The Rev. Dr. Patricia Ramsden                           First Presbyterian Church

John 1: 1-9                                                      1/2/11

 

         A funeral is scheduled for an active member of a congregation and a community, a beacon of faith to others, as a family sits, still in shock over all that has happened during the past weeks when there were no answers to the questions of why.  Christmas night was filled with the darkness of overwhelming grief during those final goodbyes.

 

         It came so suddenly.  It was as if the one we love began to disappear right before our eyes.  Almost overnight there were no answers to “do you know where you are?”  or even worse “do you know who I am?”  It was as if the night had stolen the light from their eyes.  It still looks like the person we love.  The voice sounds the same, but the person we know is no longer there.  And a darkness seems to grow, not only within her, but within ourselves as well. 

Story after story, pain after pain, have filled my office over the last few weeks.  Teenagers with cancer, a parent killed in a tragic car accident, loved ones in icu.  But still it was with a deep and abiding gladness that I stood here on Christmas Eve, that I stand here today, to declare the eternal good news of the Christmas story:

“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in darkness, on them has light come… For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.  Authority rests upon His shoulders and He is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”.

I spent this past week exploring the meaning of darkness in the scripture, trying to discover all that it means for us and I discovered that one of its meanings is the darkness of calamity and despair --- the darkness we know as we grope to find our way. 

The story that personifies that best is the story of Job.  Job lost his family, his fortune, his marriage, his friends with a suddenness that takes our breath away.  There he is, sitting on a dung heap tormented by running sores and a broken heart, shouting to the heavens “Why?  What have I done to deserve such suffering?”  It is the shout of us all at one time or another:  Why? 

And I wish I had an answer, some easy words or platitudes to take the pain away, but there are none.  In the end, there is only the journey through the darkness to the other side.  But there is that other side where light will shine bright once more.  And we do not make that journey alone.  God is with us, giving us the strength we need to make it through another day when we think we cannot take another single step, when we think the dark night of our souls will never end.   Job tells us at the end of his fight against incredible pain, “By [God’s] light I walked through darkness.” 

But that darkness is not just our personal night of the soul as deep as that night might be.  Time after time it is used for the evil in this world that we cannot understand.

It is the darkness that lives in the hearts of leaders who line their own pockets with aid intended for victims of earthquakes who stand in long lines waiting for food and shelter. 

It is the darkness found when innocents are killed in road side bombs in the name of a religion distorted beyond recognition by those who preach hatred and death instead of love and life. 

It is the darkness of prison cells where those who fight for freedom are tortured and it is the everlasting night that shrouds brothels here in our own country where children are sold into sexual slavery by parents desperate for their next hit of cocaine.   It is in the blackest darkness of evil human hearts can devise.          

Yet into that evil, that incomprehensible evil, comes the light of God --- not a peaceful, calm and gentle light, but a fierce light,  determined to destroy the darkness and bring life into death, for the light of God guides us in the battle in which we are engaged and no enemy of the night can defeat us.  And notice I said “us” for we are the soldiers in the battle against darkness whether we stand silently with arms of comfort surrounding those who grieve, lending our faith and strength when theirs is gone, or stand clothed in the armor of God brandishing the sword of the Spirit for as Ephesians tell us “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh but against…. the cosmic powers of this present darkness.”

I am reminded of the words of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” --- words meant for all the ages:

“I have seen [God] in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps; they have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damp; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on…. O be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant my feet.  Our God is marching on.” 

We are the bearers of God’s light, the foot soldiers in the battle against darkness – whether that darkness be intensely personal and private or the well broadcast darkness blared forth on the evening news.  We are the ones who must carry the light into the battle against evil. 

We must be committed to the struggle as the song I taught the children says.  At times, it may seem that our light is feeble and our faith just the flickering of a candle threatening to go out.  Yet that light is the light of the world.  It is the light of God come into our darkness and no darkness, can put it out.

Please stand and sing with me as we commit ourselves to the battle in our world, in our lives and in the lives of those we love: “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”