The Middle of the Night
The Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
March 13, 2011


Readings

Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Morning Watch by Barbara Pescan

Patiently
we waited in the dark.
The planet turned
and we upon it
stupid with sleep
hoped something would happen.

While we leaned toward the east
the weight of the night sank behind us,
toward the north a comet passed so close
we could see it through the sleep in our eyes,
and then dawn flung itself up
swirling with clouds and color and birdsong.

Look—this is our world for another day.
Reach out to it, it is your own life.
Know, too, that this day is dear
even to strangers you will never know.
Stretch out your arms to embrace it.

Do not go back to sleep.

Message: The Middle of the Night

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can listen to the sermon on our website at www.uurockford.org. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2011.

My wife and I were sitting at the dining room table
back in Colorado Springs, finishing a meal.
Rosie wasn’t quite a year old at the time –
she was carefully chewing on a carrot or maybe it was a piece of bread.
And we were Listening to National Public Radio.
We are all three then (four of us now) born-and-raised Unitarians, after all.
And there is this song.
It’s not the end of the world, little sister,
just the middle of the night.

Something about it worms its way into my mind
in that telltale fashion
that I know a sermon is starting to write itself.

It’s not the end of the world as we know it,
it’s just the middle of the night:
this is the good news of liberal religion,
this is the message of hope and assurance I need to hear, and I think everyone needs to hear.

It’s not the end of the world,
it’s just the middle of the night.

That word “just” though . . .
I don’t want to give the impression that
the middle of the night is easy.
That our struggles, our worries, our pain is “just” anything.
The middle of the night is not easy.

Robert Frost isn’t the only one acquainted with the night.
Not the only one to look down the saddest city lane,
or avert their eyes from another,
not the only one to wish and pray
that the call overheard
was for us,
to call us to company and friendship,
but knowing it is not.

Another – she lies awake in bed,
in the middle of the night,
in such pain.

Her arthritis is flaring again.
Or maybe her neck is so tight she can’t move her head.
Maybe, after a day of lifting bags,
or bending down to clean other people’s rooms,
a day on her feat helping grumpy customers in flickering florescent light,
she just hurts.

Maybe her lungs ache from the infection,
or her whole body, nerve end to nerve end,
hurts from the cancer she’s been fighting for a year.
She lies awake in the middle of the night.
She took some pills before she went to bed,
but it’s four hours later now,
and they’ve worn off.
She lies there and thinks, Oh god, why this again?
“Just” the middle of the night?
Not to her, not tonight.

Another – he lies awake, unable to fall asleep.
The mind races.
Those doubts that come when only streetlights illuminate the world,
the fears and worries.
The wakeful nightmares.

Worries about whether he really knows what he is doing at his job,
in his life,
in his relationships,
or if it is all just a sham.
Worries about the future:
what will happen if one of us gets sick?
what will happen if one of us loses a job?
And then the paranoia slips in,
fate’s fickle finger wraps him up –
what if everything falls apart?
what if it is all a lie?
And he lies awake,
full of doubts and fears,
unable to find rest and comfort.
For him, the middle of the night is anything but easy.
It is the hardest time.

The middle of the night is not easy.
For those acquainted with it.
For the grown son who paces the lobby in the hospital,
while a parent struggles for life.
For the homeless teen,
trying to find a place to keep warm.
For the janitor working her second job,
bone tired from the first one,
but needing the money for her family.
For these and so many others,
the middle of the night is not easy.
You are awakened by that siren,
somebody’s going to emergency,
somebody’s going to jail,
the middle of the night is not easy.

This is the truth:
it is not the end of the world,
it is sometimes the middle of the night.
But I do not mean to say,
not for a minute,
that the middle of the night is easy.

Neither, I think, does the songwriter,
who speaks of the ball of fear into which we are curled, the despair,
the fear that we are down the drain,
he knows too, that the middle of the night is not easy.
But, he sings, it is not the end of the world,
and this is good news.

Many people, though,
they would not think this is good news,
this claim that it is not the end of the world.
They would not like that at all.

