December 17, 2017 John 1:6–8, 19–28

John 1:6–8, 19–28
A man named John was sent from God. 

He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, 

so that through him everyone would believe in the light. 

He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.                                                                   

The Lord God’s spirit is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me.
The Lord has sent me
to bring good news to the poor,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim release for captives,
and liberation for prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and a day of vindication for our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
to provide for Zion’s mourners,
to give them a crown in place of ashes,
oil of joy in place of mourning,
a mantle of praise in place of discouragement.
They will be called Oaks of Righteousness,
planted by the Lord to glorify the Lord.
They will rebuild the ancient ruins;
they will restore formerly deserted places;
they will renew ruined cities,
places deserted in generations past.

I, the Lord, love justice;
I hate robbery and dishonesty.
I will faithfully give them their wage,
and make with them an enduring covenant.
Their offspring will be known among the nations,
and their descendants among the peoples.
All who see them will recognize
that they are a people blessed by the Lord.

I surely rejoice in the Lord;
my heart is joyful because of my God,
because God has clothed me with clothes of victory,
wrapped me in a robe of righteousness
like a bridegroom in a priestly crown,
and like a bride adorned in jewelry.
As the earth puts out its growth,
and as a garden grows its seeds,
so the Lord God will grow righteousness and praise before all the nations.

***

I don’t like to run on the path at night because it is too bright. I can see where I am to step just fine because of the lamp lights overhead, but I can’t see what is ten feet beyond them. I do not know if someone is there, where my eyes can’t adjust past the beaming into the dark, and isn’t this what they try to teach women who run anyway, to be afraid of the dark. 

We do it with our children, night-lights that lead from bedrooms to bathrooms, or toys that glow which are supposed to ease toddlers to sleep, when in fact, they disrupt their circadian rhythms. Adults, we are not that much different, when we look around the house once we’ve locked the door against scary nighttime intruders, there are blue and green dots of light, the cell phone charging, the printer still on, the stereo on pause, and the digital clock on the wall. I remember going to sleep in my grandmother’s room growing up and watching the clock, because I could, at night, in her house, big green diamond shaped numbers blinked the minutes by, and I would try to wait up just to see the double-digits, and especially if I could make it to 11:11, because that was a wishing number, there in the dark, that somehow I could never have time to wait and watch for in the light of day, everything else I could see was too distracting from just being, and waiting for wishes to come.

And isn’t that the way of things, that we avoid those dark, quiet waiting spaces? That we 

equate light with goodness, and dark with evil, despite the metaphor’s historic oppression of people of color. You look up the word dark in the thesaurus and it gives you adjectives like lack of light, but also, shaded complexion and hair, right next to, grim and hopeless, evil, satanic, ignorant, a time without light, and the witching hour. And you look up the word light, and it describes, illuminated, blond and fair, not heavy, simple, easy, funny, cheery, luminescence. I remember in my sorority’s play each year watching my sisters’ subconsciously pick the roll of the angel with a ring of white flowers as a halo, to be whomever was the blondest girl. That somehow those who were darker could not be as pure or heavenly. But what if that darkness was just where the heavenly begins to appear. What if there were no lamp lights on the path and I could run with eyes adjusted and glance from the freckles of stars across their Milky-Way cheek bones - to the brush strokes black trees against the blue of December’s Snow Moon. What if we scrolled all the way to the end of the thesaurus and found that black also can be a word for hidden, and secret, and mystery. What we honored the passing minutes and knew that almost midnights, like 11:11, held wishes that could possibly be granted. What if instead of locking our door against the nighttime intruders, we became more concerned with the power buttons that intrude our own sleep within our home. What if instead of teaching our children, “Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep, please guide me safely through the night and wake me with the morning light,” or the old scarier version, of, “and if I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take,” as if night and death were scary and left us without God, we taught our children to enjoy the dark, to let their eyes adjust, to honor the shades in shadows, and the wax and wane of the moon. Growing up, my mom, a children’s librarian by profession and a naturalist by passion, would walk us to the bathhouse on camping trips, and along the way we would turn off our flashlights, and she would point out the stars of Orion and his belt, and the Centaur and his maze, and she would tell us the stories of the constellations such that to be outside at night was a source of wonder and awe and imagination and dreams. Then, we would go back to the city, where too many lights brightened out the stars and our dreams were polluted by other people’s fear. But what if what we feared was the light creeping into our darkness, what if what we rallied against was the stealing of our dreams, the labeling of black as bad, and the avoidance of night, because it is to this darkness Jesus comes. 

Jesus is born not in the bright busyness of day, but in the quiet, solitude of night. What if our pictures of the nativity are not to be full color seeing every angle of yellow hay, but instead a cast of grey lines and shadows, surrounding the soft wrap of swaddling clothes against the smoothness of dark baby’s cheek. What if we allowed the nativity to be at night, true night? Would we be able to find the Lord better if we dimmed the distractions and focused in. I think too of the angels, who do not come to the shepherd girls on a sunny afternoon, the angels whose halos illumine a multitude of completions, show up after the sheep have been counted saying, “Do not be afraid.” and their songs of Gloria, Gloria, In ExCelesis Deo,” became the first lullabies of our Christian tradition. Similarly, the Magi, could only travel by night, turning out their lanterns, like my mother, sister and I, clicking off our flashlights and following the stars. And after seeing the Lord, they go home by another way, through another unfamiliar darkness, I supposed because they know the safety of traveling in the night. So, to us, as these night’s come quickly and stay long through morning, maybe we too are to lean into the darkness, because to that darkness is where Jesus comes, where we will find the mystery of our Lord.