When Times are Dark

Isaiah 63:7-9,

Matthew 2:13-23

12/29/19

               The story we heard from Matthew today is the other side of Christmas, the dark side of Christmas. 

“A voice is heard in Ramah,

    weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.”

               This is the part we don’t want to look at, don’t want to talk about, and at some level deeply deny.  In many ways we, as a people, as a faith, as a country even, still believe in a Santa Claus God.  We hold on to the belief that if we are good, good things will come to us.  And if we experience bad things, it is “karma” or rather, it is God getting even with us, punishing us for the wrongs we have done.  The signs that we still believe in this are many, but I think the biggest indicator that we do is that one simple word, “Why”.  When things go wrong we cry out to God and demand a reason.  “Why?” we demand.  “Why are you doing this to me?”  This is often followed by “What have I done to deserve this?” A lesser form is the “why won’t you help me?”  but it still comes down to the same thing.  We want life to be fair, and we want to be rewarded for good behavior.  We also tend to want our enemies to be punished, to suffer for their misdeeds.  But both of these ideas come from a vision of God which just doesn’t hold with either scripture or with our experience.  Today’s scriptures are just one of the times when we see this reality.  Every male child in and around Bethlehem slaughtered.  Did any of these children deserve to die?  Of course not!  But it happened.  Like the Holocaust, like genocide, like all the evil things that happen in this world. 

Our wishes for a Santa Claus God who gives good to the good and bad to the bad just doesn’t play out in real life.  So my answer to you about the “whys” and the “how comes”, my answer in the face of this reality is the uncomfortable reality of free will.  The uncomfortable reality is that everyone has been given that same free will.  My answer to you is the uncomfortable reality that God does not micro-manage us because God wants genuine relationship with us and that means we are not puppets, none of us are controlled by God, made to behave properly, made to avoid hurting you or hurting one another.  If we are allowed to be ourselves, allowed to be who we are, allowed to pick and choose our behaviors, then sometimes, and unfortunately many times within humanity, people will make bad choices, choices that hurt others, choices that deny others’ humanity and deny the truth that we are all brothers and sisters to one another.  My answer to you is the uncomfortable reality that, as Jesus tells us, “the rain falls on the just and unjust alike.”  The bottom line here?

God is not doing this to you. 

Whatever it is that you are suffering, whatever it is, it is not something that God is doing to you.  It is not punishment for something that you did.  We have choices in this life, all of us.  And that means other people make choices that hurt us, hurt all of us, damage life, damage connection, injure hundred and thousands of people, take the lives of children, box them up, treat them like dirt.  God is not doing this.  God is the God of love and life.  If it is not loving and is not full of life, it is not God.  But still these things happen.  Life is unfair.  And we cannot control the choices of other people.

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

               So, the innocents were slaughtered, then, as they are today.  Children were killed then, as they are today.  And the reaction and the result was weeping, then, as it is today.  And just as then, when God did not stop Herod from the slaughter of all the babies, it still was not God’s will that those babies be killed.  It was not God’s wish, it was not God’s choice, it STILL is not God’s will or God’s choice when babies are slaughtered, when killings and destruction of God’s people is happening.  It is never God’s will when the children are slaughtered. 

               I will tell you the truth: I often lay awake at night and grieve our world: I grieve the children at the border.  The most obvious, most memorable refugees we know are in this story today: they are Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  I do not understand how you can fail to see them every time we are looking at the refugees at the border, I do not fail to remember that every time we hurt or kill or separate a child at the border, we are separating, killing and hurting Jesus himself.  And it fills me with inconsolable grief.   I also lay awake at night grieving my own children who will surely be destroyed by the climate change we are bringing about.  I know some of you do not believe this.  And you can have your opinions.  But I will also say to you that I cannot understand anyone who would refuse to act based on even the possibility that this is a reality, the possibility that we are reaching a point of no-return from which we cannot save our planet and ALL of our children will be destroyed because of it.  I grieve.  I lay awake sobbing with grief for my own children and potential grandchildren.  And I, too, demand to know why God will not stop the greed that I see as the only reason for not acting to save our beautiful world.  And I weep for the children that will be no more if we do not take action now.

