From Darkness Toward Light (Meditation)

“From Darkness Toward Light”*

Isaiah 9:2-7

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Meditation for Blue Christmas Service

12/19/21

 

² The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined.
³ You have multiplied the nation,
    you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
    as with joy at the harvest,
    as people exult when dividing plunder.
⁴ For the yoke of their burden,
    and the bar across their shoulders,
    the rod of their oppressor,
    you have broken as on the day of Midian.
⁵ For all the boots of the tramping warriors
    and all the garments rolled in blood
    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
⁶ For a child has been born for us,
    a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
    and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ His authority shall grow continually,
    and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
    He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (NRSV)

 

         On NC Hwy 221, south of the tiny community of Linville Falls, is an interesting natural feature called Linville Caverns. Like so many other caves in our region, it has stalagmites, stalactites, and a creek running with clear, cold water. Trout live in the waters of the creek. Having lived in that dark place for untold generations through untold eons, the trout are born blind. With their useless eyes, they swim in darkness just as surely as they swim in the water itself.

         Their “land of deep darkness” is a perpetual reality. Having never known anything else, they manage to move, feed, and procreate just fine without the aid of light. Indeed, should their eyes suddenly begin to work, they would probably become terrified and start swimming in frantically into each other, rocks, and the sandy bottom of the creek.

         To sighted human beings, darkness is often a metaphor for loss. It means the absence of joy, purpose, and hope. It conjures up images of evil, suffering, punishment, or death. For the ancient Israelites, darkness referred to the experiences of defeat and exile. It referred to the very real death associated with being separated from home, family, and familiar traditions.

         Many of the psalms of lament were written during exile. Psalm 137 is one such psalm of darkness. “By the rivers of Babylon,” sings the psalmist, “there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:1-4)

         When Isaiah speaks of the “people who walked in darkness,” it is of these very Israelites in exile, people whose individual lives and whose corporate life shared the same relentless grief, the same longing for hope and wholeness, the same desire for a return to the light.

         As Christmas approaches, the days get shorter and colder, and the nights longer and darker. During these days and nights, Christmas lights seem to grow on trees, houses, and fences. They are ubiquitous and bright, multi-colored and flashing. It’s as if they demand to be seen, and demand happiness. And for those of us who can’t summon happiness into our hearts or glorias into our throats, those lights create a bitter paradox: All that brightness only sends us into deeper darkness.

         I have to think that the writer of Psalm 137 had to feel something similar when he wrote his lament. I imagine him looking at his harp and remembering how much joy it had brought him and others, and how much power music has to lift spirits and open hearts. But when he looked at his instrument, once a source of vibrant light, he saw and felt only heaviness and despair.

         Here’s the thing though: There’s a difference between “people walk[ing] in darkness” and those blind-born trout in Linville Caverns. The difference is that the sightless trout have no memory of light, while the Israelites maintained clear memories of light and sight, of gratitude and hope. Memories of their holy belovedness. And those memories of light, memories that came to them through the ancient stories of Moses, Hannah, Ruth, David, and others, created tiny flickers of light that empowered their laments. I think that makes lamentation a gift because, at its heart, it’s an expression of one’s faith that a present, painful situation isn’t of God’s making. It’s a refusal to accept darkness as some kind of final, permanent state. Lamentation does take suffering seriously, and at the same time it declares that new light is coming because human beings are, and all of the Creation is, now and always, beloved by God. And it seems to me that darkness can have meaning because we have known and experienced light. And light—that is to say joy, peace, and hope—are God’s will for all of us.

         John confirms this when he speaks of Jesus as the one through whom light itself came into being in the universe. “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:3-5)

         The darkness is real. Too often darkness even becomes a way of life for some of us. And yet we know it is darkness because we have experienced the light. We remember the light. The message of Christmas is that no matter what darkness comes, no matter how long it lasts, it does not have the last word. Light—God’s Light—will prevail.

