Advent | 2023
While I love Advent, I have been grumbling about how early it gets dark at this time of year. We go to work in the dark, we come home in the dark. I’m ready for bed and its only six. It seems like this time change draws our attention to the darkness like no other time of the year.
Most of the imagery around darkness focuses on how it is bad, something to be avoided and something to be feared. In the movies, everything bad happens at night, that’s when the bad guys come out. The light is portrayed as good. Something that keeps us safe and banishes the evil. The sun rises, the good guys win, and all is well.
But those of us who are melanin deficient know that the sun is not always good. It can burn our skin and give us cancer. We were at the Natural History Museum in Washington DC this October and they had a fascinating exhibit about light pollution. Did you know that 80% of North Americans live with so much light pollution that they cannot see the milky way? And in a super creepy interactive experiment they showed a man in a side yard like he was trying to come through the gate in the fence. As you turned the security light brighter and brighter, you could see him less and less until when you finally reached the wattage of most household outdoor lights you couldn’t see him at all. It gives new meaning to the phrase “blinded by the light.”
Without the night, our bodies do not function properly. Our circadian rhythm revolves around darkness. Animal species would cease to exist without the cover of night. The darkness isn’t always bad.
Maybe you were afraid of the dark as a child. When my kids have told me they are afraid of the dark I would open the closet doors so they would know nothing is hiding in their to come get them. I would put a flashlight by their bed or turn on the light in the bathroom so they could see. And you know what? we do what we have to do in order for the kids and the grownups to get some sleep. But sometimes I wonder if I was doing my kids a disservice by teaching them to mitigate their fear of the dark instead of trying to understand it. The light is good, and the darkness is necessary.
I think our biblical view of darkness begins in the story of Genesis. We read about the darkness, and the Spirit hovering and think that God’s creates in order to fill the void. But is that true? Could it be that God was in the darkness and created more for joy and delight? And not in opposition to the darkness? I hear the echo of Advent in the beginning of Genesis. That in the darkness there is anticipation. It is a pause, a moment of quiet before the light comes bursting in. “For there was evening, and there was morning,” Genesis says. And it was good. The evening precedes the morning. I find that very interesting.
Of course when we talk about darkness, we are not just talking about physical darkness, but a spiritual one as well. Some of us may have heard of “the dark night of the Soul,” a phrase coined by St. John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite monk in the 16th century. Some people describe this dark night as the grief after loss, or the agony leading up to a difficult decision or the hopelessness of a life in the middle of falling apart. St. John writes about two kinds of nights, tinieblas, which is a darkness that carries danger with it, and oscura, which means a darkness that obscures or makes it hard to see. There is a darkness which can cause harm, where evil waits and where are fears are founded. This is the darkness we can and should turn from, the kind of darkness that we protect our children from. And there is a darkness through which we find healing, and the beginnings of new life. This darkness is something of a mystery. We don’t always know what lies beyond the beam of our flashlight. But its a darkness that God invites us into. Because without this darkness there is no light. As Barbara Brown Taylor rephrases John 1 “There is a light that shines in the darkness, which is only visible there.”
From the darkness of the dirt the seed sprouts. From the darkness of night comes the dawn. From the darkness of Mary’s womb came the Light of the World.
And so we come to Jesus.
The Scripture for today from John 1 is honestly one of the most mysterious and confounding accounts of the Incarnation. I can make a little sense out of shepherds and wise men and babies all swaddled up. But this Cosmic rendition can start to turn my brain inside out. Let’s read it:
John 1:4-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light for all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Around this time of year, we often hear Jesus referred to as the light of the world, as I did earlier. And I think this can mean that Jesus came to break up the tineablas, the evil darkness. He came to a lost people and helps us find our way back to God. Light is both a hope and a promise.
And also: Jesus’ life brings the light that helps us to see our own lives more clearly. He doesn’t come at us with the spotlights of interrogation. His light is not a harsh condemnation. It is not a shameful exposure meant to blind and burn us.
Jesus invites us into la noche obscura and offers a gentle light of illumination. In the incarnation we find affirmation of our own humanity. In other words, the life of Jesus reminds us that being human is good, that this is the life we are supposed to live, with all its flaws and imperfections. The light of Christ shows us who we are at the core and it is good. In his book Honest Advent, Scott Erickson says,
“What gives me hope in this Advent Season is the reminder that everything can be taken away except that hidden part of me. Whether I lose my savings, my house, my title, or my very livelihood, what is un-takeable is the part of me that Jesus illuminates. The deeper self that was woven into this world but is anchored in a much larger world. In the gift of my life is a doorway to a much larger reality, And Jesus is the Light that shows me the way.”
In Advent, the finite and the Infinite meet. They meet in the person of Jesus, both fully divine and fully human. And they meet in us. In our faithfulness to the present and our hope for the future. In the way we care for each other and our neighbors right now, and the way we believe that this is not all there is, God’s kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
This is the paradox, both of the season of Advent and of our faith.. How can darkness and light, faith and doubt, hope and fear, the already and the not yet—how can these seemingly opposing ideas coexist? For me, the older I get, the more this paradox actually sounds like the Good News. I don’t think God means for us to figure it all out. I think we are meant to live in the messy middle, to embrace the mystery, to share in the vulnerability of the uncertainty. We live in seasons of light and in seasons of darkness.
If this feels like a season of light, let it be. Enjoy the warmth of the sun and the ease of life. Eat and drink and be merry. And understand that this season will not last forever.
If this feels like a season of darkness, let it be. Lean into the mystery and uncertainty. Learn what God has to show you. Remember the story of creation, where the Spirit is present in the darkness. And have faith that this season will not last forever.
Another quote from Barbara Brown Taylor whose book Learning to Walk in the Dark changed the way I understand this, she says “Even when the light fades and darkness falls—as it does every single day, in every single life—God does not turn the world over to some other deity…Here is the testimony of faith; darkness is not dark to God, the night is as bright as the day.”
Night turns to day, over and over again. There is a comfort in that steady rhythm. In every day and in every night, God is with us. This is why Jesus came, to bring peace in the darkness and hope in the light.