-- Francis Bacon
Reading: by Buddhist teacher and Jungian psychologist John Tarrant from The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul, and the Spiritual Life (p. 51)
Night grows thicker, and we sink in our journey to the valley of despair… We can imagine it as a kind of fusion with the foggy mass of night…
Within this amorphous fusion, we do not feel connected to life, but oppressed by its muddy swirling. The Buddhist explanation of despair is that it comes from alienation, from not understanding our relationship to wellsprings, from not understanding that we have the same nature as the trees, the rocks, and the people around us - kin, friend, and foe - and, like them, are sustained by an invisible source. In Christianity, despair appears via the doctrine of original sin, as banishment from our true home. In Judaism, too, it stems from our condition of exile: the Messiah, the one who is complete, is perpetually arriving, but not yet quite here. Each tradition shows that despair is a separation from the light and at the same time a fusion with the dark.
Reading: by the Unitarian Universalist minister Scotty McLennon from Jesus Was a Liberal: Reclaiming Christianity for All (p. 200)
Christmas is all about kindling light in the darkness, literally and figuratively: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who have lived in a land of deep darkness – on them a light has shined.” (Is 9:2) That means Christmas is about hope: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people.” (Lk 2:10) The story, true or legendary, relates how a tiny vulnerable baby is brought into a cruel world of kings who kill young children. This baby is born when his parents are traveling, and they can’t even get a room in an inn; instead, the baby is born in a barn and bedded down in an animal-feeding trough…. This particular baby is to be called “light of the world.” (John 8:12) Yet, all babies bring light as they renew the world by their presence and kindle hope for the future.
Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year in the northern hemisphere – at the winter solstice. Nights are the longest and days are shortest. The sun makes its lowest trajectory across the sky, barely surmounting the horizon in parts of northern Europe, Siberia, Alaska, and Canada…
So hope abounds on Christmas. No matter how dark it gets, one small candle can pierce the darkness. Then its light can be diffused and spread far and wide. Hope abounds. No matter how short the days and no matter how long the nights, the winter solstice comes with the promise of the steady lengthening of the days ahead, of more light each morning and of more light each evening. Hope abounds. We may be surrounded by cruelty and death in our world, by suffering and grief, but then all of a sudden we light up with new life among us in the person of a newborn baby. That joy is irresistible and spreads through all who gaze upon a newborn. Hope abounds.
Reading by Robert Bly a poem entitled "A Christmas Poem"
Christmas is a place, like Jackson Hole, where we all agree
To meet once a year. It has water, and grass for horses;
All the fur traders can come in. We visited the place
As children, but we never heard the good stories.
Those stories only get told in the big tents, late
At night, when a trapper who has been caught
In his own trap, held down in icy water, talks; and a man
With a ponytail and a limp comes in from the edge of the fire.
As children, we knew there was more to it—
Why some men got drunk on Christmas Eve
Wasn't explained, nor why we were so often
Near tears nor why the stars came down so close,
Why so much was lost. Those men and women
Who had died in wars started by others,
Did they come that night? Is that why the Christmas tree
Trembled just before we opened the presents?
There was something about angels. Angels we
Have heard on high Sweetly singing o'er
The plain. The angels were certain. But we could not
Be certain whether our family was worthy tonight.
From Darkness to Light
A Sermon Delivered on December 22, 2013
By
The Rev. Axel H. Gehrmann
Perhaps you heard -- according to Fox News, we are in the midst of a war on Christmas.
Christmas warfare was evident last week, when Fox News host Megyn Kelly claimed on her show, that Santa Claus is white. “Jesus is a white man, too,” she said. “He was a historical figure. That’s verifiable fact, as is Santa.” (The jolly old elf, who lives at the North Pole is a historical figure, just like Jesus… hmmmm…) Kelly’s remarks provoked responses from commentators and comedians, who considered her statements not only ill-informed, but racist. In her rebuttal she explained she was trying to be funny, and clearly failed.
But according to Fox News, the war on Christmas is no joke. “The right to celebrate Christmas is under attack,” they say. On their website they have an inter-active map of the United States, where you can click on cities, and read stories about the latest Christmas battle fields.
