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December 9, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah
11:1-10, Romans 15:7-13, Matthew 3:1-12
“Delighting in
Light: Sights and Sounds for Sore Eyes and Ears”
In a congregation as interactive and
inter-related as ours (No, I’m not quite talking Hatfields and McCoys!) our
homes, for those fortunate enough to have them to share, become very much a part
of who we are and where we meet and row near one another. With Barbara and
Ralph Drake “downsizing” and “moving to town,” as we used to say back East, we
remember the number of gatherings for business and pleasure, congregational life
and work, enjoyed in their home. We thank them, and we continue to be thankful
for all our homes to share.
The light of the gospel, the light of the world,
comes to be both seen and heard. We all know how different faith traditions
handle the loss or the change of the light: How many charismatics does it take
to change a light bulb? Ten, one to change the bulb and nine to pray against
the spirit of darkness! How many neo-orthodox does it take to change a light
bulb? No one knows. They can’t tell the difference between light and dark! How
many TV evangelists does it take? One, but for the message of light to
continue, send in your donation today! How many liberals? At least ten, as
they need to hold a debate on whether or not the light bulb exists! Even if
they can agree upon the existence of the light bulb, they still might not change
it, to keep from alienating those who might use other forms of light! How many
Roman Catholics? None, they always use candles!
And, at last, how many United Methodists does it
take to change a light bulb? This statement was issued by General Conference:
We choose not to take a position either in favor or against the need for a light
bulb. However, if in your journey you have found a light bulb works for you,
that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about
your personal relationship with your light bulb (or light source or non-dark
resource) and present it next month at our annual “Light Bulb Sunday” service,
in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions – including
incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long life, and tinted – all of which are
equally valid paths of luminescence! Pot luck will follow in the church hall,
please bring a dish to pass!
All the more miraculous that our trustees
already this year have added lights to the chancel! And rewired the entire
sanctuary! We are born in the dark. We get to the light however we can! Tom
Berry sends us this Advent quote from author Anne Lamott – “Hope begins in the
dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing,
the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up!” You don’t
give up. Isn’t that Advent? The new Church Year? God does not give up – but
hangs in there with us through everything! Even through death. Always ready
and able to start again – as soon as we are!
“Delighting in Light” begins in the dark. To be
“in the dark” is to “have no clue,” to stumble along, hardly to know where to
put one foot in front of the other. Anyone been there? If we kept up with the
readings for the “Yellow Star Underground Conspiracy to Wait for Jesus” this
week, we found a lot of the darkness of God. Creation itself begins in the dark
– “The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the light of the deep. . .
. Then God said, “Let there be light.”. . . God called the light Day, and the
darkness God called Night.” So darkness around us, darkness within us, are
there from the very beginning and part of what God has to work with in shaping
and keeping us all.
Job especially wrestles with “gloom and deep
darkness” – even as many of us may do this season of meaning and memory. Elie
Wiesel in the Holocaust novel Night we are reading in Adult Class,
identifies strongly with Job – “Never shall I forget that night, the first night
in camp, which has turned my life into one long night . . . .” Elie Wiesel
finds his love-hate, honor-horror relationship with God more in hard questions
than easy answers. Church has to be for each other the community of open
questions, the community of suspended judgments, the community living with
doubt, disbelief, depression, despair – especially in Advent!
Darkness blots out not only what we might see,
but even our means of seeing at all! Talk about “Sights and Sounds for Sore
Eyes and Ears!” The sorest eyes see nothing, the sorest ears hear nothing at
all. All is absence, all is silence. Elie Wiesel continues, “Night. No one
prayed, so that the night would pass quickly. The stars were only sparks of the
fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be
nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes. . . . . There was nothing
else to do but get into bed, into the beds of the absent ones. “We may know many
people – many parts of ourselves – who for many reasons would rather sleep, even
fitfully, through Advent and Christmas – in hopes to wake up, forgiven,
forgetful, on the far side of all the festivity.
The miracle of this season is that the word and
the deed of new light, new life, new life are coming even in darkness, and the
darkness cannot stop them! The Gospel of John places John the Baptist in the
light of a brand-new creation – “What has come into being was life, and the life
was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He
came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through
him.”
