Running Home In The Dark
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
Our liturgical calendar stands poised on the verge of a commercial feeding frenzy. Today is Christ the King Sunday. This is a day that is supposed to be a day of Doxology or praise. It is a time that we celebrate the Lordship of Jesus as the director of our lives. We are asked to reflect on our undivided loyalty to the reign of Christ in our lives. It is, admittedly, a rather strange time to do this. This is the last Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday begins Advent and the great season of expectation and hope. We are just ahead of all the baby Jesus talk and we are asked to affirm Christ as the King of kings and Lord of lords.
Jesus the king is an important and interesting title in our tradition about Jesus. Being a king really meant something in Jesus' day. When kings spoke, nations trembled. Kings were the most powerful human beings on earth. Time itself was marked on the basis of when a king began his reign. The most common Jewish messianic notion was that God would restore the anointed Davidic line to the throne of Israel. This process would restore the Israelite kingdom.
When we read the Gospels especially, we must admit that Jesus was a bit cagey on the subject of his kingship. Jesus certainly did not activate many of his royal prerogatives, did he? We struggle a bit when we try to name Jesus King, don't we? We are in some ways like Pilate of old when it comes to recognition of the kingship of Jesus. We name Jesus as King but for one reason or another we do not believe it. And if we believe it, do we really understand it?
Feminists reject Jesus as their King because they know that kings are only male and these male kings rule autocratically. Kings give orders rather than strive for consensus. Kings demand obedience instead of service.
Perhaps we take too seriously the world's notion of kingship and kingdom and do not consider Jesus' image and his words about the enterprise: "My kingdom is not from this world, if it were, my disciples would be fighting to prevent me from being handed over."
Let's just admit that we are in the dark and see where it takes us. Christ the King? There is oddness about a king who reigns from a cross instead of a throne. Jesus is an odd king and that must make us as his followers a bit odd as well. Every ruler has a vision for her or his kingdom. Jesus certainly had a vision or a dream for us. Although King Jesus never claimed for himself the title of King, even those who mocked him by placing a crown of thorns on his head recognized him as an odd king. Perhaps the clearest perception we can have of King Jesus is to say that kings make demands on their subjects and King Jesus makes demands on us. This King calls us to allow God to enter our lives. He invites us to walk by the light he has shed on the darkness of our world and run home in the dark with King Jesus.
For much of his life a minister lived with a chipped front tooth. When his children look through his old grammar school and high school annuals, he's easy to pick out. Their dad is the one with the big hole in his left front tooth.
The big disaster came one evening when four or five of the children in the minister's neighborhood were playing hide and seek. While the designated seeker was slowly counting to 100, this fellow searched for a place to hide. Normally he was not very adept at camouflage and was the first one caught. But that evening he was truly inspired. He put a ladder up to the roof of the house, climbed on the roof, and then hauled it up beside him. He lay there flat against the steeply pitched roof, breathing heavily, while the seeker looked everywhere for him. After some minutes, he realized that it had become pitch black dark. A thick cloud cover obscured even the moon. Now he didn't like the dark. So he kept inching his way closer to the edge of the roof to see if he could see a light on anywhere. Over the side he fell and he came up off the picnic table where he landed missing the lower third of his left front tooth.
You and I know how difficult it is to lie still for long periods of time in the darkness. A number of us do not like to travel long distances in the dark. Some like to sleep with a light on.
I can remember some evenings when I had to walk home from church or school late at night. The only comfort was the distant presence of streetlights. When I was under the streetlight, I would casually walk along at a slow pace. Then I would run as fast as I could to the next streetlight. I would make my way home running from light to light, with darkness for the rest of the way. Now that I am an adult, I must confess that life is still pretty much like those experiences for even us adults. We have to travel long distances without much light and lie still for long periods of time without much light.
We have questions for which there are no immediate answers. We encounter confusion, and clarity seems to stay away from us. We get in these dark moods and the sunlight seems to vanish.
John Killinger has opened my perception to an amazing fact about the first wise men; they made most of their journey in the dark, without benefit of the star in the sky.1 The wise men saw the star in the East and it guided them in the direction of the little nation of Israel. Then it seemed to desert them and leave them on their own in the darkness. In fact, all the star had done was shine in a general direction for a brief time. They had to cover vast distances in the dark. So they stopped off at the palace of King Herod. They thought that perhaps the astrologers of the royal court could help them in solving the puzzle of the star.
