Lift up your eyes and ask yourself who made these stars….calling each by name?  Because God is so great in strength, so mighty in power, not a single one is missing.  How can you say… “my destiny is hidden from YHWH, my rights are ignored by my God?”  Do you not know? Have you not heard?  YHWH is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  This God does not faint or grown weary; with a depth of understanding that is unsearchable.

Isaiah 40:26-28

Dear Waiters and Watchers,

I always look for them, casting my eyes upward as I wheel the garbage to the street on winter nights; searching the sky for a break in the clouds and a window to the heavens.  And in those moments when I do catch a glimpse of the stars, something in me expands and I feel transported from this lowly life to a place that is greater.  Do you know what I mean?

The dimensions of our galaxy, the Milky Way, are mind-boggling—up to 400 billion stars—and perhaps at least as many planets—arranged in a giant spiral disk of stars, dust, and gas measuring 100,000 light-years in diameter.  Astronomers tell us that our own solar system, arrayed around a single one of those stars, is located in the “outer suburbs” of our galaxy, 27,000 light years from the galaxy center.  To put it in more accessible terms, if our solar system was the size of a quarter, our galaxy would be 1,200 miles in diameter.  And here’s the clincher: the Milky Way is but one of perhaps 500 billion galaxies!

So many sources of light and so much energy and mass given to producing it.  And yet, within this vast universe, it’s the nonluminous material—the DARK MATTER and DARK ENERGY—that constitute together 95% of the total mass of the universe.  To say it another way, 95% of the universe is cloaked in mystery.  Does dark reveal anything to us about God?

It’s December and the season of Advent is upon us.  Coming to us in the northern hemisphere as daylight wanes and nights grow long, ADVENT is often awash with metaphors of LIGHT and DARKNESS.  So often in these scenarios LIGHT is associated with all that is good and right and true, while DARKNESS is associated with all that is bad and false and wrong.  Yet from the beginning, as the first chapter of Genesis illustrates, darkness and light have com­plementary roles to play within God’s magnificently unfolding universe.  When God creates the light, the darkness is not extinguished or cursed, but is integrated into the rhythm of the daily round.  Light and darkness each have purpose in the created order.

Imagine, if you can, a world that lacked Daytime or lacked Nighttime.  Imagine Scripture’s saving story told without NIGHT, without DREAMING.

• No starlit sky to which Abram gazes while God affirms the promise.
• No midnight vision for Jacob while fleeing his brother, no Jacob’s ladder.
• No divine – human wrestling match at the ford of the Jabbok.
• No prison-borne dreaming that leads Joseph to ascendancy under Pharoah.
• No pillar of fire by night guiding and protecting Moses and the Hebrew children as they move out of slavery, through the Red Sea, and onto their wilderness journey to the Promised Land.
• And two millennia later, no Messenger in the dark whispering to another Joseph: FEAR NOT TO TAKE MARY AS YOUR WIFE, FOR THE CHILD SHE CARRIES IN HER DARK WOMB IS HOLY.

Every life form on this planet home has evolved under the influence of night and day, darkness and light, and life as we know it could not exist without their DANCE.  Our Advent invitation this year is to stay alert to ways of imagining darkness and shadow NOT as attributes to be shunned, but rather as attributes to be hallowed.

In the shadow of your wings I will praise your name, O God!

During Wednesday evening gatherings this season we will explore this theme.  And on both Sundays and Wednes­days Scripture readings, hymns, and songs will build upon the theme that God’s presence is made manifest in light and dark and shadow.  Consider joining us.

