“Out of the Darkness”

First Congregational UCC – November 27, 2011

First Sunday of Advent

The Rev. Sharyl B. Peterson

 

Scripture:  Luke 3: 2-16

 

Today, as many of you know, is the first Sunday of the new church-year, which begins not on January 1, but on the first Sunday of the season of Advent.  It is the first Sunday on which we take the first official steps toward that joyful and Holy event that we’ll be celebrating on December 25 (which most appropriately, this year, falls on a Sunday), the birth of Jesus Christ.

            As we begin our Advent reflections this morning, I invite you to close your eyes, if you’re comfortable doing that.  And I invite you to think back … to the very darkest place you can ever remember being in your whole life.  Perhaps it was a very long time ago.  Perhaps it was a recent as yesterday.  Where were you?  What was going on?  Who, if anyone, was with you?  Why were you in that darkest place?

For some of us, that very darkest place was an actual physical location.  For example, I know that many of you are at least amateur spelunkers (cave explorers), so maybe the darkest place you’ve ever been was in the bottom of some cave deep under the earth’s surface, with all of the lights turned out, even the light of your headlamp.  Or, knowing that many of you are pretty avid campers and hikers, maybe the darkest place you’ve ever been was up on top of a mountain at night, far away from any town or city, far away from their lights that dilute the darkness of most of our nights, perhaps lying on your back, looking up at the stars, and feeling the immensity and weight of the darkness all around you.  Or, being urban dwellers as most of us are, maybe the darkest place you’ve ever been was in your very own home, in the middle of a major storm sweeping through the area, when all the power went out everywhere, and it was so dark you couldn’t even see the house next door.

For many of us, the very darkest place we can remember is not a physical place, but an emotional place.  Like the dark night that you were sitting in the waiting-room off the hospital E.R., waiting to find out whether you’d gotten your spouse – who had had a heart attack an hour before– there in time to save his or her life.  Or the dark night when, as a brand-new parent, you sat in the rocking-chair of the Neonatal ICU, and held the fragile body of your prematurely-born child, and wondered if she or he would keep breathing until the dawn came.  Or perhaps it was the dark night when, after the funeral service was over, and all the relatives had gone home, and you had finally put all the casseroles and coffee-cakes in the freezer, and you were sitting in your arm-chair in your living-room, and you looked at the empty chair across from yours, and it fully came home to you that your beloved life-companion was gone, and was never coming back.

            For some of us this morning, our darkest place is happening right here and now.  Right here and now, in this place, as we face the first Christmas season without someone we loved very much.  Or as we worry about the well-being of our son or daughter who is serving in the military in Afghanistan, or in some other war-zone.  Or, as we worry about how we (or someone we care about) is ever going to be able to find a job in this economy, how we (or they) will be able to keep a roof over our heads, without even thinking about buying Christmas presents.

            Every life has terrible times of pain and loss, when the darkness doesn’t just surround us, but it feels like it fills us up, and makes it hard for us to take even one more breath.  And as we enter this Advent season, we may feel even darker spiritually as we watch other people – so apparently filled with joy – just bursting with anticipation of all the Christmas festivities!

            And out of the history of our faith, and into our present darkness, comes weird old John, the one they called the Baptizer.  Peculiar old John, dressed in his tattered animal-skin breechcloth, with all his ribs showing from his sparse diet of bugs and scavenged honey.  Ferocious old John, travelling on foot through all the region around Jordan, taking the people who came to hear him seriously to task for all the ways they had fallen away from the ways of God.

            Screaming at them, things like “you brood of vipers!”  “You brood of snakes! What do you think you're doing slithering down here to the river?”  “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees … every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire!”

            And when the crowds, quite rightfully scared to death by his angry, threatening message, beg him to tell them what they should do so that all those bad things won’t happen to them, what does he tell them?  You should stop being so greedy.  If you have enough food to eat, you should make sure that other people do too.  And don’t cheat other people with whom you do business.  Be fair with others, and be content when you are treated fairly.  Don’t lie or gossip about other people.  In other words, live the kind of life that the Bible clearly tells us God wants us to live.