Like a group of wild-eyed freshmen descending on the science building, they sought out the professors. "It was so bright and clear but now it's disappeared. What's the answer? Where do we go to find it again?" They did not receive any kind of clear answer.
Then, when they had left the court, the mysterious star appeared again and led them, of all places, to a stable in Bethlehem.
That's reality, is it not? Life is running from one light to the next. And often we have to travel great distances in the dark and confusion. Life is up and down; answers and questions; confusion and clarity; wild-eyed fears and quiet assurances.
Life is a come-and-go affair, isn't it?
Perhaps the critical question is this: How do we find a faith to guide us in the great stretches of darkness and fear, when we must walk alone, with only the memories of past lights to guide us?
Actually, faith itself means "to trust," "to hope," that there is light beyond the shadows of our present darkness. The author of Hebrews said it best: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
The star does not shine all the time. Faith is indeed the evidence of things not seen. We run from streetlight to streetlight, trying to outpace the darkness. It happens in the choice of a mate. How do you know with absolute clarity that this is the man or woman for you? How do you know for certain that this is the right career or job for you? You don't know for certain all the time. How do you know you're doing the right thing with your friends or lifestyle? How do you deal with the death of a friend or loved one? Sometimes there isn't a clear spotlight and definite answers to walk under. Oh, we do see clearly in which direction to head. But then the star disappears for awhile. We move from streetlight to streetlight trying to find our way home. If faith has a role in life, it has to offer some hope as we walk in the darkness between the streetlights.2
What does King Jesus have to say about the time we spend in the darkness?
It's the age-old question. And we can only offer the age-old answer: At the end of the journey is the light of home. Behind the impetus of my headlong dashes from streetlight to streetlight was the underlying faith in the comfortable light of home at the end of the journey. I hoped not in myself but in the permanent existence of home. Hope in myself was not enough to calm my anxiety attacks in the darkness because there were things in the darkness that were much bigger, more powerful and more fearsome than I was. But the glow of home, that was different.
Such was the message of Saint John the Revelator as he wrote about his revelation of God. John was writing in code to a group of people in what is now Turkey. He wrote of the demons in the dark, weird images of a hornet with a man's face, of a monster rising from the sea, of the moon the color of blood, of a huge beast with a poison tail, and of the end of the world.
It was a book for people in the darkness to remind them that there was light at the end of all the darkness. He was telling the people in a secret code that the darkness would not win, that the end of the journey would one day come -- the good people would triumph. "Hope not in yourselves," John wrote. "Hope in God for he is the light at the end of the darkness." That is why he wrote, "Christ says, 'I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.' " He was reminding the people that they were not alone in their persecutions, their heartaches, and their darkness. God was the first light and is the last, and the darkness in between is only temporary.
John was writing from a concentration camp to a group of people under Roman persecution. But his revelation has a meaning for all of us who run with King Jesus between the streetlights: Don't be buried in the darkness; hope not in yourselves; you are not alone in your journey. When you have lost the star, hold on; you will eventually make it beyond the darkness and there will be a light there that you cannot now believe. Knowing that, we can endure our times of darkness. We can journey forward in our pain and hardship. We can survive even loss and death. Knowing he is there, we can journey in faith between the streetlights in our existence.
The history of our race has proven John to be correct. We wonder if our world can persevere in its trials. Nation is pitted against nation. Drugs and evil, sexual promiscuity, and nuclear chaos thrust us into darkness. Yet history has proven the existence of a light at the end of the darkness, time and time again.
Emil Brunner, in his Zurich sermons,3 told of a former Russian officer who related this event. During the dark days of Joseph Stalin, Christians were persecuted in Russia. The young officer's father was a Christian, but he was so persecuted by Communist authorities that his wife collapsed and died from sheer terror. One night this man, the officer's father, was taken away and disappeared in the mines of Siberia, never to be heard from again. The officer related to Brunner that on one occasion in the year 1940 he was present at an Easter service in the region of Odessa. The service took place in an isolated church, the only church in an area of several hundred miles. Over 40,000 Christians came to the Easter service. The Communists had organized a counterblast assembly and had erected huge loudspeakers around the church. They attempted to disrupt the service in every way possible. They compelled these 40,000 people, stretched over the land around the church, to listen to their godless Communist propaganda for four hours until darkness had fallen. Finally one of the Christians got up and announced his desire to speak through the amplification system. At first he was refused. But when he promised to say only one sentence, they allowed him to come to the platform. In unbroken tense silence he stood in the darkness and said: "Brothers and sisters, Christ is risen." And the 40,000 responded in unison with the Easter response: "He is risen indeed." For 23 years amid the bitter sorrows and darkness, for 23 years in the darkness of oppression and denial with no cultural and societal streetlight to stand under, those people had safeguarded and held fast to what they had. Their faith sustained them in the darkness. Now, of course, those people are able to see the star and stand under the streetlight again.
