It’s been a tough week; for me and for lots of people. If you live out in Oshawa, maybe you’ve just been laid off by GM, and there may not even be a company to call you back to work in 6 weeks. If you’re a retired worker for GM or Ford or Chrysler, you may be looking at your pension evaporating into thin air. It’s been a tough week. There’s been another case of greed and fraud on Wall Street, and people have lost their life’s savings. A tough week indeed, when you add the time pressures and family problems and anxiety that rear their ugly heads at Christmastime.
You know, it’s really not a good time for a baby to be born!
So as I sat in our living room late Friday afternoon, with the gathering darkness of a long winter’s night matching the inner darkness that many were feeling, I was struck by the sight of the moon, rising in the east. Did any of you see the moon on Friday night? It was a full moon, and right now the moon is closer to the earth than it’s been in about 15 years. So it was perhaps the biggest, brightest full moon that I’d ever seen. I know, the large size is an optical illusion, based on the proximity of the rising moon to the horizon; but as far as I’m concerned the scientists who keep telling us that can blow it out their ear. That sucker was big!! I sat in awe on Friday night, watching the moon rise. Looked up at it again some hours later when I went out for a late night walk. It was a clear, crisp, night, the Christmas lights on the houses bringing a delightful glow to the darkness, that moon in the sky, Jupiter still shining brightly in the west; it was an amazing night to be alive.
You can’t see things like that in the daylight. Sometimes it’s only in the darkness that the most amazing sights are revealed. Sometimes it’s only in the darkness that new possibilities are revealed. You know how it is: life takes a turn in some awful direction, and we start to wonder how we can go on, and then another crisis comes up and things go from bad to worse and you say, “I just don’t know how much more of this I can take, God!”
Sometimes we have to wait in the dark until our eyes adjust. And then we can see the possibilities. They were there all the time. But it had to get really dark before we could see them.
That’s the way it was with the exiles as they returned to Jerusalem. When they finished their exhausting journey across the desert and reached the ruins of their once glorious city, they must’ve been devastated! Most of them had been born in exile. They’d never actually seen Jerusalem. They’d been raised on stories of the magnificent Temple and the exquisite Palace. So when they first saw the devastation – the ruins of a city destroyed 50 years earlier, and allowed to crumble even further in the intervening years – when they first saw that dreadful sight, they were devastated.
But then their eyes and their spirits adjusted to the darkness. And they began to imagine the possibilities. The Temple could be rebuilt. The whole city could be rebuilt. Not just the buildings, but also the life style and the governance and the ways in which people treat each other. The prophets told them that their city had been destroyed because the people had failed to live in God’s ways of justice and peace. So now they would do things differently. There would be no more tyranny. There would be no more injustice. As new wealth was created, it would be shared. So they would build up the ancient ruins; they would raise up the former devastations. The dark night of their collective soul was over. They’d get to work at dawn.
Sometimes it has to get really dark before you can see the possibilities. That’s the way it was with Joseph. Here he was, a respected member of the little community of Nazareth, a man with a trade and perhaps a bit of property and a reputation for living according to God’s law, and he learns that his fiancé, who should be faithful to him alone, has been fooling around with another man. Well, anyway, Mary is pregnant; and the only explanation which Joseph can think of is that she’s committed adultery; maybe with some handsome Roman soldier. So he’s going to have to end the relationship. He loves her very much, but the engagement is over.
Imagine the devastation. Joseph goes to bed just overwhelmed with pain. But in the mystery of the night, Joseph has a dream. An angel assures him that there’s been no adultery. All of these troubling events are of God. The Holy Spirit is moving over the dark, churning waters of this crisis, and out of it all, the Messiah is going to be born. There are amazing possibilities here. And at first light, Joseph gets up and walks to Mary’s house, and assures her that everything is going to be okay (see Matthew 1:18-25).
Sometimes it has to get really dark before you can see the potential for new life. New possibilities arise out of the wreckage of our lives and of the world. Once we see the possibilities, the pieces of that wreckage can be re-crafted into a new dawn. But sometimes it’s only in the dark – it’s only in the mystery of the night – that the new light of possibility can be seen, just as it’s only in the night that the stars can be seen; and the brilliance of the full moon can be seen. Those who insist that it always be light will miss these possibilities; they’ll miss the presence of the Holy that is sometimes revealed only in the dark.
