In
the Darkness, a Star
Isaiah 60.1-6; Luke 2.28-32; Ephesians 3.1-12; Matthew 2.1-12
In this past week many of our brothers and sisters in the human family
have experienced the darkest moments of their lives. A powerful
earthquake of the coast of Aceh province in Indonesia caused a tsunami
wave that hit the coasts of many countries around the rim of the Indian
Ocean very, very hard. We are told that more than a hundred and
fifty thousand people have lost their lives. We are also told
that up to three million people now face extreme hardship. In the
Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia, dwellings and
centres of economic activity have been gutted, while public amenities
have either been destroyed or rendered ineffectual. At the same
time, there are grave concerns for the health of survivors as they face
the triple-wammy of depleted food and water supplies, flesh decaying in
and near waterways, and a severe lack of medical resources for tending
the wounded. All of this is of great concern, but it is
heartening to see that both government and non-government relief
efforts are swinging into action on that front. What much of this
effort will never address, however, is the emotional and spiritual
devastation at the heart of it all. Can you imagine how it might
be for those thousands of families that have lost
everything—beloved family members, dwellings, livelihoods? Can
you imagine the overwhelming power of that grief, as it comes upon folk
like the wave itself, a veritable tsunami of feeling, colour and
sensation that threatens absolutely everything taken for granted up
until that point? Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I
struggle. I have felt grief, who hasn’t? But how could I
possibly assume that my own experience in any way qualifies me to
understand theirs?
Now, I imagine that for some of you the images on our television
screens has given rise to a number of faith questions. Questions
like, ‘how can a good and loving God allow such a disaster to
occur?’ Some of you will have noted that this is an apparently
‘natural’ disaster, and should therefore be distinguished from those
disasters which stem directly from the evil will and actions of human
beings. ‘The holocaust of the 1940s killed a great many more
people that this tsunami,’ you may be saying to yourself, ‘but I can
come to terms with that because the holocaust was clearly the result of
a specifically human action and will. This tsunami is, however,
different. No human being willed it. That puts the blame
squarely at the feet of God. If this is God’s world, if God made
and sustains it in being, then a so-called ‘natural’ event is really an
event that God has either willed or allowed. Which then raises
the question, how could a good and loving God will or allow such
terrible suffering?’ Some of you will have looked at such
questions before, perhaps in philosophy courses at university. I
remember examining the question for the first time during a religious
studies course in grade 12. Anyone who has done so will know that
the question of God’s justice in the face of suffering is not a new
one. It has been discussed for at least two and a half thousand
years, perhaps more. Still, for all that, an event like that we
have been hearing about in this past week brings the rather academic
question home to many of us in a very existential way.
I do not propose to rehash what the philosophers have said this
morning, although I am happy to talk about it all with any of you, at a
time that is more conducive to lengthy discussion (I am, as some of you
know already, well-trained in philosophy). For I stand before you
today not as a philosopher, but a preacher. And what the preacher
is constrained to do is this: to address whatever has occurred to
our world this week with a word from the God we know as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. In order to do that, the preacher must begin not
with the God of the philosophers, but the God of Scripture, a God who
has spoken to us in Jesus Christ, his life and his words.
Furthermore, the preacher is not at liberty to simply choose his or her
favourite passage, in order to repeat a comforting mantra for himself
or his congregation. A preacher who pursues his or her craft
within the faith and practise of the church catholic must work from the
Scriptures of the day as they are set in the lectionary. What
that very often means is that the word of Scripture contradicts both
what the congregation would like to hear and what the preacher would
have liked to have said, if the matter were left to his or her own
wisdom.
So, as we turn to the Scriptures for today what we discover is
this: that God would address this dark week of suffering and
disaster with a burning light of hope and a call to have faith.
For what each of the Scripture passages we read have in common is
this: they are all of them, in their literary contexts, addressed
to situations which might be described as dark, dismal and
despairing. Isaiah preaches to a people worn out and dispirited
by decade upon decade of forced exile in a foreign land, a people who
are very often tempted to believe that God does not care for them
anymore. To this defeated and weary people he dares to address a
word of contradiction: “the Lord is rising upon you,” he says,
“to make you bright with glory among the nations. Kings will come
to the brightness of your dawning greatness, bringing offerings that
befit your greatness.”
Paul, too, offers a word to contradict how the Ephesians actually
feel: “You may feel small and insignificant in the world, you may
feel as though the most powerful rulers and principalities of this
world have it all over you, but this is not the case,” he says.
“But you are of great significance,” he says, “for in you the powers
who rule the world are being confronted with a mystery they could never
have discovered for themselves: that God is not a tribal warlord,
who forever supports one faction against another; no, God is one who
plans to reconcile even the most common of enemies in one body through
the cross of Jesus, across all the terrible enmities and differences
that would otherwise keep them apart. In the church,” says Paul,
“that dream of reconciliation is already taking place: you are
therefore a sign of contradiction in the world. You make it
possible for the world to believe that enemies may become friends, and
that peace may become a reality.” The people feel small,
powerless to change their world. But Paul offers a word to
contradict how they feel. All is not as it seems.