We do run from streetlight to streetlight at times. John is right; there are beasts and demons in the darkness. There are hornets with human faces and monsters rising from the ocean. We have sex for beginners, home pregnancy tests, genetic engineering, and advertisers spending over $600 million a year selling sex to children on television. We have a bomb the size of a basketball that can generate a heat explosion 1,100 times as hot as the face of the sun. We can watch MTV, as many of our children do, and see hornets with the heads of men. There are demons in the sea. Divorce has become a middle class status symbol. There is much darkness at times. We are saturated people. Today's high tech world has placed our very individual lives under siege. We live in a swirling sea of social relationships that move us from excitement to exhaustion in a short time. With e-mail we can now keep up with the illnesses of friends a continent away. Our lives, instead of finding time for withdrawal and relaxation, are often little more than parades of information and intrusions. The darkness can follow us wherever we travel.
But John is right -- there is another force in the darkness. "I am Alpha and Omega, the first light and the last light," says the Christ. "I am the light at the end of the darkness." Christ the King in its spiritual meaning may be a concept that is needed now. As we reflect on the Alpha and Omega nature of God in Christ, maybe we can relax this time of the year. Too often at Advent the churches of America act like hospital trauma units preparing to receive mortally wounded patients instead of confident banquet halls preparing tables in the midst of enemies.
May Christ the King enter our consciousness and grant us some downtime in this upcoming season. Maybe King Jesus can help us reclaim the threads of our spiritual life. Come, King Jesus, and run home in the dark with us.
____________
1. John Killinger, "Losing the Star," a sermon he preached January 8, 1984, in First Presbyterian Church, Lynchburg, Virginia.
2. See the introduction to Harold C. Warlick, Jr., The Rarest of These Is Hope: A Resource for Christians Facing Difficult Times (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 1985).
3. Emil Brunner, "Perseverance in Trial," Zurich Sermons of Emil Brunner, trans. Harold Knight (London: Cutterworth Press, 1955), pp. 74-75.
Jesus the king is an important and interesting title in our tradition about Jesus. Being a king really meant something in Jesus' day. When kings spoke, nations trembled. Kings were the most powerful human beings on earth. Time itself was marked on the basis of when a king began his reign. The most common Jewish messianic notion was that God would restore the anointed Davidic line to the throne of Israel. This process would restore the Israelite kingdom.
When we read the Gospels especially, we must admit that Jesus was a bit cagey on the subject of his kingship. Jesus certainly did not activate many of his royal prerogatives, did he? We struggle a bit when we try to name Jesus King, don't we? We are in some ways like Pilate of old when it comes to recognition of the kingship of Jesus. We name Jesus as King but for one reason or another we do not believe it. And if we believe it, do we really understand it?
Feminists reject Jesus as their King because they know that kings are only male and these male kings rule autocratically. Kings give orders rather than strive for consensus. Kings demand obedience instead of service.
Perhaps we take too seriously the world's notion of kingship and kingdom and do not consider Jesus' image and his words about the enterprise: "My kingdom is not from this world, if it were, my disciples would be fighting to prevent me from being handed over."
Let's just admit that we are in the dark and see where it takes us. Christ the King? There is oddness about a king who reigns from a cross instead of a throne. Jesus is an odd king and that must make us as his followers a bit odd as well. Every ruler has a vision for her or his kingdom. Jesus certainly had a vision or a dream for us. Although King Jesus never claimed for himself the title of King, even those who mocked him by placing a crown of thorns on his head recognized him as an odd king. Perhaps the clearest perception we can have of King Jesus is to say that kings make demands on their subjects and King Jesus makes demands on us. This King calls us to allow God to enter our lives. He invites us to walk by the light he has shed on the darkness of our world and run home in the dark with King Jesus.
For much of his life a minister lived with a chipped front tooth. When his children look through his old grammar school and high school annuals, he's easy to pick out. Their dad is the one with the big hole in his left front tooth.