I was at a round table discussion with other community leaders that the MP for this area, Jim Karygiannis, pulled together the day before yesterday. The goal of the exercise was to brainstorm ideas for revitalizing the economy. There were all sorts of creative ideas going around that table: expanding public transit and facilitating the shift to a more “green” society; building affordable housing and creating new jobs and new training programs and new revenue streams. But that discussion would not have even been happening without the current economic crisis. And no one would be seriously thinking that the federal government might actually implement some of these creative ideas without the current crises in Ottawa and Oshawa and around the country. Sometimes it has to get really dark before the new possibilities can be seen. Sometimes a city or a nation has to be on the verge of devastation before the potential for justice and the possibility of new birth can be realized.
A woman in Indiana remembers the fall of 1960 as an especially rough time. She woke up one morning with just 75 cents in her pocket and six hungry children: 5 boys who ranged in age from 3 months to 7 years, and their 2 year old sister. Their father was gone. He had been only an occasional presence in their lives at the best of times; mostly a presence they’d feared. But at least he’d left money each week for groceries. Now there would be no more beatings, but no more food either.
The woman needed a job; fast! So she scrubbed her kids until they looked brand new, put on her best homemade dress, and then loaded herself and the kids into the rusty old ’51 Chev which her husband had left behind. Off they drove to find Mom a job.
They visited every factory and store and restaurant within their small town, and within a reasonable commute beyond it. The oldest son kept the other kids quiet in the car while Mom tried to convince anyone who’d listen that she really, really needed a job; that she was willing to do anything, to learn anything; that before that day was over she had to have work.
No one would hire her. It was getting on toward suppertime. They pulled in to a truck stop on the edge of town. The Big Wheel, it was called. It was run by a woman whom everyone knew as Granny. The distressed Mom told her tale of woe one last time. Granny listened, while looking out the window every once a while at the car full of kids. Finally the owner said that she did need a waitress, on the graveyard shift: 11 at night to 7 in the morning. The pay wasn’t much, but she could start that night.
Mom raced home with the kids and called the teenager down the street who babysat for people. She bargained with the young woman to come and sleep on the sofa each night. She could arrive in her pajamas with the kids already asleep, and the mom would drive her to school in the morning. The pay would be a dollar a night; which maybe was good money for babysitting in 1960. This seemed like a good arrangement to the babysitting, so they struck a deal and the mom was off to work that very night at The Big Wheel.
The problems continued.
It turned out that the babysitter’s pay took about half the tips that the mom got each night.
As the fall progressed, the heating bills began to mount.
Clothes were a worry with growing children, and Mom was sewing patches upon patches on her sons’ blue jeans, fearing the day when there would be nothing left to mend.
The tires on that old Chev were about as bald as Yul Brenner’s head, and Mom just barely slid to work when the first snow fell.
Then one dreary morning, after a long night’s work, she dragged herself out to the car; which sat on four brand new tires. No note, nothing; just four beautiful tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana?
Christmas was coming and she knew there’d be no money for gifts. She bought a can of red paint and started to fix up some old toys in the basement so that at least there’d be something under the tree, but it wasn’t much.
On Christmas Eve, the regulars were drinking coffee at the Big Wheel. There were the truckers – Les, Frank and Jim – and a state trooper named Joe. They just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning, and then left to go home before the sun came up.
When the mom went out to her car at 7 am, she was shocked to find that the old Chev was filled to the brim with boxes! She opened the door, knelt backwards on the front seat, reached into the back seat and pulled the top off the first box. It was a whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2 to 10. Then she opened the next box. It was shirts to match the blue jeans. She opened some more boxes. She found clothing for her little girl, a big ham for baking, vegetables and potatoes and pie filling and flour. There were cookies and candy and nuts and groceries; laundry supplies and cleaning items. And in the last box, she found five toy trucks and a beautiful little doll.
The sun was rising as she drove home on the most amazing Christmas morning of her life. She could just barely see the road because she was sobbing with gratitude. Yes, there were angels in Indiana. And they all hung out at The Big Wheel.
Sometimes our lives feel like they’re falling apart. We can see the rubble all around us, in the dark night of our despair. It’s at such times that God can piece together the dawn. The devastations of the night can become the building blocks of a new tomorrow. At the first light of dawn, all things are possible. Amen.
Text: Isaiah 61:4
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
14 December 2008
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