12-1-2024 ADVENT 1 ‘NEW LIFE BEGINS IN THE DARK’

Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

New Life Begins in the Dark

Homily for St. John’s Episcopal Church by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn given December 1, 2024

The First Sunday of Advent: Luke 21:25-36

Last night my family and I went for a walk at 4:45pm, and it was dark before our walk finished. Sometimes in this time of year I look at the night outside and think it must be 10pm, but it’s actually 6:30pm. Near the winter solstice we have less than nine hours of light per day here in Minneapolis. Today is also the new moon, so you could say there is a concentrated darkness in the rhythms of sun and moon and earth.

The great religions of the world have mostly been in a binary, dualistic mode for thousands of years. There is light and dark; good and evil; body and spirit; black and white; us and them. We have been swimming in cultural seas that speak about either/or, that teach us darkness is bad and light is good. We’ve been taught to be afraid of the dark. It is no accident that racism arose in such a milieu, projecting this either/or thinking onto white people and people of color. But in the ancient Hebrew imagination, the ancient indigenous people from which our scriptures arose, the beginning of each new day was not the dawn, but the sunset. Beautiful, darkening sunset is when things are made new. There was a friendliness in that culture toward the rhythms of darkness and light in which every phase had a role. And today is the first Sunday of Advent, the Church’s New Year. Our tradition contains the wisdom that new beginnings happen in the dark. We aren’t alone in this; in Celtic tradition November 1, Samhain, is seen as the beginning of winter and the New Year.

And strangely, our Church New Year in Advent always begins with apocalyptic readings from scripture, like the one we just heard from Luke’s gospel. The movement that began with Jesus of Nazareth, and that ultimately became this vast global network of institutions we now call Christianity, was born in an apocalyptic time out of a story of oppression and suffering and resurrection. The four gospels were written soon after the city of Jerusalem was razed to the ground just a few decades after the death of Jesus. It was a terrible time. Roman soldiers literally took the great Jewish temple and destroyed it, removing stone from stone until it was gone. They slaughtered countless thousands of civilians. The people fled, and the great Diaspora of the Jewish people began. And then they began to creatively re-tell the stories of their tradition to find hope in them. It was during the apocalypse that our tradition was born.

This time in the life of the world can sometimes feel like that. For many people right now the apocalypse has literally happened; places like Asheville, North Carolina were destroyed this September by Hurricane Helene. As of the end of 2023, the United Nations Refugee Agency estimated that there were 117 million people who had been forcibly displaced by war and violence.[1] And in our own country it is clear that we do not even seem to live in the same universe as those we disagree with politically. Many people today feel great distress and fear and anger at what is coming with the change of presidential administration, while others are celebrating and feel perhaps relieved or vindicated. The Earth herself is at risk regardless of who sits in the White House because of humanity’s impact on global warming, consuming and producing waste faster than the Earth can replenish and clear.

And in the midst of all this, we have this strange new year. Just as darkness seems complete, hope is born. Into the imagination of our tradition comes a small pregnant peasant girl from the backwater of the Roman Empire in Palestine, this girl who became the Mother of God because she simply said yes to the power of the Spirit moving through her. Mary’s choice left her socially vulnerable to judgment and shame and rejection, but she had a partner in Joseph who validated her choice and had his own guidance through dreams and angels when nothing in the world around him would give him any reason to support her. At times like this, times when the darkness is everywhere and the apocalypse seems very possible, we need to dig deep to find and work with God to co-create a new story, one that does not leave us powerless or hopeless but one in which something real and true and good is born. We can learn from Mary, learn to sense the Spirit’s presence and just let go and say yes.

Where is this new life, this new story, that we can co-create with God? The answer, I believe, is not in the universal and abstract, but in the local and particular. It is here and now, in you and me and this community. Jesus taught us in today’s gospel reading to read the earth and heavens, to notice the fig tree’s leaves, to discern what is appropriate for right now, for this moment, for right here. No matter who sits in the White House, we have tremendous power right here. The timeless power of the gospel, the good news, is that we can co-create and re-create it with God in each new generation, each time we face the darkness. What does that look like in concrete terms? What would it mean for us to be like Mary, to say yes to the power of the Spirit moving through us so that new life can be born, even if we can’t see the face of that baby yet, even if aren’t yet ready to bring new life to birth?