Friends, God has not given us useless eyes. In both our heads and our hearts, God has given us eyes made for opening to the light, welcoming the light, both the light of day and the Incarnate Light, the Christ, who is coming into the world.

 

*I prepared this meditation for our “Blue Christmas” service. A health issue prevented me from sharing it, but the pastor who filled in for me read it. A Blue Christmas service is designed to provide comfort for those for whom Christmas is a more difficult than joyous occasion. If that is true for you, may God’s peace be real to you, now or sometime soon. AH

Christmas: A Paradox of Love (Sermon)

 “Christmas: A Paradox of Love”*

Luke 1:46b-55

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Advent 4 – 12/19/21

 

Before reading today’s passage, let’s remember the context in which these words are spoken.

         A teenaged Mary learns that she will soon become the mother of a remarkable child. As the scene of the Annunciation closes, we hear Mary say, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

         Most of us have been taught—and not without good reason—to hear Mary’s words as her humble surrender to God. When honest, we might also hear a young woman’s terrified submission to the demands of yet another male in a thoroughly patriarchal culture. In that case, Mary’s “Here I am” may sound like the gasping breath one takes before being thrown into cold water.

         In no way do I want to diminish anyone’s appreciation of this part of the Christmas story. It’s just that our world and Mary’s world are profoundly different from each other. Maybe that lack of understanding makes it inevitable that we romanticize the story of the Annunciation and gloss over the breath-taking scandal inherent in it.

         Think about it. The way Luke tells the story, Mary is a runaway teen. She leaves home, in haste, apparently alone, and goes to see an older relative, Elizabeth. Rather than the actions of a girl who is excited and grateful, Mary’s actions seem like those of a girl who feels overwhelmed, and not simply by an unplanned pregnancy, but by a pregnancy that has been imposed on her. She needs a loving, understanding, and non-condemning, feminine presence in her life.

         In Judea, Mary falls into Elizabeth’s wise and welcoming arms. And remember, Elizabeth is experiencing her own remarkable, late-in-life pregnancy. Because of that, she represents the fertility goddesses of an era that predates Abraham. Long before the patriarchy that characterizes first-century Rome, feminine images of God were the norm. God mothered humanity into spiritual awareness and healing.

         When Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s home, the Old Mother in Elizabeth awakens. With body, mind, and spirit fluttering to life, Elizabeth sings a song of thanksgiving. Then she utters a blessing on Mary. Only now, at this moment of mystical approval through Elizabeth, does Mary accept Gabriel’s announcement as good news. And her heart sings:

 

^46b “My soul magnifies the Lord,

⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

                  ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor

                           on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will 

call me blessed;

⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done

great things for me,

                           and holy is his name.

⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him

         from generation to generation.

⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 

⁵²He has brought down the powerful

from their thrones,

                  and lifted up the lowly;

⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things,

         and sent the rich away empty.

⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

⁵⁵according to the promise

he made to our ancestors,

to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”  (Luke 146b-55)

 

          One can almost see Elizabeth as she listens to Mary. Folding her old, thin-skinned hands in her lap, she wrinkles her brow and casts an embarrassed gaze to the floor. When Mary finishes, Elizabeth looks at the young woman with a tight-lipped, bless-your-heart smile.

         Mary’s song, you see, dives into territory reserved for men like Elijah and Elisha, Jeremiah and Isaiah. Mary’s song is full-blown prophecy. And such prophecy sounds out of place on the lips of a teenaged girl. But Mary has experienced transforming visitations, first from the angel, the in Elizabeth’s words. Everywhere Mary goes, God meets her there. From morning to evening, shore to shore, Heaven to Sheol, God is there for her and for the one being knitted together in her womb. Making peace with all of this, Mary embraces Gabriel’s announcement and Elizabeth’s blessing.

