First Sunday in Advent

December 2, 2007
The Rev. David R. Hackett

When I was a boy, a teenager, I remember my mother always saying to me when I was going to be out after dark, “I’ll leave a light on for you.” That was a wonderful and comforting statement. Oh, back then I would never have admitted that. Like all adolescents I was trying to be self-sufficient. But deep inside of me it was good to know. How good it was to come up the dark sidewalk and look ahead and see a light, a light that was burning for me; to show me the way home.

Since then I’ve become a father and a grandfather. I can’t remember one of our four children who didn’t, at some time or another, come creeping into our bed at night, when it was dark, when there was no light.

It is a universal phenomenon, this fear of darkness. We’ve all experienced it as children and, if we’re honest, sometimes as adults. It is the fear of the unknown, of the unseen. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be blind, to be unable to see what is before you. To, at best, see shadows; at worst, darkness. When we can’t see clearly, when it is dark, then we imagine all sorts of things lurking, waiting. Fear of darkness is the fear of harm. And when we can’t see others, we begin to think we’re all alone. Darkness means cold; darkness means death. We even begin to imagine what the grave must feel like (as though we could feel while in the grave) and it is cold, and it is dark. It is an apt saying, “The dark night of the soul”, the fearful time of little or no faith.

But, give us one little light and the child who is fearful of the dark is alright. She gains courage; he can see; and the imagination is quelled. When light appears, when the dawn breaks, there is renewed hope. With the sun comes warmth and life and joy. The child in us all knows the relief of light.

The light—dark motif in religion is an appropriate one. Darkness is equated with evil. Satan is “the Prince of Darkness.” His kingdom is one of death and darkness. Sinful acts are “works of darkness” which chill the soul and bring eternal death.

Light is equated with goodness. God’s first act of creation was to dispel darkness, “Let there be light, and there was light, and God saw that it was good.”

God’s own creative action is saying that light overcomes darkness, good overcomes evil. And when Messiah comes to us, when God becomes flesh in the child of Bethlehem, the sign is light, a star. And among the first who find him are astrologers and astronomers, those who seek the light of the stars. And the Incarnate One says of himself, “I am the light of the world.”

The approaching celebration of the Nativity of our Lord is set at winter solstice, when in the darkness of the shortened days the whole northern hemisphere yearns for light. The world is always at winter solstice; it is always at the brink of darkness. All you have to do that to prove it to yourselves is to read the newspaper or watch the evening news: the random violence the senseless crimes, the actions of terrorists, the war-torn world which is ours. It seems to almost every generation that there is a new dark age just around the corner. And, sad to say, we are more and more aware that some men and women, even some boys and girls, love darkness more than they love light.

And the cry goes up, “How long? Oh God! How long will this last?” And we wait. We wait in faith. We wait for Messiah to return in triumph, in victory, in the glory of his light. And our waiting is our preparation for his coming again.

One of my favorite stories is Truman Capote’s A Christmas Story. In it he tells of his aunt who lived down in Mississippi. She always saved her money to have a dime and send him off to the movies on Saturday afternoons. (Mr. Capote was only a little older than I am; there really was a time when movies cost a dime.) His aunt never went to the movies herself. Capote said she had never been much beyond a ten-mile radius from her home; never been on a bus or a train, and had ever been to a movie. “I want to save my eyes,” she used to say to the boy, “to see him better when he comes.” She was saving her eyes. She wanted to be able to see clearly. She was waiting to see the one who was coming again.

The Collect of this First Sunday in Advent must always be on our lips and in our hearts,

“Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put
on the armor of light … now in the time of this mortal life in
which your son came to visit us in great humility; that in the
last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to
judge both t he living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal.”

This prayer captures our condition: who we are and where we are. Christ, coming at Christmas in great humility, and again, at the end of time, in great majesty. Christ coming as a child to save us, and as a king to judge us. “Cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.”

Fred Buechner, in one of his writings, says that is where we are: between darkness and light. And he is right. He likens the season of Advent to the hush in a theatre just before the curtain rises. We wait to see what will be revealed.

We know, indeed, the darkness that is around us, and when we are honest enough to confront and confess it, we know, indeed, the darkness that is within us. We know the Prince of Darkness stalks us, entices us. And left to our own devices we soon succumb, we weaken, and we join those who revel in the darkness.

I’m told there are fish deep in caves who have eyes, but are blind. They have been in the darkness so long that their eyes no longer function. Sometimes we are like those fish. We’ve been in the darkness so long that we’ve become blind. Or our eyes have adjusted to the darkness so much that we have come to think that darkness is normal. The sin which is all around us has simply become a way of life. We have come to accept injustice, prejudice, and corruption simply as “the way things are.” But, my friends, that is the world of darkness. And you and I have just prayed that God will give us his grace “to cast off the works of darkness.”

But this season of Advent is about hope rather than despair, the hope that God gives us as we seek the Light. And God gives us protection against the darkness. He provides his people with the armor of light. What an antiquated, out-dated image: armor. What a modern need it is. To put on the armor of light is to put on Christ himself who is the Light of the world. We put on that armor when we call upon the Lord in our darkness. We put on that armor when we surround our bodies and souls with the grace that is given to us in the sacraments. We put on that armor when we immerse ourselves in the Word of God which is able to save our souls. We put on that armor of light when we reach out in love and compassion to our sisters and brothers who are wandering in their own darkness.

Agnes Sanford once said when she made the sign of the cross she was “smearing on her salvation.” Think of a cross of light being smeared on you. St. Patrick wrote of being surrounded by Christ while in the midst of the darkness of the enemy, “Christ within me, Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me”: surrounded, armored by the Light.

This Advent season we are made more conscious, more keenly aware of the darkness of this world and the darkness of our souls without Christ. We prepare for the Light of the world. We look in hope for h is coming. We prepare by watching and waiting.

Look to the Light. Walk to the Light. Let the light of Christ deliver you from your darkness. Let it purify you, melt you, warm you. Rejoice. Wait. Watch. Prepare. Put on the armor of light. AMEN.