At St. John’s and in the Episcopal Church we have been re-interpreting the meaning of Jesus as a path we call the Way of Love. Jesus himself said that all of the law and the prophets could be summed up in two commandments: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Love is not universal and abstract but local and particular. And it turns out that sometimes, catastrophe mobilizes people to do extraordinary things—not from the top down but from the bottom up. In an extraordinary book called A Paradise Built in Hell, author Rebecca Solnit describes how in the wake of many disasters in the last century, communities came together in extraordinary expressions of altruism, bravery and resourcefulness.  In both natural and human-made disasters, like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, she describes how communities from the ground up suddenly began sharing, dropping their usual concerns and simply helping wherever they could with whatever small gift each person had to offer. After Hurricane Katrina hundreds of people who had boats came to New Orleans searching for people stranded in the heat on rooftops without water or food or shelter, and many more came afterward to help rebuild the city. She describes how what made the most difference is whether you saw victims as dangerous criminals or simply as fellow human beings in need. What Ms. Solnit discovered was this:

When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered [during a catastrophe], people step up—not all, but the great preponderance—to become their brothers’ keepers. And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amid death, chaos, fear, and loss. Were we to know and believe this, our sense of what is possible at any time might change. We speak of self-fulfilling prophesies, but any belief that is acted on makes the world in its image. Beliefs matter…. [These moments] demonstrate what is …latent [in us]: the resilience and generosity of those around us and their ability to improvise another kind of society… and how deeply most of us desire connection, participation, altruism, and purposefulness.[2]

In today’s gospel reading Jesus refers to himself, not as the “Son of God,” but as the “Son of Man”—you might even say, the True Human. Perhaps Jesus, although unique, did not intend to be unique—some would say he came to teach us what it looks like to fully embody one’s innate divinity, to live in a non-dualistic mindset in which compassion and sharing and justice are north stars guiding one’s thoughts and actions. If we truly believed that all people without exception—including those with whom we most disagree—were made of divine light at their core, how would that change our attitudes and behaviors? If we believed that the entire earth and all its creatures were also divinely made and in community with us, how would that change our patterns of eating and consuming and travel and sharing?

Here are some glimpses of new life, of love in action, that have been growing at St John’s. Mike Huck had quintuple bypass surgery six weeks ago and many of you have been visiting and calling him. Kate MacKinnon fought the insurance company so that our beloved Chad Smith could have the medical procedure he needed. We have gotten to know several refugee families from Ecuador and have been offering significant support as they wait for their immigration applications to process. We have been involved with Good Courage Farm, a regenerative agricultural ministry in Hutchinson where they are caring deeply for the soil, and which is operating from a gift economy. We have continued to support teachers in Haiti even though the town where their school is located has been overrun by gangs and the school cannot operate. We are teaching our youth about immigration and systemic racism and non-colonized indigenous cultures through pilgrimages to Greece and South Africa. We have had a three-part series on the relationship of the Episcopal Church with Indigenous cultures here in Minnesota and are launching a study group to learn the story of St. John’s relationship and Indigenous Peoples. In many ways a gift economy, an economy of sharing and love and support, is in operation here at St John’s, so much so that I believe we can be a sanctuary for hope and an alternative from the hatred and division characterizing our nation right now. We can offer sanctuary for people who are most vulnerable and most threatened, including those of us who are immigrants, the poor, queer, people of color, the earth and all her species—anyone falsely considered “other” and “enemy” by those in power.

Rather than despair about the darkness in our world, let us reclaim the deep wisdom that teaches us darkness is not inherently evil but rather is a beginning. Let us focus our attention and energies on following Jesus’ Way of Love, on embodying divine light and operating as if everything we have is a gift and that we have plenty to share. Rather than being stuck in rage or anxiety or grief, let us focus on the power we have to make a difference in our local lives and communities and neighbors, including our more-than-human neighbors the trees and the pollinators, the lakes and woodpeckers. Considering your own life in this moment, what opportunities do you have to operate from trust and generosity instead of fear and hoarding? How might you say yes to God’s endless invitation to allow the Spirit to flow through you to create new life? Amen.

[1] See “Global Trends Report 2023”, UN Refugee Agency, accessed December 1, 2024 at https://www.unhcr.org/global-trends-report-2023

[2] Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (p. 3, 305-06). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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