Darkness and Light

‘But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
   and the moon will not give its light, 
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
   and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 
Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

 ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’

Mark 13:24-37

Throughout the semester on Sunday nights, our UKirk students have been doing a fascinating Bible study on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians—we’ve talked about everything from how to welcome new believers into our congregation to submission in relationships and marriage to our social media practices that can so easily lead to shaming to the many and varied gifts God has given us. As we read through the 4^th and 5^th chapters, one theme has really stuck with me—the image and descriptions of darkness and light: “Therefore be imitators of God, as God’s beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us…For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light.” You were darkness, but now you are light, the writer reminds us. You were darkness, but now you are people of faith, people who have been enlightened, people who have been illumined. I told the students that night that I was kind of bothered by this sentiment, that while lovely, it seemed to leave out and diminish people of very deep faith who sometimes struggle with the darkness of the world; that just because you are faithful doesn’t mean there won’t be bleak, hard times. I also suggested that, if you are a person of very deep faith, you can’t help but see the darkness, the sin, the brokenness of the world. Your faith compels you to see it.

As we talked more, we also talked about the idea of equating darkness with sin and brokenness and harshness and ignorance--and what that idea might mean to folks with dark skin, what it might mean in our country, a country who has struggled to accept people with dark skin, to see them as whole. That is certainly something we have been reminded of this past August and over the past few days as we have struggled with all of the implications and nuances of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. Does darkness have to mean something bad, something sinful, mean that something is broken? Does darkness always have to take the back seat to the light? And, on the contrary, does light always have to mean something good, something whole, someone faithful? And do these images of darkness and light imply that our vocabulary for our faith journey, our faith story, is terribly limited? So many questions.

So, I, we, come to today, this first Sunday of Advent, thinking about these images of light and darkness, these questions about darkness and light. I love that we begin each Advent Sunday lighting a candle, winding our way through these Advent days, waiting, hoping, yearning for our Lord to be born into the world. Waiting, hoping, yearning, for our Lord to bring his light to all of us. I love that we have lit a candle for hope and will soon light others for peace, joy, and love, one for Christ. But as our service today has begun with light, it’s fascinating that our Scripture passage from Mark begins in the darkness: “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heaven will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.”

The world feels dark and bleary, tired and overwrought. There has been much suffering and it feels like there is nothing to light the way. And Mark uses images of darkness to describe how the world feels. Perhaps this image of darkness, of a night without starts, of a darkened sun is the best image he can think of because that’s how it feels to him; I think we all share the same struggle—about how to describe our feelings, our lives, our experiences during those bleak, overwrought, hard times in our lives, times when we feel like the sun will never come up again.

Author and minister Barbara Brown Taylor has written a new book about darkness and light, about these very same mixed feelings about the images, called Learning to Walk in the Dark. In her introduction, she writes:

…”Darkness” is shorthand for anything that scares me—that I want no part of—either because I am sure that I have the resources to survive it or I do not want to find out. The absence of God is in there, along with the fear of dementia and the loss of those nearest and dearest to me. So is the melting of the ice caps, the suffering of children, the nagging question of what it will feel like to die…The problems is this: when, despite all my best efforts, the lights have gone off in my life (literally or figuratively), plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water, nonetheless I have not died. The monsters have not dragged me out of bed and taken me back to their lair. The witches have not turned me into a bat. Instead, I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.

“I need darkness as much as I need light,” she says. Don’t we all? Taylor suggests that we need those times that are hard and those times that are lovely; those times when we struggle mightily and those times when nothing seems a struggle at all. Perhaps we learn the most about ourselves, the most about the true people in our lives, the most about our world, the most about God, when times seem worst. As hard as it is to live in that space where there seem to be no answers, maybe we need to be in that space for a while where there are no answers. Maybe we need to stay in that space for a while, to dwell there for a bit. It is easy to look at ourselves during the daytime hours, when we can see everything in front of us, but perhaps we need to examine ourselves in the dark, when nothing gets in our way, when no one else sees us, when we are forced to look into the deepest depths of our being. As difficult as it is to face our fears and the things that hurt us and the things that challenge us most, perhaps this thin place is the place where we learn the most about ourselves and others, our world. The place where, most importantly, we learn most about God.

Our first Advent candle has been lit today, celebrating the beginning of a new Christian year, lighting and illuminating the way for a baby to be born into our world. As Christians, we celebrate a new year a little while before everyone else—not, of course, on our human time, but God’s. That new year, that advent, begins in the midst of that time in the year when the days are short, the nights longer. This advent time carries us through December, the month with the longest night of the year. We, naturally, are tempted to jump straight to Christmas, when the lights shine the brightest, when the Christ candle is lit as he is reborn into our world. But we can’t. We are called to live through this time where a candle is lit every seven days, forcing us to wait, encouraging us to take our time, just as it takes time for a baby to develop in the womb. During this advent time, we are called to examine ourselves and our lives even through the darkest and longest night.

That news is hard and great all at the same time, and maybe that’s the way it should be. The hard news of that deepest and longest night, that deepest and longest time, is that we often feel God is not with us, that God has abandoned us, that God couldn’t possibly see or understand. In the midst of that, though, there is always good news, the news that darkness is not dark to God, that nothing can get in God’s way of being with us in the very depths of our soul. I’ll end with more of Barbara Brown Taylor’s words, the good news about God we all need to hear, that

…even when light fades and darkness falls—as it does every single day, in every single life—God does not turn the world over to some other deity. Even when you cannot see where you are going and no one answers your call, this is not sufficient proof that you are alone. There is a divine presence that transcends all your ideas about it…whether you decide to trust the witness of those who have gone before you, or you decide to do whatever it takes to become a witness yourself, here is the testimony of faith: darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day.

Thanks be to God. Amen.