Light in the Land of Shadows
Sermon
Light in the Land of Shadows
Cycle B Sermons for Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany, First Lesson Texts
Object:
On a trip to Munich, Germany, Samuel Miller had a chance to watch Karl Vallentin, the last of the great "metaphysical clowns." As the curtain lifted, the stage was completely dark except for one small circle of light in the middle. Vallentin appeared in his magnificent clown costume and began to intently look all around the circle of light. A policeman appeared on the scene and inquired if he had lost something. The clown replied, "Yes, the key to my house." The policeman joined him in the search for a long time and finally asked, "Are you sure you lost it here?" The clown answered, "No, I lost it over there," and pointed to a dark corner of the stage. "Why, then," asked the exasperated policeman, "are you looking here?" To which the clown shrugged his shoulders, "Because there is no light over there!"
In a very real sense this sometimes depicts our religious situation. We decide where God is to be found and if God comes in another form we are in the position of the clown, of looking for God where God does not exist.
This was true of those people before that first Christmas who expected the Christ to be born in a mighty display of power and positive experience. They looked for him in the temples and their emotions. Few thought that God's lordship would be expressing itself in the dark corners of the world, among the poor and disinherited.
God is not always to be found where the brightest light is shining. Sometimes God's justice is not even center stage, because the shadows of life are not center stage. And it is often in the land of shadows that we find the key to our lives.
The lectionary text for today is an intrusive one. It is closely related to the political ideology of the Davidic monarchy in ancient Israel. A new king is welcomed with all the dazzle surrounding important births and coronations. This celebrative rhetoric announces a new heir who will bring light and newness as the fulfillment of long-standing expectations on the part of people who have lived in the land of political shadows. The message of the great light comes as a welcomed announcement to people who look forward to the dawn of a completely new day for their shadowy world.
The prophet Isaiah has in his mind's eye a people who are suffering in a land of shadows: the fearful military domination of the Assyrian empire. These men and women, who once experienced God's covenant with Moses, are enduring unspeakable brutality at the hands of the Assyrians. They have been thrown politically into the pit of the shadows -- sheol, the land of deep darkness in which there is no hope.
The prophet announces a new creation for these dwellers in the land of shadows. Hope is reawakened. And that hope, that floodlight of joy, is not to be found center stage in the decisions of the great powers. The text goes on to point not to the triumph of the new king's military armies but to the power of "justice" and "righteousness." This new king will rule not in self-aggrandizing power but in the best hopes of the old Mosaic covenant. The key will not be found where the world has traditionally found light -- in the center-stage brightness of power, success, and prosperity. The people will not have to walk over to the armed light of another political rally as resplendent as Hitler's festival of lights in pre-World War II Munich.
No, the light will itself come into the shadowy places of the world, dispensing justice like a "Wonderful Counselor," an "Everlasting Father," and a "Prince of Peace." Small wonder, then, that the church finds Isaiah's oracle so useful and appropriate for its Christmas announcement of Jesus.
We, too, are dwellers in the land of shadows. We live in a world that desperately cries out for the dawn of a new beginning in the material realm. In the shadows of our existence we lock our doors and chain our bikes at night. We often hide in our churches in the shadows of stained glass windows and collection plates full of dollars, blaming faceless, nameless enemies for a lack of progress. Ours is not a peaceable kingdom. One out of every nine jobs in the United States is related to the Department of Defense. More than half our national budget is related to defending ourselves in a world of war. A kind of spiritual gridlock develops when significant numbers of Christians decide it is easier to blame evil than to make a clear proclamation that the light has come to brighten the dark places. Sometimes this spiritual gridlock develops in our own soul when we try to wander around in the shadows of past experience instead of proclaiming a new birth.
Leslie D. Weatherhead was the venerable pastor of the City Temple in London, England. In a little volume titled When the Lamp Flickers, Weatherhead noted that all of us sometimes try to "bury Jesus in past experiences." Many of us perhaps had a wonderful experience of religion years ago. Perhaps we heard a resounding message, or read a book, or walked in solitude under the quiet stars and made an agreement with God. We gave God who and what we are. Our sincerity could not be doubted. The reality of God's presence was known to us and we walked on air for days. Yet the remembrance has become just that, a remembrance. Some call it a testimony, a testifying to what once was. But here again, we cannot treasure that experience or even revive it and live on it forever. Christ is not waving from our personal pasts but is out in front of us, beckoning us to new experiences, new birth, and new spiritual adventures. Christ's government is not through an old, old story but through an "ever-expanding peaceful government that will never end."
The prophecy from Isaiah touches us, then, at both the personal and collective levels as we respond to its claims. While our homes are filled with lighted Christmas trees and toys, we still look for the light to come into our lives. All too often, like Vallentin's clown, we look for the key in the center-stage phenomena of power politics and powerful religious emotions. It's as if the coming dawn of the new realm cannot find its way into our shadows. Yet Isaiah's tying together the announcement of the king with the power of "justice" and "righteousness" firmly foreshadows the Christmas event.
