Last Sunday of Advent

From Yesterday morning (last Sunday of Advent):

We thought a fitting theme for this season of Advent would be Light…  

Before recorded time, our ancestors measured seasons, days, time often by the movement of the sun – and the length of light in the day.   Some days stood out for them more than others – some days had more significance than others.   Today is one of those days…. tonight will be the longest of the year – at least for us in the northern hemisphere.  I say – “for us in the Northern Hemisphere”, since there is a big world out there, and the “southern” half will be recognizing just the opposite – our life-giving sun will shine on them longer today than any other day of the year.   

Today is also the fifth day of Hanukkah – an ancient “Festival of lights”.   The Jewish people – the people that make up part of my ancestry – celebrate this season by lighting a menorah – a 9-branched candelabra.  The story goes that some time in the second century before the common era, the leaders of the Maccabean revolt pushed the Selucide forces of Antiochus IV out of their holy land… and the holy temple.   These Selucide rulers – today from the region of Syria – had profaned their holy place… offering pigs in the temple – to the Greek God Zeus.   Once these foreign rulers had been expelled, the Israelite leaders began the process to rededicate the temple to their God – but the enemy had desecrated almost all of the sacred olive oil used to light the temple.   But they did find a little… just a little… enough for only one day of sacred light.   But the miracle of this event is the light lasted 8 days.   They trusted the lord of Light… the believed the Lord would protect them, restore them… and they celebrated… for 8 days.   

Or so the story goes.   Who knows exactly?   The selucides did indeed invade and control what would later be the land of Israel in the second century before Christ.   And they did indeed profane the temple.   And they were indeed pushed out later.    But did the sacred oil give 8 days of light?    Who knows… but still they tell the story. 

Ancient peoples told stories – stories of the creation, stories of how life came to be, how we came to be, stories of how God or “the gods” interacted with them, teaching them, healing them, testing them, playing with them.    The stories expressed their identities.   Whoever our ancestors were, they told stories… holy, sacred, stories.   And they told stories of light; of the absence of light, of the coming of light, of what the light represented to them.      

And we moderns tell our stories… our stories of light.   Just last week I met a couple who want me to participate in their wedding.   He is Lutheran and his fiancé is Jewish.    We talked about family, and what family means.   She shared about how her 4 sets of grandparents were in Europe as Hitler came to power.   Of those four sets, only one left Europe to survive the holocaust – the other grandparents died under the Nazi regime.  

She evidently doesn’t practice her Judaism too much… but she’s for sure Jewish!    It’s part of her identity.   It’s very important to her to identify as a Jew!   And the stories of her Grandparents are told and re-told. 

We humans have this propensity to tell our stories – and some of these stories become very important to us – as individuals and as peoples.    My children used to ask me – each in their own time… “Daddy, tell me a story about when you were little.”   We tell stories…  we’ve always told stories.   Stories do run deep in the human experience.

I told stories these last few Sundays about Light… at least my interpretation of light.    

I asked myself... "What should I say about Light?"   

I shared a story – really a story made up of many similar experiences rolled into one – about the many times I spent in the field overnight, with my face colored with camouflage paint, and a rifle in my hands as me and 11 other guys woke up in our patrol bases before dawn and waited… waited for the sun to rise.    How many times I remember waiting for the light to come… how it got colder and darker just before dawn.  And then when the sun did come… there was really something sacred about it.   We wouldn’t talk – we’d just wait… the moment had to be respected.    Light.       

I shared about some people of Light… Malala Yousufsai is one.     She’s not even 20 years old yet.    She was shot in the head for speaking out against the backward beliefs of the Taliban, who, among other things, do not believe in educating girls.  She survive, and is still speaking out about this and other topics of light… stronger than ever!      Light!

I shared the story of Don Quixote de la Mancha, a fictional character by the author Miguel de Cervantes.  “Don Quixote” is to us famous for tilting at windmills… his name now synonymous with “a worthless effort”!    He tilted at windmills… fighting dragons that didn’t exist.   He fought for the honor of his lovely Dulcinea, his fair and honorable lady, Dulcinea… who to all the world just a common whore.    He saw the world not as it was, but as it could be, as it should have been, as it was intended to be.    And in all this, he changed her heart.   She became a lady, a lady worth loving and honoring.    And the world was made whole again.   A man of light!

Consciousness – the light of consciousness.    I told stories about this as well.    I told a story I’d heard – a friend told me back in 2003 how she’d recently met a woman at her church one Sunday morning, a guest.   This guest was in her mid 50’s, well-dressed, well-spoken.   They got to talking, sharing, learning about each other.    This lady shared how she was expecting a child – she was pregnant.    Talking about this coming birth, the woman became Joyful, Jubilant even.     In her next breath, she shared that she’d been pregnant since the late 1990’s.  

Obviously there was something going on cognitively.   But this expectant, coming child, seemed to light up her life.   I wonder what else she would have lost had she been forced to see reality for what it really was?   She would have lost a child… and some light perhaps.    

I told part of the story of my father’s decline and death.   I told part of the story of how the light of his cognition seemed to dim more and more… until there wasn’t much left of the father I’d known all my life.    The father I knew had been dying a little every day for many years.   The light of his consciousness, his identity, his stories, died a little every night, disappearing into the darkness.    Each day’s sun rose on less and less of my father’s mind.    I wondered for a few years after his death what it would be like for him to enter the next world… would his confusion and loss go with him, at least temporarily – restoration coming in pieces?    Or would his memories, identity, and stories, have all been washed clean and restored whole again, cleansed with the rising of his Spirit on that “great getting’ up morning”?     I don’t wonder any more… he’s all intact now.  And I’m happy about that.      Light.

I told a story of our visit to the “Elmina Slave Castle” – less a castle than a fort, really – on the coast of Ghana, West Africa.   I shared how I just couldn’t comprehend how the European slave-traders – 2, 3, and 4 hundred years ago – who ran the fort, were able to worship in the chapel in the middle of the fort’s courtyard… with human beings literally in cages all around them, preparing to be forcibly removed from their homes, family and land.    I couldn’t understand how they could worship the same God we do, sing songs of praise like we do, read the same bible we do… and yet still were able to do what they did to other people?        And then I wondered what our descendants would say about us – 2, 3 and 4 hundred years from now… as they see our structures, our policies, our life-styles, our understandings, our choices… and ask us:  "How could you have missed something so big as that?”    Light.   

    

Light opens.   Light enlightens.   Light illumines.    It does so to our benefit.  It might hurt us.  It might bring joy.  It might shock us, or bless us.    It might do all of these things.  But light comes.    

The light comes…  it comes.   Soon well be celebrating the birth of Jesus.  This is one of our stories – a story of faith.    We believe the light of God comes, as we remember this story.  

The Light of God is of course here – always has been…    but it is good to tell these stories again.   It reminds us.  We need to keep telling these stories of light!   We need to keep hearing these stories of light…   these stories of faith...   of a God of light… a God of life…   

We must tell them – year after year… even if we’re tired of them.   Even if they bore our children.   We must tell them – it is in the telling of these stories that the light shines!   We tell them in words, we tell them in actions, we tell them in our identities.   We tell them in the light of our God!

Light!     The Gospel writer Matthew has Jesus saying in chapter 5…   Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works, and glorify your father in heaven.