            The Lord is coming, John told them – and tells us – and your task … our task … is to do everything we can to make that easier, to make that more likely to happen.  “Prepare ye the way of the Lord … and all flesh shall see the salvation of God!”  John says, yes people, there is a lot of bad news … there is a lot of trouble and pain and darkness and brokenness … but there is also some very good news a’ comin’.

            John understood something that we – wrapped in our own darkness – may sometimes forget.  And that is that no matter how frightening – how downright terrifying – how truly dreadful the darkness may be, it also holds some good news.

            And part of that good news is that it is only in the darkness that we are able to see the light.  If you don’t believe me, take a flashlight outside this afternoon while the sun is bright, and try seeing the beam of light it projects.  You just can’t do it.  You can only see the beam of light when you have the flashlight in some dark place, say outside at night, feeding your horses at 10:00 PM, and flip the switch of the flashlight, and suddenly there is the beam of light you can see stretching from the flashlight into the darkness.

            And not only did John the Baptizer understand this, so did the prophets before him.  In a beautiful passage in the book of Isaiah that is subtitled in some versions of the Bible “The God Who Forms Light and Darkness” (The Message), the prophet puts these words in God’s mouth:  “And I will give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, who call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel” (King James Version).

            The “treasures of darkness”  Clearly, God knows – and God knew, all those centuries ago – that darkness is not a completely awful and distressing thing, but that it could hold riches and promises as well.  That darkness can hold the possibility … the promise of something new, of something special, of a gift.  And in one of the darkest periods of human history – a time filled (like our own) with wars and brutalization, a time filled (like our own) with poverty and with want, a time filled (like our own) with inequities and injustices – God sent a new kind of light into the world – a light in the form of the man we call Jesus, our Christ. 

            As UMC pastor Patricia Farris puts it in her book Shine!  Light for All People, “The truth of our faith, the oft-hidden treasure in the darkness, is that the birth of the Christ Child happens in the darkest dark of the night.  In that night, God’s love triumphs over the power of hopelessness and fear; and a special star shines so brightly that the whole of the night sky is brilliant with light.  (And) the world begins anew[1].”

            Advent – the Holy season of preparation for this new thing that God has done, and is still doing, even now – doesn’t happen in the spring, or in the summer, which is when Jesus probably was really born, when all is bright and light and beautiful, but in the darkest part of the year.  It comes at the time of the Winter Solstice.  At the time of the very shortest day, and of the very longest night.  It comes at a time of year when human beings, for millennia, have been most filled with fear that the darkness will get longer and longer and longer until the light never returns.  It comes at a time of year when people, for every reason, most long for – most need for – light to appear, in the world, and in their lives. 

            Maybe that’s why actual physical lights – like candles – or Christmas tree-lights – or those hanging icicle lights on everyone’s roofs – are so often part of our Advent and Christmas decorations.  Maybe it is in part why in most churches, at this time of year, you find somewhere in the sanctuary what we call an “Advent wreath.”  A circle of candles, with four on the outside, representing the four Sundays of Advent, and one right in the middle – representing the Light of Christ.

            Interestingly, this wreath is a symbol and a practice that comes from even before the time of Christ[2].  In northern Europe, at this time of year, after the harvest was all in, and the nights grew longer and colder, the people who worked the land, and plowed the fields, and transported the crops would go out to the wagon they used day after day to do their work, and painstakingly remove one wheel.

If you’ve ever seen really old-model farm-wagons, you know this was no easy task … it took a lot of muscle, and a lot of sweat, and a lot of time.  And once the wheel was off, they would lay it down on its side.  And then, since the wagon was now out of commission, work would stop for a few days or weeks.

Meals would become simpler.  Story-telling times around the hearth would become longer. 

