Words From Silence: Contemplation in a World of Action

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark Advent 4, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector Here we are at the darkest time of the year, when shadow and mystery envelop us, and things lose their crisply defined edges. Is that a person at the end of the driveway, or swaying tree branch? Someone whispering my name, or just the cold winter wind teasing the eaves? We enter into the darkness where our usual clarity and surety are stripped away and we find ourselves in an in-between place where dream, and uncertainty reign. Of course, it’s also the time of year when we, “rage against the dying of the light,” as Dylan Thomas writes. We string Christmas lights, inflate house-high Santas, drench the manger scene in 200 watt fluorescents in an effort to keep the creep of darkness at bay. Mystery is banished in the movement activated security light by the garage and reign of cold, hard, measurable fact reasserted. But what if we are called as Christian...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark 3 Advent, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector Poor John the Baptist. When we first encountered John he was living in the wilderness, making curious fashion choices, eating bugs dipped in honey, and proclaiming the coming of the Lord. “The ax is at the root of the tree!” he said, to remind us that Advent is a time when all of our accustomed ways of seeking the happiness for which we are created in all the wrong places, need to topple down in order that we might realize that we already are in possession of that which we seek. That old habit of looking “out there” for fulfillment through deeply-ingrained patterns of seeing and being in the world needs to fall down in order that the true peace, happiness, and joy for which our hearts are restless might sprout, and the desert bloom and blossom in the realization that God has been with us all along, buried in the field of the heart. Now, however, John is...

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark First Sunday of Advent, Year A The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector One of the confusing things about the season of Advent is that it is a curious blend of darkness and light. Darkness that speaks of the end of one world and light that speaks of birth of another. In today’s readings we are called to, “Cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” We hear those glorious, prophetic words from Isaiah about how when the Lord’s house is established on the highest mountain, when God is all in all and human being are fashioned into perfect expressions of the Spirit of love and peace, swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. Instruments of war and violence will be transfigured into tools of abundance and plenty. Advent is an in-between time, a time when something needs to tumble down in order to make a little room for something new to emerge. The world needs to go dark...