And finally, in the passage from Matthew’s gospel, we read about a star
of prophecy that appears in the dark winter of the ancient world’s
oppression under the Roman emperor and his agent in the province of
Judea, Herod the Great. The star rises in the East, and is
recognised by both Jewish and Oriental sages as a prophecy about
Christ: a child born to be king of the Jews, certainly, but also a
light who (like the star) reaches into the darkness of the non-Jewish
world as well. In the context of Matthew’s birth stories, in this
world torn apart by barbarism and fear, the star is a sign that a
redeemer has come who will save not only the Jews, but also the whole
world, from its many, many sins. The people who walked in
darkness have seen a great light, says Matthew, and that light is the
sign of Emmanuel, that God is with us.
Now, what if we were to believe that these ancient words of prophecy,
addressed to these several ancient experiences of despair and
hopelessness, were also a word for ourselves today—and especially for
everyone affected by the tsunami? What if we were to believe that
even death and destruction is finally unable to quench such a
word? What if we were to believe that God is not in fact mad, or
on holiday, or evil, but rather is with
us in exactly the same way as God was with us in Christ—through his
love, copping the very worst of our humanity in order to show that
human beings can be a hell of a lot more human than that, that we can
be like Christ himself? Well, if we were to believe such things,
and if we were to show our belief by the way that we love, then we
would be Christians, imitators of Christ. And that is what we are
in fact called to be this week, the week of the tsunami, as indeed we
are so called in every other week of our lives. Christians who
imitate Christ’s love for a world in trouble and despair.
So what the Scriptures give us today is not a philosophical answer to a
set of questions about the justice of God, but the possibility of a
practical faith that actually changes things. Karl Marx once said
that our task is not to understand the world, for that is ultimately
impossible, but to change it for the better. Let me suggest that
he learnt that from faith. Allow me to conclude, then, with a few
comments about how a Christian might respond, practically, to what has
occurred this week.
First, a Christian would not pretend to understand the grief of the
victims. Their grief is theirs, and our grief is ours. We
should not confuse the two, because doing so can prevent us from really
hearing what the victims are saying about their experience and their
needs. Listen to how many times the journalists and
anchor-persons at channels nine and seven project their own vision onto
that of the victims they are interviewing, thus making it very
difficult for the victims to tell their own stories and state their own
needs.
Second, Christians respond not as individuals but as a community.
Maggie Thatcher was wrong. There is such a thing as a society,
and it began with the church. Christianity is an irreducibly
communal faith. We talk together about what is most
important. Out of that talk comes decision and a plan of
action. Then we do it together. I would welcome a St.
Luke’s-wide conversation about (a) how we are feeling about what has
happened; and (b) how we might respond to what has happened
together. Tuesday night at 8 pm might be a good place to
start. Here in the church.
Third, Christians love their neighbours as they love themselves.
The victims of the tsunami, I suggest, might well be our
neighbours. So how might we love them as we love
themselves? Well how about this, for starters. At Christmas
time you all received Christmas gifts that you really didn’t need, and
you possibly bought gifts for others that they really didn’t
need. Apparently Australians spent around $22 billion on this
strange process of mutual self-enrichment. I would suggest,
then, that each of you consider giving at least as much to your
neighbour as you received yourself at Christmas. For that would
be a truly Christian gift, a gift that is given without thought of
repayment. Imagine if every Australian did the same! That
would amount to $22 billion worth of disaster relief.
Finally, Christian love is not only about the sharing of resources, it
is also about the embodied love of the face-to-face. In Christ,
God faces us and we face God. In is primarily in the face-to-face
of Christ that God is with us. Perhaps we ought to consider,
together, the establishment of a more personal relationship with a
local community affected by the tsunami? I am conscious that we
have a number of Sri Lankans amongst us. Perhaps they could
assist us to identify and establish a relationship with one of the
Christian communities affected? Just a suggestion.
To conclude, then. When a disaster like this hits, we can allow
it to overwhelm our faith, hope and love. Or we can see it as an
opportunity to exercise, in real and practical ways, our faith, hope
and love. What is faith unless there is uncertainly and
ambiguity? What is hope, if all that is hoped for has already
come to pass? And what is love is no-one is in need of it?
Some might see the tsusami as a sign that God is either dead or
wicked. I myself think differently. I see it as an
opportunity for people of faith to actually exercise their faith.
Perhaps it is only as we do so that the world will once again learn
that God is love. For Christianity is unique amongst the major
faiths in this: that the word of God can only arrive at its
purpose by becoming flesh. The star from the East did not remain
a star, you recall, an idea or a prophecy enshrined in the
heavens. It waned to give way to a child, a child who grew to
become the human face of a loving and suffering God.
Glory be to God—Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. As in the
beginning, so now and forever. Amen.
Garry
J. Deverell
Epiphany 2004