The Second Sunday of Advent, December 6th, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black, preaching
Baruch 5: 1-9
Canticle 16: The Song of Zechariah - Luke 1: 68-79
Philippians 1: 3-11
Luke 3: 1-6
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. AMEN.
On this Sunday, Luke's second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist proclaims a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. However, both the reading from Baruch, and the Benedictus, Luke's hymn of praise that Zechariah proclaims, lean the action from darkness to light. "Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God." We'll consider darkness to light and repentance to forgiveness, but first a little context.
In the Gospel for this morning, Luke anchors the narrative about John the Baptist. When was it? It was the 15th year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (who lived from 42 BC-37 AD. Who was governor of Judea? Pontius Pilate was that governor. Who was the ruler of Galilee? Herod was the ruler of Galilee. His own brother Philip was the ruler of one nearby region, and Lysanias was the ruler of another neighboring area. Who filled the high priesthood when this happened? It was during Annas and Caiaphas 's high priesthood. Who announced this? Zechariah having seen Jesus as a small child, told his son John, the first cousin of Jesus. Years later, John traveled through the region around the Jordan River, that fresh, life-giving water that runs through the region, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Luke was insuring that all readers would be able to set John's announcement in accurate, real times and places. Remember as a child addressing some letter, probably a Valentine, to someone at, maybe, 9 Oak St., Boston, MA, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, The World, The Galaxy, and The Universe. It was a way to show just the place we wanted our mail to go, and that it was special to us, and a real place. In his way, Luke was doing just that. He wanted readers to know, he wasn't writing poetry or something invented. Luke was describing something important, and he wanted all readers to know of its accuracy, reality, and truthfulness. Throughout his Gospel, Luke provides corroborating details to verify his account, so that we'll know of its complete probity by his naming places, people, and lineages we know, can study, and can verify.
Luke sets John's proclamation in real time, and yet it is also about a time when repentance will turn into forgiveness, darkness into light, not so historical. To be sure, he sets his own account into the prophet Isaiah's prophecy, using the earlier prophecy as a link to own John's value and authority, another kind of historical anchor. If Isaiah was the most respected prophet and John echoed him, then what he said must be taken seriously and respected also.
The idea, though, is of darkness to light, repentance to forgiveness. As Theodore Roethke wrote, "In a dark time, the eye begins to see..." We pause in Advent exactly to begin to see. Our presenter, Janet Davis, spoke of darkness on Wednesday, observing that in Scripture, creativity comes from darkness as a source. She referred to creative or dynamic darkness. She spoke of creation, the exodus, the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection-each of those began in the darkness. Darkness then is not bad, nor connected with sin or evil. Instead, darkness permits, or even encourages, the possibility of creation. The earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the earth...Then God said, "Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness." Light emerges from darkness and creation goes out from it to continue creating. Darkness does not obscure light in Scripture; it begins light. The pattern then is that darkness is the pool, the life-giving substance from which light and life arise, evolve, and come.
In similar way, after Moses had taken his people away from Pharaoh and they were leaving Egypt, it was night. They arrived on the far side of the Red Sea, as it was dawn, so the Exodus was at night. The incarnation, of course, began in the darkness, both of creation and of mystery, each a kind of darkness. The moments after the crucifixion, the earth went dark, and from that darkness, a new light came permanently into the world, as it did after the resurrection. Think of the famous painting by William Holman Hunt, called "The ight of the World."
And yet, and yet, we usually are told that darkness is the locale of sin and evil. Scripture does not say that, but somehow modern psychology has layered that onto darkness.
The Psalmist says: Darkness itself will not darken for You, / and the night will light up like the day,/the dark and the light will be one. How if darkness goes into light, might we consider sin? Remember that sin is only "missing the mark," and not the late 19th century/20th century's deep psychological turmoil of failure, evil, narcissism, violence, and worse. Sin rather is an occupational hazard of being human, an ordinary by-product of freedom of choice, and a necessity for creativity and any other sort of life. We do not believe that people are born evil or flawed, but rather we all acquire lifetimes of wrong words, wrong actions, things done and left undone: many occasions of missing the mark.
The writer of Baruch was presumably a friend and secretary to Jeremiah, writing from exile in Babylon to those in Israel. He urges them to take off their sadness, that God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory. Zechariah says similarly, "In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness.
If that is the build up, over and over, of the biblical understanding of the pattern, the trajectory, the life history of missing the mark, then John's preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. John the Baptist is rough and tumble, almost wild or untamed, and he lived a strange life. Yet he delivers the message that salvation is near. He provides a new entrance to a life without sin, a rebirth to the way God made us, returning to each of us the diadem of glory. Rather than being wild and fierce, this is an invitation saying that God will always return us to our pristine state and always see us that way.
Unlike Lent, where Jesus is gathering up all the sinfulness collected over time, from humanity, in Advent the promise of light from darkness is made. Here in the northern hemisphere, where Christianity evolved, Advent heads into the darkest December days, and turns towards the light just as Christmas and Epiphany come. The narrative of sin to redemption might not work as well if we were plunging from light into darkness, but this calendar works for us. I imagine that in places like South Africa, where some people came with both narrative and calendar, those people just hear the narrative and its message of hope and joy and overlook that the seasons don't match. We hear and feel it reinforced in our living in time and space. We feel the weight of the diminishing light. The days get shorter and our flowers finally give up, and the world looks increasingly bleak, lifeless, and spoiled.
Even here, though, by Epiphany the light changes radically. I took a class for years at 6.30 a. m., in an East facing room. Not only did Advent days get greyer and greyer, but also by the Christmas break, in that hour, we didn't even see any evidence of sunrise. By the end of the time away, in early January, the difference in the light was obvious and there would be a day when it wasn't grey, and we would all nearly cheer at a first visible dawn. We need to recognize, even with city lights, electricity, tall buildings, and more, obscuring the horizon and our schedules not being tied to the rhythms of the sun, that the solstices were real times to mark the coming and going of light.
We can allow ourselves to think about where we miss the mark, because it fits so well with the darkening world, and because we know it's not for long. We know as surely, as John the Baptist knew, that the light is near, and is coming to shine on us and for us.
We can begin to rejoice that salvation is very near. (In fact, we remember that it has already been given us in an earlier cycle of telling this story. It happened in real time in a real place, in fact.) We can mark each of our calendars with the date for the return of the light, but John the Baptist's proclamation says we can also count on the return of our fresh selves, and the guaranteed, everlasting, light of personal salvation. Luke tells us that this is not just some old famous prophecy, but is also a real promise of what is to happen, and did happen historically in his world. Advent reminds us always to bless the darkness and that is Good News.
~ Katharine C. Black copyright 6 December 2009