One of them is right here in Illinois. Imagine: in Chicago’s Daley Plaza an atheist group has erected a giant “A” – for “atheist,” I guess – right next to a life-size nativity scene on the same plaza. Clicking on another story, in Texas, I see a report from the Dallas News that says an elementary school violated the state’s “Merry Christmas Law,” by banning Christmas trees and the colors red and green from their “Winter Party.”
So perhaps this is evidence of the truth underlying an apocryphal poem that goes like this:
There was an old fellow of Dallas
Who was filled with atheist malice
And on Christmas Eve
He cried, "I don't believe"
To small children, which was terribly callous.
Christmas is a holiday full of contrasts and contradictions. A smorgasbord of secular observances and sacred traditions. And Christmas battles are waged on many different levels. There is the long-time conflict between the consumerism of Christmas, with its materialist obsessions, that is challenged by our longing for a simpler and more spiritual observance. There is the battle between the Scrooges who cling to their miserly heard-heartedness, and those who treasure the opportunity for feasts with family and friends. And now Christmas is also a battle over our differing interpretations of what it means to separate church from state.
Sometimes our Christmas battles seem silly. And we may be tempted to dismiss Christmas altogether. But I think that would be a mistake. Beneath all the silliness, Christmas touches on very serious themes: the timeless battle between darkness and light, the battle between life and death, the battle between hope and despair.
John Tarrant says that if we want to learn how to live, we need to claim more of the territory of life, even, or especially, the darkness. All great religious traditions, each in their own way, grapple with the darkness of despair. Its hallmarks are alienation, a lack of understanding, and a sense of inadequacy. Enlightenment is an awakening, opening our eyes, and seeing the light that will guide us toward a life of love and faith and hope.
Every year, Christmas is a struggle, a struggle between competing worldviews and lifestyles, competing religious and political factions. But above and beyond that, Christmas touches on existential struggles that are waged within every human heart.
Every year I struggle to make sense of surprisingly strong feelings – feelings of sadness and gladness, of cynicism and sentimentality – that invariably arise around the time of the winter solstice. I don’t know what to do with them.
And so I take time in the evening to sit quietly in our living room. I turn on my favorite holiday music – a string quartet playing “Ave Maria,” and “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and “All Through the Night.” And I light a stick of incense and put it inside a traditional German wood carving standing on our fireplace mantle – the figure of a man holding a pipe – designed so the sweet–smelling smoke escapes from his round open mouth. And I look at the Christmas tree decorated with bright lights, and an assortment of ornaments gathered over the years.
Looking at the ornaments, I think of the holidays we celebrated when our kids were preschoolers, just learning what to expect on Christmas, how they loved the candlelight, and all the trappings of our family traditions, and how they were overwhelmed by the gifts on Christmas morning. And I think of the young adults they have now become. They will still be home this Christmas, but they are both making perfectly clear that they are eager to leave home, and somehow strike out on their own.
Looking at the ornaments, I think of family celebrations when I was a child. The excitement, not only opening my own presents, but taking turns and watching my brothers open theirs. And the strange joy I felt, watching my parents open the small, clumsily wrapped gifts I had made, hoping desperately that they liked them.
Looking at the ornaments, I remember how exchanging gifts with grandparents was always a special treat. And I realize that now none of my grandparents are alive anymore. And my father died years ago.
Suddenly the darkness outside seems to mirror a darkness within my soul. And I wonder what to do with all these thoughts and feelings.
* * *
Scotty McLennon finds enlightenment, a path through the darkness, in the ancient story of a newborn baby, born in the simplest of settings, in dark and violent times. A vulnerable and helpless child – amazingly and almost unbelievably - is the “light of the world.”
The story of a child savior, of a messiah in our midst, perpetually arriving, is an ancient tale about the transformative power of love. But in Scotty McLennon’s mind, love’s potential is still just as powerful today. He finds inspiration in modern stories, too.
For instance, he tells a story that took place a few years ago, when the five-state area of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana was designated “white homeland” by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. Non-whites, Jews and gays in those states were targeted for harassment, vandalism, and even murder.
