Sermon Series: Learning to Welcome the Dark, Part Three
The
Rev. Dr. Leah Schade
Dec.
14, 2014
Isaiah 7:13-17; Psalm
139:1-18; Luke
1:26-38
A few
weeks ago I did a children’s sermon where we talked about the phases of the
moon, and I handed them a calendar that showed what phase the moon would be in
during this month. Starting today, that
glowing orb in the sky is waning toward “new moon,” which will be on Dec. 22,
when the moon’s light disappears. Interestingly,
Dec. 21 is Winter Solstice – longest night of the year. So the darkest night of the year will have
not have any moonlight either. This is a
dark time.
We
sometimes hear people use that phrase to describe their lives or the state of
our world. If someone says “this is a
dark time” – what do they mean? I posed this
question on Facebook and invited people to respond. The question sparked nearly 30 comments. Answers I got were: a valley of grief, tyranny and destruction running rampant, confusion
and fear,
lack of knowledge and wisdom. In movies, whenever a war or battle is about to start, someone says
"dark times are coming." It’s a time of negativity, injustice, oppression, overwhelming
challenges, and depression. For some,
this time of year reminds them of losses they have suffered, especially loved
ones who have died, with whom they are no longer able to share the
holiday. When people say “it’s a dark
time,” it can mean what is absent - not much hope or joy.
 |
| Lester Johnson, Three Transparent Heads, 1961 |
By these
counts, I think the argument can be made that we are in a “dark time.” Racial tensions in our country are as high as
I’ve ever seen. We hear news about rapes
on college campuses, threatening the safety of our daughters. There are debates about the value of using
torture as a means by which to extract information from our enemies. News about worsening pollution and climate
disruption from fossil fuel extraction processes. As a friend said in one of her responses to
my post: “Watch CNN or the local news and it paints
the picture of darkness. Current affairs that we are confronted with daily: Police
Brutality, ISIS, War, School Shootings,” the list can seem endless. These are, indeed, dark times.
But as we’ve learned in these past few weeks on this sermon series
about learning to welcome the dark, it’s important to unpack the stereotypes
people have about darkness. Especially
since people with darker skin are unconsciously or even consciously demonized
simply for their skin’s pigmentation. And when it comes to the feelings of
anger, grief and depression that arise in response to these personal, national
and global injustices, let’s not push too hastily for people to “get over it,”
to swallow their pain and anger and “move forward,” as the saying is so often
reiterated.
Because
as Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us in her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, “The best thing to do when you are
flattened by despair is to spend time in a community where despair is daily
bread. The best thing to do when sadness
has your arms twisted behind your back is to sit down with the saddest child
you know and say, ‘Tell me about it. I
have all day.’” (Taylor,
Barbara Brown, Learning to Walk in the Dark,
HarperOne, New York, NY, 2014; 86). But we have
to do this without expecting all this to magically cheer us up and whisk us out
of our dark emotions. By listening to
their words, hearing their stories, and holding those powerful, violent
emotions as best we can, we are at least acknowledging that, yes, this has
happened, and it is worthy of healing.
But of course, many would disagree. You may have noticed the kind of rhetoric
that has arisen in response to these events, the kinds of insensitive, offensive remarks jumping off of blog posts and blurted by political
pundits that seek to blame the victims, downplay the seriousness of the issues,
and divert our attention from the work that needs to be done. Our culture basically pushes two
options for us in the face of these massive injustices: fight or flight. Toss nasty verbal grenades into the fray, or
turn away and shop shop shop for the best holiday deals.
It is understandable to react to these strong feelings of those
who cry out against injustice with either dismissive acidity or detached
numbness. Because some of us have never experienced this kind of
suffering. We build walls between us and those who suffer a thousand
micro-aggressions over the course of their lives due to their skin color. Between us and the ones whose suffering is
distanced from us. Between us and the
woman who has been raped. We cannot bear such suffering, so we express
outrage that such intensity of pain is even voiced. Yet these words of
frustration and rage are found throughout the Bible, in the Psalms, in the
mouths of prophets like Jeremiah and Habbakuk who says: “Why
do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are
before me; strife and contention arise.” (Habakkuk 1:3)
Here’s what we must do with those enraged by Ferguson, and those
standing in oil-slicked soil on their farms, and those whose bodies have been
abused and assaulted: we must listen to them, and hear them in the
context of prayer. We all know we live
in a world marked by violence and revenge - wouldn’t it be prudent to put those
feelings into a prayerful context? Wouldn’t it be wise to invite God into
these feelings?
That’s
just what Mary does in the Gospel of Luke. Mary was a woman who lived in “dark
times.” Because the
days leading up to Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary were filled with many of the same
things identified by the Facebook observations. Her people were oppressed by the Romans and
despised in much the same way as people of color are in this
country. They lived under military
occupation and the soldiers often used violence in their patrols of the
villages and cities. Diseases were
common, poverty was nearly universal outside of the homes of the wealthy elite,
and crime was a constant. Hopelessness
and depression could easily settle into one’s heart, and even take hold of an
entire community. All this could lay open a person’s mind to the creeping suspicion
that perhaps God has finally abandoned us, left us to our own devices, given up
on us.
The world holds its collective breath, waiting to see if and how
God will respond. Will God punish us for
these feelings or mutely turn away?
Neither. God chooses a third way. God listens and responds. God responds by effecting a transformation in
the darkness. Despite all of the
negative stereotypes about darkness, Mary instinctively understood that God
works in darkness differently than in light, but God still works in those dark
places. It is within Mary’s womb, as
dark a place as can be found, that the Messiah is conceived and grows. There in the secret, dark place of a young unwed
teenage girl’s shame – there you see, is Mary’s God, the God of our raped
daughters, the God of our murdered sons, the God of our desecrated earth. This is the God who sees that things must change, and creates in her a
future that causes Mary to burst forth in song:
“My soul doth magnify the Lord and rejoices in God, my savior! For he has looked with favor on the lowliness
of his servant. Surely, from now on all
generations will call me blessed.”
