1/5/20 “When Light Dawns” by Nancy E. Petty
Scripture: John 1:1-9
Country dark is dark. It is not at all like city dark. I can testify to the fact that when you grow up in rural America you know something about how dark the night can be. Out route 1762 in Cleveland County where I spent my childhood there were no light posts, no glow of high-rise buildings or even low-rise buildings—in fact, there were no buildings except for the small general stores and small country churches that dotted the landscape of corn, cotton, and soybean fields. The next house could be a mile down the road. There were barns but the barns, at least our barns, didn’t have lights. On clear nights, the stars would light up the sky, but even still, the country night was dark.
As a child, I was afraid of the dark. So was my sister. We were so afraid of the dark that until we were in middle school, we shared a room together even though each of us had our own bedroom. All of those normal night sounds—the floors settling, the crickets chirping, the wind blowing, the door slightly moving, the dogs howling—were magnified in the dark, and with a scary tone to them. Thus, my sister and I often slept with a small light on—just a little something to shed some light in the darkness.
The season of Epiphany begins and ends in light. From the brightly shining star that led the wise ones to the babe to the radiant robes of the transfigured Jesus, Epiphany is about revelation, the kind of sudden brightness that lights the path to God’s justice love, to the way of living in wholeness and awareness. Epiphany, this season we enter into today, is also about the manifestation—the seeing—of the divine becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Epiphany is that moment, often a small and ordinary everyday experience that becomes a life-changing ah-ha moment that shifts the rest of the story.
Traditionally, in the liturgical calendar, Epiphany is about the visit of the Magi from the East bearing gifts for the newborn Christ child. Seeing the light, they followed the star to Bethlehem to worship this newborn King. Bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh they bowed down and paid him homage. It was, for them, that moment of seeing—a visible manifestation of God dwelling with us and in us.
Epiphany is the shining moment of the Christmas story—the part of the story that’s all about how bright the light shines. But here’s the thing. In the celebration of the Epiphany light, we can almost forget that the journey to that light was preceded by some very dark days. Those days when the travelers pay a visit first to Herod’s court and are instructed to report back to him the location of this newborn king. Intuiting Herod’s intent, they engaged in civil disobedience and helped the holy family escape Herod’s wrath. But all could not escape the darkness. The darkness of Herod rested on the children of Bethlehem and it was the children who suffered the evil of Herod’s power and insecurity. It remains one of the darkest day in Biblical history.
We are five days into a new year. We have gathered on this Epiphany Sunday to celebrate the light—the visible seeing of God made flesh. And yet, if our faith is to be relevant in this new year we are faced this morning with asking a somber question: How do we celebrate the light when we are living in profound darkness as a nation? How do we gather on this Sunday and celebrate the light that lights the path to God’s justice and love, to wholeness and to living life awake to the Spirit when our country is waging the darkness of war among people we call our friends, beautiful souls from Iran who just three months ago worshiped with us, slept in our beds and ate at our tables, prayed with us, laughed with us, and showered us with a boundary-less love and generosity? Yes, our faith requires us this day to reflect on the meaning of Epiphany in the current context of our nation’s willingness to create darkness rather than light a path to peace in our world. It is not the bad guys who will suffer the darkness of American’s actions. It is still the innocent who suffer the darkness of today’s Herod’s.
So what word of hope might our faith offer us this morning?
In my mind there are two kinds of darkness and two kinds of light. There is what I will call “unproductive darkness” and there is also “productive darkness.” The productive darkness is the kind of darkness necessary for growth. This is the fallow winter darkness where the growing is taking place deep below the earth’s crust, where the light doesn’t go but where the nutrients are. “Productive darkness” can also be those dark nights of the soul where there is loss and grief but also growth and grace. This productive darkness is a necessary part of life. It is the energy field that births the light; or that from which the light bursts forth. Productive darkness is not to be feared. It is to be awed and respected and honored.
