A few days ago, the ceiling light (my only light) in my
study burned out. Because I’m too short to reach it, changing it requires me to
go to my detached garage, lift the ancient wooden door, scrape around in boxes
until I find a replacement, carry in the ladder, climb up, remove the fixture,
and change the bulb. Okay, in the scheme of things, not a complicated process,
but with work and rain, I simply couldn’t bother, so it’s still burned out.
As Advent begins, I’ve been thinking about light and
darkness and justice and righteousness and signs and portents and a baby. It’s
a lot . But I keep coming back to my study. Light, for me, has always meant
hitting a switch and voila – Light! All my life. I’ve never lived without
electricity. Even when I spent time in Congo, although it was sometimes
intermittent, the house I stayed in had electricity…even hot water. On the
evenings when the power was off, we simply turned to our flashlights and battery
powered lights strategically placed all over the house. Switches…and voila…light.
This has not been true for most of human history. By and
large, we were active during daylight hours and we were quiet, still, and
restful during the night. It was a rhythm that ordered our whole interaction
with the world. While today we suffer from what scientists call “light
pollution,” this would have been a ridiculous concept even 100 years ago. We
are oversaturated with illumination: the light from street lamps, buildings
that never go dark, clocks with digital displays, TVs, computers, ereaders like
the Nook and Kindle, car headlights, and so on. We are so overstimulated that we
don’t know how to stop, slow down, take stock, be still, appreciate the
darkness, and get back into the groove, the rhythm that evolution has relied
upon in us for safety, rest, and rejuvenation. A few years ago, I lived near I5
and I used to get a little loopy thinking about how the traffic never stopped
on the interstate. All night long headlights burned through the darkness and
people catapulted their way from one destination to another. Culturally we do
not stop. And this culture of limitlessness, of constant movement, it has a
cost. Advent can help us pause.
Advent is not just a season of Light. Too much light washes everything out, washing away. No. Advent is a season of light in the midst of darkness. Darkness and light playing off one another. We have to welcome the darkness in order to appreciate the light. It’s important to know and not be bowed by the darkness in our world, in our lives.
As a holy season of preparation like Lent, Advent is a time
of prayer and preparation. But, the Latin root of the word for Advent means “to
come.” Something is coming; and we are waiting for it. But, waiting,
anticipating, resting. These things are not our forte.
In many ways, Advent is a seasonal mirror of the Jewish
Sabbath. Jews start their days at sundown. We begin our year (Advent is the
start of the Christian calendar) in a season of darkness. During Jewish
Sabbath, people are called to worship, reflection, community, and joy. Advent
does as well. Jewish Sabbath leads people away from the busy-ness of everyday
life back into a rhythm predicated on the belief that we were made for no other
purpose than to commune with our God. Advent brings us back to our purpose,
too. During this season, more than any other during the church year, we
celebrate all of the many titles and roles given to and taken on by Jesus.
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Light of
the World, Word of God, vulnerable child, a baby born into poverty, Emmanuel
(God with us), and so on. During our waiting, we anticipate the coming of this
complex and wonderful God. Moreover, we
can’t begin to commune with God if we can’t spot God, if we can’t see God, feel
God, know God.
Luke’s portents could have been written today: “There will
be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among
nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” Whoever says the
Bible is irrelevant hasn’t read it. This past week, the UN has been gathered in
Qatar to wrangle, once again, over global climate change. Once again, the world
had few expectations of this meeting. And, once again, it hardly was covered by
the media. Yet, hurricanes continue to intensify, the oceans continue to
acidify, the Northern hemisphere is growing warmer with fall and winter
becoming delayed by weeks, fresh water is scarce in many places, drought, and
climate change driven famine are taking place. There is distress among the
nations due to the roaring of the sea and waves. And we are confused. To address
climate change with any seriousness would require us to interrupt our patterns
of behavior – globally to do so – and to change our rhythms of life. To slow
down. To use less. To expect less autonomy. To live differently.
Luke, clearly, wasn’t talking about climate change, but his
words are prescient, all the same. Luke, recalling words from a prophet, speaks
of international chaos. We see that all around us, too: throughout Africa and
the Middle East, but all around us. Even here in the United States, as we
debate the fiscal cliff, economic policy, and engage in hyper partisan
politics, we are fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the earth.
We experience spiritual darkness, too. Loss of loved ones,
economic stress and distress, old and painful psychic wounds, uncertain
futures, unknown purpose, our own mortality. Individually, we faint from fear
and foreboding.
Then Jesus tells a story, which seems to make little sense. A
great storyteller, but sometimes his stories leave us scratching our heads in
wonder. Yes, sprouts on trees tell us that life is coming, but what has that to
do with the sun, the moon, and the stars, and distress upon the earth. Moreover,
this passage comes from the end of the gospel just before the events of Jesus’
final week of life. They move us toward the crucifixion. Why are they read
during Advent?
Change. This is a story about change. About endings and
beginnings. God’s time is more mystical than chronological. During Advent, we
look back at the birth of Jesus but we also look for Christ coming again. Each
Advent we declare that this age is ending and a new one is being born. We
celebrate not just to arrivals of Jesus (his birth and the second coming) but
we remind ourselves that God is born into the world all of the time. We are
incarnational people. God is here. In the hyperbolic portents but in the quiet
moments, in our struggles, in the poor babies born today, in the margins of
society now, not just 2000 years ago, not just in the future. We wait for what
is all around us. We celebrate the birth of the not yet. It’s a jumble of
mystical wonderful frightening experiences. This is the why the angels must
declare again and again, “Fear not!” for this kind of mystical hodge podge is
uncontrollable, uncontainable, unpredictable. It is interruptive and
disruptive. Change. Everything changes.
Where is the darkness in your soul? Is there a way you can
move into your darkness this Advent – embrace it a little? Touch the sorrow.
Touch the loss. Touch the fear. And remember, everything changes. There is a
light that splits your darkness. A light different from all others. A light
emanating from the Light of the World. A light found in the stars. A light that
is leading us, sometimes circuitously for sure, but leading us all the same
from the stars to the stable, to the side of a God who is born among us, who
knows the completeness of the human condition. There is a light of justice that
shines wherever there is injustice and oppression. There is another light that
calls us back to a rhythm of existence of dependence upon it; it demands that
we let go of the artificial lights upon which we rely. Let them go, it says.
Let them dim. Let them fall to the ground. They are worthless. There is only
one light that shines with truth and mercy, and it cannot be found in the sky
or in a lamp.
Go to Christmas by way of a route of rest and justice.
Awaiting the change that only our God brings. So, close your eyes and enter
that moment of darkness as I leave you with a poem from Wendell Berry called
The Peace of Wild Things. It says,
"The Peace of Wild Things"-Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of the wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
