Talk for the First Sunday of Advent
November 28, 2010
Wake-up to Life

The statistics are startling: three people a week commit suicide in Palm Beach County. Families of survivors want to focus attention on the often-hidden tragedy and help prevent it .Every thirty-six hours a member of the armed forces commits suicide .Three to four times as many men as women take their own lives, but women are more likely to attempt suicide than men .Approximately thirty thousand people commit suicide in the US each year, with rates peaking in the Spring and on Mondays Suicide is very unreported because of a number of factors, insurance etc. Therefore to quote one author: ”it is likely that thousands of suicides are covered up as accidents each year.” The suicide of elderly men is also underreported-they commit suicide 14.5% times that of elderly women .But many times it is covered up by:” they fail to take their medication” , the author states:” .The attractive unemployed woman is sought after by many men, but the attractive unemployed man is not.

In a book titled The Myth of Male Power “In my listening to thousands of women and men whose relatives or friends have committed suicide, I observed that people who feel genuinely loved and needed rarely commit suicide”. I was privileged this past Sunday evening, as I hope many of you were, to listen to CNN Heroes .I was moved, sometimes to tears, to see, hear, and try to absorb what these incredibly courageous individuals were doing to make this world a much better place. In the context of this talk today, I feel certain that none of these individuals will commit suicide, or suffer from suicide ideation. They are so involved in reaching out to the very-less fortunate that they have no time for repeatedly asking the question:”Am I happy?” “ What have you done for me lately?”

To cite a few cases; the man who is clearing landmines to save the lives of thousands –landmines that he as a young boy of ten was forced to lay.50,000 mines have been removed-I also wish to point out that this work is very dangerous. A man who is feeding 400,000 meals a day –sixteen feeding stations all over the world. A woman who was in prison and now meets the women prisoners as they leave and helps them to discover a new person and a new life. Mother Teresa suggested to one person’s inquiry as to what he should do”find Calcutta in your own backyard.”

Our readings today for the First Sunday of the New Church year are confronting us with :Brothers and Sisters: You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now that when we first believed; the night is advanced, the day is at hand .Let us then throw off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day . . .” But put on the Lord Jesus Christ .Rom.13 .” Stay awake is the opposite of complacency, which is defined as satisfaction without awareness of any dangers .Our first reading from Isaiah 2 –we read:”For from Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many people They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another nor shall they train for war, O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord” .Our gospel from Matt. 24:”So too, you must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” “Come let us climb the Lord’s mountain.” AMEN