Sermons

“Sitting in the Shadow of Death”

Luke 1:68-79; Luke 3:1-6 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – December 6, 2015

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that your peace might prevail in our hearts and in our witness to your world. We pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.

So today is Peace Sunday. After the week we’ve had, after the last ten days, after the past few months, here we have arrived at Peace Sunday. What’s a preacher to do? There is so much to say. And yet, it almost feels as if there are no words. Blessedly, as preachers not essay-writers, we don’t have to start with our own words. We are, in fact, not supposed to start with our own words. We begin with scripture. And so we listen to the Song of Zechariah. And there’s a verse there that sticks out, just a short phrase really, from the middle of verses 78-79: “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, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And it struck me that maybe that’s what’s going on. I think we might be sitting in the shadow of death. I think we might be sitting there and not even know it. It had never occurred to me before that these people Zechariah was talking about might not know where they were – that they were sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death – but I’ve suddenly realized that must be what’s going on. 33,000 deaths to gun violence every year, and we really only hear about it when it happens in public places with multiple victims, as this past week in San Bernardino. 33,000 gun deaths a year – that’s around 90 a day – and two thirds of them are suicides. There is so much that is wrong with this, so many levels at which this is broken. And yet, it’s almost like we can’t really see it. We’re sitting in the shadow of death, and we don’t even know it.

Have you ever been working on something, or reading a book, or just whatever, in what was originally a sunlit room, but then eventually, the sun sort of sets, and you don’t really notice, because it got dark so gradually? But then someone else comes in, and exclaims “What are you doing, sitting in here in the dark?” And they flip the light on, and it hurts your eyes. If your family is anything like mine, you are likely, at this moment, to cry out like Gollum, “It burns! It burns us!” And even if that isn’t your reaction, the light is bright, and it takes you a moment to adjust and realize how very dim it had gotten and how much easier to see it is now that the light’s been turned on.

I feel like this might be what we need. Those words from Zechariah sounds so beautiful, “By the tender mercy of God, the dawn from on high will break upon us…” but if you think about it, it seems obvious that the initial reaction might not be as positive as a superficial reading would lead us to believe. We’ve gotten quite comfortable in the dark. Zechariah seems filled with joy, but it turns out he’s also well aware of the dramatic nature of his baby son’s future. John the Baptist, with his camel’s hair and locusts, is not really a festive Christmas character. No, really, he’s not. He’s not a Christmas character at all; he’s an Advent character. He’s not here to help us decorate or sing. He’s here to remind us of the need for repentance. He’s here to shine a bright light on the things we’ve been keeping in the dark. He’s not really concerned about being pleasant. And he may be exactly what we need. We may be slow to realize it, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that we need someone to lead the resistance.

One of the most depressing things about the mass shootings that are occurring in this country at an ever-rapider pace is the pall of resignation that falls over everything almost immediately afterward. It’s as if we’re all convinced that nothing can be done. This is just the way things are here. There is this and there is that, and all of it together means that nothing will ever change. We will simply have to acquiesce to being unsafe in our homes and churches and schools and malls and workplaces and streets. We will be a people who teach our pre-schoolers what to do in an active shooter situation. We will give them backpacks that fold out into bullet-proof mats they can cover themselves with. Our eyes have grown so accustomed to the darkness of the shadow of death that we don’t even realize what we can’t see anymore.

These are days that are crying out for John the Baptist and his call for repentance. We need someone to teach us how to resist the culture of death that is in danger of swallowing us up whole, someone who can remind us that, as followers of Jesus, we are called to lift up a different vision for God’s people, to follow a different way. We need that dawn from on high that will guide our feet into the way of peace.