               But just as in the slaughter of the innocents, God does not stop the evil from coming.  God does not stop those who have their own motives.  God does not make people see, or make people choose life, or make people care for one another or the planet.  God tells us to love, but God does not make us love.  And so, many of us now are weeping for our children, for, whether they are the children at the border or our own children affected by a dying planet, they are and will be no more.

So, where do we go with this?  Where on earth is the Good News in this?

There are two: first, God is still there with us in all this mess: “In all their distress he too was distressed.” As the passage from Isaiah told us.  God is with us in our pain, helping us to bear it, carrying us, loving us through the darkness.

But the second is that just as free will leads some to buy their heads in the sand, and others to act with greed and selfish inclinations, for some to act out violence and hatred and rage against their own brothers and sisters, and to inflict cruelty and yes, evil, onto the world, freewill also opens doors for good to come in, for light to shine, for hope and grace and compassion to shine forth.  Free will allows some people to choose love, no matter what is happening, and to love with a ferocity that is greater than their own lives, with a willingness to live out their love even to death.  Free will allows us to choose God, goodness, and love no matter what we are facing.  And that is a gift indeed.  Because as Mark 8:36 tells us, “what does it profit a person to gain the whole world only to lose their soul?”  the opposite is also true, some people lose their lives and are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of all and in doing so, they gain their very souls.

I found myself reflecting on this as we were lighting the candles for the last Taize service of the season Monday evening.  The candles we use have a very short lifespan.  They burn for maybe an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and then they are done.  So, as we were lighting the candles, many of which had begun their burning the previous week, I felt in some ways that we were fighting an uphill battle.  We’d light two candles and one would snuff itself out, running out of wax or drowning in the little wax that was still there.  We’d replace the candle and by the time it was replaced, another would have gone out.  David and I together were standing at the communion table lighting candles as people were coming in, and even with both of us working, we’d get a few done and another would burn out, needing to be replaced.  But despite the darkness that kept engulfing each little place where a candle stood, even though candles burnt out quickly and our ability to keep the light going needed constant attention, when we finally said, “well, we need to start the service, the candles that go out will just have to be out for the rest of our time today,” even as we said this and let them be, the light from those that were strong was enough.  It was bigger and brighter than the ones that had burnt out.  There remained more candles that were lit and burning than were out, even ‘til the end of the service.  And the ones that burned shown strong.  They pushed the darkness away for that time.  The light would not be put out, nor the darkness overcome it.  And in that is my hope.

There is a story written by Robert Fulghum in his book, It was on Fire when I Lay Down on it (New York: Ivy Books, 1989), p 171, that I would like to share with you this morning: click for story

God is the light.  God is the light.  We are mere reflections of that light.  But our job is to be strong and vigilant and to keep spreading the light: love, compassion, grace, the memory that we are ALL God’s children, all brothers and sisters to one another, all in need of love and healing, all called to be the ones to bring that love and healing.  We are called to spread that word and spread that light to all who will hear.  Once we have spoken, once we have shone our lights, it is not our job what happens then.  It is not up to us whether or not it makes a difference, whether or not it changes anyone.  That part is up to God.  Our part is just to keep shining the light.  Today.  Everyday.

I end this with a poem that was sent to me from Jan Richardson:

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you

who bear the light

in unbearable times,

who testify

to its endurance

amid the unendurable,

who bear witness

to its persistence

when everything seems

in shadow

and grief.

Blessed are you

in whom

the light lives,

in whom

the brightness blazes --

your heart

a chapel,

an altar where

in the deepest night

can be seen

the fire that

shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith,

in stubborn hope,

in love that illumines

every broken thing

it finds.

- Jan Richardson

from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings