The Beauty of Light and Dark - Epiphany Sunday - January 2, 2022
Matthew 2:1-15
Deborah Laforet
The Beauty of Light and Dark
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by the Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
On Christmas Eve, at the 10pm service, I mentioned that I loved that time of night, especially on Christmas Eve, when everything gets quiet, and there’s a note of expectancy in the air, but even when it’s not Christmas Eve, I love the night time, when we can see the stars and the moon, and there is a quiet hush that settles onto the earth. I love a good night’s sleep. I love campfires and singing in the dark. I’m not as appreciative at the length of these dark days in the wintertime, but I do appreciate the qualities in the night and in the darkness.
Do you know how difficult it is to find hymns that celebrate darkness? Most celebrate light. Christians call Jesus the light of the world. Our Epiphany hymns today talk about gleaming lights and shining splendour. I came across a couple of secular songs that stood out, like, “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again,” by Simon and Garfunkel, and “The lamp is burnin' low upon my table top, The snow is softly fallin’. The air is still in the silence of my room. I hear your voice softly callin’.” by Gordon Lightfoot.
In the church and in our secular society, we tend to use light and dark as opposing forces, light as good and dark as bad. We equate light with purity, goodness, and awareness, and dark with evil, maliciousness, and closed-mindedness.
Now, we could attribute this to the fact that humans are day creatures and that we tend to fear what we cannot see. Unfortunately, though, it’s become more than that. I want to read for you a quote from the Reverend Anthony D. Bailey, a black minister who is currently at Parkdale United Church in Ottawa. He writes:
“The problem that the United Church’s anti-racism policy is trying to address has to do with what is called the racialization of the terms “white” and “black.” This occurred when some of the leading European enlightenment philosophers, academics, and scientist arbitrarily assigned the positive and “pure” characteristics of the term “light” to White people (i.e., Europeans), and ascribed to nonEuropeans, including the brown and Black peoples of the world, the “negative” characteristics of the term “dark.”
“In the 1700s, German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote: “Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites. The yellow Indians do have a meager talent. The Negroes are far below…at the lowest point.” Before this time, the positive and negative aspects of light and dark were not systematically assigned to different peoples. Once this separation of peoples based on race became entrenched in education, science, economic, social, and political policies and activities of colonial conquest and enslavement, it was virtually impossible to use these terms in ways devoid of a racist agenda. (Anthony D. Bailey, written to supplement study resources for the Sankofa DVD (United Church 2011)”
Over the years, I have become more and more aware of how our language exhibits our racist society. Words like blackmail, blackhearted, calling something black as sin, or when we call a movie or a piece of music, “dark.” When we constantly use these word in negative ways, they take a toll on a people who are already feeling the weight of oppression and discrimination.
Adele Halladay, the Anti-Racism and Equity Officer with The United Church of Canada, asked the questions, “How then, do we speak of darkness and light? Are we simply too sensitive? Do we throw out all biblical references to light? Surely not. What we need is balance.” (Seasons of the Spirit, Congregational Life, for Advent/Christmas/Epiphany, 2008) She continues, “In reality, darkness can be seen as comfort as a refugee is fleeing a time of war and unrest; light in this circumstance, could lead to death. Darkness could be seen as a wonder to explore, full of Holy Mystery; light, could be seen as a harsh reality, revealing a blinding light.”
Let’s look at the bible story we heard today. It is the story of the magi who are following a star to find “the child who has been born king of the Jews.” The magi get to Judea and visit King Herod, a part of the story that we usually leave out. When King Herod hears of a child born to be king, he gets scared. He feels threatened. He asked these magi from the East to come back to him after they’ve find this child so that he too can pay homage, but the magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod. When they don’t return, Herod comes up with a scheme to remove this threat to his power. Verse 16, the verse immediately following the passage we heard today, where we heard that Joseph was warned in a dream to leave Bethlehem right away, reads, “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.”
I imagine that when Joseph received this dream, he packed up his family, and under cover of night, fled to Egypt. They became refugees, fleeing from the tyranny of a despot. Night was their friend, hiding them as they ran. In fact, many families, probably hid and ran, hoping the nighttime would protect their children from the king.
In this story of the birth of Christ, we have magi, travelling at night, following a star, and we have Joseph using the night to flee to safety. In one story, the night is needed to illuminate a guiding star; while in the other, it’s needed to protect and cover.
Light and dark are not opposing realities. They are not set against each other. We need both and all that is in between. They are part of a spectrum, from the many colours of our skin, to the times of day, dusk to dawn, sunset to sunrise. This is why I like Adele’s Halladay’s idea of balance. If we only focus on the light, only see the light as good, only use the colour white to symbolize peace and resurrection, then we are missing out on a vast amount of other helpful imagery. The songs we sing during Christmas, like It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Still, Still, Still, and Silent Night, recall the images of peace and goodwill, angels and stars in the night sky. When we talk about resurrection, there are those three days between death and resurrection. What is happening in that silence, in that dark tomb. Darkness can also mean mystery, rest, sabbath, preparation, expectancy, and hope.
I’ll leave you with one last image that I found meaningful this week. As we leave this season of Christmas and look towards Lent and Easter, I leave you with words from Barbara Holmes, a black theologian, teaching at the Centre for Action and Contemplation in Arizona. She writes: “As an African American woman, I wear darkness as a skin color that I love. It is a reminder of my African origins, hidden in my genes, but not accessible through memory. Without darkness, I would not be! I entered the world from the nurturing darkness of the womb and relied upon a dark and resourceful family, community, and cosmos for my well-being. . . . We come from the darkness and return to it.”
On this Epiphany Sunday, when we celebrate the arrival of the Magi and celebrate light, may we also celebrate darkness, and all that lies in between. May we honour our black linen as much as our white. May we continue to celebrate the stars and remember to celebrate the darkness that illuminates those stars. May the sun and the moon be our companions. May we give thanks for the many silent nights and holy nights that bring us peace and stillness and the possibility of a new day. Thanks be to God. Amen.