On the other hand, there is this unproductive darkness. It is the kind of darkness that hides the truth. It strokes the ego, promotes fear, and operates out of our places of insecurity. Unproductive darkness keeps us from seeing what is real and authentic. It feeds on accelerated death instead of the natural cycle of life and death. It wages war instead of promoting peace. Unproductive darkness shelters us in places with low ceilings–places where love cannot grow, where hope cannot rise up, and where joy cannot be detected.
When I say that we are living in a time of profound darkness in this country I mean we are living in a kind of unproductive darkness—both politically and spiritually. The darkness is hiding the truth, or at the very least is keeping many Americans from seeing the truth. The darkness we are encountering in our country right now is the kind of unproductive darkness that promotes fear and has us acting out of our ego and insecurity as a nation. It is literally the kind of unproductive darkness that is waging war with a nation full of innocent people. This unproductive darkness has us buried not in the deep dark soil where there are life-giving nutrients but rather in the underbelly of a society where love cannot grow, where hope cannot spring up and where joy cannot be detected. Our nation is living in the unproductive darkness, and those of us who understand that must rise up in this moment.
Just like there are two kinds of darkness, there are also two kinds of light. There is the light that reveals and the light that blinds. Much like the unproductive darkness, the light that blinds keeps us from seeing the truth clearly, if at all. Because it blinds us, we see nothing beyond the surface. It stops us dead in our tracks and abandons us where we are, rendering us unable to see anything new. Blinded by the light we are stuck in what we know, repeating patterns that limit us, making the same old mistakes because we can’t see any other way. The blinding light narrows our vision and creates distorted images. This blinding light is the light that I fear is guiding America right now.
This blinding light is not the light of Epiphany, it is not the light of our faith. The light of Epiphany, the light of our faith is the light that reveals—it exposes what is fake and reveals the truth, it exposes what is unjust and reveals justice, it exposes hate and reveals love, it exposes judgment and reveals forgiveness, it exposes despair and reveals hope, it exposes hostility and reveals peace, it exposes hard hearts and reveals an open heart and a willing spirit, and ultimately it exposes the unproductive darkness and it reveals the true light that came to dwell among us. The darkness does not overcome the light.
Let me come back to the question I posed at the beginning: How do we celebrate the light when, in our cultural context, we are living in such profound darkness? This may surprise you but I believe we have to be willing to live in and create more productive darkness before we can reveal the true light. We have to have the courage and the willingness to enter a kind of productive darkness where we go underground and into our spiritual soil where we can feed off the nutrients of our faith: grace and mercy, justice and forgiveness, sacrifice and the practice of letting go, love and hope, peace and joy, truth and surrender. In the dark rich soil of our faith we need to be willing to witness our own complicity in the unproductive society around us. In the dark rich soil of our faith we need to be willing to let die the aspects of ourselves that are identified with the blinding light of the myth of American democracy as the panacea for our planet. In the dark rich soil of our faith we have to be willing to let decompose the systems of oppression that have benefited us, Pullenites, as white Americans. Only then can the seeds of the fruits of the spirit break open and deepen their roots such that they may have a bountiful season as we try and live them out in our everyday lives of faith. Out of the productive darkness shines the light of grace and mercy, of love and hope, of peace and truth. The revealing light is dependent on the productive darkness.
To celebrate and reveal the true light we must stay away from the unproductive darkness and the blinding lights. We can’t live in the darkness of fear and expect to reveal the light of trust. We can’t live in the darkness of our egos and be able to see the light that all people are created in the image of God. We can’t focus on the blinding light of American cultural Christianity and ignore the faith of others. We can’t choose death for some, and the light of life for others. We can’t kill Iranians while allowing the blinding light of our comfort with the status quo to keep us from seeing how our racism is killing our brown and black sisters and brothers here in our own country and community. We, too, must forsake the unproductive darkness and the blinding light and otherwise commit ourselves to the productive darkness and to the revealing light. When such light dawns we at least have a chance to live peacefully with all. May such be our prayer for these days.
