Sermon     “Embracing Chaos”

The Rev. Rali Weaver

Given the 6^th of December 2009

First Church and Parish in Dedham- Unitarian Universalist

How many of you have had the feeling of satisfaction that comes from turning chaos into order? After watching Holly Fare Preparations this week I have been astounded at how many of you it takes to take a tangled mess of donations and turn it into a magnificent display of goods. And today those of you who are willing and able to help will, after worship take what is left of the magnificent display and turn it back into a chaotic mess to be recycled, thrown away or for someone to pick up and organize again.

Turning chaos into order is something we as humans are called upon to do.

We make gardens, budgets, lists, clean our houses and do countless other things that begin with a mess and end in order.

Yesterday I spent the day doing dishes for the Holly Fare Luncheon and I hate to admit (for fear that one of you might want to steel the job away from me) that I loved every second of it. There was a rhythm to what I was doing. Every few minutes someone would bring me a dirty dish or spoon or pot or pan and I would wash it or rinse it for the dishwasher and in an orderly fashion and a timely way the chaos of the dishes would become clean and in neat piles again. In the work that I do I rarely have that sense of completion or of putting things right again and so cleaning the dishes and putting things aright at the end of the day gave my heart much pleasure.

I believe this sense of making order out of chaos is what Advent is in many ways about.

If you weren’t already aware today is the second Sunday in the Christian Holiday of Advent.

Advent is the time when Christians prepare their hearts for the coming of the Light or the Good News of the Savior. If we were in a Christian Church we would be reading the scriptures as it is prescribed for today from the lectionary. From the book of Malachi we would read how the world was in chaos and God’s people did not follow his statuettes and would blaspheme against him and so God in an never-ending attempt to reconcile the people to his will would send a messenger to prepare peoples hearts, turning Chaos into order.

In the book of Luke we read of just such a messenger who goes into the region around the Jordon River (which was basically a wilderness) and encourages people to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, preparing the way for the Lord by “make(ing) his pathways straight. (Smoothing) Every valley… and every mountain and hill … and (making) the crooked… straight, and the rough ways… smooth (so that) all (people) could be saved.”

In the light of these scriptures it seems appropriate to say that Advent is a time of reconciling the darkness to the light, of acknowledging the chaos and regaining our footing to order.

Even Hanukkah, which begins next Sunday, represents the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it’s desecration, celebrating the eight days of oil left for the celebration. Celebrating the miracle of light in the midst of difficult times.

We could safely say that this time of year we are called to in the midst of the Chaos to find order. I would go so far to say that order is in fact something that all of the world’s religious invite us to.

We being Unitarian Universalists, and not bound by rituals tying us to the past, I believe it is good and right for us to examine today what it might be like for us to – instead of trying to find order this season– to train our hearts to embrace chaos.

As rational beings I believe we are seduced by the idea that if we input conventional matter we can always produce linear, predictable changes. We plan events such as the Holly Fair or even this worship service and we can expect certain outcomes. If we set things up a certain way, serve certain food we can predict that we will receive a certain outcome. If we sing the certain hymns, if we follow a simple routine in worship we can predict that worship on Sunday morning will leave you feeling a certain way. Following a scripted plan, even a scripted religious observance such as Advent or Hanukah each year can offer us a reasonable assurance for success.

I believe there is one problem with using our rational minds to predict outcomes in this way- and that is as human beings our capacity for growth and change is neither linear nor can be prescribed. In order to adapt to the ever-changing reality of human potential we must make room for a bit more chaos in our plans.

It only took standing at the doorway as the Holly Fair commenced yesterday for me to see that chaos is an essential element in the Holly Fair production.

On simple example is that the Fair is advertised with a sign on our green for over a month as starting at 9 am. There were flyers all around town, and it is posted on our website and published in the paper all as starting at 9 am. But every year I am told, without fail at 8 am-- people begin forming lines to enter the Parish House. We set the expectation. The Fair begins at 9. We can enforce this year after year and there will always be some people who must arrive at 8. Someone explained to me that this is the nature of things when you are dealing with collectors and shop owners. They want to be the first to pick over the goods and so they arrive at 8 am and wait.

