Lighten Up & Get Real

Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Paul Carling
Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3; John 1: 1-18

“What has come into being with him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 

The light shines in the darkness ,and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Years ago, living on an isolated spit of land stretching out into Lake Champlain, I remember the night the tornado came through. It severed the tallest trees at mid-height, and threw their tops across the narrow road to Ruth’s house, an elderly woman who lived alone at the very end of the point. We called her son, but he was at least an hour away, so we stuffed candles into our pockets, got out our chain saws, and struck out in the pitch black and the driving rain, to cut our way through. As we got closer we saw that the storm had completely ripped off the long living room wall facing the lake, and for a while, we were sure we were too late. But when we finally got to her, huddled on her sofa, fully exposed to the weather, instead of the relief and gratitude we expected, Ruth greeted us with a tirade, “What took you so long?  I could have died here! People who know what they’re doing would have gotten here in half the time it took you!” Bone tired, we turned to putting plastic tarps where the wall once stood, and getting her settled into her warm dry kitchen to await the arrival of her family.

You’d think that the coming of the light, because it illuminates reality, would be very good news wouldn’t you? Well, yes and no. Because the truth is that, as human beings, we’re not so fond of reality. Time after time, we prefer illusion.

Like the desperate parents I saw at Toys R’ Us, poring over this year’s gift options, twice as expensive as last. Their haggard faces said it all – “I can’t afford half this stuff, but maybe my tax refund will bail me out. You see, I have to buy this so he can tell his friends he got the must-have coolest present of the year, so she’ll know I really care, so I can feel like the kind of parent I’m supposed to be.” As the kids grabbed at elaborate gift after gift, I didn’t hear a single parent (or child) say, “That’s pretty cool, but actually, it’s only worth it if you buy all the software, and we just can’t afford that,” or “That’s’ pretty violent, how about something educational?”  Like stage actors tightly scripted to their roles, no one was speaking the truth; no one was shining a light on reality.

Or the three girls in that new Verizon commercial – you know the one where two of them get cool new cell phones and the other gets a pony. The truth no one speaks is that the pony may be far and away the best Christmas gift – it offers a relationship, learning responsibility for another being, endless pleasure in riding… well, even if you do have to train it not to bite!

I sit with parish families, and hear how their Christmas gathering went terribly wrong – the cousin who refused to come, the uncle who showed up drunk, the sister who was so ungrateful for the gift selected so carefully, the husband who blames his wife because things aren’t perfect. They’re heartbroken – “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be!”  And I try to tell them that so much of the pain we experience over the holidays comes from our own magical thinking about some ideal Christmas, some ideal family. So we get disappointed and irritable, and we blame each other or ourselves that we’re not like that. It’s no wonder that psychologists tell us that the incidence of depression is highest between Thanksgiving and New Years.

The truth is we can choose to think about our families, about our other relationships, without these illusions, but in the light – in the reality of who each of us is – acknowledging each of our limitations, each of our unique blend of the good, the bad and the ugly, accepting each other through all of it, and judiciously using St. Paul’s admonition to “speak truth in love.” As we know, this is great in theory, but agonizing in practice, but we choose to do it anyway. Just imagine doing Christmas that way! 

It’s painful standing in the light of truth, so we might ask, “Why bother?” The answer is found later in John’s gospel, in God’s assurance, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Because even though life may not be the way it’s supposed to be, it’s the way it is, and we can’t begin to change ourselves or our circumstances until we first accept this reality. People in AA call it “living life on life’s terms,” and it’s the key to spiritual freedom.

Christmas, the incarnation, is all about living in the light of truth, and abandoning the illusions that inevitably break our hearts. It’s about being authentic, being vulnerable, seizing the power that can only come through being real. That’s why the light Jesus brings often feels like such a mixed blessing. Standing in the light means acknowledging our own dark sides, our own limitations, and those of others – and instead of walking away, choosing to live in reality, choosing to live without illusions. 

It’s amazing the possibilities that open up when we live this way. As spiritual leader Anthony DeMello put it in one of his lectures, “Instead of going on and on about how ‘I’m OK, and you’re OK,’ why don’t we start with the truth that ‘I’m a jerk and you’re a jerk?’ Then maybe we can get somewhere.”

Thankfully, we have two powerful Christmas gifts that allow us not to just tolerate standing in the light, but to flourish in it.  The first is the gift Jesus gave us at his birth.  Jesus became flesh for one reason and one reason only – in order to give each one of us a relationship with God that was similar to his own, to give each one of us the actual experience of being “children of God.”  Watching Jesus – the way he relates to God, relies on God as a beacon of light – illuminates the loving, living relationship we can have if we choose to. 

If we accept this gift of relationship, it means God is with us every step of the way; that God wants nothing more for us than to be authentic; to be real; to speak the truth; to witness to his presence all around us; to acknowledge being his child, and to live accordingly. And it means God will give us an unlimited supply of grace and inspiration and comfort in the process – if only we’ll ask.

And the second gift? It’s the gift of each other, the power of Christian community to hold us up as we reel from one uncomfortable and painful truth after another. I’ve witnessed this power over and over in the small groups we have here at Saint Luke’s – people sharing their stories, their vulnerabilities, their failures and successes with each other; people learning to forgive others and, even harder, to forgive themselves; people learning to accept the gift of loving attention and support from others. I’ve seen this in our DOCC and Living the Way groups, in Mother’s group, in Women at the Well, in the Men’s Retreat, in Bible Study, in our Rebuilding our Lives after Separation or Divorce workshop, and in our Healing Prayer group – in each of these, the content is so much less important than the commitment to be real with each other, and to love each other through the process. 

I see it in the individuals who admit they have a problem with alcohol, and reach out for help from other parishioners already in recovery. And I see it in parish families who choose to shine light on the real difficulties they’re having, and to seek help from clergy, or one of our chaplains, or a therapist, or the support of friends. They’re casting off illusions and choosing the freedom that only comes from living in reality.

And the rest of the good news is that, as we gain strength from God and each other, we take this experience of God’s light among us, and turn it into an invitation to the rest of the world to step into that light. Each of us is baptized to be a bearer of that light, for each other and for the world. And as long as we huddle together, casting off illusions and embracing reality, “that light will shine in the darkness… and the darkness will not overcome it.”