Talk about an unlikely source, and resource, for
God – a sight and a sound for sore eyes and ears! In the wilderness, the middle
of nowhere. Claiming to signify God’s kingdom come near. Into camel’s hair --
and leather! Subsisting on grasshoppers! Baptizing all sorts of unlikely
candidates! (Even as we receive into membership on this day?) Turning away the
more likely ones – the established religious ones – the ones so sure their
salvation is safe and secure! Calling them vipers. Threatening to cut them
down at the roots and throw them into unquenchable fire. Just because they will
not turn from their ways to the way Isaiah announces. The way of the “peaceable
kingdom.” Where enemies and opposites lie down together in peace. And a little
child will lead them . . . .
We won’t find John the Baptist, the wilderness
or the deep darkness, on many Hallmark Christmas cards. We will find Edward
Hicks’ painting “The Peaceable Kingdom” based on Isaiah’s images of all the
animals, however different, however traditional dangers to one another, find a
way, just as they are – with none becoming the other but remaining themselves in
relation to the other – though Woody Allen cautions, “If the lion and lamb lie
down together, the lamb may not get much sleep!” Hicks did the painting many
times, to sustain his ministry in the historic peace church of the Quakers, the
Society of Friends, of Pennsylvania. The Quakers, of course, have taken this
image much more seriously than a holiday card. It’s almost like believing in
Dennis Kucinich! No one wants to be identified with what seems to be such a
hopeless and hapless fantasy as Isaiah here portrays. But the word about
Christmas is, if GOD believes it, it is happening – even now! Give us the light
and the eyes to see it.
John is a witness. He is not the light. He
bears witness to the light. As Elie Wiesel bears witness to an unending night,
so John the Baptist bears witness to an unlikely light. To the true light,
enlightening everyone. The one who is always coming, even and especially in
deepest darkness and longest nights of the year. The one who has been in the
world from the world’s beginning -- offering life, offering love – but whom the
world has not known, has not accepted. The light is of Holy Spirit and of fire
that destroys us or refines us – depending on how we receive it and live by it.
The challenge, as in this image from Isaiah the light comes to illuminate, is to
lie down in harmony with our neighbors, including our enemies and our opposites
-- to become the very children of God, born not only of blood or the will and
the way of all human flesh, but born anew directly of God.
That’s what our baptisms and their renewals are
all about – birth again of God.
Paul speaks of loving our neighbors, welcoming
one another, as Christ always has welcomed us! Christ the servant to the
uncircumcised, the outsiders of any description, and all those left behind – the
very young and the very old, the very sick and the very poor, the immigrant and
the imprisoned, and those who must sleep on the ground. We cannot survive, we
cannot endure, without one another! Everyone is welcome in the kingdom, the
kin-dom, the new creation of God in Christ. The very promises to the mothers
and fathers in faith are fulfilled in fully diverse and inclusive wholeness
where even the Gentiles belong!
Elie Wiesel leaves one camp wondering “if it has
ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever
recited the prayer for the dead for themselves.” He arrives at the next, the
ultimate camp, to these words of a young prisoner in charge --
Comrades, you’re in the concentration camp of
Auschwitz. There’s a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don’t lose
courage. . . . We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life.
Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away
from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer – or rather a
piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers and
sisters, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all
our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.
The miracle of this season is, no one is too
hidden, no one is too fallen, no one is too barren to receive the newness of
light, the newness of life, the newness of love. This week we say, even the CIA
may come to the light! No one is too much in darkness or even in death, no one
is beyond the reach of God’s redeeming love, God’s liberating deliverance! Even
the dead stump of Jesse! Julie and I learned from the redwood trees of Muir
Woods by the ocean in Marin County that when a tree dies and falls across a
path, rangers and volunteers do not move the tree. They, do what? They move
the path! They trust the tree to find its way back to life! Branches of the
fallen tree always turn toward the light! They reach toward the sky. New life
grows out of their fallen birth places! That is Isaiah’s vision! We have
settled so long for moving the tree – it’s not working! What have we got to
lose by trying to move the path for a change? Only war!!
It has been written of these redwoods, “The big
difference is whom they grow next to, whose roots tangle with their own.” These
are words of theologian and therapist Gary Gunderson from his book Deeply
Woven Roots –
A forest’s resilience reflects diversity.
Any one tree relies not just on its own roots but on an interwoven fabric of
roots. And while it is a good thing to put down roots, grow into the wind, and
rise high into the sky, it is also a good thing to know that even in our
falling, even as our individual memories slip behind, we will be part of the
whole! We, too, spring from the roots of those who precede us.
Amen.
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