Perspective: Good Grief

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Good Grief

A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God.

You won't despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed.

Psalm 51:17 (CEB)

I've found a reason for me

To change who I used to be

A reason to start over new

And the reason is you

From "The Reason" by Hoobastank

St. Paul had a rather complicated relationship with the church in Corinth.  He originally planted this community with the help of his friends Priscilla and Aquila.¹  Later on, after another evangelist named Apollos began shepherding the community in Paul's absence, people began splintering into factions, some pledging allegiance to Paul and others to Apollos.  Paul wrote a rather lengthy letter to the Corinthians to remind them that, as the Church, their allegiance is to Christ and not to any of Christ's followers and to address a number of the other problems that had been plaguing the community.²

Later on, Paul paid the Corinthian church a visit that went rather badly, to say the least.  We don't know the details, but some speculate that someone publicly humiliated Paul.³  Afterward, he wrote the community an extremely harsh letter, sometimes called the "Letter of Tears," that, by his own admission, caused a great deal of pain for many people.⁴  In a later correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul admitted that he initially regretted sending the letter that caused them so much pain, but went on to write that he was glad that their pain ultimately caused them to rethink their lives and change their ways.  He remarked that their grief was not "worldly grief" that leads to death, but rather "godly grief" that leads to repentance.⁵

So what exactly is the difference between "worldly grief" and "godly grief"?

Judging from the results of each kind of grief, I would say that a worldly grief that leads to death is despair and that a godly grief that leads to positive change is contrition.  That said, I want to dig a little deeper into the question at hand and also examine the words worldly and godly.  Though Christians are exhorted to not "be conformed to the patterns of this world"⁶ and to not "love the world or the things in the world,"⁷ people cannot fully extricate themselves from the world.  Furthermore, even people who strive for godliness have been shaped by the world around them.

The way we look at the world matters.  The truth is that we all view reality through lenses, whether or not we realize or acknowledge the fact.  Many Christians have been handed a lens of judgment.  Basically, they understand that some people, whom some might call sheep, will ultimately go to Heaven and that others, whom some might label goats, will suffer for ever and ever in Hell as punishment for their sins.⁸  The Bible, when read through such a lens, becomes a handbook for becoming a sheep as opposed to a goat so that the one's eternal destiny is secure.  Some Christians might even understand themselves to be at war with a world of goats who threaten to drag them down to Hell with them.

I was handed such a lens when I was young, and it scared me out of my mind.  Even now, I try not to think too much about the afterlife.  In my journey of faith, I've sought to leave behind a lens of judgment and to adopt a lens of redemption.  I strive to read the Bible as a story of a loving God who has not given up on putting a broken world back together again.⁹  Though judgment will be involved in the process, God is not interested in simply taking out the trash.  According to biblical scholar N.T. Wright,
God's authority vested in scripture is designed, as all God's authority is designed, to liberate human beings, to judge and condemn evil and sin in the world in order to set people free to be fully human.  That's what God is in the business of doing.¹⁰
The question then is whether or not we want to get on board with what God is doing and take part in this redemptive story.

Some people use the word fallen to describe this broken world, while others might say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.  However one might describe the fact, this messed-up world, left to itself, is on a downward trajectory.  On the other hand, God, who is in the business of redemption, is working to put the world back on an upward trajectory.¹¹  With that in mind, perhaps one could say that worldly grief is something that drags a person down and that godly grief is something that is redemptive, ultimately building a person up.  Perhaps, in this case, one could substitute the word unredeemed for worldly.

I wonder if maybe the difference between worldly grief and godly grief is not what ultimately results from the grief, but rather the way that the grief is channeled.  Perhaps worldly grief is used in a destructive way, while godly grief is used in a redemptive way.

Some people use their "darker" emotions constructively: they work through them, become stronger, and develop empathy.  Some might even create art in the process.  Others use such emotions like a blade to slash themselves apart, turning to destructive attitudes, actions, or habits that become their undoing.  These are the same emotions, but they are channeled in different ways.  The Christians in Corinth channeled the grief Paul caused them constructively, and, as a result, they became better people for it.

As for me, on my best days, I work through my worst emotions constructively, but, more often than I would like to admit, I handle such emotions in less than constructive ways.  So often I feel that, after a difficult season, there is less of me than there was beforehand.

