Sermon, Feb. 2

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Christ – February 2. What else falls on February 2nd? …  (Groundhog Day.)

There IS a reason for that convergence – a planetary reason, rooted in the tilt and turn of the earth. February 2 falls more or less at the halfway point between the winter solstice – the longest night of the year – and the spring equinox, when night and day are equal in length. After that, the days start to be longer than the nights again. So February 2 is a turn in the planetary year, a half-twist towards light and spring. It’s a natural time of year for some kind of festival of light, especially here in the northern hemisphere. That’s reflected in the other name for this feast – Candlemas – and the old custom of blessing candles on this day. 

Light is one of the big themes of the season of Epiphany. It’s all over the core Scripture texts of this time of year. For example, Isaiah chapter 60, long used by the church as a song of faith, canticle 11: Arise, shine, for your light has come! For behold, darkness covers the land, deep gloom enshrouds the peoples… 

We’re also trying out an old Episcopal custom of reading the first verses of John’s Gospel at the end of the service: The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. 

Back in Advent we heard the Benedictus, Zechariah’s holy song from Luke chapter 1, often used in Morning Prayer: By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death…  One Advent prayer calls us to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. And there are many hymns and prayers that draw on this language and these images, in Epiphany and beyond.

The power of light and dark imagery has deep roots in human experience. As animals, as a species, we rely heavily on eyesight; it may be our strongest sense. 

So darkness – literal darkness – takes away our primary way of knowing where we are, finding resources, and avoiding danger. It’s natural that at a deep-seated level, dark makes us feel vulnerable and frightened, and that we welcome the return of light. 

But over millennia of human culture, literature, and politics, the realities of light and dark have been layered with additional meanings, becoming a set of overlapping binaries: 

Light – Dark

Good – Bad

Holy – Profane

Safety – Danger

Knowledge – Ignorance 

Civilization – Barbarity 

Light becomes shorthand for everything in that first column – and darkness a shorthand for everything in the second column. A powerful set of dualisms – a word which here means that humans have used our thoughts and our words to divide a whole complex range of ideas and experiences into two big, opposing categories. 

Those metaphors and meanings are deep and powerful. You may not be aware of the way they’re lurking in these ordinary words, but that doesn’t drive them away. It would be a fool’s game to try to expunge several thousand years of cultural word association. But I would like to try to call it to our awareness – and complicate the way we use the vocabulary and imagery of light and dark. 

A spiritual writer I follow, Jen Cobble Willhoite, wrote recently about the fires in Los Angeles, a place she loves. 

In it she grapples with how our familiar light and dark imagery sits askew in a season of wildfires. She writes, “Dawn approaches. Things look promising when we’re halfway out of the dark. But everything feels unnatural in smoke and haze. The growing light that crests [the horizon] is not the one that embraces us at the end of a long pilgrimage [through night]. It is [an approaching wildfire,] something we have to run away from. It feels terrible to be afraid of the coming light.”

Light isn’t always welcome. Light can be glaring, blinding, uncomfortable. Even dangerous. 

So many of the things we find beautiful are actually an interplay of light and dark. Christmas lights, candlelight, starlight. Dawn and twilight. Fireworks and lighting bugs. Light and dark are most beautiful when they’re dancing together. 

Hear me: I am not saying that life is better when it has some periods of difficulty, danger or sorrow in it. That’s the metaphor speaking. People do sometimes become stronger, wiser, or kinder through suffering, but that’s not a reason to wish suffering on anyone, or take unnecessary suffering as a blessing in disguise. 

I’m saying, rather, that even at its roots in human sensory and aesthetic experience, the dualism of light as good and dark as bad overstates, simplifies and distorts. 

I understand the power of our Scriptural images, and I try not to edit the Bible. Much. But for several years I’ve been trying, slowly and imperfectly, to move away from using “dark” as a shorthand for all the things “dark” is often shorthand for, in my own speaking and writing. You might hear me talk about things being heavy – another metaphor that makes sense to me. I can feel the weight of things sometimes, can’t you? I can see it on other people:  the way public events or personal griefs are like physical burdens, pulling down our shoulders, draining our energy. 