         As she accepts the gift, Mary speaks with clarity and authority. And like the child within her, that authority comes as a gift of grace. It comes through Mary’s willful struggle with and her willing acceptance of her call. Mary’s prophetic authority arrives in the midst of paradox.

         So it is with virtually all things spiritual. Scripture is full of paradoxical proclamations: The last shall be first and the first shall be last...Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise [and] what is weak in the world to shame the strong. Mary’s prophecy is all about the paradox of faith. It’s all about God’s ongoing work to displace violent power with transforming meekness. It’s all about God’s work to reveal the dingy gloom of shiny things that we think we own, but which almost always end up owning us.

         Paradox is about God’s aggravating truth that only when human beings learn to die do we begin to live.

         Paradox lies at the heart of all prophecy, because virtually all prophecy says, in one way or another, that things are not what they seem. Prophetic truth declares that eternal reality is being revealed in the transient, material stuff of the Creation. Fundamentalist theism and fundamentalist a-theism cannot tolerate all the gray space of paradox. They demand that all things be exactly as they seem. Maybe that’s what allows these fraternal twins—fundamentalist theism and fundamentalist a-theism—to traffic so freely in fear and hate. When one is certain that others are wrong, one will justify almost anything to protect the very things Mary sings about: pride, power, and wealth.

         Christmas, which cannot be divorced from Easter, declares the paradox of love. Christmas and Easter declare, with earth-shaking gentleness, the enduring mystery of grace. There is no such thing as earning or escaping the love of God. At Christmas, the true wealth and wisdom of the ages is born to a poor, uneducated, teenaged girl.

Well-to-do, First-World Christians have tried to undo the scandalous paradox of Christmas by connecting it to Black Friday instead of Good Friday. In doing so, we have managed to flip the paradox in our favor. We have allowed Christmas celebrations to ignore, or even to include the material wealth and the violent power that God comes not to safeguard, but to judge. Still, even when we corrupt our observations of Christmas, Christmas itself remains, well, immaculate. As Mary’s prophecy reminds us, Christmas still delivers God’s commitment to justice for all Creation.

         Here is the paradox of Love: Just as something in Mary must die before she lives into the new life stirring within her, we, too, are called to embrace, over and over, Christ’s life-renewing death. And we embrace that death by receiving with grace all that giving has to offer.

         Christmas is not under the trees in our homes. It’s under those trees out there, and in those wide-open spaces. It’s in classrooms and cubicles. It’s in alleys, and hollers, and barns.

I do wish a Merry Christmas to you. And even more so, I wish to all the world a Merry Christmas through you.

 

*This is the sermon I had prepared for Advent 4, 2021. Because of a health issue, I didn’t get to preach it. I’m sharing it anyway. AH

Desire of Nations (Newsletter article)

 Dear Friends,

          To most people reading this, December means Advent and Christmas. Some also have birthdays, wedding anniversaries, or graduations in December. And for some, December holds sad memories, as well. Even with everything else that does or can happen in December, the last month of the year is still a time to prepare for (Advent) and celebrate (Christmas) the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

         Over the centuries, the Church has pounded away at one message above all others: Jesus “saves us from our sins.” While I don’t argue that, I do think that over-emphasis on an individualistic, reward-and-punishment interpretation of the Gospel can obscure—and even deny—its fundamental and profoundly transforming (i.e. saving) message: Salvation and wholeness for each of us means salvation and wholeness for ALL of us.

         If and when the message of the Gospel is used to close doors, hearts, and futures, we have learned nothing. More to the point, we have been unfaithful to all that God comes to say and do for the Creation through Jesus.

         In the third verse of the beloved Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,”we sing these words:

O come, Desire of nations, bind

All peoples in one heart and mind;

Bid envy, strife, and discord cease;

Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.

         “Envy, strife, and discord” tear at human community and at the earth herself. And as the “Desire of Nations,” Jesus draws us together. He creates the order of community out of the fear-splintered chaos of individualism and tribalism.

