“Jesus is the Light of the World”

First Congregational United Church of Christ

December 4, 2011

The Rev. Sharyl B. Peterson

 

Scripture Reading:    Luke 1: 26-38

 

Last week, which was the first Sunday of Advent, we began our sermon-series which this year focuses on light, and dark, and what they have to do with our faith-story in this season … and on what it has to do with our lives, not just during this season, but all year ‘round. 

            If you were here last week, you may remember that one of the things we talked about was what the prophet Isaiah – ostensibly quoting God – calls “the treasures of darkness.”  About the fact that even though most of us tend to be afraid of darkness, or angry about it, or wish it would go away, it is only when it’s dark that we can actually see light shining.  About the fact that there is no darkness so deep that God’s light cannot penetrate it, however that may happen. And about the fact that Jesus came – and that Jesus comes again – into our world – to shine light into the very dark and very real places of our lives, to help us heal them, or redeem them, or transform them.

            Scripture tells us in all kinds of ways how God has sent light into the world – not just all the way back at the Creation, where God separates light from darkness, which is in fact a very big deal, but over and over again through human history.  Scripture tells us that God sends light when the people have totally lost their moral bearings, that God sends light when the people have become consumed with greed, with power-over, with having and with getting more, that God sends light even when the people have most egregiously sinned against God.  And the Biblical story that frames our Christian faith tells us that some 2,000 years ago, God sent a very special kind of light – in the person of a human being named Jesus – to light up the darkness of the ancient world, and to light up the dark places in our world today. 

Because most of us know at least a little bit about the ancient world into which Jesus was born, we know how dark the times were then, for most of the people who lived then.  There were wars everywhere.  There was oppression and injustice.  There was day-to-day violence against normal people just like us. 

            And even if we don’t know even a little bit about ancient history, or care about it, we certainly know about all kinds of dark places in our world today.  Like wars everywhere.  And oppression and injustice.  And day-to-day violence against normal people just like us. 

            So much darkness that we may feel overwhelmed by it; so overwhelmed that we feel hopeless – and helpless – and frightened.  I would bet that whether we think about it in quite this way or not, nearly every one of us sitting here this morning (or reading this at home) is looking, each of us in our own way, for some kind of new light to come into our worlds.

            And so, as looking and hoping people of faith, we find comfort in the promises of the Psalms, like:  “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you (O God); the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psa. 139: 11-12).  This time of year, we love hearing again the ancient promises of the prophet Isaiah, like:  “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them (and on us) light has shined… For a child has been born for us, a son given to us … and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God … Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:2, 6). 

            We love singing the ancient hymns this time of year, like the one we began our service with today, when we called aloud, with children and men and women across the world, “Come, O long-expected Jesus.”   Some of us even love singing more contemporary Christmas hymns,

like the one with which we’ll end our service, in which we sing – and ask the Holy One – over and over, “Christ, Be Our Light.”

            After all, isn’t that the real “reason for the season?”  Isn’t that the bottom line of the Christmas story, boiled down to its essentials?  That God so loved the world, that God came into the world in the form of a human being– a human infant, then a toddler, then kid, then teen, then a man – named Jesus to bring new light – new ways of seeing –of being in relationship with God.

And so many of us really want to believe that God did do that … we really do.  We desperately want the light of God to come into our places of darkness.  To come into our hurting hearts.  To come into our frightened minds.  To come into our broken relationships.  To come into our damaged communities.  To come and show us again the way of Jesus that brings joy, and peace, and healing, and hope.

            And yet … we start listening to the stories of this season like today’s passage from Luke, and we begin to struggle.  Because alongside that deep, intense yearning we have to sing – and to hear – and to believe – and to live – the “old, old story” – are some of those questions we have as intelligent, thoughtful, rational, 21^st-century sophisticates. 

            All those questions that rise up in us as we hear the story told again, and as we wonder (again) whether or how this particular detail, or that particular detail, could possibly be historically – biologically – scientifically accurate?  You know, like that whole business that we read today in our Scripture passage from Luke’s Gospel. 

