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December 16, 2007
The Rev. John Auer
Scripture: Isaiah
35:1-10, Canticle of Mary, Luke 1:46b-50, Matthew 11:2-11
“Blind, Lame,
Lepers, Deaf, Dead, and Poor: Light Magnifying the Best that Shines through Us”
Hearing from John in prison reminds us of all
those in prison, jail, detention in our nation with one of the highest rates of
incarceration in the world. We hear today one in every 32 Americans is
imprisoned or on probation/parole. One wonders how many prophets are being
prepared there. But also how much despair. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from
prison in 1943 – “Life in a prison cell reminds me a great deal of Advent – one
waits and hopes and putters about, but in the end what one does is of little
consequence, for the door is shut and can only be opened from the outside.”
Advent keeps us in darkness to accept those doors in our lives – to our minds,
our hearts, our congregations and our communities – that can only be opened from
outside. We need something new to break into, shine into our lives – the light
within us responds to the Light of the World.
Karl Barth urges us to theologize with the Bible
in one hand, the newspaper in the other. Articles in paper this week addressed
in a general, more systemic way some of what we experience as “personally” this
time of year -- and more so “in light of” our theme our attention to Advent as
waiting and watching for light in the darkness of our lives and life itself.
One article speaks of “stress” and illnesses flowing from it – depression,
autoimmune disorders, heart disease, obesity, diabetes. Doctors say stress is
produced by how “wired,” how connected our culture and we have become – how
expectant of instant gratification, instant results. We have lost capacities
for patience and persistence – for an Advent-kind of alive, awake, aware, alert
waiting and watching – for our door to open!
Maybe we try to take the place of God in “being
connected to everyone all the time.” There’s only so much we can expect of
ourselves, only so hard we can drive ourselves toward production and
perfection. One psychiatrist puts it, “A long time ago, when it got dark, you
ate dinner and went to sleep. Now we’ve turned night into day!” Julie and I
remember wistfully what a shock it was to our Chicago-born and raised children
to go camping for the first time – to confront utter darkness for the first time
-- and the unheard of prospect of nothing to do but to eat and go to sleep!
As electronic technologies compete to displace
all our darknesses, we are advised is to look and listen more carefully to our
bodies – to those hidden parts of us blind, lame, lepers, deaf, dead, and poor!
– and to respond more creatively – in ways that welcome and allow a light, a
lightness, that does not minimize but magnifies the best that is shining through
us! Mary saying “yes” to God with her whole body and being shows us how to open
ourselves to our being magnified!
More specifically to life in Nevada, another
article speaks of the dangers of “shift work” – in gaming, in hospitality, in
mining. How many of us or our families have worked early-morning, swing, and
graveyard shifts? The article speaks of our “circadian rhythm” – “The circadian
clock regulates sleeping and waking in all living organisms. It relies heavily
on a regular light-day cycle to maintain its rhythm. Exposure to light at
night, for example, disrupts the circadian clock. Is it possible that ever
since we let the genie of nuclear fission and atomic explosion out of the
scientific bottle– which one witness called “being present at the creation!” –
and with all the technologies, peaceful and otherwise, flowing from that genie –
is it possible we have radically reshaped “the light of the world?”
Light is built in to every life cycle – every
plant, every animal, every season – with solstices and equinoxes – the longest
night of the year this week – every day, every night, many dates of holy
days/holidays, every baby born – from womb to world – every means of rest and
renewal, balance and equilibrium. The universe is made up of solar systems
reflecting the infinite light! We call spiritual and mental growth
“enlightenment” and long for both sudden and sustained “illumination” of mind
and soul. We call God “Light” and see God in shining visage, burning bush,
pillar of fire, etc.
Circles of light depict haloes of holiness – See
the one around the preacher’s head? – and bulbs of light sudden insights – Ahas!
– and “bright ideas!” The Word of God, the scriptures, are meant to enlighten
and brighten the pathways by which we may see and may walk with God. The “light
of the world” comes for nations and whole peoples, as well as for communities
and individuals. “In the light” we may to hope move from ignorance and
isolation to revelation and reconciliation.
We work and pray, look and long, for the “New
Jerusalem” – now more than ever! – where God’s own indwelling promise, presence,
passion, power provide all the light that any might need – so that even day and
night, light and dark themselves are free to fade away! Meantime we live with
the darkness – the night, the silence, the “shadow side,” all the “power
outages,” all the “making our ways in the dark” of our lives. We travel,
darkly, this season – with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem – with the magi and
kings – with the Holy Family to Egypt – inspired and guided by deep dreams in
deep darkness. We remember all the dark journeys of our own lives – through
pain and suffering, fear and loss, grief and depression, disaster and death.
Much as the darkness may be reshaped thought all our electronic and atomic
technologies – much is remains the same!
Prophet Isaiah invites us today to see and hear
-- to behold! -- “the glory of the LORD” in every door that opens from the
outside – in every vision and voice, every sight and sound, of reversal and
contradiction of all logic and all common sense – all business as usual, things
as they always have been. Behold every way out of no way! Behold every life
out of no life. Wilderness – and Bill Wylie-Kellerman calls prison “the
wilderness in a very small space!” – and dry land bursting with gladness!