If you are currently dealing with some difficult emotions, I would offer you three pieces of advice.  I offer this advice not as a licensed therapist, but as a rather emotional person.  First, let your emotions be an offering to God, the One who is in the business of redemption, and allow God to guide you as you work through them.  Second, open up about your emotions to people you can trust.  You might even need to seek professional counseling.  I wouldn't recommend that anyone attempt to go through life alone.  Third, find a creative outlet.  As you can probably tell, I like to write.  A lot of my writing is cathartic, and I find that when I put my feelings on paper - or rather a text document - I feel better afterward.

Grief is something we all experience as human beings, regardless of whether someone would classify us as worldly or godly.  Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once mused, "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger."  Though we cannot always control our emotions, we are still the owners of our emotions, meaning that we can decide whether they kill us or strengthen us.  Choosing to live out a story of redemption makes a world of difference.


Notes:

1. Acts 18:1-11
2. 1 Corinthians.
3. See the notes on 2 Corinthians 2:1-11 in the Wesley Study Bible.  2009, Abingdon Press.
4. Wikipedia: Second Epistle to the Corinthians
5. 2 Corinthians 7:8-10 (NRSV)
6. Romans 12:2 (CEB)
7. 1 John 2:15 (CEB)
8. Matthew 25:31-46
9. John 3:16-17
10. From a lecture by N.T. Wright titled "How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?"
11. In the book Who Is This Man?, John Ortberg explores many ways in which the world has become a better place because of Jesus.  2012, Zondervan.

The photograph featured in this post was taken by Wikimedia Commons user Specialtoyoutoyou and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.

Introspection: Something Meaningful

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Something Meaningful

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

James 4:10 (CEB)

I've had just enough of the spotlight when it burns bright

To see how it gets in the blood

And I've tasted my share of the sweet life and the wild ride

And found a little is not quite enough

From "Empty Me" by Chris Sligh

One day, Solomon, not long after he was inaugurated as king of Israel, went to worship at one of the shrines that had been built to God.  That night, God appeared to him in a dream and said, "Ask whatever you wish, and I'll give it to you."  Solomon was a bit self-conscious at that time.  He felt that he was too young and inexperienced to be king, so he asked God to give him the wisdom he would need to lead his people well.  God was impressed that Solomon selflessly asked for wisdom when he could have asked for anything else, so God agreed to give Solomon the wisdom he requested along with the riches and glory he did not request.¹

While Solomon ruled the people, he searched for something meaningful in life, so he pursued ambition, pleasure, and wealth.  He oversaw great construction projects, including palaces for himself and a Temple for God; he amassed a great fortune; he had servants, personal choirs, and even a harem.  Though he enjoyed it all for a while, it all left him feeling empty inside.²  He looked back on his life and concluded that everything is "Meaningless! Utterly meaningless!" and "a chasing after the wind."³

A friend of mine once observed that thoughtful people tend to be prone to sadness.  Similarly, I seem to remember reading that philosophers are some of the most depressed people in the world.  I would wager a guess that their depression stems from their habit of picking apart everything that typically makes people happy.  I suspect that Solomon must have experienced some sort of cognitive dissonance, some internal conflict between his desire and his wisdom.  He pursued his every desire, holding nothing back from himself, yet his wisdom haunted him, crying, "Meaningless! Utterly meaningless!" not unlike a raven repeating, "Nevermore."

The very fact that someone laments that life is meaningless hints that there actually is meaning in life.  To borrow some logic from C.S. Lewis, if life really was meaningless, then nobody would know or even care that it was meaningless, because there would be nothing meaningful to which one could compare the meaninglessness.  Nobody laments the meaninglessness of life without having first tasted something meaningful in life.⁴

Solomon was wrong: some things in life actually are meaningful.

---

Last year, my friend Scott was diagnosed with cancer, and he fought it bravely to the end.  All the while, he and his wife had a large community of friends and friends of friends supporting them and praying for them.

To be perfectly honest, I hesitated to refer to Scott as my friend when I asked people to pray for him.  My hesitation was a matter of semantics and not fondness.  I didn't dislike him; I just didn't think I knew him well enough to rightly say that he was my friend.  There was a time when we worked at a spiritual retreat together, but, other than that, we hadn't really spent any time together.