         We do experience and share “Heaven’s peace” of being “one [in] heart and mind,” and that does not happen by trying to make all people think just alike. It happens through all people learning to see, appreciate and to love the Christ in ourselves and in one another. 

         In 1985, the PC(USA) adopted a document written in 1977 and entitled A Declaration of Faith. The document was not added to our Book of Confessions, but was accepted as a “reliable aid” for the church’s preaching and teaching. That document includes this powerful passage:

         The diversity in the early church caused tension and conflict.  Yet the Spirit bound them into one body, enriched by their differences.  We know that the same Spirit gives us a unity we cannot create or destroy.

         The Spirit moves among us not to end diversity or compel uniformity, but to overcome divisiveness and bitterness.

         The Spirit leads us to struggle against the lines of race and class, the ambitions of competing parties, the loyalties to individuals and traditions that divide us.

         The Spirit impels us to make the unity of Christians visible to a divided world, and assures us that we shall be one. (A Declaration of Faith, Chapter 5, lines 70-87)

         There has never been a time when human beings did not experience dislocating division and fear. And our time is no different. It’s just our time. So, it is our responsibility.

         As Jonesborough Presbyterian Church, we are but one very small part of the Church Universal. We are, effectively, about 160 people strong. And we are as diverse as the culture around us. While that often challenges and strains us, it’s also one of the most important strengths of our congregation. The differences among us may cause us to disagree at times, and to disagree passionately, but we are still called and equipped to do amazing things. Realm of Christ things. Christmasthings. We continue to seek know, love and serve God, to make music, tell our stories, and to laugh—even if from safe distances or on Zoom. And we do these things both in spite of our diversity and in the midst of it.

         When we come together in fearless honesty about whom we trust and whom we follow, we come together as one body, bound by the Holy Spirit, revealing to the world what it looks like to be a place of Advent and Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter.

         It is never easy, but it is always holy.

 

                                    A Blessed Christmas to You All,

                                                      Allen

New Clothes for Christmas (Sermon)

“New Clothes for Christmas”

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/5/21 – Advent 2

 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and release to the prisoners;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

 to comfort all who mourn;
³ to provide for those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
⁴ They shall build up the ancient ruins,

they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,

the devastations of many generations.

⁸For I the Lord love justice,

I hate robbery and wrongdoing; 
I will faithfully give them their recompense,

and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
⁹ Their descendants shall be known among the nations,

and their offspring among the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge

that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

¹⁰ I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,

my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

¹¹ For as the earth brings forth its shoots,

and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,

so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

to spring up before all the nations.  (NRSV)

 

         According to Luke, when Jesus is asked to preach for the first time at the synagogue in Nazareth, he opens the scroll of Isaiah and reads the first verse-and-a-half of Isaiah 61, God’s magnificent promise of deliverance and renewal. Jesus follows the reading with a sermon that Luke sums up in one sentence: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-30)

         At first, the people stand in awe of Jesus. The hometown boy seems to have made good for sure. Things change quickly, though, when Jesus interprets Isaiah’s words. He recalls that two of God’s most memorable prophets, Elijah and Elisha, tended to a Gentile widow and a Gentile leper before tending to Jews. In this memory, Jesus exposes that which is most utterly true about God: When the Spirit of the Lord moves, the initial beneficiaries are not necessarily those who consider themselves blessed and favored, but rather those who are most vulnerable. God acts first on behalf of the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed. Regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or even religion, these are the ones whose “descendants shall be known among the nations.” These are the ones whom the world will acknowledge as “a people whom the Lord has blessed.”

I hear Jesus saying that to the extent that Israel continues to remember that she was called out of bondage, not privilege, and to the extent that Israel continues to embody God’s concern for the powerless and the marginalized of the world, she maintains her role as God’s chosen witness. However, when Israel falls into bed with power, wealth, and violence, she allies herself with injustice and abandons her identity and her calling.