            “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.  And the angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

            I mean, for Heaven’s sake – an angel?!  A supernatural being, presumably complete with wings, halo, and so forth?  And this angel shows up to a teenage peasant kid doing her daily chores in a little hut in a little village in the middle of nowhere?  And the angel tells us this little teenage nobody girl that she is going to give birth to God’s Son?  Get outa here!  Get real!

            And then we go on to tell ourselves, well if the writers put in some stuff that is not factually accurate, what good is the story?  How can we possibly believe it?  And if it raises questions we aren’t able to answer, how useful can it possibly be, either in our faith-walk, or in our lives in general?

            And yet, that’s one of the most wonderful things about this particular passage of Scripture.  That it affirms our question-asking.  That it affirms that our questions are not, in fact, incompatible with our faith yearnings.  That being “faithful” does not require understanding everything perfectly, or having all our questions answered.  It is a passage full of questions, from beginning to end, and a passage about God’s grace in responding to those questions – ancient ones, and ours today. 

            So let’s start at the very beginning, where we hear about the appearance of an angel, whose name we are told is Gabriel, to a young girl named Mary, living in a rather obscure village called Nazareth.  And so, our first question might be, well, how do we understand this statement? 

When we think “angel,” are we thinking about the Hallmark kind, with wings and halo and harp?  Or can we think a little more broadly, perhaps trying to put ourselves back into the thinking framework of the first-century, where “angels” – however they were experienced – were understood to be messengers from God.  If an angel showed up (and they do rather frequently in the Old Testament), you knew that God was on the move, that God was still speaking, and that if an angel showed up to you, it was a pretty good bet God had something to say to you.

            And yet, if this angel was not the supernatural wings-and-halo being we first thought of, what else could it have been?  Could it have been a dream, like some of the important dreams we have?  Could the “angel” have perhaps been some other story from Scripture, something Mary knew but perhaps heard in a new way on that day, just like we sometimes hear things in a new way on a Sunday morning, and it changes our thinking in significant ways?  Could the “angel” have been one of those sudden, intense perceptions like we have when we’re doing something perfectly ordinary, like sorting the laundry, and we suddenly see the sacred shining through? 

            Whatever this angel actually was (including possibly being some kind of mysterious celestial being that we simply don’t “get”), we know that in some way something happened on that day that told that teenager named Mary something extraordinary was about to happen in the world, and she was going to be part of it.

            But that question (what was this “angel”?) is only the first of the questions in this story.

When the angel greets Mary with, “Greetings, favored one!  The Lord is with you!” the Gospel-writer tells us that Mary was much perplexed by these words, and wondered what sort of greeting this might be.  What is happening here?  What does “favored one” mean?  I’m just your basic, ordinary peasant girl.  And what do you mean “the Lord is with me?”  I know that the Lord is always with me, because the Scriptures tell me that.  How is today any different?  Plenty of questions there. 

            And next, after the rather lengthy pronouncement in which Gabriel tells her that she will soon bear a child who will be called “the Son of the Most High,” Mary doesn’t just say, “oh, sure.”  “Okay.”  “Whatever.”  Instead, Mary responds with yet another question:  “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 

            Mary is old enough to know how babies are made, and she knows she hasn’t had the experience necessary for this job.  Help me out here … help me understand this … I don’t understand what you’re talking about.

            And finally, even after the angel offers a not terribly clear or satisfying answer (“the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”), Mary never says, “Oh, I get it now.  I understand.  And since I do understand completely what you’re talking about, I’ll go along with God’s plan.”  It’s just not in there.  Not in any of the ancient text fragments.  Didn’t happen, apparently.

            All Mary says is, “Here I am, the Lord’s servant; let it be with me as you have said.”  In other words, I may not completely “get” what’s going on here, but I do trust God, and I trust that God can do what God has planned, whether I understand it or not.

            Now, the reason I said a few minutes ago that this is good news for us is because I suspect most of us spend a large part of our lives – especially of our faith-lives – asking questions just like Mary’s:  “How can this be?” 

            I know that I have, ever since I was five years old, and used to drive my Sunday School teachers crazy by asking, “How can this be – that a guy named Jonah manages to live for three days and three nights in a whale’s stomach?”  “How can this be – that if there weren’t any people around when God created everything, how did someone know what the first two people were named?”  “How can this be – that if Noah put two of every animal on the ark, and saved the giraffes and lions and all the other animals, that we don’t have any dinosaurs now?” 