As I already noted, Scott had a lot of friends praying for him, and, shortly before he passed away, a large number of us took buses to his house to sing to him.  He and a his wife invited us into their house afterward, and each of us had a chance to talk with him.  When my turn came, he said to me, "Thank you, dear friend."

Any question in my mind regarding whether or not Scott and I were friends was settled.

I received a blessing that day, which seemed unfair at first.  I went with the others to be a blessing to Scott, but he blessed me by calling me a friend.  I seriously doubt he even knew what his words would mean to me: I'm sure he just said what he was feeling at the time.  When we look at the world around us, life seems like a zero-sum game in which many lose so that a few can win.  That day, I was reminded that there is another mode of living in which one can give a gift to someone else and both somehow end up richer for it.

---

An early Christian hymn tells us that Jesus Christ, who was both one with God and equal to God, divested Himself of the power and glory that comes with divinity, to take on frail human flesh and minister to the humans He created.  He lived His live as a servant, and He always did what was right, even though it meant that He would die a disgraceful death.⁵  The life of Christ was perhaps the most meaningful life in human history.

Like Solomon, we all go through life seeking personal fulfillment, but so often we find ourselves feeling empty inside.  I live in a country that was founded on the right to pursue one's happiness, yet, for some reason, depression runs rampant like a plague.  Perhaps our problem is that our search for meaning and fulfillment is largely self-centered.  We follow our desires to make us feel happy and fulfilled, yet it is in those moments when we empty ourselves for the sake of others, following the example of Christ, that we truly find meaning in life.  Perhaps fulfillment is found ironically through emptiness.


Notes:

1. 1 Kings 3:3-14 (CEB)
2. Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
3. Ecclesiastes 1:2,14 (NIV)
4. C.S. Lewis.  Mere Christianity.  Book 2, ch 1
5. Philippians 2:5-11

The picture of King Solomon is public domain.

Perspective: The Message Within the Message

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

The Message Within the Message

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.  For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?  Or what will they give in return for their life?"

Matthew 25:24-26 (NRSV)

When all around me starts to fall

And when my faith it seems so small

Even in my darkest hour, I will believe

From "Believe" by Mainstay

By the time Jesus began His public ministry, a rather eccentric prophet named John had already sparked a revival in the area.¹  He challenged people to rethink their lives and change their ways.  He lived in the wilderness, and he baptized the people who came to him as a sign of their repentance.  People began to wonder if this strange prophet was the Messiah, the one who would liberate the Jewish people from Roman occupation and usher in an age of peace and prosperity, but he always spoke of one yet to come who was greater than he.²

One day, Jesus himself goes to the Jordan River to be baptized.  After He is baptized, He kneels down to pray, and, while He is praying, the heavens are ripped open.  The Holy Spirit descends from heaven and lands on Him in the form of a dove.  Then God the Father calls down from heaven with a very important message for Jesus.³

You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.

I delivered a sermon about this story, as told in the Gospel of Luke, three years ago at my home church, in which I suggest that what God says to Jesus is something we all need to hear.  When a familiar story like this comes around again, it is often a challenge for me to read it with fresh eyes, as I tend to fall back on on what I have already observed.  Luckily, I recently purchased up a copy of biblical scholar William Barclay's commentary on the Gospel of Luke at a used book store.  I figured it would come in handy since the Lectionary, which guides my daily Bible reading, focuses heavily on Luke's Gospel this year.  I was glad that I had picked up this book, because what Dr. Barclay wrote about this story blew my mind.

It seems that, hidden within God's message to Jesus, there is a second, more-subtle message only someone who is very familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures would notice.  God's first declaration, "You are my Son, the Beloved," would have called to mind the second Psalm, which is written from the perspective of God's "anointed."

I will tell of the decree of the Lord:

He said to me, "You are my son;

today I have begotten you."⁴

The Hebrew word for "anointed" is mashiyach, from which we get the word messiah.⁵  The Jewish people had been waiting for a Messiah who would save them from oppression, and John understood himself to be the one who prepared the way for this Messiah.

God's second declaration - "With you I am well pleased" - would have called to mind the Book of Isaiah, which contains four songs about a certain servant of God.  A similar declaration is found in the first of these servant songs.

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;

he will bring forth justice to the nations.⁶

The fourth of these servant songs describes the suffering that this servant will have to endure on behalf of others.  The song describes him as "a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity" who was "wounded for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities."⁷  Because of this, this servant of God is sometimes known as the "Suffering Servant."