Now, let’s remember, while Israel does refer to a specific people and place, even more does Israel refer to those who intentionally “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” (Micah 6:8)

         The same is true for the church. When we commit ourselves to the way of the Christ, by following Jesus as Lord as passionately as we proclaim him Savior, we are his body. When we fall short of that calling, we compromise and weaken our body-of-Christ identity. We become tribal and shallow. We quit looking for the image of God in ourselves and each other, and we become obsessed with demanding “proof” of salvation by uttering prescribed religious phrases.

When we settle for a spirituality of rewards-and-punishments, our definition of beloved and called gets reduced to selfish concerns about who has earned what after death. We become impatient with the mysteries of grace. And we completely miss out on the joyful holiness of living as ones who, as God says to Abram, are blessed so that we might be a blessing. (Genesis 12:2)

         If the four gospels are accurate, it would seem that the leadership of first-century Judaism had abandoned Israel’s unique identity and calling. But let’s be gracious with them. Let’s acknowledge that living as Jews in first-century Rome was no picnic. As a whole, Israel was an oppressed people, and they desperately craved deliverance. They looked for God’s long-awaited messiah, and because of their situation, they looked for a military leader to deliver them from Rome. This was particularly true among the Pharisees who were also desperate to keep Jewish identity pure—free from all Gentile influence.

Returning to Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth: The theology of those who hear Jesus would have been shaped by the Pharisees’ teachings, so they’re offended when he reminds them of times when blessedness extended beyond the confines of Israel. Turning from friendly to fiendish, they herd the Good Shepherd toward a nearby cliff intending to throw him off it.

After slipping through their fingers, Jesus, instead of wilting and fading away, commits his life to fulfilling the gloriously disruptive prophecy of Isaiah 61. And he will not wear the fancy, gold-fringed robe of a Pharisee. As one who loves the Lord who loves justice, Jesus wears a very different wardrobe. He wraps himself in “the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit,” because God has clothed him with “the garments of salvation…[and] the robe of righteousness.”

         Given these images from Isaiah, whose prophecy Christians connect to Jesus and his Christ-revealing life, there’s little wonder that new clothes tend to be popular Christmas gifts. And if the clothing we give and receive actually reminds us of being clothed in Christ—a teacher of love and doer of justice—new clothes are entirely appropriate.

         Clothing has a long history as a metaphor for the spiritual life. The psalmist speaks even of God being “clothed with honor and wrapped in light as with a garment.” (Psalm 104:1b-2a) One of my favorite passages to read at weddings comes from Colossians 3: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…forgive each other…And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…And be thankful.” (Colossians 3:12-15)

         Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, peace, gratitude—these are the bridegroom’s garlands and the bride’s jewels. They are Isaiah’s garments of salvation. And such garments assume relationship with the Creation as well as the Creator. Our Christmas clothing is outerwear, not underwear, because salvation is our visible life, life in relationship with and for others. This does not mean that we try to encumber ourselves and others with some kind of homogenous, mind-numbing uniform. It means that we wear our Christmas hearts on our sleeve.

         Jesus declares the same thing when he says to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment…Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this [love] everyone will know that you are my disciples.” (John 13:34-35)

         Agape love is the fabric of the garments of salvation. To mix in the rest of Isaiah’s metaphors, love is the eternal and irresistible energy God uses to grow the fragrant and healing gardens of faith. When our lives embody the agape love and the redeeming justice of the Christ, we do more than talk about and wait for salvation. We experience it. We share it. To engage our faith actively and boldly is precisely what it means to wait upon the Lord. And isn’t that what Advent is all about?

         The promise of Christmas is this: When we gratefully offer ourselves to others, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon us. And even through the likes of you and me, the very heart of God may be revealed and fulfilled.

         Advent is the season of getting dressed for the arrival of the bridegroom. The table before us is our dressing room, our place of deliverance, renewal, and transformation.

And everyone is welcome here.