Light in the Darkness

Light in the Darkness

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

November 13, 2016

Scripture: John 1:1-5

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

(Take off stole) For a moment I’m going to speak for myself here. That’s why I have taken off my stole, the symbol of my status as an ordained minister and as your pastor. I’m going to speak for myself because I have to. If someone tells me that I can’t do that, that I’m only up here because I am the pastor of this church, I won’t argue with them; but I’m going to speak for myself anyway. I’m not speaking now in my role as your pastor. I’m speaking only as an American citizen. For me, last Tuesday, the world became a very dark place, much darker than I had ever thought of it being before. I don’t need to tell you about the result of our election of that day. You know it already. You know who won, and you know as much about that person as I do, maybe more. Some of you already know how I took that result. For the rest of you, I took it very badly. I reacted to it with powerful negative emotions, emotions of depression and even anger. I see nothing but harm coming from it, harm to our nation, harm to the world, especially harm to the vulnerable, to minorities, immigrants, non-Christians, and people with disabilities like my six-year-old granddaughter Calnan, who has a significant visual disability that will probably only get worse as she grows up. I grieve the result of our presidential election, and I suspect that I will for years to come. I never thought my country would make a decision I consider to be this bad, but it did. So I have prayed for help for my nation and for myself as we enter what I fear will be a very difficult time for us and especially for the ones Jesus called “the least of these.” I have struggled and continue to struggle with the question of how I can keep doing the work, the ministry, that I have been doing for years, for last Tuesday’s result frankly makes it all seem small and meaningless. Tomorrow I am going to a two-day retreat for UCC clergy on the subject of how to be the church. I am hoping that spending time with my UCC colleagues, as far as I know all of whom have reacted to the election much as I have, will help me get my feet back under me; for they sure haven’t been under me since last Tuesday. I hope you understand that I had to tell you what’s going on with me, for you need and deserve to know.

(Put stole back on) OK. I’m back as your pastor. One thing that Christianity has always known is that the world is a dark place. Our world today is hardly unique in being a dark place. There has always been war. There has always been injustice. There have always been charlatans and reprobates in seats of power. The good has always struggled with evil. Indeed, sometimes it seems to us Christians that the world is nothing but an arena for the cosmic struggle between good and evil. Frankly, I have never understood how Christians can see the world any other way, for we follow a Lord and Savior whom the darkness of the world tortured and executed as a common criminal, as a threat to public order. Yet we call our crucified savior the Son of God. We call him Emmanuel, God With Us. We call him God Incarnate. And the world killed him as if he were nobody. Yes, he rose again, but our faith truly grew out of the darkness of the world.

Our New Testament knows that. We heard it say it in our reading from John this morning. I used the New Revised Standard Version translation of those verses because they are the form in which I have long known these verses and because I think they are a better translation than the NIV we use here, especially in their last phrase. Those verses are the New Testament’s most profound proclamation of Jesus as God Incarnate. And they know that Jesus came precisely into a world of darkness. They are so profound that I’m going to recite them to you again. They say:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Jesus is the light of all people, and he came into darkness. His light shines in that darkness. And this Bible verse says “the darkness has not overcome it.” That’s the line that’s translated better in the NRSV than in the NIV. The darkness has not overcome it. Folks, I’ve had a hard time holding onto that one since last Tuesday, but I know it is true. The darkness of the world has never overcome the light of Christ. He is the light in our darkness. Thanks be to God.

This last week one of you forwarded to me a letter that proclaims not the light of Christ in the world exactly, for its author is Jewish, but the light of God in a world of darkness. That’s the same light that shines in Jesus. This letter is from Rabbi Will Berkovitz, the Chief Executive Officer of Jewish Family Services in Seattle. It is so beautiful and so powerful that I am going to share most of it with you. Last Wednesday Rabbi Berkovitz wrote:

"What happens now?" was the question my children asked me last night as I was putting them to bed. "What can we do? What will we do?"