We’re going to have a very festive evening tonight, at the Christmas Dinner and Choir Extravaganza. There’s a song the choir will be singing, though, that I want to talk about a little bit. It’s from Benjamin Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols” and it’s called “This Little Babe.” I want to tell you a little bit about it, because it has a lot of words and it goes really fast, so you’re probably not going to catch them all, even if you’re listening carefully. Oh, and it’s basically in Middle English, so even if you did hear them all, you wouldn’t necessarily understand them. “This Little Babe” sounds, if you wanted to hear it that way, almost like an attack. It moves forward in a martial, aggressive way. That makes it even more important to understand what the words are saying. We are tempted to enjoy these martial-sounding hymns, because they make us feel like we’re on the winning side. But listen to what the song is really saying. It talking about how the Baby Jesus is coming to do battle with Satan and all hell. But listen to the weapons Jesus brought to this fight: tears, nakedness, baby’s cries, weeping eyes, cold, need, feeble flesh. The truth is that this song is turning the whole idea of battle on its head. This isn’t about winning a mighty victory; it’s about how the strategy of Jesus for winning over evil is exactly the opposite of battle. In case anyone hasn’t gotten it by the end, the closing lines go like this: “If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy, then flit not from this heavenly boy!” In case that’s still not clear – it’s saying that for Christians, the only way to overcome enemies is to make them our friends, and that we’re much more likely to be successful at that, if we’re getting Jesus’ help, because that’s how he does it.

Where does such a teaching fit in our modern culture of death? We are surrounded by so much violence – that which is condemned and that which is sanctioned by the state. People are arming themselves so that they can defend their families, but toddlers are finding guns and killing their parents. What would it mean to proclaim a vulnerable Baby our Savior and Lord? What does the dawn from on high illuminate in our current setting? How would “this little babe” go about addressing our culture of death?

It seems to me that we must have the boldness of John the Baptist to call ourselves and our society to repentance. We must have the courage not to acquiesce to the forces that would tell us there is nothing to be done. We must be brave enough to proclaim God’s vision of peace, not as a promise of heavenly delight, but as something we can work toward here on earth. We must be the resistance. And we must do it together – gun owners and gun haters, those who are healthy and those who have deep, personal knowledge of mental illness, bleeding heart liberals and staunch conservatives. We must remind our world that we need Advent as badly as we need Christmas. We’ve been pining to know our worth, in sin and error, far too long. We need the courage to turn toward the light of dawn, unafraid of what it will reveal about us.

Let me tell you a story, lest these words seem like an impossible dream. Our Global Ministry prayer partner this week is Colombia, where Michael Joseph is our missionary. He tells an amazing story in his prayer reflection for this week. Colombia has been caught up in a state of civil war for over 50 years. The most recent incarnation of that involves the Colombian military and the FARC guerrillas. Michael with a group called DiPaz, which is a coalition of Protestant and Catholic church groups, formally known as the Interchurch Dialogue for Peace in Colombia. He writes, “In April of this year violence erupted across Colombia as the FARC guerrilla called off their unilateral ceasefire, which had never been reciprocated by the Colombian military. DiPaz quickly responded with a letter, signed by over 150 religious leaders, calling on the FARC to re-instate their ceasefire and for the Colombian military to take similar steps toward de-escalating the war. In July the FARC decided to do just that, but with a new twist – this time they asked the churches, along with other sectors of civil society, to monitor the ceasefire and report on their compliance. The Colombian military partially followed suit and announced a suspension of aerial bombardments of FARC camps.

“So for the past four months, DiPaz has been working with churches all over Colombia to monitor these small steps toward peace. At times DiPaz has felt like a “voice in the wilderness” calling for peace, justice and reconciliation in the midst of war. But seeing violence in Colombia dip to its lowest levels in over forty years has made it all worthwhile.”

If churches in Colombia can make such a difference in a 50-year civil war, surely we can stand up to the culture of death that is killing our citizens at a rate of 90 a day. Surely, at the very least, we can find it within our hearts to resist the weary acquiescence that would tell us there is nothing to be done. We are called to bear the light of peace, into the darkness corners that have been overcome by the shadow of death, even those within our own hearts. We may feel, as Michael says, like a voice in the wilderness, but we are not alone there. That “little babe” with his tears and cries and weeping eyes is there with us. For his sake and for our own, we must not give up on the cause of peace. Amen.