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Look Up
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis January 8, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Isaiah 60:1-7 Matthew 2:1-12
Often it is in the details of the Bible that we who would believe get lost—especially in the season just past: virgin births, descending and ascending angels, mysterious stars. They are at once utterly foreign to the details of our own existence, even as they remain the means by which we come to believe the deepest truth we ever will know. Yet it is not with the stranger details of this story that we have to do this morning, but with one detail necessary to Christ's epiphany and more familiar to our existence than we would care to admit. In one sense, it would seem to be a detail that underlies the whole of the infancy narratives both in Luke and in Matthew; yet it is a detail I believe we have read into the actual telling of the event over the centuries. For though we know the shepherds were keeping watch by night, and in order to follow the star the wise men necessarily traveled by night, nowhere does scripture connect Jesus' birth with the darkness; nowhere does it say that Mary gave birth to a son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger while it was still dark. Not one verse concerning the time of his birth is given. Yet there is no doubt in my mind: it was into the darkness that our Savior was born…because it is into my winter darkness and yours that he comes still. The detail of darkness, of course, is mentioned in these verses: "And there were in that same region shepherds…" you remember, and now on this Epiphany Sunday, "Behold, there came wise men from the east." Curious, but it is in the stories of those who were keeping watch and in the recollections of those who seeking that we are told of the darkness. They are stories which originate in the human condition, verses that locate us at a distance from the God who has come to be with us, words which surround us by the necessary and chosen darkness of our lives wherein God finds us and summons us to come unto Him. What we are told by this little but decisive detail is simply that we dwell, you and I, in darkness. Strange to say, but the story would not ring true were it told otherwise…were the shepherds leading their flocks in the heat of the sun when an angel appeared…were the kings merely scholars of the day who set out in their minds toward the manger rather than scientists of the night who followed a star. The detail of darkness is at the heart of God's beginning with us because God knows our preference is for the darkness, the darkness is where we choose to walk, and so I say again: it is into the darkness that the Light of the world must come to dwell with us still. The great New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann would even go so far as to say to us that it matters not whether Jesus was born of a virgin or whether there were actually angels out in that field or whether astronomers can now determine the existence of a special star. What is at stake in this story, he would say, is whether or not, in your own present darkness, you see his star and come to worship him. I would not go so far, myself, believing that to God all things are possible and that our seeing his star is finally God's doing more than our own. But I would go so far as to say that the human condition necessary for our seeing his star--and not another--must be darkness. Now there are some here this morning that have no doubt as to the darkness in which they dwell, a darkness that does seem to deepen as the winter light settles in. To believe there is One who has come for the purpose of reconciling the world to God and reconciling human beings to one another when there seems no hope of reconciliation in your own marriage is to dwell in a darkness human effort alone cannot dispel. To hail the coming of One who is Life when death now slowly ravages one you love is to dwell in a darkness too deep for words and beyond the reach of human comfort. To see the star and follow Him who is the Way when you have lost your own way and are grasping for some clear purpose or identity is to dwell in a darkness that defies even the most determined act of will. In a sense, to dwell in darkness is to live with little illusion that salvation rests in your own hands or in the hands of the one by your side. All the little lights that may once have seemed enough--the ring on the finger, the sound of a voice, the task at hand, the strength of arm--all the little lights do not avail at the limits of human existence or in the face of life's intractability. The paradox of the incarnation is this: these are the eyes of those keeping watch; these are the eyes of those searching the skies for a Great Light. They have been readied for a Savior not by their piety, but by their pain; they have been marked by their wounds rather than by their well-being for a great healing. If this Sunday after Epiphany finds you with little to hold on to and with most vestiges of security fallen away, if in this sense you dwell in darkness, then it is for you that his Light has come to shine. Because you dwell in darkness, the Light has come that you might trust, with all your life, in God's love and care and mercy toward you in Jesus Christ; that you might, as Luther said, in faith and readiness enter confidently into the darkness of the future (for still it will be dark) because you daily dwell secure in the care of a Good Shepherd who knows your name. If you can bear it, there is surely a strange gift that comes to any who dwell in darkness--a painful sort of freedom from all illusions as to the world's power to uphold your life; a fragile sort of freedom for the God who alone has