God's message for Jesus is both beautiful and profound at the surface level, but the message within the message is that Jesus is both the long-awaited Messiah and the Suffering Servant.⁸  God is basically saying to Jesus, "You will save Your people, but You will suffer on their behalf."

This hidden message casts what happens next in the Gospel story in a new light.

Jesus immediately goes into the wilderness to process everything that has just happened, and the enemy begins to whisper in His ear.  Jesus is hungry because He has been fasting, so the enemy suggests that He use His divine power to transform stones into bread.  Jesus refuses.  The enemy then shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and offers Him world domination if He will only swear allegiance to him.  Again, Jesus refuses.  Finally the enemy whisks Jesus away to the highest part of the Temple and suggests that He jump and allow angels to catch Him.  That would prove to everyone watching that He indeed came from God.  For a third time, Jesus refuses, and the enemy leaves.⁹

Basically, the devil tries to get Jesus to avoid suffering by taking the easy way out.  Turning stones into bread would be an easy way for Him to avoid the pain of hunger.  Summoning angels as proof His divinity would be an easy way for Him to avoid the pain of rejection.  Exchanging His allegiance for world domination would be an easy way for Him to avoid the pain and humiliation He would inevitably experience on the cross.  Later on, Jesus tells His disciples that someday He will have to suffer and die, and one of the disciples tells Him that they won't let this happen to Him.  Jesus then says to him, "Get behind me, Satan!"  Satan was, after all, the one who tried to get Jesus to avoid suffering.¹⁰

We cannot rightly say that Jesus was "tempted" in the wilderness unless the devil's suggestions weren't at least somewhat appealing to Him.  Jesus was fully divine, but He was also fully human.  Humans generally don't want to suffer, and Jesus was no exception to the rule, as evidenced by the fact that, as the time nears for Him to face the cross, He prays, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me."¹¹  Even so, Jesus refuses the path of least resistance and rejects all easy answers, remaining true to Himself and true to His calling.

So often, people turn to faith as a means to escape suffering, and, for many, Christianity is little more than a "Get out of Hell Free" card.  Such people are in for a big disappointment, for sometimes faith actually brings us face-to-face with suffering.  Jesus even says that following Him means taking up a cross.  This cross is not some symbol we wear around our necks to show off our spirituality; it is the suffering we will face for doing what is right.  A life of faith is not for the pain avoidant.  In our recent history, was there anyone more saintly than Mother Teresa?  For much of her life, she secretly felt the absence of God.  She served God by tending to the suffering people in Calcutta, but she was secretly suffering herself.¹²

So why in the world would anyone choose to endure suffering if it could possibly be avoided?

Consider for a moment the word passion.  Usually we associate the word passion with love.  When someone loves a cause, we say that she is passionate about it.  When two people are deeply in love with each other, we say that there is passion between them.  The original meaning of the word passion is "suffering."¹³  When we speak of the passion of Christ, we are referring to His suffering on the cross.  These two connotations are very different but are not unrelated: people are willing to suffer for something or someone they love deeply.  Love makes the suffering worth it.  Consider the champions of civil rights like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela who suffered greatly so that other people could live better lives.

The word passion is also the root for the word compassion.  Compassion is a deeply felt awareness and concern for the suffering of another person or, more literally, suffering alongside another person.¹⁴  Jesus is the ultimate example of compassion.  In Him, we see that God is not only aware of our suffering but also suffers alongside us, for we see, in Him, that God took on human flesh and entered into our suffering.  In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Only a suffering God can help."

The Gospel story does not end with Christ's suffering on a cross: it ends with an empty tomb.  Christ also suffered to show us that, as Frederick Buechner would say, "The worst thing is never the last thing."

Life entails suffering, and the life of faith is not exempt from suffering.  The one who calls us to follow Him chose to endure suffering, refusing to take the easy way out, all because of His love for humanity.  He suffered, died, and rose again to show us that we are not alone in our suffering and to show us that suffering is not the end of the story.  We follow in Christ's example by showing compassion to others and by putting aside our own comfort for the sake of others.