For many people across the globe,
of many different religious traditions,
the good news of their faith is opposite:
they sing,
do not worry, friends,
for it is not the middle of the night,
it is the end of the world.
And they rejoice in this.
For they expect the end of the world to put things right.
To restore some mythical vision of a correct world,
a world of order,
a world of righteousness.
They expect the sinners to be washed away,
or even the whole of existence as we know it to end.

A while ago – again, back in Colorado Springs,
I decided that I needed a white clergy robe
to go with my black one.
I wanted to mix it up for those few occasions
when I wear a robe,
Easter, Water Ingathering, Ordinations, and the like.

I thus found myself in a Christian gift and supply store,
on the north end of Colorado Springs.
Now, you don’t know the place –
but let me tell you that northern Colorado Springs
is probably the most conservative place in the country.
Home to Focus on the Family and more than 150 other mostly right-wing Christian conservative organizations,
subdivisions in various shades of beige,
the Air Force Academy, and so on.
As I was standing in line to order my robe,
I saw there on the self sat a book –
I don’t remember the title,
but it had a picture of an explosion
over the skyline of Jerusalem.

This isn’t the book, but it looked like this.
It was a key to interpreting recent events
in light of Right-Wing Christian Apocalyptic fantasies.
In the upper right corner,
in a little star,
it said, “Revised and Updated for 2007!”
Next to it on the self was the 2006 edition.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
I tried to do so quietly.

This isn’t new.
A hundred thousand Americans awaited with great hope
the end of the world,
scheduled for October 22nd, 1844.

The last years of the 10th century,
right before the year 1000,
was a time of great violence, upheaval,
fear, and strangeness in Europe,
as people anticipated the end of the world.
Of course, people didn’t have exact calendars,
so they panicked at different times,
some well after the odometer turned over.
Jesus of Nazareth,
in addition to preaching a lot of good sense
about love and kindness,
also preached that the end of the world was at hand.
His followers believed him –
for surely,
the occupation of Israel by the Roman Empire would not continue.

But when the Jewish temple in Jerusalem
was destroyed in 70 A.D.,
the followers of Jesus re-interpreted his predictions to refer to this cataclysmic event.
The authors of the book –
the end of the world, revised and updated for 2007,
the key to their predictions and the reason for the cover photo,
is the rebuilding of that very temple.

It is not just religious conservatives, though,
who have such fantasies.
I have heard them from liberals too,
who believe that through some kind of new consciousness
or utopian awakening,
the world will change,
peace and harmony and love will break out everywhere.
Just because it is nice,
doesn’t mean it isn’t fantasy.

All these hopes and expectations of the end of the world,
they have always disturbed me.

I saw a cartoon once,
a frog-shaped creature crawling out of the sea,
wearing one of those sandwich boards reading,
“The Beginning Is At Hand!”
That’s more my style.
I am not a fan of the apocalyptic imagination.

But I understand.
When you lie awake in the middle of the night,
you think, lord, will this go on forever?
You begin to long for some great change,
some wonder, a new heaven and a new earth.

Thus, the good news of liberal religion:
it is, sometimes, the middle of the night,
but not the end of the world.

The middle of the night is real.
But no, it does not go on forever.

Dawn does break, with its gray light and birdsong,
and we awake to the world.
The middle of the night is hard.
It’s real.
But it is not the end of the world,
and it is not the end of the story.

This we know:
For thousands upon thousands of years,
some humans have predicted the end of the world.
Hoped for it, feared it, expected it.
And yet, each morning the sun comes up.
Life goes on.

“Patiently
we waited in the dark.
The planet turned and we upon it
stupid with sleep
hoped something would happen.”

Thus does the author of our second reading,
Barbara Pescan, live in expectation –
not for the end,
but for the beginning.

And what:
“we could see . . . dawn fling itself up
swirling with clouds and color and birdsong.”
“Look—this is our world for another day.
Reach out to it, it is your own life.”

Look – this is our world for another day.

This is spiritual maturity:
Sometimes things are great.
Don’t expect it to last.
Sometimes things are awful.
Don’t expect it to last.

The realization that “this too shall pass”
is part of the spiritual assurance offered by liberal religion.
But though it offers comfort to the weary,
and humility to the proud,
the knowledge that dawn follows night which follows day,
forever and ever,
this is not enough.
This is not all we have to say.

