Darkness, Advent, and what the Light is really for.

We need this reminder now more than ever. That we aren’t children of darkness. We are children of the light. That the darkness in the world is not imposed upon us by an angry GOD, but comes from fear and prejudice. We are the light-bearers, the truth-tellers, and the health-bringers. Let us cast GOD’s light in the darkest places so that healing may begin.

Advent 1B  |  Texts: Psalm 80, Isaiah 64:1-9

A Time of Darkness

Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

Or as the NRSV puts it: let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Advent begins each year with our shrinking days and our growing nights. It begins with the end of fall and the ushering in of winter. We give thanks on Thursday and then find ourselves immersed in a season of  rising darkness. It comes each year as an environmental metaphor for our human condition. The midwestern winds and the Great Lake-effect snow bring the harshness of the world to our minds.

The greatest of these environmental metaphors is the increasing night and its growing darkness.

Darkness comes not only at the end of the day, but is there at the day’s beginning. All of creation began in darkness

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.

GOD brought the people out of darkness, out of slavery and into the light of GOD’s presence. “Let your face shine” the Psalmist sings to GOD. There is something deeply wrong here. Lighten this darkness.

The middle of this psalm, snipped for brevity speaks to the saving power of GOD to do precisely that.

You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches; it sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River.

What GOD has created was a work of true beauty and faithfulness. It was a vineyard, a garden, a place of great prosperity and life. But it went awry.

Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?

The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.

Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted.

A song of great lament, the people cry out to GOD. You delivered us! You freed us! You made this for us! What has happened here? Why does it look nothing like the eden you created? So like our own cries.

The Darkness of Our Making

We can name our own darkness and that sense of separation. That feeling the psalmist describes as being fed “with the bread of tears”. The grief of loss, distance, separation.

This week, we saw darkness rise again in a community that could be our own; a city that is only a few hours away; it could be our neighbor. The city of Ferguson, Missouri is still engulfed in pain and suffering. A suffering that is not days old, or several months old. But suffering that is counted in years. And yet the simple act of talking about its suffering has become politically divisive. Even saying the name of the city leads to knee-jerk responses. And no doubt fidgeting in the pews.

Speaking of police brutality does not make one anti-cop any more than being concerned for the rule of law makes one a racist. This is the confusion from within the darkness, the veil of evil, in which the truth is obscured and the suffering increases with the darkness.

Where our hearts must go is to the suffering. The suffering of the people: all the people. Not just the shop owners or the cops or the protestors or the vandals, but also to the multitudes of citizens that have lived with and complained about how the Ferguson police department polices the city for years. And the people who live in a community which saw its jobs leave decades ago. A community that suffers great injustice and iniquity. A community whose suffering is greater than its neighbors.

Much like the home of my birth, where thousands of people have had their water shut off, even when it is paid for. Where the public utility was sold to a private company, rates were raised, and whole neighborhoods of Detroit had their water shut off for months. Again, even when debts are paid, the people suffer. True, cry out to GOD, please save us! suffering.

Pleading for the Light

It is from this darkness that our plea must not be for peace first, but for light. We ask GOD: put your light on this and heal it. Restore us. let your face shine, that we may be saved.

We know that something is wrong and in our search for a solution, we run to the easy culprits of our politics or our disunity. Our most pernicious partner in the dark is the one who doesn’t want the circumstances to change: who hides our flashlights and refuses to share the lamp oil so that we can see what is really going on.

What we ask for, is for GOD to do precisely as 3rd Isaiah calls upon GOD to do

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence

Tear open the heavens, GOD and be here! You can fix this! The evil would cease if you made your presence known!

From the darkness we cry out to GOD for help. From the darkness of grief and sorrow we cry for help. From the darkness of hatred and anger we cry for help. From the darkness of confusion and fear we cry for help. From the darkness of guilt and depression we cry for help.

In the darkness we fear and suspect and imagine all manner of monster lurking in the bushes and buildings that surround us. In the darkness, we fear that this is really the end.

It is in the darkness that light is the brightest. It is in the darkness that we come to see that our fears are phantoms and that the monsters are our own creations. The demons we see in one another are only the demons lurking in our own souls.

What Light Reveals

The light that comes, the light that is found in the face of GOD, the light that we cry out to save us is the light of revelation. The light that allows us not only to find safety, but to see the very workings of creation. That allows us to see the world as GOD sees it.

We are not healed when we put a Band-Aid over an infected cut. We use a disinfectant, like Neosporin. We don’t cover up our problems and hope they’ll go away, we reveal them, we ask GOD to shine a light on it, so that we may be healed.

We even have common saying that sunlight is our best disinfectant. They call freedom of information laws sunshine laws because we know what good comes from casting a light on the darkest places. This goes for all the places where darkness resides: from our government to our homes.

We need this reminder now more than ever. That we aren’t children of darkness. We are children of the light. That the darkness in the world is not imposed upon us by an angry GOD, but comes from fear and prejudice. We are the light-bearers, the truth-tellers, and the health-bringers. Let us cast GOD’s light in the darkest places so that healing may begin.

That means talking about racism and systems that lead to suffering.

It means talking about death and grief and loss of loved ones, especially around the holidays.

It means talking about sex, relationships, and GOD’s hope in all human desires to be known intimately by another person.

And it also means naming the times and places in which the church has brought darkness, rather than light, veiled the truth with a fog of war, and proclaimed a gospel of consumerism and feeding the belief in a GOD of wealth and separation rather than a GOD of equality and restoration. That is of darkness, but what is of GOD brings light!

Let us join the Psalmist and pray again and again throughout this Advent season:

Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

 

[H/T to Homebrewed Christianity, particularly Tripp Fuller for concept and Bo Sanders for the title.]