Desert rejoicing! Weak hands and feeble knees (Amen!) made strong! Blind
seeing, deaf hearing, lame leaping, dumb singing! A highway for all, a Holy
Way, where no one (not even fools – Can I get a witness?) shall go astray or be
afraid! Where all who are lost shall be found!
Sisters and brothers, the great Good News of
this day is, all-ee, all-ee, all in free! No one lies beyond the reach of
redemption! No one lies beyond the touch of transformation! Do not fear. God
who is coming is powerfully with us and for us. With vengeance (All vengeance
is mine, not yours, says the Lord!) and recompense. By grace, and not by
violence. The grace, like the light of God, so often lies hidden deeply within
and among us – as we ourselves are hidden in darkness around us. Bonnie Greene
of the United Church of Canada tells of –
a delicate purple flower that grows in the
tundra so far from the sun’s warm rays that it could not blossom if it had to
start its life cycle from seed each spring. With this plant, the cycles are
reversed: The flower remains fresh beneath the snow during the ten months of
winter. It promptly withers and dies as soon as the snow melts, leaving room
for new life to spring from the old.
Can we imagine? Living in the dark ten months
of the year? (I know those of this congregation who have lived in Alaska
imagine!) Only to die just as soon as we come to the light??!! All that life –
all that beauty, that courage, that patience, that persistence – apparently all
for noting and for naught? Like sand no sooner painted in Buddhist practice
than washed away out to sea? Like a sermon of any description no sooner
preached than vanished into thin (hot?) air? Or could it be, that in the
all-seeing sight of God, nothing of us ever is lost? Nothing goes unseen or
unheard? No vision absented, no voice is silenced? That those who labor in
whatever deep darkness – in shift work, in mines, in snow fall, in stress, in
depression, even in death – also labor for and with God?
The One we call “God” so often is hidden in the
midst and the depth of our everyday lives. We often have no more of a clue than
a faraway baby born in a barn. Under mounds of snow, through ferocious winter
weather – whatever the time, the condition, the temperature, the circumstance of
our lives – Those who are most at work (at life, at love) in the most hidden of
ways, in the darkest of times, are the most promised to come to the light! In
contrast, those who are much better seen and known, recognized and regarded now
– especially in this age of upper-steroidal fixation on fortune and fame! – They
have got all they’re going to get! Nothing more is promised to them. God’s
promise is for the rest of us, for the least of us! All our limitations will be
overcome – by whatever means God needs. God will not be mocked or denied.
So Mary the mother of Jesus proclaims powerfully
in these magnificent magnified words – of the light that shines through the best
in her! Mary is no more perfect than you or I. But she has opened and offered
her best up to God. God is determined to show favor to those who need it the
most. God builds on the best that is in us – the potential (which is
power-full), the hope for the future. Kurt Vonnegut died this year, a prophetic
novelist one might say. He used to call upon our government to create a new
Cabinet position – the Minister of the Future! To represent and advocate for
all our children, our grandchildren and their children! Around all the
consequences of our short-sighted actions today – the countless costs of fossil
fuel, land erosion, water pollution, climate change, nuclear proliferation,
genocidal wars, massive displacement and dislocation, massive indebtedness and
imprisonment.
No wonder we are so stressed and oppressed! We
know we are harming the lives of the children to so many generations. We need
the help of such revolutionary mothers as Mary – supported by such unlikely men
as Joseph? In whom could God be any more hidden? Any more obscured? Who
could be a less likely source of God’s power – which is our potential? Look and
listen at Mary – unwed, uneducated, unprepared, unknown, uncredentialed!
Sometimes I speculate how many more obvious choices of women (and men!) were
approached before the angel found one who would say “yes!” And what a “yes”
Mary says – not only to the life of her own child – but also to the whole future
and hope of God for this world – for God renews that future and hope in the life
of every child born!
There is no place, no time, no person, no people
on earth beyond the full reach and touch of God’s promise! No one too feeble,
to weak, too anxious, too blind, too deaf, too lame, too sick, too dead, too
poor, too captive, too imprisoned, too indebted, too enslaved! Every one of us
is called, and empowered, this morning to bloom in the light of wherever we are
planted! Jesus says the very least of us who, like Mary, accept in faith that
Jesus brings the fullness of God’s promise to every last person on earth – Even
the least of us is greater than John, the greatest of prophets, who looked
ahead, who looked always to someone else. We are those who are given to know
how near salvation and liberation are to us.
I hate to be the one to tell us – When Jesus
comes into your life, my life, our life together, the life of this world – We
learn from Mary and Jesus himself (even “tough guy” John learns!) every excuse
between God and us has been removed! Whether Mary as a poor and single pregnant
woman far from home, or John the Baptist locked up in a dungeon and getting just
bits and pieces of what’s going on “out there” – There is no excuse any more for
us to withhold ourselves from our God – to withhold our lights, our lives, our
loves from our God – who is all-lighting, all-living, all-loving.
Every excuse is removed from all of the world.
It does not matter how hidden, how obscured, how unexpected, how buried – in how
much snow, or in anything else! – how unknown, how unappreciated, how
unrecognized and unrewarded – how put down, how left out, how rejected, how
neglected! Our time under God is now! Our time under God is now! Our time
under God is now! We are God’s child. We are God’s children. All born again
in the one who is born in all. Amen.
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