Scriptures: Various
The Christmas season always seems to pull me emotionally in a bunch of different directions all at once. For me, to experience this season of the year is to open myself to experience all the contrasts, the ironies, the incongruities that seem to go with this territory. For instance…
Of course there is always the contrast between the sweet promise of peace and the persistent reality of war. And it’s not just that there is always some place on earth where human beings are engaged in killing each other. It’s that war provides a context for so much of our life on earth, even when we choose to pretend that it doesn’t. To think of all the people who mourn the losses of war and will continue to mourn to the end of their days, people who deal with the traumas of war and will continue with that to the end of their days, who try to erase the memories of war, who try to side step or get rid of all the lingering land mines (real and metaphorical), all the time and money we spend trying to repair the destruction (physical and spiritual) and preparing for the next war, time and money that is not spent on other things. The songs of angels announcing peace on earth are mocked in numberless ways here on earth where human beings seem much more serious about making war than about making peace, where war games are common among adults in high positions and video gamers, but you never do hear of a peace game. It’s an obvious contrast, one we’re all familiar with, and all too familiar with, but one that doesn’t go away.
Equally familiar is the contrast between the merriment the culture says we are supposed to feel and that many people in fact do feel, who find various sources of joy around them at this time of year that more than make up for any downside to Christmas, versus those who find this season particularly difficult, filled maybe with quite specific griefs, or some deep-seated depression made worse by the demands of the season, or just some general melancholy that seems to hit harder now. Though I am not a stranger to depression, my own tendencies at least in December run toward the joyful. I do find lots of sources of joy in the season, sacred and profane, trivial and not so trivial. But my own tendencies, which are complicated enough, are made much more complicated by all the contrasting moods I have found in people around me who I have cared about as pastor and friend and whose moods inevitably become partly my own.
All this is to say nothing of the particular combinations of greed and generosity, commercialism and idealism, whatever other contrasts that may surface especially at this time of year. And then there is the more obviously religious, the more theological side of all this. I have always thought that Christmas carries really the heart of the Christian message. I can get into Easter with its celebrations of new life and the promise of life being victorious over death and so forth, but in truth my faith is not centered there. (Of course when we get to the Easter season I will want you to forget that I said this, which I’m sure is not too much to ask, and in fact chances are I will have forgotten I said this, because I will be doing my best to find the essence of faith expressed in the stories of Christ’s death and resurrection.) But in truth my faith is anchored not so much in a triumphant God out there, up there, a God who conquers sin and death, a God who reigns over us and looks down on us. My faith is anchored in a God who is among us, mysteriously among us but among us, God with us, which is what the word Emmanuel means, and what to me the stories of Christ’s birth lead us toward. Triumphant or not, at peace or at war, at peace in our souls or not, joyful or not, hopeful or not, God with us. For me that is the starting point and the returning point of faith.
But even here there is a contrast. Even in the message “God with us” there are so many opportunities to distort and sentimentalize and trivialize the message. Instead of the God up there, all powerful, all everything, victorious, but distant, we get a guardian angel God, who we can turn to whenever we want for comfort or inspiration, a God who is “with us” in that sense but who is not among us as a force for discomfort, disturbance, impatience for peace-making and justice-making, repentance and change, whose love is expressed not only as comfort in times of distress but as discomfort with the world as it is and who dreams on our behalf for a new creation.
And then there is also the tendency to turn the message into just the repeated, familiar words and songs and stories we bring out every year as though they were decorations and not substance. There is always the need, or the temptation, to look for new ways to package the message, give it some freshness so that the words are something more than pretty. Here too I feel the contrast. On the one hand approaching Christmas eagerly and gratefully as a celebration that points us truly toward the truths the Christian faith has to offer, but also with some reluctance and inadequacy, knowing that often I have trouble even hearing those truths much less speaking them in some way that is fresh and honest.
