Punching Holes in the Darkness

“Give us grace to cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life when Jesus Christ will come in great humility.” Amen.

About six or seven years ago Mary and I went outside
on an absolutely gorgeous night.  The sky was incredible. It was very clear, crisp, cool. The darkness was a tangible deep blue black, infinite in its depth and substance, like a deep, clear crystal darkness that goes on forever. Hanging in that magnificent blackness was a “blue moon”, the second full moon of the month. Bright, shining, almost a pure white, it cast a light so bright that we could see our border collies casting moon shadows as they danced around the yard. The moon was so bright that it overshadowed the city clutter and the smaller, fainter stars; but standing watch alongside and around the sphere were several bright stars. You felt you could almost touch the moon, it seemed so close, but these sentinel stars spoke of realities far, far in the distance. As Mary and I watched and enjoyed we felt or sensed a movement, then looking up, were given the grace to see a large Barred Owl, in a tree almost right over our heads. Maggie startled it, and it flew slowly, silently and majestically over to another tree. It waited and watched us as we watched it back for quite a while. Everything around was very, very still, then the owl, unprovoked, perhaps bidden by some unknown voice or inner instinct, spread its wings and silently drifted off over our house, leaving us feeling like we’d received a special visitation and benediction. Every time I think of this owl my subliminal tape begins hearing the hymn: “Unresting, unhasting and silent as night, nor wanting nor wasting thou rulest in might; thy justice like mountains high soaring above, thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.” (hymn #423, v. 2)

That night was an “advent of Advent” sort of night. Robert Lewis Stevenson, wrote in his memoirs of a similar night he witnessed as a young boy growing up in Scotland on a hillside around a small town. He told of sitting at the window in his family’s kitchen, looking down at the town, and seeing the lamplighter walk down the street lighting the street lamps. He remembered saying: “Look Momma! There is a man down there who punched holes in the darkness!”
 

That is a perfect story for this season we begin this day. For Advent is about the coming of a man who punched holes in the darkness. It is about Christ, who came to usher in a new age, a new creation in which darkness is pierced and overshadowed by the light of divine visitation, and judgement and benediction. On this First Sunday of the new liturgical year we are told to watch, wait and prepare for this. This visitation. This inbreaking. This new age and new order of God’s design.
 

I used to say that Advent was my favorite season of the Church year.    That is still true, in a way, but now I’d also add that Advent is perhaps the season that I need the most. I need to hear the correctives in Advent’s proclamation. These aren’t just the relatively superficial, outward correctives to our secular observance of this holiday time. The call for quiet, for steady waiting, for simplicity, which stand over and against the shallow sentimentality of too many mall manger scenes (though I guess now they are generic holiday scenes); the hurry, hurry, hurry, and feeding frenzy of shopping for the perfect gift midst the blare of generic Musak carols played far too early and far too often. I need and relish the respite Advent offers from these.

But I more deeply need the hope it offers in the midst of deeper fears, terrors and anxieties and griefs of a world that seems darker and far more empty than it once did before. I need the promise of the “amour of light” that meets the thirst for healing and community in a world that no longer feels safe and whole–if it ever truly was before.
 

Advent bids us to make ready for the most momentous event of human history, the coming of Christ as judge and deliverer. Hence at our beginning of the season we look towards last things, towards final things or end things; we look to Christ’s second coming, and not to the story of his birth. It’s not that the birth is unimportant, for it is; but the birth must wait—gestate for a time-- while we remember the reason for it in the first place: the restoration and redemption of all things under the King of kings and Lord of lords. 
 

Watch and wait, we’re told, for we do not know when this will happen. You know, our owl has continued to bless us with her visitation over the years. But like the first time, her coming is always unexpected. She comes unbidden, at her own initiative and in her own timing. We can’t predict the day or even the season of her coming. Often we only hear her call in the neighborhood—hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo—and know she’s near. Other times, like the other day, we go outside and there she is, on the limb or telephone pole at the edge of the house. We have learned to listen for her, watch for her, be alert to her presence, every time we go outside—to take out the trash or drive to the store or take Maggie for a walk.
 

In the same way Advent reminds us that in the ordinariness of life, the commonness of the day to day, in God’s good time and in God’s good way, the ordinary will be pierced by the extra-ordinary and creation will be made new.