Advent 4 – Gathering the Light December 18
Luke 1:26-38
Six months later, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to
a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a young woman named Mary; she was engaged
to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. Upon arriving, the angel said to
Mary, “Rejoice, highly favored one! God is with you! Blessed are you among
women!”
Mary was deeply troubled by these words and wondered what
the angel’s greeting meant. The angel went on to say to her, “don’t be afraid,
Mary. You have found favor with God. You’ll conceive and bear a son, and give
him the name Jesus—‘deliverance.’ His dignity will be great, and he will be
called the only begotten of God. God will give Jesus the judgment seat of
David, his ancestor, to rule over the house of Jacob forever, and his reign
will never end.” Mary said to the angel, “how can this be, since I have never
been with a man?” The angel answered her, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the most high will overshadow you—hence the offspring to be
born will be called the holy one of God. Know too that Elizabeth, your
kinswoman, has conceived a child in her old age; she who was thought to be
infertile is now in her sixth month. Nothing is impossible with God.” Mary
said, “I am the servant of God. Let it be done to me as you say.” With that,
the angel left her.
Genesis 1:14-18
Then God said, “Now, let there be lights in the expanse
of the sky! Separate day from night! Let them mark the signs and seasons, days
and years, and serve as luminaries in the sky, shedding light on the earth.” So
it was: God made the two great lights, the greater one to illumine the day, and
a lesser to illumine the night. Then God made the stars as well, placing them
in the expanse of the sky, to shed light on the earth, to govern both day and
night, and separate light from darkness. And God saw that this was good.
On
Christmas Eve we will sing “Silent Night’ and light a single candle. The flame
of that candle will be passed to other candles, which will in turn pass their
light down the pew until our sanctuary will be filled with the light of more
than a hundred flames. It will be a light that will push back the darkness. It
would be far less impressive if we all stayed home and lit that single candle
there. But when we gather together, when we gather the lights in community the
glow can be spectacular.
I
have to confess that I am not entirely sure what we were thinking when we chose
this week’s them of “Gathering Light.” Its counterpoint darkness we named as
loneliness. That loneliness, I assume, is the single candle, isolated from
other flames. Gathering light is the gathering of community, and in this
specific context of Advent as we await the coming of Christ we anticipate the
gathering of the Christ community. There is a family for all of us, even if it
is not complete yet. We are gathering the light of Christ to illuminate the
growing hope that is that family.
Our
culture is very good at isolating us as individuals. The powers that be tell us
that we are small and weak and nothing we do will ever make a real difference.
Jesus was born in the most powerless circumstances imaginable, at least as Luke
tells the story. Mary was an undistinguished young woman. Engaged (betrothed)
to a certain, she receives word that she will be pregnant with a baby that is
not that man’s. In most circumstances like this, that young woman would be
isolated in the extreme, especially in first century Palestine. Her
illegitimate pregnancy would have been seen as a dishonor for her father’s
family, and an insult to her betrothed. It is not exaggeration to say that this
was a life-threatening position. She must have felt all alone. One tiny candle
against a sea of shadows.
Yet
she did not believe she was alone. She had the vision to see that God was going
to be with her in this perilous journey. And somehow Joseph himself got on
board. Somehow they gathered enough light to push back the shadows of fear and
hopelessness. They gathered enough light to believe that God was doing
something even more than positive in the midst of this outwardly disastrous
event. The gathering of light in community, even a small community, allows us
to see our situation and our world differently than the way the world tells us
they are. Gathering light empowers us to have hopeful vision.
Brad
Wishon posted this thought about the loneliness some feel in this season: “via
Steven Charleston: It is that season again. The time for being invisible. I do
not share these words to darken truly happy hearts, but I speak to all those
for whom holidays are but a burden. I speak to those who feel some private hurt
that keeps them from the joy they see in others. To any who understand my
meaning, I offer a gift, small, but radiant in power. I hear your silence in
the midst of singing, I see you unseen in the crowd. Not because I have what
you do not have, but because I have stood where you stand. You are not alone.
You are not invisible. You are not forgotten. A single star shines above you,
guiding love to where you are. It is that season again, your season, when God
seeks the lonely place, to shelter hope where few would expect to find it.”
So I
am sensing that our task of “Gathering Light” is a little like the Hubble
telescope. All this random light is shining throughout the universe. The Hubble
physically gathers some fo that light in its barrel, focuses it so that we can
see with new clarity what is invisible to the naked earthbound eye. TO gather
light is not to collect it or contain it, but to see it in a clearer way. Early
mariners gathered the light of the stars to chart their course across the
dangerous oceans. Frederick Buechner uses that metaphor for the difficult times
in life that become lodestones for life’s journey: “The fearsome blessing of
that hard time continues to work itself out in my life in the same way we’re
told the universe is still hurtling through outer space under the impact of the
great cosmic explosion…. I think grace sometimes explodes into our lives like
that—sending our pain, terror, astonishment hurtling through inner space until
by grace they become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris to give us our bearings, to
bring us into something like full being at last. (Telling Secrets)”
How
does Christ become the light by which we get our bearings? How can we gather
lights to help give others, or our world their bearings? When the thousands of
chintzy Christmas lights drown out all true light, how can we gather it in?
Anchor: A Light in the Dark
Frame: Gathering Light
Thread: More Light, more trugh is breaking from your
word.
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