One December night a brick was hurled through the bedroom window of a five year old boy named Isaac Schnitzer. “His bed was strewn with shards of glass,” McLennon writes. “The reason for smashing his window was that a menorah had been stenciled on it as part of the family’s Hanukkah celebration.” The next morning the police suggested to Isaac’s mother that when they replaced the window, they should leave off the menorah.
A Christian mother read about this in the news and brought it to the attention of her minister. What if we couldn’t set up Christmas trees or hang wreaths on our doors, because it wasn’t safe, she wondered. With this question in mind, the minister, in turn, contacted his non-Jewish colleagues and congregations in town. After Sunday services that week, menorah’s suddenly appeared in the windows of hundreds of non-Jewish homes. And throughout the week, as the spirit spread, more and more menorahs appeared. Soon there were thousands. And citizens organized a peace vigil outside the synagogue during Sabbath services.
The vandalism continued. Homes and schools and businesses that put up menorahs in solidarity were targeted, windows shattered, displays destroyed – those who had put them up were called “Jew lovers.” And this taunt, Scotty McLennon writes, was exactly the point.
“Exactly right! Jew lover. Lover. Love of humanity,” he writes. “Lover of the persecuted and the oppressed. This is what Christian enlightenment at its best is all about. Putting oneself at personal risk in solidarity with those who are targeted by hate. This is what it means to bring light into the darkness.”
As a result of their efforts, the anti-Semitic incidents in the city waned in the course of the following months. “Although there were only [a few] dozen Jewish families…, many new friendships formed and greater mutual understanding was achieved,” McLennon writes. “Hate overcome by love. Life affirmed in the face of death. A light in the darkness.”
* * *
Christmas is many things. It’s a religious observance. It’s a battlefield in our culture wars. It’s a very personal and private event. It is a celebration of solidarity, encouraging us to reach out to the persecuted and the oppressed. Or, as Robert Bly writes, “Christmas is a place, like Jackson Hole…”
I have never been to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But from what I hear, it is a spectacular place. It’s a valley in the Rocky Mountains, just south of Yellowstone National Park, with mountain ranges on all sides. The snow-covered peaks surrounding the valley, rise up thousands of feet. The peaks of the Tetons soar a mile straight up from the valley floor. Visitors are often left breathless by the majestic beauty of the lush flat plain surrounded by snow-clad peaks.
In the 1800s Jackson Hole was a way station for trappers, traders, and travelers heading across the country. Each of them following their own path. Each on their own journey.
* * *
Every person’s life is journey that leads us through bright vistas of joy and dark valleys of despair. Christmas is a place we all agree to meet once a year. We may gather with family and friends we rarely see. Or once a year, we may send and receive cards in the mail that remind us of our connections. We can read or write holiday letters that speak of the high and low points of the year.
Travels and trials, tribulations and triumphs are shared in a few carefully crafted paragraphs or pages, so that even if we can’t all sit around a fireplace and talk face to face, we can still share our stories. We can still look back on the year just passed, and marvel at what we have been through. We learn of babies born and parents passed away. We learn of illnesses overcome and great things accomplished.
When we were children, we didn’t hear all the details of the stories told among our elders at Christmas. But somehow we knew that weighty matters were on their minds. They each had their own battles to fight. They each had a part to play in wars that were started by others.
* * *
The message of the solstice, and the message at the heart of Christmas, is that we cannot escape darkness. Each of our lives, at some time or other will lead us through dark valleys. We will sometimes find ourselves in places of pain and sorrow. But we don’t have to stay there. Life goes on. If we continue on our way we discover that our time of darkness will be followed by a time of light. If we face our fears and move through them, if we confront the evils that surround us, and if we have the courage act, we ourselves will be harbingers of hope.
No matter how dark the night may be, one small candle can pierce the darkness. That single candle is a beautiful sight. Our single candle is like a star in the sky. It’s invisible in the light of day, but at night it can guide us on our way.
To live life to the fullest, we need to embrace and understand everything life offers us – the high points and the low points, our brightest days and our darkest nights. We need to claim the totality of life’s territory.
And then – with a clear sense of the lay of the land – may we choose a path that leads us toward enlightenment, understanding, and salvation, so that we ourselves may embody an ever deeper and ever brighter love.
Amen.
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