So, I might say, These are heavy times. Or I might just say what I mean: these are frightening times, or difficult times. I’m trying not to say, These are dark times. I won’t judge you if you do! That language is everywhere, including all through this liturgy! I just increasingly find it an unhelpful metaphor, for myself. 

Why does this matter? Why worry about words, in such heavy times? Maybe it is just me. But here are a few reasons that come to mind. The first is that allowing darkness to remain an unexamined shorthand for everything evil, immoral, or lacking, aligns with the ideology of white supremacy. Over the past several centuries, these ideas about darkness have become woven into our racial thinking in dangerous and dehumanizing ways. When white Europeans talked about Africa as “the Dark Continent,” for example, they were more or less intentionally tying people’s skin color to all those other meanings I named earlier… with dire and lasting consequences. 

Pausing to notice what we mean, and the unintentional overtones, when we talk about darkness or blackness as intrinsically or obviously negative, is actually a small but important step in anti-racism work.

The second reason I’d like to complicate the language and meanings of light and dark in church and everyday talk is that refusing stark dualisms keeps us human. 

At its roots, our human propensity for categorization is a matter of cognitive efficiency. We don’t have the brain resources to analyze all the information with each and every thing that comes before us. So we chunk up reality, and, importantly, other human beings, into categories and types. Safe, dangerous. Good, bad. Kin; stranger. 

Those categories in turn become catchalls for a whole lot of other stuff. For example, we don’t have to have our own opinions about lots of things because we can just believe what our people believe. Everybody does this, to a greater or lesser extent! 

And in times of high stress and anxiety, the pressure towards polarization, towards dualistic thinking, is even more intense. When somebody is demonizing me or my loved ones, Lordy, it is easy to demonize them right back. 

The us/them mentality has a powerful pull, and the light-and-dark, good-and-evil stuff comes right along with it. 

But some the fiercest, boldest people I know are also the most compassionate. People who carry a strong ethical commitment to the humanity of their enemies. People who not only resist dualistic  and demonizing thinking themselves, but who try to understand why someone else’s anxiety and resentment is driving them towards that kind of thinking. 

And, pragmatically speaking, if I want you to care about my child’s well-being, then it’s probably incumbent on me to care about yours.

 Hear me: This is not “can’t we all just get along.” This is facing the truth that we are, in fact, all in this together. 

Let’s be very, very clear what and who we stand for – what and who we will work, march, give, vote, and fight for – but that doesn’t have to mean going deeper and deeper into polarized thinking, into us/them mentalities that ultimately may be counterproductive for our goals – and that dehumanize us as much as those we regard as our opponents. 

This is not something I have mastered, friends.  But it is something that I believe.

The third reason I’d like us to take the light/dark imagery, and all the other ideas tucked away inside that dualism in our Scriptures, and hold it up and think about it a little, is that sometimes the dark has gifts that we need. 

Remember the old Louis Armstrong song “What a wonderful world”? I love the lyric “The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night.” The dark is sacred sometimes, isn’t it? Dark can be gracious, comforting, safe. And light can be glaring, painful, dangerous. 

The Underground Railroad, and the work to protect Jews and others at risk in Nazi Germany, often took place by night. Think about the phrase “under cover of darkness.” Dark like a blanket, offering shelter. And when such work took place in daylight, there was still the metaphorical darkness of secrecy, silence, and subterfuge. 

The darkness out there may have ways to bless us; so may the darkness within. Seeking to understand our own more difficult or obscure inner depths is important and holy work. There may be something we need to work through and release; something we need to grapple with and transform. Something we need to mine, to tap into, as a source of power. We might not know until we venture into our inner shadows. 

When we sing or say,  Behold, darkness covers the land, deep gloom enshrouds the peoples; Arise, shine, for your light has come! … When I read from John’s Gospel at the end of our Eucharistic services: The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it… I need those words, friends. I need the comfort and courage they offer. 

But I’m working on seeking the comfort and courage that hides in the dark, too. The dark can be frightening, no question about it; but it has its own gifts to offer. In Advent we sang a song about it, composed by African-American musician Lea Morris: “Honor the dark as you do the light…receive the gifts that come to us by day and by night. I choose to honor the dark, uncertainty and change; deliver us from fear until only love remains.” 

Now I’m going to read you a book that I love, The Dark by Lemony Snicket…