Notes:

1. William Barclay.  The Gospel of Luke, Revised Edition.  1975, Westminster Press.  p. 37
2. Luke 3:1-20
3. Luke 3:21-22 (NRSV)
4. Psalm 2:7 (NRSV), emphasis added
5. https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H4899&t=RSV
6. Isaiah 42:1 (NRSV), emphasis added
7. Isaiah 53:3,5 (NRSV)
8. Barclay, p. 38
9. Luke 4:1-13
10. Matthew 16:21-23 (NRSV)
11. Luke 22:39-46 (NRSV)
12. Peter Rollins.  Insurrection: To Believe is Human, to Doubt, Divine.  2011, Howard Books.  pp. 157-160
13. Wiktionary: Passion
14. Wiktionary: Compassion

Bautismo de Cristo was painted by Juan Fernández de Navarrete around 1567.

Perspective: How Strange Thou Art

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

How Strange Thou Art

Jews ask for signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, which is a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.  But to those who are called - both Jews and Greeks - Christ is God's power and God's wisdom.  This is because the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:22-25 (CEB)

You were as I

Tempted and tried

Human

The Word became flesh

Bore my sin and death

Now You're risen

From "Lead Me to the Cross" by Brooke Fraser

I grew up immersed in the Christian faith.  I've been going to church on Sunday mornings ever since I was in utero, and I attended Christian schools exclusively until I graduated from high school.  Even now, I read my Bible almost daily and spend a lot of time pondering the mysteries of the faith.  That said, the tenants of the Christian religion are so familiar to me that I seldom think about how strange they really are.

Tripp Fuller, who thinks we need to "keep it weird" when it comes to our Christology¹, writes,
Jesus was a homeless, itinerant, first-century rabbi who talked about the end of the world, taught in parables even his disciples couldn't follow, and ended up dying on a Roman cross as a failed political resistor.  That is the Jesus we call the Christ, the Son of the living God, the First Born of all creation, the Image of the invisible God, the eternal Logos, and all of the other christological titles packed into the New Testament.²

Christians believe that Christ, who is somehow one with God, divested Himself of the power and glory that comes with godhood to take on frail human flesh.  He came into the world to minister to His own creations as a man named Jesus of Nazareth who lived in Roman-occupied first-century Palestine.  His relatively brief ministry put Him on a collision course with both religious leaders and political leaders, and He was hanged on a cross like a criminal.  We believe that this man, once thought to be forsaken by God because of the way He died, was actually resurrected by God and that this resurrection somehow changes everything.³

Don't get me started about how most Christians believe that God is somehow both three and one at the same time.  This doctrine is so difficult to explain that most people who attempt to explain it end up saying something considered heresy.

St. Paul writes in one of his letters that Christians "preach Christ crucified," a message that is both a "scandal to Jews" and "foolishness" to others.  The Jewish people of Jesus' day had been waiting for a Messiah who would set things right by defeating the Romans, restoring Israel to it's former glory, and ushering in an age of peace.  Many believed that Jesus would be this Messiah but lost all hope when He was executed by the Romans.  Strangely, Christians believe that Jesus, through His death and resurrection, really did set things right.  Jewish existentialist philosopher Martin Buber once observed, "To the Jew, the Christian is the incomprehensibly daring [person] who affirms in an unredeemed world that its redemption has been accomplished."

Greeks and Romans believed in deities who were all-powerful and all-knowing.  Jesus, whom Christians call the Son of God, hanged helplessly on a cross and was seemingly foolish enough to get Himself into that situation.  Even so, Christians proclaim that Jesus Christ is "the Word made flesh."⁴  The Greek term translated as word is logos, from which we derive the word logic.⁵  Some would say that this title equates Jesus with the very wisdom of God.⁶

We Christians see victory where the world sees defeat, and we see wisdom where the world sees foolishness.  We indeed believe some strange things.

This unlikely Son of God and Savior of humanity kept some strange company - not the good, upstanding, religious folk one would expect.  Jesus sat down for dinner with crooked tax collectors and allowed prostitutes to wash His feet.  Jesus chose some unlikely followers who included fishermen, tax collectors, and members of a political party some might classify as a terrorist organization.  They weren't exactly the best of the best: the fact that they even had such jobs indicates that they weren't already following a rabbi, meaning that they had already failed to make the cut.⁷  St. Paul, who became a follower of Christ later on, considered himself chief among sinners because he once terrorized Christians, yet somehow he became one of the most influential early Christians.

