A vespers worship service has a kind of natural solemnity that is the simple gift that the evening brings with it.
The evening is both the end of the day, and the beginning of the night.
And yet, though it has elements of both day and night, it is neither.
The evening is very distinctly its own thing entirely.
It has its own character. A character that is characterized, above all else, by its beauty…
Like the autumn in New England, the undeniable beauty of the evening, cannot be separated from the presence of sadness.
Day is done
Whatever were our hopes for the day, they must wait for the morning. Before us lies the hours of darkness.
Does the evening also offer us a hint of the Divine presence?
I often feel this way…
And our short scripture passage confirms that God chose to walk in the garden when the cool evening breezes blowing…
I have always loved this detail.
God does not appear in the heat of noon, when the light is blatant and unforgiving…
God is not an interrogator.
God comes at dusk, when the light is golden; when shadows paint watercolor gestures; when the heat of day surrenders to the soft touch of the wind…
God is a painter.
When I read this passage, I can feel the cool evening breeze… can’t you?
To me, the words “cool evening breeze” are a blessing by themselves. These words conjure the feeling of deep well being that accompanies my great love for planet earth, and its sublime patterns that hold and sustain us.
The phrase “cool evening breeze” is like a long cool drink of water. It is comforting, sweet, and nourishing. It contains the wisdom and sacredness of creation, and so, it makes perfect poetic sense that God should choose this, most delicious moment, to go for a walk in the garden.
God is a poet.
Must we jar ourselves from this reverie to acknowledge what happened next?
This, of course, is the moment in the creation story when God discovers that Adam and Eve have eaten from the tree of Good and Evil. This moment, when God goes walking in the cool evening breezes, is the calm before the storm, as it were.
But, this evening, we have joined together for a vespers worship service, so we need not discuss God’s bright, noon day anger any further.
This evening, we remain in the cool evening breezes part of the story, for it is here – before the anger – that we learn something delightful about God.
When God, the painter – when God the poet – came forth to enjoy the delights of creation at its most sublime – God was not just going for a walk…
This subtle, sweet moment, was the moment when God came looking for us.
Came in search of you and me.
In the time of the “cool evening breezes” God asked us that eternal question:
Where are you?
Amen.
Near the end of his life, my father (who was religious and poetic man) used to say to me:
“Mark, you are in the early afternoon of life. I am in the evening of my life.”
And then, one day, my father died.
Is my father, now in the “night” of his life?
A day has a natural rhythm.
The sun comes up, reaches its zenith, and descends.
In the morning we wake
During the day we are active.
At night, we sleep.
These rhythms can be thrown off. Maybe you work the night shift, or perhaps you have jet lag. In both cases, your body is off balance.
When we are in balance, though, there is a kind of inevitable way that a day is similar to a life.
The sunrise feels like birth.
The morning is youthful
Afternoon feels like age.
Evening is like old age.
Night, to follow the metaphor, is death.
To me, this feels like the poetry of the earth. We live in a kind of cosmic metaphor that is constantly at play around us – and we are not separate from it.
We are part of it.
But wait.
This living metaphor – this “day as life” vision of human existence, has a kind of built in bias…
Dawn and morning seem more optimistic.
Afternoon and evening, as they come close to night, are tinged with the fear of death.
There is something curious about the little snippet of scripture that I just read.
The world had been covered by a flood.
Death everywhere.
In this fearful moment, Noah sent a dove flying off the ark.
In search of life.
But the Dove did not return in the morning.
Surely, if we follow the poetry of the earth, the Dove should have returned at dawn.
But no.
Even though this is a story of rebirth, the dove returned in the evening.
In a way, this curious “evening return” offers us a more subtle reading of the cosmic metaphor.
It acknowledges that life is not a line that goes from morning to evening to night…
If it were a line than surely, the Dove must return in the morning.
But it is not a line.
The poetry of the earth is the poetry of a circle.
All that lives dies.
But life also comes from death.
We are born into a cycle of life and death.
Evening can also mean birth.
My father lives on, inside me.
And there is Morning
and there is Evening
And it is good.
Amen