A sense of perspective is a necessary but not sufficient ingredient in a renewal of the spirit.
A renewal of the spirit comes from not just
awaiting the morning,
but embracing the mystery and wonder of dusk and dawn.

A renewal of the spirit can happen
when we open our hearts,
when we breathe a bit deeper,
uncurl from the fetal position, as it were,
and reach out.

Unitarian Universalists claim six sources of our living tradition.
The first is this:

“Direct experience with that transcending mystery and wonder
affirmed in all cultures
which moves us to a renewal of the spirit
and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.”

“Transcending mystery and wonder”
is a lot of syllables to describe what many people just call “God.”
But that’s the Unitarian Universalist way.
It’s our attempt to be more inclusive.
But it is not the noun that interests me today,
but the adjective.

We speak of the ultimate as transcending,
and not transcendent.
There’s a difference.
We are not speaking of a power that is abstract
out there beyond our reach
but of something that begins, that is encountered, where we are, in this world.
It goes beyond, but it begins where we are.

It is, sometimes, the middle of the night.
And although this is often not an easy time,
it is also a time when we can experience that
transcending mystery and wonder
which renews our spirit.
In the midst of our worries and our struggles,
we can find meaning, purpose,
and encounter that power of life
which sustains and transforms our lives.

We encounter that power of life
when we stand under a heaven of stars,
when the full moon – Frost’s luminary clock
where the time is neither wrong nor right –
casts its glow upon the earth.

Magic can happen in these witching hours,
in the silence of the night we can hear the smallest noises:
the leaves rustling,
a single pedestrian walking home,
the breathing of a pet, lying by the side of your bed.
We have a wind-chime, a gift of my sister,
and in the middle of the night,
when doubts and worries plague me,
it’s noises give a bit of peace,
a bit of joy.

Some of the most powerful spiritual times in my life
have happened late in the evening,
when, stupid with sleep,
I’ve moved past my fears and past old answers
and lived in the present,
been open to magic and mystery.
4 A.M. on the way back from the all-night diner, talking gossip and philosophy,
we fell into a quiet for a block or so.

11 PM in the woods in Washington State,
worshiping and singing and reaching out.
Midnight at my desk,
or sitting with a laptop on the couch,
writing the end of that paper or sermon,
and things just fall into place.
Past the fear and under the suffering,
magic, wonder, awe, transformation awaits
those who make the journey.

To worship is to stand under a heaven of stars,
it is a loneliness seeking communion.

We encounter that power of life
when we seek out communion, too.
In the middle of the night,
we need one another.

It’s not the end of the world, little sister.
It’s not the end of the world, my brother.

It is the middle of the night
when parents walk the halls with their infant children,
when, again, stupid with sleep,
love overpowers everything,
rushes into their heart like a mighty river.

It is the middle of the night
when friends lift up their glasses in salute
to companionship.
Saying to one another, in their actions,
this life business is too hard to do by yourself,
and too wonderful not to share it with others.

It is the middle of the night
when lovers keep each other company.
It is the middle of the night,
when nurses keep station at hospitals,
when a shelter keeps its doors open
so the homeless have beds,
when conscience disturbs the guilty,
and makes them resolve to change their ways.

It is the middle of the night,
when human beings remember that essential truth: we are not alone.

Awe, attention, insight:
Compassion, caring, love:
these are the manifestations and the incarnations
of what is holy and wondrous.
They are the way we renew our spirits,
the way we know that it is not the end of the world,
it is just the middle of the night.

For myself, and for you,
I carry this prayer in my heart:
Yes, the world can be hard.
The nights - or the days - can be long and difficult.
May each of us have the courage,
when it feels like the end of the world,
may we have the courage to resist the temptations of apocalyptic fantasies,
may we have the wisdom to reach out
to the universe itself and to another;
may we know better than to suffer alone –
may we also have the grace
to be there when others need us.

May we build religious communities
whose fellowship and caring sustain us,
whose ritual and teaching comfort us,
and whose ministry calls us to awake to the new day, to see it as our life,
and to live it with radical love and everlasting hope.
May it be so.
Amen.