The big disaster came one evening when four or five of the children in the minister's neighborhood were playing hide and seek. While the designated seeker was slowly counting to 100, this fellow searched for a place to hide. Normally he was not very adept at camouflage and was the first one caught. But that evening he was truly inspired. He put a ladder up to the roof of the house, climbed on the roof, and then hauled it up beside him. He lay there flat against the steeply pitched roof, breathing heavily, while the seeker looked everywhere for him. After some minutes, he realized that it had become pitch black dark. A thick cloud cover obscured even the moon. Now he didn't like the dark. So he kept inching his way closer to the edge of the roof to see if he could see a light on anywhere. Over the side he fell and he came up off the picnic table where he landed missing the lower third of his left front tooth.
You and I know how difficult it is to lie still for long periods of time in the darkness. A number of us do not like to travel long distances in the dark. Some like to sleep with a light on.
I can remember some evenings when I had to walk home from church or school late at night. The only comfort was the distant presence of streetlights. When I was under the streetlight, I would casually walk along at a slow pace. Then I would run as fast as I could to the next streetlight. I would make my way home running from light to light, with darkness for the rest of the way. Now that I am an adult, I must confess that life is still pretty much like those experiences for even us adults. We have to travel long distances without much light and lie still for long periods of time without much light.
We have questions for which there are no immediate answers. We encounter confusion, and clarity seems to stay away from us. We get in these dark moods and the sunlight seems to vanish.
John Killinger has opened my perception to an amazing fact about the first wise men; they made most of their journey in the dark, without benefit of the star in the sky.1 The wise men saw the star in the East and it guided them in the direction of the little nation of Israel. Then it seemed to desert them and leave them on their own in the darkness. In fact, all the star had done was shine in a general direction for a brief time. They had to cover vast distances in the dark. So they stopped off at the palace of King Herod. They thought that perhaps the astrologers of the royal court could help them in solving the puzzle of the star.
Like a group of wild-eyed freshmen descending on the science building, they sought out the professors. "It was so bright and clear but now it's disappeared. What's the answer? Where do we go to find it again?" They did not receive any kind of clear answer.
Then, when they had left the court, the mysterious star appeared again and led them, of all places, to a stable in Bethlehem.
That's reality, is it not? Life is running from one light to the next. And often we have to travel great distances in the dark and confusion. Life is up and down; answers and questions; confusion and clarity; wild-eyed fears and quiet assurances.
Life is a come-and-go affair, isn't it?
Perhaps the critical question is this: How do we find a faith to guide us in the great stretches of darkness and fear, when we must walk alone, with only the memories of past lights to guide us?
Actually, faith itself means "to trust," "to hope," that there is light beyond the shadows of our present darkness. The author of Hebrews said it best: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
The star does not shine all the time. Faith is indeed the evidence of things not seen. We run from streetlight to streetlight, trying to outpace the darkness. It happens in the choice of a mate. How do you know with absolute clarity that this is the man or woman for you? How do you know for certain that this is the right career or job for you? You don't know for certain all the time. How do you know you're doing the right thing with your friends or lifestyle? How do you deal with the death of a friend or loved one? Sometimes there isn't a clear spotlight and definite answers to walk under. Oh, we do see clearly in which direction to head. But then the star disappears for awhile. We move from streetlight to streetlight trying to find our way home. If faith has a role in life, it has to offer some hope as we walk in the darkness between the streetlights.2
What does King Jesus have to say about the time we spend in the darkness?
It's the age-old question. And we can only offer the age-old answer: At the end of the journey is the light of home. Behind the impetus of my headlong dashes from streetlight to streetlight was the underlying faith in the comfortable light of home at the end of the journey. I hoped not in myself but in the permanent existence of home. Hope in myself was not enough to calm my anxiety attacks in the darkness because there were things in the darkness that were much bigger, more powerful and more fearsome than I was. But the glow of home, that was different.
Such was the message of Saint John the Revelator as he wrote about his revelation of God. John was writing in code to a group of people in what is now Turkey. He wrote of the demons in the dark, weird images of a hornet with a man's face, of a monster rising from the sea, of the moon the color of blood, of a huge beast with a poison tail, and of the end of the world.