For example, let us contrast the Christian and Buddhist nativity stories. The Buddhist nativity is heroic and embroidered with myth. The Buddha is depicted as being born to a beautiful queen in the "unconquerable" clan of Shakya. He is born to a life of princely luxury and advantage. He enters the womb of Maya in the form of a white elephant, and after 500 previous incarnations comes to this final and glorious birth. As his mother's time comes near, she retires to a pleasure-grove where she is attended by thousands of maids-in-waiting. The garden is full of flowers, fruits, and nuts. While the queen stands beneath the greatest tree in the grove, she gives birth to the infant Buddha without pain or discomfort. The child is delivered in a gold net carried by angels.1
The Christmas story is quite different. Instead of an aristocratic and noble birth, we are told the story of a carpenter's wife from a poor village. The birth takes place in a donkey shed. The animals in whose feeding trough the infant is laid are the only witnesses to the birth. There is no golden net held by angels, nor great tree. And this one so lowly born is forced to flee into Egypt to escape Herod's threat of slaughter.
His very birth takes place not on the center stage of world history or in a tremendous personal religious experience, but among those who are forced to sit in deepest darkness.
It is always from the deepest darkness that the light shines brightest. Isaiah's words are spoken first to those who have lived longest in the shadows. He prefaces his announcement by speaking of the humbled land of Zebulun and Naphtali (Isaiah 9:1b).
When the Assyrians come swooping down on Palestine in 722 B.C., the people of Zebulun and Naphtali in the remote regions in the northwest part of Palestine are the first to be brutalized and carried away as captives. Those who remain behind are, by the time of Isaiah, the longest standing mourners in the kingdom. For hundreds of years they have had no reason to hope.
In like manner, Jesus' ministry is exercised first among those who have dwelt longest in the shadows. He does not go first to the great cities of Palestine. It is to the little village of Nazareth, in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali, that Mary and Joseph bring the baby Jesus after their return from Egypt. And it is to this region that Jesus many years later returns to begin his ministry.
It is to these dwellers in the shadows that Isaiah speaks as he announces the shining of the great light and the dawn of the new kingdom. The Christmas event, like the ministry of Jesus, establishes "justice" and "righteousness." That the Christ has the power to bring light into the shadows of Zebulun and Naphtali unleashes the most radical kind of hope for humankind. This light can bring together the different families of the human race with eventual advantages to all. Insofar as humans have relied on this light for deliverance, forgiveness, and guidance, God has confirmed that faith.
A child has been born to us. He has been rightly called the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. He sits over a kingdom and rules, unlike other rulers, with justice and righteousness from now to eternity.
The Kingdom whose foundations we commemorate and the Prince whose nativity the world's nations celebrate today bring light to all us dwellers in the land of shadows.
____________
1. See Conrad Hyers, "The Nativity As Divine Comedy," The Christian Century (December 11, 1974), pp. 1168-1172.
In a very real sense this sometimes depicts our religious situation. We decide where God is to be found and if God comes in another form we are in the position of the clown, of looking for God where God does not exist.
This was true of those people before that first Christmas who expected the Christ to be born in a mighty display of power and positive experience. They looked for him in the temples and their emotions. Few thought that God's lordship would be expressing itself in the dark corners of the world, among the poor and disinherited.
God is not always to be found where the brightest light is shining. Sometimes God's justice is not even center stage, because the shadows of life are not center stage. And it is often in the land of shadows that we find the key to our lives.
The lectionary text for today is an intrusive one. It is closely related to the political ideology of the Davidic monarchy in ancient Israel. A new king is welcomed with all the dazzle surrounding important births and coronations. This celebrative rhetoric announces a new heir who will bring light and newness as the fulfillment of long-standing expectations on the part of people who have lived in the land of political shadows. The message of the great light comes as a welcomed announcement to people who look forward to the dawn of a completely new day for their shadowy world.
The prophet Isaiah has in his mind's eye a people who are suffering in a land of shadows: the fearful military domination of the Assyrian empire. These men and women, who once experienced God's covenant with Moses, are enduring unspeakable brutality at the hands of the Assyrians. They have been thrown politically into the pit of the shadows -- sheol, the land of deep darkness in which there is no hope.
The prophet announces a new creation for these dwellers in the land of shadows. Hope is reawakened. And that hope, that floodlight of joy, is not to be found center stage in the decisions of the great powers. The text goes on to point not to the triumph of the new king's military armies but to the power of "justice" and "righteousness." This new king will rule not in self-aggrandizing power but in the best hopes of the old Mosaic covenant. The key will not be found where the world has traditionally found light -- in the center-stage brightness of power, success, and prosperity. The people will not have to walk over to the armed light of another political rally as resplendent as Hitler's festival of lights in pre-World War II Munich.
No, the light will itself come into the shadowy places of the world, dispensing justice like a "Wonderful Counselor," an "Everlasting Father," and a "Prince of Peace." Small wonder, then, that the church finds Isaiah's oracle so useful and appropriate for its Christmas announcement of Jesus.