There in
the midst of hopelessness is where God does Her best work. Darkness is as useful for God as light. Because it makes us slow down, rely on our
ears to hear, and our hands to feel. Darkness
helps us to dismantle those things that keep us from hearing and feeling
God. I did an exercise with a group of
preachers in a workshop a few months ago where I blindfolded them and guided
them into a room of darkness. They lined
up, putting hands on shoulders, and became acutely aware of what the floor felt
like beneath their feet as they shuffled slowly one step at a time. Without their sight they learned to rely on
hearing each other’s voices, and my voice, to tell them where to turn, what was
on their left and right. They had a
shared experience of smells and textures and sounds that gave them new insights
into how God works in darkness.
In what
ways might Darkness be trying to effect a transformation in you, in us? What voices are we supposed to hear in the
Darkness? Whose hands can we reach
for? Especially during this period of waning
moon and approaching winter solstice, what Taylor calls “endarkenment,” let’s
not be too quick to run to “the light” and miss what Darkness is trying teach
us, trying to dismantle in our individual and collective egos.
The
Darkness is trying to show us that we can do better, that we need to reach out
for the hands and shoulders of God’s sons and daughters - no matter their skin
color, sexual orientation, culture or economic level – and see them as having
inherent dignity, value and worth. The
Darkness is urging us to sharpen our senses to God’s created world and
recognize that our earth and its precious waters and biotic communities have
inherent dignity, value and worth.
So how do
we take those first, shuffling steps into the darkness? This
afternoon some of us will be taking gift bags and singing carols at Country
Comfort Assisted Living. We will be
going to what some people think of as a “dark place,” where the elderly wait
for the final shroud of death to enfold them, a place where few people go to
visit because it’s uncomfortable, and they do not want to be reminded of their
own mortality. But we will go and see
that even in that dark place, new life grows in unexpected ways.
Two days ago I went to another place that people might call “dark.” I went to Haven Ministry, the homeless shelter
for our tri-county area. Few people
would want to be there, a place where poverty throws its victims, where
domestic violence tosses its abused women and children, a place where people
only go as a last resort. I only went because I was sent there with the gifts
bought by our youth with money from our Rich Huff Fund. So I arrived with clothes, a toy and some
diapers for a 5-week-old infant who was there with his mother. I don’t know what her circumstances were, but
I could imagine the pain and humiliation she had endured, the hopelessness she
must have experienced, the “darkness” that surrounded her. But I asked if I could see the child – and she
took me back to her little room. There
on the bed the little baby boy was sleeping, as perfect and holy a child as I’ve
ever seen. New life in this place of
darkness.
In a few minutes, I will hold Laylanya and Koda in my arms and stroke
their soft hair with the baptismal waters, a reminder of the dark birth waters
of our planet, the dark waters that pillowed them in their mother’s womb. And I pray that when the day comes when they
feel lost and abandoned in the darkness, they will be reminded of the words from
Psalm 139:
Even the darkness is not dark to you; the
night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
13 For it was you
who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
God
is calling us in the dark to listen and learn and lend a hand even more at this
difficult time. Because, as Mary reminds us, God is at work in ways that are
not immediately visible to us, but are nevertheless powerfully moving among us:
49 For the Mighty One has done great things for [us],
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him from
generation to generation.
God has not abandoned
us. God is at work as much now as in the
beginning of our dark-shrouded world, as when God’s people cried out for
justice and mercy from the depths of the biblical texts. The God of Mary’s womb, and the God of Jesus’
tomb – both places of darkness – is our God: the God of our broken bodies and
hearts and communities who comes to bring healing and new life in the darkness. Put your hands on God’s strong shoulders,
listen for God’s voice guiding you in the darkness. And take your first shuffling step. Amen.
Today we commemorate the courageous act of Martin Luther,
who, nearly 500 years ago, took a stand against the abusive powers of the
church and began what became known as the Reformation. He wanted to reform the church, to bring it
back into alignment with the intentions of God and the principles of the Bible. In 1517 at the church door of Wittenburg,
Germany, a young monk stood nailing his 95 Theses into the splintering wood, an
act that would splinter the entire stronghold of the religious authorities and
start the Protestant movement that still exists to this day. 
Lutherans also persecuted
the Anabaptists, or what we know as the Mennonites. In this area of Pennsylvania we see lots of
our Amish and Mennonite neighbors and work alongside them or purchase their
goods. But there was a time when
Lutherans so disagreed with their theology and religious notions that we
pursued them and killed them. And so we,
as Lutherans, have had to be honest about these darker aspects of our heritage
and to apologize and make amends for it. 
Then, in the article, he quotes a passage from the Gospel of
Luke where Jesus says: “When someone has
been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been
entrusted with much, even more will be required” (12:48 NLT). He said, “I used to wonder who Jesus meant,
because I sure didn’t think it was my family.
The way I saw it, we had been given nothing, entrusted with
nothing. I hoped that rich and powerful
people would read Jesus’ words and take them to heart. But when I went to Vietnam, I finally
understood: He meant me. I was the one plucked from the South China
Sea. I was the one granted asylum in a
nation where education is available to everyone, and prosperity is attainable
for anyone. I worked hard to get where I am today, but the humbling truth is that
my hard work was possible because of a
blessing I did nothing to deserve.
And that blessing is something I must pass on, in any way I can.”
