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Homily:
Christmas (Mass at Midnight) – Cycle A
Our pastor, Fr. Mike, and I are pretty practical
people. We try to live simple lives that
respect the fact that we are here as part of your parish, knowing that one day
we will both move on from here and that other priests will take our
places. Because of this we are both
pretty frugal, especially when it comes to expenses that we know cost the
parish money. As a result, among other
things, we eat a lot of leftovers from funeral dinners and other parish events
and we don’t often turn lights on when were just walking through the house.
Like most of us, I’m sure, we kind of know where everything
is in the house and so to walk around the house without any lights on is not
really all that dangerous. Besides, it
really isn’t all that dark anyway.
Lights from street lamps or the neighbor’s house make their way into our
windows and create enough of an outline of objects to act as reminders of where
things are at so as to make it safe to move around in the dark, and so we do.
Some years back, I took a tour of Marengo Caves in southern
Indiana. If you’ve ever been on a tour
of this cave complex or others like it in the Ohio Valley (such as Mammoth Cave
in Kentucky), you’ll know how neat it is to walk around and see this “world
under our world” that most of us don’t even know exists under our feet. One of the more interesting aspects of the
tour that I went on, however, was when they took us into the “total darkness”
chamber.
The caves on the tour are lit by electric light the whole
way, but in this chamber they offer an experience of “total darkness” by
briefly turning off all of the lights.
At first I was kind of skeptical because I was like “I’ve been in
darkness before, this can’t be that different” and because the tour guide was a
little over dramatic about selling the experience (“You’ve never experienced darkness like this before!”), but when the lights
went out I was actually surprised by how I felt.
To be in the absolute absence of light, I found, was somewhat
disorienting. In fact, I remember
feeling like I almost lost my balance for a second when the lights went out and
I tried to look around to see if I could see anything. A bit of anxiety actually began to arise in my
gut because I was feeling a bit helpless and vulnerable; not knowing where I
was or how I could escape if the lights failed to come back on. The darkness, I would say, was in control of
me at that moment and so I felt surprisingly relieved when the lights were
turned back on.
While many of us here may never have had an experience of
physical darkness like I experienced in the cave that day, many of us have
probably experienced emotional or spiritual darkness that felt something like
what I described. Perhaps it was the
sudden loss of a loved one due to accident or an unexpected illness. Or maybe it was the betrayal or rejection of
a close friend or a spouse. Whatever it
might have been, the often unexpected emotional and spiritual trauma that comes
with these experiences can plunge our hearts into a disorienting darkness in
which we feel completely overcome by it: that is, vulnerable and helpless to
escape or even move.
The shepherds in our Gospel reading were used to
darkness. There was no electricity back
then and so, unless the moon was somewhat full, they had to keep watch over the
sheep in darkness. Thus, they had to learn
how to move within the darkness. Imagine
what a shock it must have been for them, then, when the angel of the Lord came
upon them and the glory of the Lord broke through the darkness of
midnight. (Now when the Scriptures say
“the glory of the Lord” they mean a brightness like you’ve never seen. Imagine Clark Griswald’s house when he
finally gets it lit up… brighter than that.)
And so you can imagine what fear must have struck them when such
brightness suddenly broke forth into the darkness. It was, ironically, a disorienting experience
that they were unprepared for.
You know, one of the things that I love about the Church is
that she pretty much has us figured out.
She really does know what makes us tick.
(Really, Father? Because it seems
like she’s often behind the times.)
Believe it or not, the Church really is an expert on the human
person. She knows that it is through the
senses that we first experience God and that through our senses we will deepen
our experience of him. And so for the
last four weeks, as we’ve been anticipating the celebration of the coming of
our Savior, what is it have we been doing?
(Yeah, I know, shopping for presents.)
No, I mean what is it that we have been doing in the Liturgy? We’ve been lighting candles. But what’s been happening in the world for
the last four weeks? The daylight has
been getting increasingly shorter up until this week, when we experience the
least daylight of any time in the year.
Then we do something crazy and we show up for Mass in the
middle of the night. “Father, it’s
always been the tradition in my family to come to midnight Mass.” Sure, I get
that, and it’s a great tradition, but you wouldn’t do that any other time of
the year, so why tonight? Well, I think
that there’s something deeper here. You
see, I think that the reason that the Church even has a Mass at midnight is
because she knows that there is something deep inside of us that has to believe
that light can break through even the deepest darkness. And so she set up this Mass, during the
darkest days of the year and in the darkest hour of the night, so that we could
speak these words from the deepest darkest part of our souls and find hope:
“We, a people who have walked in darkness, have seen a great light! … For a
child has been born to us, a son given to us!”
And so, unlike those shepherds who were caught off-guard by
the in-breaking of the glory of the Lord, we walk directly into the darkest
darkness in order to celebrate the coming of the light that conquered all
darkness: Jesus Christ, our Lord. For his
birth signaled the end to the darkness caused by sin and, thus, to all of the
darkness that results as an effect of sin: our broken world in which death and
loss, betrayal and failure, seem, at times, to overcome us still.
My brothers and sisters, for those who believe that Jesus
is the Son of God and that he came to save us from our sin, no experience of
darkness can ever be absolute; for even in our darkest darkness, Jesus, the
glory of God, stands ready to break through our darkness with his light: the
light of a multitude of angels; the light of a little child lying in a
manger. Thus, no matter where you find
yourself tonight, the message is clear: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I
proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For today in the city of David a savior [that
is, a light] has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.” May the light of Christ that broke through
this world’s darkness nearly two-thousand years ago, and that still comes to us
here, in this Eucharist, fill your hearts with light and with peace.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – December 25th, 2013
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