We can hold our place while not denying others theirs. We can walk with the vulnerable so they know they are not alone. We can be a place of peace and not darkness. We can be kind with ourselves and others. And we can transform that kindness into deeds of love. We can acknowledge the fear and uncertainty that may exist within us, but to which we must not succumb. 
 
With clarity and conviction, we will re-affirm the core beliefs that have always guided us. We will value the dignity of each individual. The one who prays differently or not all. The one whose color, gender, education, sexual orientation, abilities, aspirations, ethnicity or geography is not the same as ours. The one whose experiences and worldview are different than our own. 

We will look within and re-commit ourselves to the work ahead. We will be a place of refuge and gathering where we respect and offer compassion to those who are most vulnerable, embracing the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the poor and the brokenhearted. 

One more time, we will remind our children and ourselves of our collective story, so each of us learns anew and remembers always there are reasons we are obligated to do all we can to repair what is broken. And we will come together to build sanctuaries of peace with the power to shine light out into the darkness.

Jesus is our light in the darkness, but other faiths also know that God is light in the world’s darkness. Rabbi Berkovitz speaks powerfully here of what God’s light, the light we know through Jesus Christ, means in the world today—and not just since last Tuesday. He speaks of what it means for all people of faith to be called to be that light in the world. For us it is Christ’s light, for Rabbi Berkovitz and others it is the light of God known in other ways, but it is the same light. To live in that light, indeed to be that light, means we walk with the vulnerable so they know they are not alone. We become a place of peace. We are kind with ourselves and others. We perform acts of love. We value the dignity of every person, even, or rather especially, those who worship differently than we do or don’t worship at all, those who differ from us in color, gender, education, sexual orientation, abilities, and ethnicity. We become a place of refuge where we offer respect and compassion to the most vulnerable among us. In the grand tradition of Jewish prophecy Rabbi Berkovitz lists the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the poor, and the brokenhearted as those who are most vulnerable. Those yes, but there are others too. Women, whose equal human value and dignity we men so often disparage and deny. Racial minorities, who live among us in a land founded in and deeply tainted by racism. Sexual minorities, who have been told for millennia and are still told today that they are somehow broken when they are no more broken than the rest of us. The immigrants living far from what was their home, hoping for a better life for themselves and their children. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and other religious minorities whom we Christians have told for centuries that their faith is false and they are damned if they don’t become Christian, a diabolical falsehood that far too many Christians still believe and still proclaim.

As Rabbi Berkovitz says, there are reasons we are obligated to do all we can to repair what is broken. The world didn’t break last Tuesday. It has been broken from its beginnings. It didn’t get dark last Tuesday, it has been dark from its beginnings. The reason we have to know that we are obligated to do what we can to fix it, that we are obligated to be Christ’s light in today’s darkness, is that we are Christians. We say that we follow Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ and as our Lord and Savior. He came as the Word of God in human form to be light in the darkness, and he came to tell us that we too are to be light in the darkness. We are to carry the light he brought into the world’s darkness and make the world brighter.

Folks, today God’s call to us to do that is more urgent than ever. More people than ever will need help. More people than ever will be afraid and need a safe place to be. Many already are and do. Some of them may be Christians, but most won’t; and that doesn’t matter at all. Some of them may be straight, able-bodied, and white like most of us, but most won’t; and that doesn’t matter at all either. Those things matter not at all in how we are called to be there for them, to be the light of Christ, the light of God for them, to assure them that they are dearly beloved children of God. To say you are valuable. To say you are loved. To say that regardless of what the world says to you, regardless of what your government says or does to you, you matter. You matter to us, and much more importantly you matter to God.

Being and doing those things is what it means to be Christian today. Not to be and do those things is to fail in our call to follow our Lord Jesus Christ. Are we willing to be Christians today? Are we willing to be the light of Christ for a dark and hurting world? May it be so. Amen.