And during this stopped, quiet, dark time, people would take time “in the stillness and quiet of the very dark night sky to linger and look for the stars, to light candles, and light up the darkness of the long night.”  They would prepare the way for new birth … for new life … for the new year from the inside out, from hearts to minds to bodies.

            It’s a pretty far cry from the way we “prepare” at this time of year.  Most of us are killing ourselves in this season – either emotionally or physically or both – by running 10 times as hard as normal, looking for “just the right gift” for each person on our list, and trying to make Betty Crocker- or Martha Stewart-worthy holiday cookies and candies, writing Christmas cards (and perhaps even making them first), getting the cards and the gifts in the mail, going to school plays, and to parties, and to all the extra activities at church.

            Which I am almost certain is not what John the Baptist was urging faithful folks to do.  In fact, I think what he was urging faithful folks to do is captured far more accurately in the play (and the movie) Godspell, which if you’ve never seen it is available free from the Mesa County Public Library.

            There is a song in the show (which Martha played for us a little while ago in our service) called “Prepare Ye the Way,” with the solo part sung by a modern-day John the Baptist who is pretty peculiar in his own way.  For one thing (at least in the movie version I saw), he is dressed in, of all things, what looks like a Prince Charming doll soldier’s uniform, complete with huge shiny buttons and epaulets.  For another thing, instead of standing in middle of the Jordan River, this modern-day John is standing in the middle of a large stone fountain in a city square. 

            And as he sings, people of all kinds begin to move through the city-streets toward the fountain.  You see a waitress, and an actor, and a secretary, and a ballerina, and a student, and a construction worker, and a police officer, and a mom with a baby carriage all making their way toward this modern-day prophet.  And they are not making their way slowly and solemnly, or exhaustedly (as we may be prone to feel in this season)… but are dancing, and jumping, and spinning, and laughing, and kicking cans, and tossing off burdensome jackets, and they all end up playing and dancing in the fountain with “John.”  They are clearly filled with joy, and are sharing that joy with each other.

            Prepare ye the way of the Lord?  Alongside taking a look at our own greed – and trying to give it up, alongside taking a look at our own dishonesty – and trying to give it up, alongside taking a look at our own meanness of spirit – and trying to give it up, this John might encourage us to laugh more.  Prepare ye the way of the Lord?  Sing – or whistle – or hum more often.  Prepare ye the way of the Lord?  Do something that gives you – and maybe someone else – some joy.

            And in the best Biblical tradition, if we do do any of those things this year, especially if they are not our usual practices, we truly are engaged in the Biblical practice of “repentance.”  Of turning our lives around, and living them in new ways.  Of asking deeper questions in this deeper season, and searching for new answers.  Of drawing nearer to the God who calls us not to speed up, but to slow down occasionally, for Heaven’s sake!  Of stepping out of the Christmas frenzy, and stepping into the simple happiness … into the quieting down … and yes, into the light that beckons to us in this season.

            Yes, it might be a whole new way of preparing for Christmas – and for the Lord – this year.  It might take a little muscle (even if it’s the mental kind) and some sweat and some time (kinda like taking the wheels off those wagons all those centuries past).  And it might indeed prepare us for the new life, and the new possibilities, which our God promises us, and to which our God continues to call us.

            And wouldn’t that be a wonder?  But this is a season of wonder. 

            As Ann Weems, one of my favorite poets and theologians puts it,

“Into this silent night

            as we make our weary way

we know not where,

            just when the night becomes its darkest

and we cannot see our path,

            just then

                        is when angels rush in,

                        their hands full of stars[3].” 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

 

Prayer

Lord, help us stay awake.  Help us trust that You are here with us, even in the darkness.  Give us hope that You are coming to heal the world.  Show us the things in our lives that we don’t see because our spirits are asleep.  Lord, we want to be ready for Your coming.  Prepare our hearts … our minds … our lives in this Holy season.  Amen[4].