s promise is not just to me, but to all flesh, all creation. If I can’t get there, it just doesn’t seem remotely reasonable to think that such salvation will come upon the world in my lifetime.

But we can begin today with the seed of anger in each of us which is both the source and the nutrition of all of the anger in the world. All of the pain in the world, whether it is violence, hunger, fear, or oppression, are all at work in each and all of our hearts and it is there that we must first confront them. “Hello, old friend. Shall we sit down and talk?” That feeling of being threatened by enemies, that worry about never having enough, that pain of having been born too tall or too short, too thin or too fat, too smart or too dumb, too rich or too poor, too loved or not loved enough, whatever it was that gave birth to our own angry baby. Because until each of us makes peace with that angry baby within us, our energy will emanate from each of us, multiply with the energy of our neighbors, and rampage. The truth about God’s promises is their realization begins within each one of us.

Switching metaphors, "An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times." He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.

Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"

The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."

When we hear John inviting us to prepare the way of the Lord, it can sound like a voice crying in the wilderness, until we start caring for our angry baby, until we stop feeding the wolf of anger and start feeding the wolf of love. John uses the word repentance, which is a turn off for many of us, but it just means turning ourselves around so that we can see the new thing God wants to do in our lives and through us in the world. Not to stress you out with another responsibility, but the future of creation is waiting to be born in you right now.