3 January 2010

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

Many years ago, while I was on the faculty of Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, I was invited to preach at a planned community-wide celebration of Epiphany.  For several days I agonized over how to start my sermon, for I felt that I needed something profound (or at least interesting) since I knew that many of the people who would attend the service had never heard me preach before. I have had some similar thoughts this week, as I thought about how to start my first sermon here at St. Paul in this service as we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany of our Lord, for many of you have never heard me preach a sermon before either.

I finally decided to begin this Epiphany Sermon with the same story I used for that sermon I gave in Kansas. It is a true story, and as you'll see, it speaks to the theme of light the midst of darkness that is so prominent in our celebrations of Christmas and in the Season of Epiphany, which we begin today.

On a dark, cloudy night, sound asleep in the home into which we had recently moved, I was awakened by the sound of one of our daughters crying in her basement bedroom. When I opened my eyes, I could see abso­lutely nothing; the room was in pitch-black darkness. All the electricity for our town came from one power plant which had the unfortunate tendency to break down frequently and this was one of those times it went off line. Our house was totally dark, all the streetlights were out as well, and any possible moonlight was blocked by clouds. I immediately realized that the cries were most likely prompted by the fact that our daughter had also awakened and began crying when she realized that her night light was no longer working. I also knew that it was my duty as her brave daddy to make my way downstairs and soothe her fear of the dark.

There was only one problem; it was so dark and the house was as yet so unfamiliar, that I was not sure I could make my way.  I left the comfort of my warm bed and instead of finding myself in the hallway, I found myself tangled up in the clothes of our bedroom closet. When I extricated myself from that dead-end, I somehow ended up trapped in the bathroom, so disoriented I did not have a clue how to find my way to the stairs that would take me to the basement. But about then the crying came to an end as the electricity was restored. The lights came back on the streets outside our home as did the night light in the basement, calming the fears of our little girl, and enabling her befuddled daddy to find his way downstairs to check on her and then make his way back to the security and warmth of his own bed.

It really is not a very profound or exciting story, is it?  Many of you could tell similar stories about having to soothe a child's fear of darkness, or of finding yourselves awakened by sounds of things that go bump in the night, thankful you could .ip a light switch to calm your beating heart. But I told it in that Epiphany Sermon many years ago.... and I retell it this morn­ing, because I feel it is a parable about our world as we come to the end of the first decade of the 21st. Century -- a world that many see as being soiled with darkness and fear, that they wonder if there is any light or hope or peace to be found at all.

Last week, I read the results of a recent which asked Americans to rank the last five decades since the 1960's from best to worst. The over­whelming response was that the last ten years were the worst decade of those fifty years, worse even than the 1970's which was the decade of Watergate, the Vietnam War, the oil embargoes, and the Iran hostage crisis.  The survey suggested that today American optimism has been replaced by doubt and fear; that we live in a world that is hungry for light, but not sure and light can be found.

Leading the reasons for this assessment of the darkness of the past few years, were the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which we experienced early in the decade. Since that horrible day we have seen a decreased sense of security and safety, which has been underscored by the latest foiled attempt to blow up the plane headed to Detroit on Christmas Day.  Added to this was what happened next: the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq which have involved America being at war for 100 of the past decade's 120 months as well as terrorist attacks that have taken place in other parts of the world. Other elements cited in this gloomy assessment of the past decade were worries related to the current economic crisis, the growing awareness of the threat of global warming, concerns in the past few months about the Swine Flu epidemic, the increasing political polarization that seems to be taking place over health-care reform and many other “scary things” that keep us awake at night. Our world today is very much like that house in Kansas when the power went out. We feel disoriented; not sure which way to turn; wondering if we have lost our way to a life of peace and safety; threatened by obstacles we cannot see which threaten to trip us up. We feel vulnerable and frightened, and we long for light to give us a sense of hope and comfort.