The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a pitch-dark land, light has dawned. 3 You have made the nation great; you have increased its joy. They rejoiced before you as with joy at the harvest, as those who divide plunder rejoice. 4 As on the day of Midian, you’ve shattered the yoke that burdened them, the staff on their shoulders, and the rod of their oppressor. 5 Because every boot of the thundering warriors, and every garment rolled in blood will be burned, fuel for the fire. 6 A child is born to us, a son is given to us, and authority will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. 7 There will be vast authority and endless peace for David’s throne and for his kingdom, establishing and sustaining it with justice and righteousness now and forever. The zeal of the Lord of heavenly forces will do this. (CEB)
“How Much is Enough? Hungering for God in an Affluent Culture”:
Week Four
The
author Jon Krakauer had been writing literally for decades—and in the process
had survived some harrowing adventures, including a near-death experience on
Mount Everest made famous in his account, Into
Thin Air. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
his next book tackled issues of religion, accountability, and persecution, when
he came out with Under the Banner of
Heaven as an examination of Mormonism and American religious culture. At the end of Under the Banner, he appended an epilogue, in which he explained
that because he was writing on matters of the soul, he felt ethically compelled
to disclose what his own take on God was.
This is what he wrote:
“I do not know what God is, or what God
had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I do not know if God even exists,
although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear,
or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty…in the absence of
conviction, I’ve come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable
corollary of life. An abundance of
mystery is simply part of the bargain—which does not strike me as something to
lament…and if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of
eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest
truths: Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why—which is to
say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of
us, for as long as we happen to be alive.”
This
sermon still bears the original title I had planned, and it still nominally
occupies a place in the sermon series I had planned for this season of Advent, based
on the book by Arthur Simon entitled “How Much Is Enough?” But after three Sundays of Advent, I have
preached on this original series but once.
The first Sunday of Advent was the Sunday immediately after our
break-in. Last Sunday, of course, the
third Sunday of Advent, was the Sunday immediately after the Sandy Hook mass
murder. In both cases I abandoned my
original planned sermon, and I am very glad I did in both cases. But it does make it difficult to preach a
sequel when there hasn’t really been an original. You can't have The Empire Strikes Back without A New Hope, you know?
So,
instead, I thought that I would just
talk with you today. About Isaiah. About Christmas. About where we are as a church family right
now. This is just you, me, and God right
now.
Because
like Jon Krakauer, I think that many of us feel, even if we have seen the
proverbial light and are leading lives of spiritual richness, we still feel in
the dark this Christmas season, perhaps more so than usual. I know I do.
And I know it is a nagging spiritual burden to have to bear.
Isaiah
says we will break our yokes and our burdens.
And, over the past nearly year and a half that you and I have been
church together, we have indeed unshackled ourselves from many a weight upon
our shoulders. It has been truly
wonderful to see, and I am as thrilled to be here as the pastor of First
Christian Church as I was the day I started.
We are actually going to keep with that theme a little bit, about what
it is like to be church now, rather than when I first arrived, in January—it will
be a sermon series centered around the “a time for every purpose under the sun”
poem in Ecclesiastes 3.
But
there is a time for burdens. And that
time seems to always be after that initial joy begins to wear off. We know that Jesus knew there would be
burdens to bear. In almost the same
breath as He said, “my burden is easy and my yoke is light,” He also said in
the Sermon on the Mount, “blessed are those who are poor spirit, who are grieving,
and who are persecuting for doing what God asks. And, of course, He said, blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
But
honestly, sometimes I think this earth isn’t what I want my inheritance to be.
But
then I stop. And I remember what Isaiah
says. A people walking in darkness has
seen a great light, and that we have, in fact, shattered the yoke that has
burdened us.
It
is simple enough to say that we each have our own yokes and burdens to bear and
to shatter. Tougher to explain is how
the great light gets us to that point of freeing ourselves from them.
In
Genesis, it is written that in the beginning, God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. In His unknowable wisdom and understanding,
God saw that the light was not simply acceptable, or serviceable, or
adequate. It was good. It is one of those phrases that you can savor
as you speak it, a phrase that really does roll off the tongue.
It
was good.
Now,
if you’re like me and are prone to questioning and prodding with a stick
anything placed before you, you may ask, what does it mean for an abstract
phenomenon such as light to be “good”?
The closest I have ever come to an answer was during my seminary
training, when I read an answer to that question by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld,
who said that light is good because it gives of itself freely. It does not seek anything in return. It does not ask whether you are friend or foe
before lighting your path. It fundamentally
and unconditionally gives of itself, and thus, it is never, ever diminished.
We
see this goodness of the light in the prophecy of Isaiah, for it shines for the
people who had previously walked only in the pitch darkness. It shines to protect and guide the people of
God, pilgrims like ourselves who are well along now in our way of preparing for
the birth of our Lord and Savior. In
creating the light, God has created an unending source of constant,
unconditional lavishing of warmth and sight for His creation.
Because
that is what Christmas is in the end, right?
It is part of proving to us that God will offer sight to the us who are
blind and warmth to us who are cold, no matter what, even if it means giving
over His Son to human parents, to human disciples, and ultimately to human
persecutors.
It’s
about God, in all His power and splendor, making Himself vulnerable as well.
It’s
why Christ came to earth not as a fully grown man, but as a baby.
And
it’s where we find ourselves today—feeling vulnerable, raw, and probably more
than a bit exhausted by everything the past four weeks have thrown at us.
And
so I stare into the light, longing to become the light. It is through this light that I can, in fact,
begin to see love. I can reach out sense
it, feel its warmth. That mysterious yet
awe-inspiring feeling that somehow in this imperfect world, where people kill
one another by the bucketful, where thousands of children die by the day not
only from gunfire but from starvation and neglect, where we look around and at
times feel so much despair and see so much darkness, that this is, still, in
the end, a world worth living for.
Because, like it or not, it is our inheritance.
The
meek shall inherit the earth.
Lucky
us, right?
But
we are fortunate. The earth, for all its
ills, for all its sins, for all its fragility and brokenness, is still divinely
made.
In
the beginning, the earth was without form and void. And God said, “Let there be light.”
And
there was light.
For
God, in the end, wants us to see.
He
wants us to see His love for us.
And
believe me, His love still lives. I see
it. I see it in the great light of God,
shining in our darkness.
And
so I stare into the light. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
December
23, 2012
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