So perhaps this isn’t a great example but in looking at the faces of those who entered our parish house yesterday I could see that shop owners or not some were in a hurry, some were there to browse, some were looking for friends and some were looking to make a friend. Peter who watched more faces than I enter the Parish House yesterday, said that several of the people needed to be cheered up and Janet mentioned that the Holly Fair is more of a community tradition than a simple fundraiser and I would have to agree.

What is done at the Holly Fair is a prescribed fundraiser with generations of tradition behind it but what is received and what is gained is far less predictable.

There are the jokes that are told by John during the set up and the others that are told by Richard on the day of the event that may leave a worker or a buyer smiling. There are the smiles and kindnesses exchanged that we cannot measure. There is the way the grill cheese is cooked to perfection or arranged on the plate that makes it something special or not. It is the way the cookies are displayed on the baked goods table that makes them sell. We can measure our production in the outcomes of profit but it is something as unpredictable and unquantifiable as the spirit that we bring to this work that makes this event a success or a failure.

Life is something more than perscibed actions and predictable outcomes. Learning to train our hearts to allow time and room for the things we cannot predict or expect is an essential element of spiritual growth.

In the Dictionary- Chaos is defined as a state of complete disorder, lacking predictability.

In Greek Mythology though Chaos is the original dark void from which everything else is created. This Greek Myth is mirrored in the creation stories of countless cultures even the Jewish and Christian traditions that explain creation by saying that all of existence is created out of a nameless and formless void. This story is actually confirmed by science in the Big Bang Theory that refers to the idea that the Universe has expanded from a hot and dense mass approximately 13.7 billion years ago and continues to expand to this day.

If we were to attempt to embrace Chaos I believe we would need to reconcile these two ideas - one of chaos being complete disorder and the other of chaos being the nameless void. Living comfortably within the nothingness and the everything at once-ness is what would be required for us to truly embrace life.

One Sunday (when I was the Director of Religious Education in San Francisco) I was out of sync with the service and let the children out of a class too early. Having nothing else for them to do we just stood in the hallway looking at each other. That was until one of the restless students picked up a name nametag from the greeter’s table and said, “I am going to be Bob”. She then picked up a marker and wrote in large letters “Bob”. The idea caught on like wildfire and all of a sudden there were six or seven “Bob's". Each claiming to be “Bob 1” or “Bob 2” and so on. Only one of the students chose a different Name. He was Mr. Maxwell.

After a short amount of time it registered to me that pretending to be someone else was a rather noisy activity and church wasn’t going to let out any time soon, so all the Bob’s and Mr. Maxwell and a few parents and I moved to the church playground. The Bob’s and Mr. Maxwell kept up the charade for some time. Wandering around the play structure they kept saying things like “Bob 2 can we go down the slide?” with Bob 2 answering with something like, “I don’t know you will have to ask Bob 1”. And then Bob 1 responding with, “I don’t know let’s ask Mr. Maxwell.”

I am certain that some of you might find lots of things wrong with this scenario. Surely the children could have been doing something more productive with their Sunday school time. Surely they wasted a bunch of nametags that could have been used for real people named Bob or Mr. Maxwell. And all of that all of that is true but I bring this story up because that unplanned unpredictable event was the most fun I think I have ever had with Children in all my many years of teaching. It was fun because it was so unexpected and it was fun because the kids were just being kids. I repeat this story to you today because I think it represents a perfect example of the things we cannot plan but must leave room in our hearts this holiday season.

If nothing else I hope this advent season reminds us all of the importance of having fun, of being silly, and of leaving room for things that are different.

May we hold loosely to our traditions allowing room for anything to happen so that chaos will become a welcome guest at every event whether we invite it or not. And let us approach this New Year with the knowledge that chaos is a natural and liberating part of our lives and in so doing more fully embrace life.