As I say, I have always felt Advent as a time of contrasts, so much so that I have come to feel that that is what it’s all about. It’s a reminder that the conflicts, contradictions, and ironies that are to be found, and are often highlighted, in this season are the way our lives are in every season. Advent is an invitation to learn to live with the tensions and ambiguities of our lives, not just to live with them but to find our happiness and our home in them. Advent is a calling not to give in to the urge for simplicity, the tendency to see things in black and white, the desire for some kind of tension-free existence. Advent suggests that while stress is something that is often self-inflicted, often unnecessary, and often harmful to our physical and psychic health, that nevertheless not all stress is bad. That living in the midst of certain kinds of tensions and conflicts and contradictions is where we are supposed to be spiritually. And it says that that it is possible to live in that place joyfully. And it says that if we learn to live there, not trying to escape, but accepting the necessary tensions and ironies of our lives, that we will find God living there too.
One way of symbolizing those contrasts is the use of the images of darkness and light, which of course the scriptures do with some frequency. Donna and Martha read a sampling earlier of scriptures that make use of those images. One of them was taken from the passage from John’s gospel that is often read at Christmas, that refers to Jesus as the light and says that that light “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” It’s a favorite passage of mine: “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” But I confess I always add quietly to myself what scripture does not say but which is also undeniably true that though this is a light the darkness cannot put out, neither has the light from God yet succeeded at putting out the darkness. We live with both. Our human lives are not human without both.
Advent invites us, perhaps pleads with us, to acknowledge the darkness, to confess the darkness, to pay enough attention to the darkness to, as one writer has put it, to take a “fearless inventory” of it. The point being that it’s not enough to pray for a light to dispel the darkness, but that in some ways we need to honor the darkness too.
Thinking in these terms reminded me of when Ava and I first came to Charlottesville, living in temporary quarters out near Crozet, one of the things that impressed us was how dark it was. We were coming from the big city where there were street lights and headlights and window lights and airplane lights and who knows what all lights making sure that the night didn’t get too dark. Here nighttime impressed us as being very dark. It was dark too where we lived before, but really dark again where we have moved to. Though it’s not much more than a mile from civilization, if you call Rio Rd. civilized, it’s very dark. And you can see the stars so much better when it’s dark all around. But you also have to learn your way around and learn to be comfortable in the dark. You need to make friends somehow with the dark, more than just appreciating the view in the sky.
When a phrase is used such as taking a fearless inventory of the dark, it usually I think means being honest with yourself about the nature of the dark we live in and that lives inside us. It usually assumes that the dark is undesirable. It is the part of our world, or of ourselves, that we wish were different but that we need not to be in denial about. And so we take a fearless inventory of the dark so as to be able to face squarely what we are up against, whether it’s outside us or inside us.
But learning to be comfortable in the dark may be about more than learning survival skills, naming the demons in the world around us or confessing the demons in the world within us. I chose the litany we read earlier from the hymnal because it does something that few readings do actually. It uses the image of darkness as something, not that is unattractive, something we want to get rid of, but as something positive. It calls the darkness “our friend”. I believe it is more than that even. I believe it is where we meet God, not just as a light that shines in the darkness but as a quiet, invisible, but true presence in the darkness, as part of the darkness.
And so if our darkness is a wilderness of uncertainty about the future with no clear path ahead and no light right now to show us the way or tell us what’s next, if we don’t panic but learn to dwell in the darkness, we may find that God dwells there with us, even before some new door opens before us.
And if our darkness is a time of depression that we seem powerless to just snap out of, if we don’t panic but find ourselves somehow able to dwell in this place, we may find that God dwells there with us, not on the other side but on the inside of that particular darkness.
And if our darkness comes from being disheartened by the dim prospects for peace, or widening gaps between rich and poor, or the devastating effects of AIDS on individual people or whole continents, if we don’t try to escape but find ourselves able to dwell there, we may find that God is dwelling there too.
And if our darkness is a loneliness that won’t let go, if we don’t panic it may be even that loneliness itself that leads us to a closer, deeper relationship to God.
And if our darkness is that God is hidden by so many questions we have no answers for, if we don’t panic, if we don’t stop asking the questions or give in to easy answers, then we may find God present in the questions themselves.
Sometimes darkness is something we can only pray to be rid of but where we may find God dwelling with us nonetheless. Sometimes darkness is a gift where silence makes room for God, where dreams take shape, and where new life grows. May we honor the darkness, the darkness that is not like gloom but like the womb, and doing so prepare to give birth to something new and healing and holy in our world and in ourselves. Amen
Jim Bundy
November 30, 2003