In Who Is This Man?, John Ortberg notes that the early Christians had a reputation among the Romans for their strangeness.  They were believed to be atheists because they didn't believe in the Roman pantheon of gods.  They were suspected of incest because they called each other "sister" or "brother."  They were accused of cannibalism because they referred to the bread and wine they shared in remembrance of their Savior as His body and blood.⁸

Christians believe some weird stuff.  We believe that God is somehow revealed in the strange and wonderful man Jesus Christ, meaning that we believe in a strange and wonderful God who turns everything on its head.  We live in an ever dissatisfied world, yet we proclaim that grace is enough.  When many believe that turnabout is fair play, we believe we are called to love those who hate us and to pray for those who would do us harm.  We find victory in defeat, strength in weakness, wisdom in foolishness, life in death, and light in darkness, all because we believe in the power of resurrection and redemption.  When we have no reason to boast, we boast in our strange God.

You can't make this stuff up.


Notes:

1. Tripp Fuller.  The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to Jesus: Lord, Liar, Lunatic or Awesome?  2015, Fortress Press.  p. 7
2. Fuller, p. 5
3. Philippians 2:5-11
4. John 1:1-18
5. Wiktionary: Logic
6. Compare John 1:1-4 with Proverbs 8:27-31.
7. Rob Bell.  Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith.  2005, Zondervan.  p. 131
8. John Ortberg.  Who Is This Man?  2012, Zondervan.  p. 130

The image featured in this perspective was created by Wikimedia user Carlaude and is used under the under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.  Neither the licensor nor the original photographer is in any way affiliated with this blog.

Sermon: A Light in the Darkness

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church in West Greenville, South Carolina on January 3, 2016

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

A Light in the Darkness

Audio Version

In the beginning was the Word

and the Word was with God

and the Word was God.

The Word was with God in the beginning.

Everything came into being through the Word,

and without the Word

nothing came into being.

What came into being

through the Word was life,

and the life was the light for all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness doesn't extinguish the light.

A man named John was sent from God.  He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light.  He himself wasn't the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.

The true light that shines on all people

was coming into the world.

The light was in the world,

and the world came into being through the light,

but the world didn't recognize the light.

The light came to his own people,

and his own people didn't welcome him.

But those who did welcome him,

those who believed in his name,

he authorized to become God's children,

born not from blood

nor from human desire or passion,

but born from God.

The Word became flesh

and made his home among us.

We have seen his glory,

glory like that of a father's only son,

full of grace and truth.

John testified about him, crying out, "This is the one of whom I said, 'He who comes after me is greater than me because he existed before me.'"

From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace;

as the Law was given through Moses,

so grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God.

God the only Son,

who is at the Father's side,

has made God known.

John 1:1-18 (CEB)

I believe in the sun

Even when it's not shining

I believe in love

Even when I don't feel it

And I believe in God

Even when He is silent

From "I Believe in Love" by BarlowGirl

Sunday, December 28, 2014 was a very special day for me: it was the sixth anniversary of the day I delivered my very first sermon.  My first sermon was based on the story of Simeon and Anna, two elderly prophets who had the privilege to see their long-awaited Messiah at the Temple shortly after His birth.¹  The Revised Common Lectionary, from which many churches select Scripture passages for the week, consists of a three-year cycle of readings, so my pastor preached on the very same Gospel passage that day.  Though I was a bit under the weather, I had absolutely no intention of missing church.

A lot had changed in the past six years, so I reread my first sermon the evening before, to see if I would still deliver the same message if I were to preach on the same passage again.  I figured that I would rework a lot of the wording and do some additional research so that I could eliminate any unnecessary filler.  Those superficial changes aside, I decided that I would probably retain the basic structure and overall message of the sermon.  Six years later, I would still preach that, like Simeon and Anna, we, as Christians, are waiting for Someone to set things right.

One evening a couple of days later, I reflected on my experience.  When I wrote my first sermon, I wrote about waiting and longing, most likely because I was personally in a place of waiting and longing.  I was stuck in a bad job situation, hoping and praying for a new direction in life.  I realized that I would probably deliver a similar sermon six years later because I was again in a season of waiting and longing.  A lot changed after I delivered that first sermon: I found a new job and a new community, and I was getting more and more involved in the Church.  For a while it seemed that life was on the upswing, and I thought that my life was finally going somewhere.  Life then took a turn for the worse as I began to break beneath the weight of what I believed to be people's expectations of me.  I suddenly realized that I was angry, and I lost my motivation to write or teach Sunday school.

