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Welcome to the Comfortable Words.
Last week a dear friend and I led a small retreat for women out in Logan County, about an hour from home. We called it Bon Hiver, which is French for “good winter,” and wanted to create some space to help people move into winter in a way that was prayerful and intentional and quiet. Every year, whether we’re ready or not, the light begins to wane, and autumn comes slowly at first, and then quickly, and often the light is gone before we have become attuned to its going. So before the dark really settled in, we gathered. We held a time of silence from Friday night into Saturday afternoon, and slept, walked trails, sat by the fire, laughed.
My co-leader and I both have dealt with significant loss over the past couple of years, and while very different, each has impacted us deeply. So a part of Bon Hiver, if I’m being honest, was the two of us working to steward our own experience of wintering, not just hosting something for others.
Over the weekend we moved through three movements: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. And I want to share a little bit again about orientation today, because I’ve been meditating on that word a lot. It seems like so many of us exist in constant disorientation.
So as we begin, a question for you:
How are you doing today?
Is there anywhere in life that feels upside down or sideways?
Slow down a little bit. Take a breath. Invite God to be with you in the midst of wherever you are.
The comfortable words this week are from the Gospel of John, chapter 16. Jesus is speaking to his friends on the night before he dies, and they’re very familiar to us. Jesus says:
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)
I notice so much that Jesus says both of these things in one breath. You’ll have trouble, and I have overcome. He doesn’t say one and then offer a pregnant pause. He doesn’t say one now and then the other in years. He says both all together: trouble now and peace now, all at the same moment.
And as I begin to think more and more about this, I begin to understand that this is the primary experience of being a Christian. We exist in a state of chronic, oriented disorientation. We can be turned all around, feel upside down, be going sideways, and yet somehow we are always attuned in the presence of God.
The word orient comes from Latin, and it meant “to rise up,” and it was said of the sun. So to jump from there, the sun rises in the east, and orient came to mean the lands to the east of wherever you happen to be standing. And then it shifted into buildings, so for a while to orient a church was to build it facing eastward, toward the sunrise.
So when we talk about oriented, we’re talking about having our attention turned in the direction the sun comes up. And here’s the thing I keep coming back to. It doesn’t matter if it’s dark as midnight. If you’re turned to the sunrise, you’re properly oriented to see it. You’re facing the right point of reference, whether or not you can see anything at all in front of you.
And I think about something else that’s tucked inside that word. It’s that if oriented means being turned to the sunrise, then it’s implicit that it was just night, because you can’t have sunrise without one. Night is built into orientation, which tells us something about needing the quiet and inactivity of night and sleep and rest to remain oriented. So the dark isn’t the enemy of being oriented. It’s just a part of how it works.
That’s the first half of what Jesus said. In this world you will have trouble. It will be dark. He doesn’t pretend otherwise.
Now here’s where I think many of us go wrong, including me. When we feel disoriented, upside down or sideways, our instinct is to get up, to strain, to find east. We work. We read another book. We add another practice. We try harder to pray. And honestly, we’re the most overfed Christians in the history of the world. We have more books, more sermons, more podcasts, more information than anyone who has ever lived. What we do not have is silence. So no wonder we’re so disoriented.
Too much of Christian faith has become reduced to straining, to productivity, to effort. I once had a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani tell me that he thought God has a very hard time with highly effective people.
So I’m learning that what God wants is our childlike devotion, so that we can receive his joy, receive his attention, receive his love. And you’ll note that childlike devotion is not an achievement. You can’t really be effective at it.
In other words, you’re not the subject of the sentence. God is. You’re the object. He’s the grown-up in the room. You’re the child. You’re the lily in the field, a sparrow. You’re a grain of wheat, a grain of sand on the shore, which means that you are very, very, very small, and also very, very, very important.
The movement of orientation is simply one of becoming right-sized and remembering who you are in relationship to God.
Often as a pastor I used to hear people say, all the time, “I just need to…” And then they would name some sort of religious duty, like: I just need to pray more. I just need to get back into the Word. I just need to get my act together.
But let me invite you to take those words out of your mind this week. Let me remind you that you’re not here to impress anyone with your amazing religious fervor. You’re here to remember that you are a child, you are dust, you are in Christ.
And because you are in Christ, everywhere you face is oriented to him.
You are in Christ, meaning you are always properly oriented, even when you forget it, even when you can’t recognize it, even when you feel upside down or sideways, even when it’s midnight and you’re turned around and nothing looks familiar. You are kept in the care and keeping of Christ.
That’s the second half of what Jesus said. Take heart, I have overcome the world. He’s the one who’s done the overcoming, not us, never us. The orientation is his, and we are found in him.
When you stop straining and get still, you get oriented, but also things get stirred up. Sometimes in the quietness it feels a bit windy, like the wind stirring up leaves on the street in front of me. You start to feel some feelings. Maybe you remember some things. When we get still, we become aware sometimes of a deep sense of unsettledness, anxiousness or anger or grief, or you just feel alone. And usually what we do in that moment is we distract ourselves. We read, we turn on a podcast, we watch TV.
But I wonder what it would be like to simply sit with Jesus and watch the wind together. What would it be like to exist in both the trouble and the overcoming? You don’t have to tidy up all the debris. You don’t have to make it stop. And you don’t have to be in it alone.
When we get quiet, sometimes we feel emotional, and sometimes when we feel emotional, we get a little nervous. Our emotions are a bit like carbonation in a soda bottle. Life shakes and shakes and shakes, but we keep that lid on tight. Stillness, though, because God is present in it and because God is safe, helps to unscrew that lid. And sometimes when the lid comes off, what is inside comes out pretty strong. That’s not a sign that something’s gone wrong. It’s a sign that something needed to be released. You don’t have to be afraid of that, or rush to tighten a lid back down. You can trust God to sit with you in the darkness, in the trouble, in the night. And you can trust that, just like carbonated water, that spilling won’t last forever. It slows down and it settles, and you learn over time that you can sit with the Lord in that space quietly, without being afraid.
The psalmist writes in Psalm 130:
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. (Psalm 130:5-6)
This is our orientation. A watchman does not make the morning come. He cannot hurry it, and he cannot yet see what the light will bring, but he stays tuned toward the place where it will rise, and it does rise. You do not have to make the morning come either. Whether you feel disoriented or upside down, you can recall that because you are in the presence of God, and because you are found in him, you can allow yourself to experience orientation.
Where in your life are you straining to get oriented?
Why are you working so hard to figure everything out?
And what might it be like to sit still instead, and let yourself be found in the care and keeping of God?
As we end our time today, let me pray for you. You can place your hand over your heart as a sign of receiving a blessing, or make the sign of the cross.
The light has lessened, and we long for its coming. Lord, bless us these dark days.
The field lies fallow, and we do not yet see its promise. Lord, bless us in the waiting.
The trees are barren, and we look forward to their flowering. Lord, give us vision for what will be.
This winter, let us rest in you. This winter, let us be revived. This winter, let us know you as good, and as God, and as ours.
Orient us, Lord.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.