The Rev. Rob Fisher
St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley
Readings for Advent IV: Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—Amen.

On Monday I had an awful experience.

Before going into it, though, you have to know a little background.

Neither Sarah nor I have lived in a place with a dishwasher for a long time.  So, when we moved here in March, we were pretty excited to have one in our home.

I did noticed early on that after running it, all the little bits of food tended to still be on the dishes and silverware exactly where they had been when we put them in.  Only now, those little bits of food were of course totally clean.

Naturally, we started a practice of scrubbing everything pretty well before putting it in—scrubbing it with hot, soapy water—before really washing them in the dishwasher.

We also noticed that after running the dishes, they were always still wet—soaking wet.  No problem.  We would just open up the dishwasher and let them dry out for a while before toweling them off and putting them away.

Also it always smelled funny.

But we were happy to have a dishwasher.

Unfortunately, about a week ago, as you might have expected, the dishwasher final completely conked out.  It just stopped working entirely.

Now, all that I’ve just described so far—none of that was the bad part.

The awful thing that happened on Monday, my day off, was the experience of going to the stores to shop for a new dishwasher.

Shopping at this time of year can take a lot out of you, especially if you are shopping for something for a big ticket item that you know very little about

Shopping for a dishwasher in particular is hard because, first of all, they all look the same.

What makes it even harder is that most of the models don’t have real names

For example, you might ask the salesman, “How does the Maytag Jetclean® Plus MDB8959AW compare to the Whirlpool DU1010XTX?”  By the way, I am not making this up.

I went to all the usual stores, including the big box ones.  Mostly it was a miserable experience.  But the height of misery was a particular store that will remain nameless.  It’s a store that sells anything electronic, and is in Marina next to Kohl’s and REI and Old Navy and Target.

Anyway, this nameless store has so much noise, and so many TV screens and hanging advertisement banners and booming surround sound systems that it floods the senses.

Even in line to make your purchase, you have to be inundated with more messages to buy, buy, but—coming from the TV screens strategically posted above your head at every angle.

And the message you get when you walk in there is a reminder of all the things that you don’t have.  Things like awesome cameras, super high definition flat screen TVs, noise canceling headphones, and on and on.

And then that terrible, itching sensation creeps in, nagging you, “Wouldn’t it be great to have one of those iPads?”  An urge that soon yields to the sentiment, “I really do need an iPad!”

If I only had an iPad, I would be happy.

***

In our Advent book series, we are reading a book about slowing down.  The book is called Sabbath, by Wayne Muller.

And it is interesting that Muller notices this very kind of marketing and how it affects us.

We often see advertisements that display peaceful, contented individuals for whom time has stopped.

They don’t have a care in the world.

Their hand is calmly resting on the golden retriever at their side, and their cup of freshly brewed coffee or hot chocolate or alcoholic beverage is held on their knee as they sit by the glowing fireplace.  Life is good.  They have found happiness.

And, so the message goes, you could be happy, too—if you only had the product that they are selling.

This kind of advertising manufactures unhappiness.

***

These ads cultivate our desire.  They take the desires we have, and cause them to grow.  They also give birth to new desires for things we didn’t even know that we needed—including things that didn’t even exist before last year.

And by our nature, the more intense our desire grows, the more we suffer.

Muller quotes a story about a new car, which goes like this:

“We’ve just bough a new car and we are so happy to be in it and to drive around.  It’s so clean, and smells so fresh, and the engine works so perfectly, and the doors and windows open and shut like silk.  And then someone spills their milkshake on our front seat and we suffer.”

Can you relate to this at all?

***

Freedom from materialism is something that is at the heart of Christianity, but I am afraid we have not developed this important aspect of our faith as well as Jesus would have us.

The philosophy of Buddhism definitely shares this view with Christianity, but the Buddhists have done a better job developing it than we have.

According to the Muller, “Tibetan Buddhists personify this endless craving as a character they call the ‘hungry ghost.’  The hungry ghost has an enormous belly, but a very small throat.  It can never consume enough to satisfy its appetite;

“It is always hungry,

“Always suffering.

“While the marketplace insists that happiness will come when all our desires are finally satisfied,

“We have, in fact, built a “hungry ghost” economy.  We are not creating happiness.  We are producing suffering.”

***

What they are selling in the picture, after all, is a life where the work and worry and anxiety and distraction have all stopped.  These imaginary people in the ads are people who have stopped.

And as Wayne Muller says, we see it and we want that, too.  But in actuality “you cannot buy stopped.  You simply have to stop.”

And it is only in stopping that we meet God.

If we want to acquire God, we will grasp and suffer, because God cannot be acquired.

God can only be received.

So we have to learn to be receptive.

***

The collect we prayed together this morning speaks of a “mansion” prepared in ourselves, awaiting the Lord’s visitation.

We prepare an open space to receive the Lord into our hearts when we practice slowing down, breathing, resting and stillness.

In Matthew, the angel comes to Joseph, and reveals that his bride will give birth to a son, and that this baby born into the world will change history, and his name will be “Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”

Joseph goes and makes space in his life for this gift.

He does not have the means to buy fancy baby gear, or to even have an ideal room for the delivery.

But what he prepares will be enough.

The birth most likely took place inside a home.  What has been translated as “inn” is a word that more likely means “guest room.”

It probably refers to the upstairs guest room of the house where Joseph and Mary were staying in Bethlehem, possible the house of one of Joseph’s relatives.  Because there was no room in the guest room, they stayed in the part of the home where the animals slept.  It was humble, but it was warm and cozy.

In most Palestinian homes of that day, the animals were kept indoors at night in a lowered section of the main living room.  Because they were within the same walls of the home, they warmed the home at night.  Keeping the animals inside also kept them safe from anyone who might try to steal them in the night.  The animals were then turned outside in the morning.

Because the area for the animals was on a level lower than the floor of the main room—just enough so that they could not climb up—there was often a hole carved in the floor where hay was placed for the animals to eat.  It was not unheard of for such a manger to be made into a soft bed for a newborn baby.

It was very humble, but Joseph made use of what was available to him, and he made a place for the Lord.

And we can, too.

It may not be easy, but we can do it.

We can let go all the desires that plague us and lead us to suffer.  We can let go of the hungry ghost that is never satisfied.

We can learn to look with different eyes, and see not what we lack but what we already have.

Now is the time to do this.  This is the season when we celebrate God’s tender care for us, and his coming to be born into the world.

He was born among the animals 2,000 years ago.  Let’s make a space for him to be born in our hearts today—the one who is called Emmanuel!

—Amen.