Some might label what I was feeling that evening weltschmerz.  Weltschmerz is a German word that means "world-weariness" or, more literally, "world-pain."  It describes "the kind of feeling experienced by someone who believes that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind" or alternately "the feeling of anxiety caused by the ills of the world."²  In other words, weltschmerz is the pain of knowing that the world is not as it should be, that life is not as it should be, that we are not as we should be – basically, that nothing is as it should be.  Borrowing a phrase from William Shakespeare and John Steinbeck, I named my experience "the winter of my discontent."

There are two major times for celebration on the Church calendar – Christmas and Easter – both of which are preceded by more somber seasons – Advent and Lent respectively.  Advent is the perfect season for people afflicted with weltschmerz, for it is a time of longing.  We light candles for hope, peace, joy, and love, not because we experience such things, but because we long for such things.  During Advent, we remember that, in the same way that the Jewish people longed for a Messiah to come and set things right, we long for the day when our Savior returns to set all things right in the world.  If Christmas is the time when we celebrate, in the words of the priest Zechariah, the breaking of "the dawn from on high,"³ then Advent is like the darkness before the dawn.

During Advent and Christmas, the Church typically reads the birth narratives found at the beginnings of two of the four Gospels.  The Gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus' birth primarily from Mary's point of view.  We read that Mary and Joseph are forced to travel far from home to Bethlehem, and, unable to find any place that will take them in, they end up delivering the baby in a stable.  There, they are visited by a group of nervous shepherds who have just seen an army of angels heralding the infant's birth.⁴  The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, tells the story of Jesus' birth primarily from Joseph's perspective.  We read that the family is visited in Bethlehem by wealthy astrologers who have followed a star to their location.  The magi present the child with gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh shortly before the family has to flee from the violence of a paranoid king who is afraid of losing his power.⁵

In the Gospel of John, we read not a birth narrative, but rather poetry, which some have titled the Hymn to the Word.  We read that "in the beginning was the Word," that "the Word was with God," that "the Word was God," and that "everything came into being through the Word."  We read that the Word, who is "the light for all people," "became flesh and made His home among us."  In the words of Eugene Peterson, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood."⁶  The Hymn to the Word is very different from a birth narrative, but it tells us all we really need to know about the Christmas story.  It tells us that the creative force at work when God spoke that first word hayah ("let there be")⁷ became a human and lived among us as Jesus of Nazareth, a man "full of grace and truth" who "has made God known" to us.

As the longing of Advent gives way to the joy of Christmas, everything changes – or at least everything is supposed to change.  There I sat, on the sixth day of Christmas, feeling like I was wandering in the darkness, still waiting for dawn to break.  Over time, I got my motivation back, but the pain that the reality of my life does not match my expectations for life did not go away.  During the summer, I asked some of my friends to pray for me because I felt stuck.  For a while it seemed that my life was changing for the better, but it ended up taking a turn for the worse once again.  The Bible study group that has been my community for the last five years has called it quits; I am not certain where I belong in the Church; certain issues within my family have been causing me stress; and, as a result of all these things, I have been battling a case of the blues.  It is now the tenth day of Christmas, one year later, and once again I find myself waiting for dawn to break.

I wonder if it is common for people to experience a bit of a letdown after Christmas.  After months of buildup, we visit our families, exchange presents, and sit down to feast on ham or turkey.  Eventually we have to go back home, and everything goes back to normal.  As children, we can barely fall asleep on Christmas Eve, full of anticipation for what awaits us in the morning.  When we grow up, we realize that we long for things that money cannot buy, things that Santa Claus cannot leave under the Christmas tree.  At Christmas we sing, "Joy to the world!  The Lord is come!" yet, once the festivities are over, it seems that little has actually changed since Advent.  Unfortunately, life does not always follow the liturgical calendar.

In the midst of everything going on in my life lately, there is one phrase from the Hymn to the Word that has returned to me multiple times during the holiday season: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn't extinguish the light."  The season of Advent took on a new meaning for me in the last few years when, during Christmas Eve services, my pastor began putting out the other four candles on the Advent wreath before lighting the Christ candle.  It was into a dark world – a world in desperate need of hope, peace, joy, and love – that Christ made His entrance.  The world can be a very dark place, and the circumstances of our lives can be dark as well, but the message of Christmas is that the Light of Christ continues to shine in spite of the darkness.