the power to keep you from falling. Those who know the darkness wherein they dwell are those who are given to trust with all their hearts that, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." But then there are the rest of us who dwell in a darkness of our own making which, to us, is no darkness at all. We are those who, in every season, have kept the light of our own achievements, have kept the light of our own goodness, have kept the light of our enlightened politics, have kept the light of our above average intellects turned on for all to see. We are those who dwell in the security of functional families, of sufficient bank accounts, of well-insured futures, of reasonably mortgaged lives. We work at our goodness, take pride in our lawfulness, support worthy causes, give at the office. We would seem to have what it takes: "...the adrenal courage of the tiger,/ The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the doe,/ Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity;/[in W. H. Auden's words]To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not/ So impossible after all: to cut our losses/ And bury our dead was really quite easy: That was why/ We were always able to say: `We are children of God,/ And our Father has never forsaken His people.'/ But then we were children: That was a moment ago,/ Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced into our lives." An outrageous novelty, which is to say, a Light other than our own, greater than our own, eternal and for the whole world to see was introduced at his birth. And this outrageous novelty, this Light that sees straight through us, says unto us a bit latter in Matthew's gospel, "If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" In other words, if you think you have what it takes, you walk in the deepest darkness of all. To those of us who think we dwell in the light: who have some confidence that we are the bearers of justice to the social order or are the ones who hold the correct set of beliefs and values and truths in our heads or are sure that our politics coincide with God’s will or are confident that our minds are the master of all truth--to us the Light which has come into the world comes as threat, not comfort…comes forever as a light competing with our own little lights…a light judging all our claims to enlightenment…a light we must somehow co-opt as though it were our idea. But this are not the heart of darkness nor is it, I believe, what Jesus meant to imply when he said on the mount, "If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" Rather the tragedy of our better lives is this: that though he was born for us, he cannot get to us…and there is no greater darkness in human life than to live without him. We seem to be the ones not even mentioned by Luke or Matthew--the ones at home by the fire while the shepherds are keeping watch by night; the ones off on another interesting trip while the wise men set out toward a star; the ones who, having charged up a whopping electricity bill, now proudly trust our own ability to settle accounts. How in the world can "the God who said, `Let light shine out of darkness,' can the God who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ", how can this God indeed be Light to our well-lit lives? Yet “God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity, that we throw in our lot with random people, that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him. God needs nothing,” says Annie Dillard, “asks nothing, and demands nothing, like the stars. It is a life with God which demands these things. Experience has taught the race that if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means but the condition in which the means operate. You do not have to do these things, not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these things—unless you want to know God. They work on you, not on him.” All of which brings us, in the end, to his cross, to the love revealed out of a greater darkness that works not on God but on us. Ours is the story of those who, unable to bear the Light in the world, made him to bear the cross for us all. It is the story of his death before his birth which shines the light of truth upon our darkened world; that story before this which bears to us the necessary judgment: for the light has come into the world, and we have preferred our greater darkness. By golly, there is a faint whiff of Lent in the air! For short of hearing his judgment, most of us will never look up or even seek his star. What I know of my life is that the darkness wherein I already dwell must be named before I can his star and be led with the gift of my heart to his manger, before I will bow down and worship him. What I know is that I must be loosed from myself, from my self-importance, from my self-justification, from all the little securities by which I think I have upheld my own life, before I can behold God's great and tender mercy toward me in Jesus Christ. What I know is that I can do none of that for myself, but need the very One I cannot abide in my life to abide with me. “You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary,” Dillard counsels. The story does not say so, but I know it must have been midnight in that ancient cave when Mary invited the wise men in, the ones wise enough to know they needed him desperately enough to seek him by way of a star. Into their darkness, my friends, he came; into our darkness he comes still. Whatever the days ahead hold for you, be they days that deepen the darkness within you or days that find you, by grace, looking out and up for his star, know that it is the God who said, "`Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." For we have seen his star and have come to worship him. Thanks be to God. |