It is very old, primordial, this fear of the dark, this ancient human fear of what is unknown. It is the salt in the soup of our souls, this desire to know, to explore, to illuminate, and to hate what is obscured. Dylan Thomas advises us: “Do not go gentle into that good night,†further advising us to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.†Death and birth, ignorance and knowledge, these are tropes, figures that transcend any single culture, the raging at the dark seen in our ritual candle lighting, in the bonfires of the ancients. And here, in the long dark of winter, we celebrate light.
Of course, actually, what we celebrate this Sunday, a couple of days behind that actual date, is Epiphany, and epiphany does not mean light. It actually means an appearance or manifestation of the divine, and this is what we celebrate as we close out Christmastide. Jesus as the opposite of darkness, of ignorance, of death. Specifically it is timed to celebrate the arrival of the wise travelers from the east, the three kings of tradition, and so is connected with the gospel to the Gentiles, the idea that the light of Christ is available to all people, not just the Hebrews, and so we are once again wrapped in this archetype of light as goodness.
There is a certain discomfort for many of us, if we are truthful, with this whole light equals good theme. For one thing, it fails to account for those who are not blessed with sight. Might, for their purposes, we refer to Jesus as the sound of the world rather than as the light of the world? After all, our ancient stories tell us that God spoke the world into being. Then there is the great problem of race, for as humans have evolved and adapted to their contexts, some have developed darker skin, and yet, throughout the western, and by western I mean northern, context, white is good, and therefore black is bad. We refer to someone who is evil as having a black heart, the good guys wear the white hats. The damage done by this equation, white equals good, black equals bad, this damage is real, is still a knife through the soul of countless people. Just last weekend a political candidate said in a public context “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.†Today, still, racism plagues our nation. So the whole Jesus is light is good thing, you know… must we be politically correct all of the time? Maybe not, but we can try…
The ancient equation of light and vision equaling knowledge and divinity obviously had much to do with agriculture. It shows up in Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, in which the philosopher escapes the world of shadows and sees what is real. The Romans used the equation when they called Augustus Caesar “light from light,†language the early Christians would co-opt in an act of defiance. In modern usage the word epiphany has come to mean that aha moment, might we call it a moment of enlightenment, coming full circle back to that ancient equation. So be it. I surrender. As sensitive as I want to be about how our language unintentionally harms, I cannot undo thousands of years of human history, so we land back where we started, at this feast that celebrates the appearance of the divine in the person of Jesus. And that is reason to celebrate.
Maybe, just maybe, there is something we can still rescue from this language of light. I want you to think for a moment, those who are old enough to have driven a car, I want you to think back to a long car trip, at some point in your life. You’re driving for hours, and slowly, ever so slowly, it gets darker. At once it hits you: it is dusk and you are driving without your headlights. This rarely happens these days, it’s nearly impossible to drive with the lights off, but back in the day…
Dusk is one of the most dangerous times to drive, and partly because you don’t always realize that you can’t see. On this feast of the Epiphany, maybe we can, just for a moment, reflect on the many ways our society is in a spiritual dusk. They don’t know what they don’t know, or more accurately, they can’t see what they can’t see.
The good news of our salvation includes this truth: together, we can see more, just as two in the car see more, especially when your passenger turns to you and says “it’s getting kinda dark.â€
We have a box full of spiritual flashlights that have been passed on to us from the Hebrew religious tradition, from Jesus, that have had their batteries and bulbs changed and been taped back up by the generation of Christians that have gone before us. The box even contains a couple of flashlight, weird and foreign looking, that we’ve borrowed from other cultures and faith. Those flashlights include some of the most basic things that define us as Christians. To be a Christian is to pray, this is a flashlight. To be a Christian is belong to a covenant community, another flashlight. To be a Christian is to give a portion of your income for the common good of that community, a flashlight. To be a Christian is to study the Word of God, that’s that really big flashlight… I hope you don’t wait to bring it out until there is a spiritual hurricane.
The practices of the Christian faith, not the label Christian, but the things we do, these are the lights that reveal to us the divine, that take away our ancient fear. They are not perfect, there will always be the dark, and mystery isn’t always terrible and scary. We don’t need perfect light! The late Beat poet and Buddhist Lew Welch wrote “Seeking perfect total enlightenment is looking for a flashlight when all you need the flashlight for is to find your flashlight.â€
Not perfect. We will still go into that night, raging or not. There will still be darkness, ignorance, death. But when we need it, Jesus the Christ, God’s light in the world. And what he left behind for us, a handy box of flashlights. Change your batteries, check your bulbs. Turn on the lights of Christian practice and let’s continue our journey through the gloom of winter. Amen.