The Hymn to the Word tells us that even though "the light was in the world" and "the world came into being through the light," "the world didn't recognize the light."  The Light of Christ shines in the darkness, but apparently it is easier to miss the Light than one might think.

During Advent, as the Church prepares for Christmas, congregations who follow the Lectionary typically read about John the Baptist, the one who was called by God to prepare the way for Jesus.  At some point after Jesus began His public ministry, John rubbed the wrong people the wrong way and landed himself in prison.  For those called to be prophets, this is a hazard of the job.  As John sat in prison, he began to second guess himself and wonder if the One he had been supporting was going to do what He was supposed to do and set things right.  He sent two of his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are You the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"⁸  Basically, they were sent to ask Him, "So are You the Messiah, or not?"

Jesus, who had already done a lot of wonderful things in His ministry, said to the messengers, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them."⁹  Though life was indeed dark for John, the Light of Christ was still shining.

After the messengers left, Jesus said to those around Him, "I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."¹⁰  If the greatest man to ever walk the face of the earth didn't fully understand the Christ and the Kingdom He came to establish, what does that say about the rest of us?  Though we may have certain information that John did not, are we really any more enlightened than he was?  If even the voice crying out in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord!" didn't fully understand why he was preparing people, then what might we fail to understand?  If even the one "sent from God" to be "a witness to testify concerning the light" could lose sight of the Light amid the darkness of his circumstances, then how easy it must be for us to miss the Light!

We tend to think that light and darkness are opposites.  According to Shane Hipps, this assumption is a fallacy: to say that light and darkness are opposites is to imply that they are equal opposing forces.  The fact of the matter is that darkness is merely the absence of light.  If you enter a dark room and turn on the light, the darkness will flee, and there is no way to bring darkness back into the room as long at the light is present.  Darkness is utterly powerless against light.  In fact, darkness exists only at the mercy of light.¹¹

Hipps says that, if you want to dispel the darkness in your life, you need to seek a source of light.  If you are in a place of despair, seek a source of hope.  If you are plagued with anxiety or anger, seek peace.  If you are dealing with sorrow, seek a source of joy.  If there is hatred in your life, invite love into your heart.  If you are tired of the darkness, then move toward the light.¹²

We don't usually notice light, because our attention is most often focused elsewhere, usually on whatever the light illuminates.  What we don't always realize is the fact that light is the only thing our eyes can actually sense.  You aren't really seeing the objects in the room around you: you are seeing the light reflected by the objects.  The sense of sight is totally dependent on light.  This is why, in a pitch dark room, all you can see is a field of black.  We don't typically notice light, but, at the same time, light is the only thing we can actually see.¹³  I wonder if, at times when the world seems devoid of light, we are actually walking around with our eyes closed, spiritually speaking.  Perhaps the light we seek is always hidden plain sight, and perhaps we only need to open our eyes to experience it.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn't extinguish the light."  When our Christmas celebration is over, when the decorations are taken down put back in the attic, when all the leftovers are finished, this is the message we must keep in our hearts, whatever lies ahead of us in the new year.  The world can be a dark place, and our lives can seem dark at times, but the Light never stops shining.  The Light is always shining, no matter how dark life seems, but we must keep our eyes open if we want to see it.

May we all keep our eyes focused on the Light.  Amen.


Notes:

1. Luke 2:22-38
2. Wikipedia: Weltschmerz
3. Luke 1:78-79 (NRSV)
4. See Luke 1-2.
5. See Matthew 1-2.
6. John 1:14 (The Message)
7. https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?t=niv&strongs=h1961
8. Luke 7:18-20 (NRSV) (See also Matthew 11:2-3)
9. Luke 7:21-22 (NRSV)
10. Luke 7:28 (NRSV)
11. Shane Hipps.  "Spoiling the Illusion."  Mars Hill Bible Church podcast, 05/08/2011.
12. ibid
13. Peter Rollins says stuff like this when comparing love to light.

The image featured in this blog post is part of a photograph taken by Jack Delano in the Union Station waiting room during World War II.