We, too, are dwellers in the land of shadows. We live in a world that desperately cries out for the dawn of a new beginning in the material realm. In the shadows of our existence we lock our doors and chain our bikes at night. We often hide in our churches in the shadows of stained glass windows and collection plates full of dollars, blaming faceless, nameless enemies for a lack of progress. Ours is not a peaceable kingdom. One out of every nine jobs in the United States is related to the Department of Defense. More than half our national budget is related to defending ourselves in a world of war. A kind of spiritual gridlock develops when significant numbers of Christians decide it is easier to blame evil than to make a clear proclamation that the light has come to brighten the dark places. Sometimes this spiritual gridlock develops in our own soul when we try to wander around in the shadows of past experience instead of proclaiming a new birth.
Leslie D. Weatherhead was the venerable pastor of the City Temple in London, England. In a little volume titled When the Lamp Flickers, Weatherhead noted that all of us sometimes try to "bury Jesus in past experiences." Many of us perhaps had a wonderful experience of religion years ago. Perhaps we heard a resounding message, or read a book, or walked in solitude under the quiet stars and made an agreement with God. We gave God who and what we are. Our sincerity could not be doubted. The reality of God's presence was known to us and we walked on air for days. Yet the remembrance has become just that, a remembrance. Some call it a testimony, a testifying to what once was. But here again, we cannot treasure that experience or even revive it and live on it forever. Christ is not waving from our personal pasts but is out in front of us, beckoning us to new experiences, new birth, and new spiritual adventures. Christ's government is not through an old, old story but through an "ever-expanding peaceful government that will never end."
The prophecy from Isaiah touches us, then, at both the personal and collective levels as we respond to its claims. While our homes are filled with lighted Christmas trees and toys, we still look for the light to come into our lives. All too often, like Vallentin's clown, we look for the key in the center-stage phenomena of power politics and powerful religious emotions. It's as if the coming dawn of the new realm cannot find its way into our shadows. Yet Isaiah's tying together the announcement of the king with the power of "justice" and "righteousness" firmly foreshadows the Christmas event.
For example, let us contrast the Christian and Buddhist nativity stories. The Buddhist nativity is heroic and embroidered with myth. The Buddha is depicted as being born to a beautiful queen in the "unconquerable" clan of Shakya. He is born to a life of princely luxury and advantage. He enters the womb of Maya in the form of a white elephant, and after 500 previous incarnations comes to this final and glorious birth. As his mother's time comes near, she retires to a pleasure-grove where she is attended by thousands of maids-in-waiting. The garden is full of flowers, fruits, and nuts. While the queen stands beneath the greatest tree in the grove, she gives birth to the infant Buddha without pain or discomfort. The child is delivered in a gold net carried by angels.1
The Christmas story is quite different. Instead of an aristocratic and noble birth, we are told the story of a carpenter's wife from a poor village. The birth takes place in a donkey shed. The animals in whose feeding trough the infant is laid are the only witnesses to the birth. There is no golden net held by angels, nor great tree. And this one so lowly born is forced to flee into Egypt to escape Herod's threat of slaughter.
His very birth takes place not on the center stage of world history or in a tremendous personal religious experience, but among those who are forced to sit in deepest darkness.
It is always from the deepest darkness that the light shines brightest. Isaiah's words are spoken first to those who have lived longest in the shadows. He prefaces his announcement by speaking of the humbled land of Zebulun and Naphtali (Isaiah 9:1b).
When the Assyrians come swooping down on Palestine in 722 B.C., the people of Zebulun and Naphtali in the remote regions in the northwest part of Palestine are the first to be brutalized and carried away as captives. Those who remain behind are, by the time of Isaiah, the longest standing mourners in the kingdom. For hundreds of years they have had no reason to hope.
In like manner, Jesus' ministry is exercised first among those who have dwelt longest in the shadows. He does not go first to the great cities of Palestine. It is to the little village of Nazareth, in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali, that Mary and Joseph bring the baby Jesus after their return from Egypt. And it is to this region that Jesus many years later returns to begin his ministry.
It is to these dwellers in the shadows that Isaiah speaks as he announces the shining of the great light and the dawn of the new kingdom. The Christmas event, like the ministry of Jesus, establishes "justice" and "righteousness." That the Christ has the power to bring light into the shadows of Zebulun and Naphtali unleashes the most radical kind of hope for humankind. This light can bring together the different families of the human race with eventual advantages to all. Insofar as humans have relied on this light for deliverance, forgiveness, and guidance, God has confirmed that faith.
A child has been born to us. He has been rightly called the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. He sits over a kingdom and rules, unlike other rulers, with justice and righteousness from now to eternity.
The Kingdom whose foundations we commemorate and the Prince whose nativity the world's nations celebrate today bring light to all us dwellers in the land of shadows.
____________
1. See Conrad Hyers, "The Nativity As Divine Comedy," The Christian Century (December 11, 1974), pp. 1168-1172.