It was a book for people in the darkness to remind them that there was light at the end of all the darkness. He was telling the people in a secret code that the darkness would not win, that the end of the journey would one day come -- the good people would triumph. "Hope not in yourselves," John wrote. "Hope in God for he is the light at the end of the darkness." That is why he wrote, "Christ says, 'I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.' " He was reminding the people that they were not alone in their persecutions, their heartaches, and their darkness. God was the first light and is the last, and the darkness in between is only temporary.
John was writing from a concentration camp to a group of people under Roman persecution. But his revelation has a meaning for all of us who run with King Jesus between the streetlights: Don't be buried in the darkness; hope not in yourselves; you are not alone in your journey. When you have lost the star, hold on; you will eventually make it beyond the darkness and there will be a light there that you cannot now believe. Knowing that, we can endure our times of darkness. We can journey forward in our pain and hardship. We can survive even loss and death. Knowing he is there, we can journey in faith between the streetlights in our existence.
The history of our race has proven John to be correct. We wonder if our world can persevere in its trials. Nation is pitted against nation. Drugs and evil, sexual promiscuity, and nuclear chaos thrust us into darkness. Yet history has proven the existence of a light at the end of the darkness, time and time again.
Emil Brunner, in his Zurich sermons,3 told of a former Russian officer who related this event. During the dark days of Joseph Stalin, Christians were persecuted in Russia. The young officer's father was a Christian, but he was so persecuted by Communist authorities that his wife collapsed and died from sheer terror. One night this man, the officer's father, was taken away and disappeared in the mines of Siberia, never to be heard from again. The officer related to Brunner that on one occasion in the year 1940 he was present at an Easter service in the region of Odessa. The service took place in an isolated church, the only church in an area of several hundred miles. Over 40,000 Christians came to the Easter service. The Communists had organized a counterblast assembly and had erected huge loudspeakers around the church. They attempted to disrupt the service in every way possible. They compelled these 40,000 people, stretched over the land around the church, to listen to their godless Communist propaganda for four hours until darkness had fallen. Finally one of the Christians got up and announced his desire to speak through the amplification system. At first he was refused. But when he promised to say only one sentence, they allowed him to come to the platform. In unbroken tense silence he stood in the darkness and said: "Brothers and sisters, Christ is risen." And the 40,000 responded in unison with the Easter response: "He is risen indeed." For 23 years amid the bitter sorrows and darkness, for 23 years in the darkness of oppression and denial with no cultural and societal streetlight to stand under, those people had safeguarded and held fast to what they had. Their faith sustained them in the darkness. Now, of course, those people are able to see the star and stand under the streetlight again.
We do run from streetlight to streetlight at times. John is right; there are beasts and demons in the darkness. There are hornets with human faces and monsters rising from the ocean. We have sex for beginners, home pregnancy tests, genetic engineering, and advertisers spending over $600 million a year selling sex to children on television. We have a bomb the size of a basketball that can generate a heat explosion 1,100 times as hot as the face of the sun. We can watch MTV, as many of our children do, and see hornets with the heads of men. There are demons in the sea. Divorce has become a middle class status symbol. There is much darkness at times. We are saturated people. Today's high tech world has placed our very individual lives under siege. We live in a swirling sea of social relationships that move us from excitement to exhaustion in a short time. With e-mail we can now keep up with the illnesses of friends a continent away. Our lives, instead of finding time for withdrawal and relaxation, are often little more than parades of information and intrusions. The darkness can follow us wherever we travel.
But John is right -- there is another force in the darkness. "I am Alpha and Omega, the first light and the last light," says the Christ. "I am the light at the end of the darkness." Christ the King in its spiritual meaning may be a concept that is needed now. As we reflect on the Alpha and Omega nature of God in Christ, maybe we can relax this time of the year. Too often at Advent the churches of America act like hospital trauma units preparing to receive mortally wounded patients instead of confident banquet halls preparing tables in the midst of enemies.
May Christ the King enter our consciousness and grant us some downtime in this upcoming season. Maybe King Jesus can help us reclaim the threads of our spiritual life. Come, King Jesus, and run home in the dark with us.
____________
1. John Killinger, "Losing the Star," a sermon he preached January 8, 1984, in First Presbyterian Church, Lynchburg, Virginia.
2. See the introduction to Harold C. Warlick, Jr., The Rarest of These Is Hope: A Resource for Christians Facing Difficult Times (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 1985).
3. Emil Brunner, "Perseverance in Trial," Zurich Sermons of Emil Brunner, trans. Harold Knight (London: Cutterworth Press, 1955), pp. 74-75.