            And I know that lots of you have those kinds of questions too, because you’ve kindly shared some of your questions with me.  And I love it that this story from Scripture comes as a special gift to all of us question-askers, all of us who want very much to be faithful, but sometimes (or often) find ourselves bumping up against questions of “How can this be?”

            And when it comes to the Christmas story – the story that God – God Most High – the Holy One – the Almighty One – the Everlasting One – the Divine One who is so far beyond our human ken, so very Holy and sacred that human beings aren’t even supposed to say the Holy Name – that that God came down to earth, and became a human person, just like us, just so maybe humankind would finally get at least a clue to what God is really like – don’t we ask those questions all the more? 

            That whole idea of incarnation – of God’s putting Godself in carne, in flesh – is more than countless people have been able to accept over the past two millennia.  They – we – may be able to believe that God exists, that God is good, but incarnation?  That just does not make any sense at all.  “How can that be?”

            And the quite wonderful thing – both for Mary, and for us – is that her knowing – and our knowing – that it doesn’t make any sense is okay.  That Mary’s questions are not a problem for the angel, or for God. 

            Conceivably, God could have zapped her dead for daring to ask a question like “How can this be?”  God:  “Because I said so.”  Or God could have sent Gabriel off to find some other, more faithful young woman who would agree to God’s request without asking any questions. 

            But in this story of new light – of God’s breaking into the world in new ways – questions are okay.  God’s messenger lets Mary speak honestly … just as God does with us … (and) is patient with Mary … just as God is patient with us … and doesn’t condemn her for her questions, but respects them … just as God does with us.

In fact, maybe this God of ours, this still-speaking God, this God who keeps on doing new and surprising things throughout history, not only lets us ask our questions, but needs us to ask them.  Perhaps our questions are one way that God’s spirit, that dwells inside each of us, moves in the world.  Perhaps one of the ways in which Jesus – God in flesh – becomes the light of the world is through the questions we ask today. 

            For example, as we look around at the glorious and beautiful world that God created, and ask “how can this be?  why are we willing to destroy so much that God created, in order for some people to get more money?”  Or as we look at the tens of thousands of children across the world who die every day from preventable diseases, and ask:  “how can this be?  we could prevent these children’s deaths?  why don’t we value them enough to do that?”  Or as we look at the broken places in our relationships … in our families … in the Grand Valley … in our nation, and ask:  “How can this be?”  “What new light needs to come into this situation and heal it?”

            We may not yet have the answers, but we do have the questions.  And that may be a great beginning.  Perhaps it is in the questions themselves that our understanding really takes root.  Perhaps without the questions, real understanding is not even possible. 

            In her wonderful book on Advent, While We Wait, theologian Mary Lou Reddon says this: “we don’t have to understand what God is doing in order to participate in it or to know that it is real.  If complete understanding were necessary to know that something is real in order to use it, few of us could use (i-phones) or computers or electricity because few of us understand those technologies.  But we can accept them as gifts and benefit from their presence in our lives without understanding them.

            God doesn’t want us as a business partner, as a distant relative, even as a close friend.  God wants to live with each one of us, as one of us.  That is the miracle of Christmas.  God takes on flesh.  It sounds impossible.  Do we choose to believe it anyway?  The angel closed the conversation with Mary by reminding her who is behind it all:  ‘For nothing will be impossible with God.’ 

            God’s coming doesn’t depend on us, on the depth or steadiness of our believing.  This miracle depends on God, whom we cannot understand or contain, who reaches out to us at Christmas and every day of our lives.  As Mary shows us, finding ourselves slightly puzzled and in awe before this mystery is a faithful response.[1]”

            And so, in this season of wonder, may we embrace the mystery … the awe … the miracle … even the not-knowing.  And may our questions … our not-knowing … lead us to a deeper relationship with the Holy One, because that is, indeed, what Christmas is all about.

            Please be in prayer with me:  Holy God, who is more mysterious, more wondrous, more everything than we can begin to imagine, we pray that You come into our lives in new ways in this Advent season.  Help us be more patient with our own questions, and more understanding of your answers, as we struggle to discern how you would have us be and live and shine in the world.  Amen[2].