“Hope begins in the dark,” writes Elizabeth Hunter.  “In deep, dark, winter soil little seeds nested underground are kept safe and nurtured.  When skies are dark, stars can be seen more clearly. In darkness, the natural sleep cycles of nocturnal animals and migratory patterns of birds are undisturbed.  Darkness has many benefits.”[1]

In the short story NIGHTFALL, Isaac Asimov tells the tale of the fictional planet Lagash, whose six suns keep it perpetually in light.  Residents of this fictional world experi­ence a star-filled nighttime sky only when astronomical factors perfectly align once every 2050 years.  For a brief period during this rare interlude all six suns fall away from view, exposing the inhabitants to the dark, starry sky.  The affect, however, is not awe and wonder but rather pandemonium.   Nyctophobia—irrational fear and foreboding  of the night—grip the populace of Lagash, unleashing internal forces so intense that the result is the complete destruction of the planet’s civilization. Survivors are left to build their lives—and their civilization—over from scratch.  Asimov’s tale is a fascinating take on the notion of perpetual light as a fiendishly potent enemy.  Might it also serve as a warning to a society which has elevated “whiteness” onto the pedestal superiority and consigned “blackness” to the dungeon of inferiority?

From the beginning darkness and light, day and night have been necessary components of the unfolding story God is telling.  Parts of a single whole, both are declared GOOD.  And both are seedbeds for our social and spiritual lives.  Absent one, the other suffers immeasurably.  Fourth century Cappadocian monk Gregory of Nyssa flipped the West’s social/spiritual paradigm on its head when he wrote: “Moses’s vision began with light.  Afterwards God spoke to him in a cloud.  But when Moses rose higher and became more perfect, he saw God in the darkness.”[2] What rich, new insights become available to us when we’re willing to explore the precincts of the night!

I leave you with one verse of a hymn by Brian Wren that we’ll be singing this month:

Joyful is the dark, holy, hidden God, rolling cloud of night beyond all naming:

majesty in darkness, energy of love, Word-in-flesh, the mystery proclaiming!

Blessed Advent(ure)!

Pastor Erik

[1] Elizabeth Hunter quoting Anne Lamott, Hope Begins in the Dark, in her article in Gather Magazine, November/December 2021 Issue, page 1.

[2] Quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor in Learning to Walk in the Dark, p. 48

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. – Philippians 4:8-9

Beloved of God,

Astronomically speaking, November is a liminal month.  Each year we turn our clocks back, pull warmer coats and hats out of the closet, and prepare for the “long dark” as we watch daylight diminish and see the sun’s arc move lower in the sky.  November is also a liminal time within the Church Year.  It begins with the Feast of All Saints: remembering the faithful people of all times and places whose lives were captured by the gravity of grace, along with those individ­uals dear to us who, though no longer living, continue to impact our lives.  It ends with the Feast of Christ the King and the promise that in the end, evil will be vanquished and the Lamb who was slain will reign over a renewed heaven and earth. Finally, November is a liminal time within our common life: election time.  After all the speeches have been given, all the arguments made, all the ads posted and polls taken, it is, at last, decision time.  The texts and themes we’ll hear during November speak of End Times and counsel us not to become so swept up in the perils and predictions of the moment that we allow them to infect us with anxiety.  In the words of the great civil rights folk song, we are to “keep our eyes on the prize and hold on.”

St. Paul, writing from prison (quote above), invited the Christians of Philippi to put the circumstances they faced into a larger frame by focusing each day on “whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise.” “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me,” says Paul, “and the God of peace will be with you.”

As we countdown to one of the more contentious and consequential presidential elections in American history, we do well to take Paul’s dose of wisdom and make it our own.  Whatever the world may look like in the days and weeks after November 3rd, God will still be there with his promises, and our mission as a congregation will still be be­fore us: TO CULTIVATE FAITH AND TRUST IN OUR LIFE TOGETHER, TO DISCERN GOD’S CHALLENGE INTO UNFAMILIAR PLACES, AND TO VENTURE BEYOND OURSELVES SO ALL PEOPLE WILL EXPERIENCE GOD’S LOVE. [PLC Mission state­ment]  “Remember who you are and what it means to be a community in Christ,” says Paul, and that is indeed what you and I, together, are to be about.

The COMMUNITY PRAYER VIGIL we will host at Peace the evening of November 3^rd, All Saints Sunday, is one way we’ll walk that talk.  Against all the hyperbolic, offensive, and controversial language of this campaign season, we will offer a counterpoint: space for contemplation and prayer; for lighting candles and keeping hope burning, “come what may.”

With you on the Way,

Pastor Erik