Turning

December 20, 2015

Luke 1:39-56

For the past six months or so I’ve been volunteering most Mondays with the National Park Service greeting visitors to the Martin Luther King Memorial on the Mall. One of the great benefits of my Mondays with Martin is being surrounded by his words carved into the polished granite of the memorial.

During this season of Advent, as the days grow shorter and the sun a bit dimmer at its winter angle, I’ve stopped several times to ponder these words: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

I read those words and I can’t help but recall the prelude to the gospel of John and its words that we’ve used through this season of Advent to frame our time of prayer, of sharing personal stories, of lighting a candle of hope, of joy, of love, of peace. “A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Like Dr. King, the author of John drew upon the deep well of scripture and its wealth of metaphorical use of light imagery. As Marcus Borg helpfully pointed out:

Light is an archetypal religious image, found in all of the world’s enduring religions. When the Buddha was born, a great light filled the sky. And “enlightenment” as an image of salvation is central to many religions, including Christianity.

Light as an image of salvation is in the Jewish Bible as well. To illustrate with two passages from Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (9:2); and, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (60:1).

The claim made by the use of this light imagery is concisely expressed in John’s gospel: Jesus is the light shining in the darkness, the true light that enlightens everyone, indeed the Light of the World (John 1.5, 9; 9.5).[1]

The author of John wrote in a context that King would have understood well, and that might also seem somewhat familiar to us even while remaining ancient, distant, and troubling. The gospel of John is commonly dated toward the end of the first century, and is the gospel most distant in time from the actual life of Christ. John was likely written for a community that was living in the Jewish diaspora after the crushing destruction and defeat of Jerusalem by the Romans in the Jewish War that unfolded a generation after Jesus’ death between the years 66-73 of the Common Era. The author of John addressed a community that was searching for hope amidst overwhelming despair, looking for a light that shone brighter than the darkness in which they dwelled.

King’s words were similarly addressed to a community searching for hope. The lines that have spoken to me of late were written at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, in the context of massive resistance to desegregation and vigilante violence inflicted on anyone with the temerity to insist on justice and equality for people of color. King was in jail in Georgia when he wrote of the transformative power of love to drive out hate.

Writing there in a southern jail cell, his life under near constant threat, and having witnessed already the deaths of more than a few of his fellow workers in the Movement, you would think that you would find anger in his words. You would think he might lash out at the white folks who violently opposed him or at the moderates who enabled the extremists. You might think he would name names and condemn his enemies. You might think that.

Instead, he wrote a sermon entitled “Loving Your Enemies.”

Why, he asked, should we follow Jesus’ instruction to love our enemies? “The first reason,” he wrote, “is fairly obvious.”

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.[2]

The second reason, King often argued, lies in what hate does to the one who hates. It distorts the soul, and causes one “to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”[3]  

Finally, loving enemies is practical because it is the only way to stop the cycle of enmity. King insisted, “We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get ride of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.”[4]

This redemptive transformation is the heart of the song that Mary sings as her soul magnifies the Lord. Bringing the mighty down from their thrones, filling the hungry with good things to eat – that is the transformative power of love in action.

The transformative power of love in action is the meaning of the incarnation. Christmas invites us into the mystery of incarnation and deep into the heart of God. The path into the mystery is not lined with gifts under Christmas trees. The path into the heart of God is not made plain by our songs nor by our worship. The path into the heart of God is certainly not made by trampling out the paths made by those who seek God by other names and through other traditions. No, the path deep into the mystery of God is made as we love our enemies.

This seems a particularly powerful word to us just now as the drums of war beat more loudly, as so-called leaders whip up fear among us, and as scapegoats are made of the most vulnerable among us. Into all that, the gospel speaks an invitation to turn the world around.

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus goes up to a high place to teach his most enduring lessons, and there he instructs his followers: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, to that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44).

As King pointed out, this verse from Matthew contains the key concern with nonviolence for followers of Jesus: it’s about our relationship with God. God draws close to us in the life of Jesus, and invites us closer still. “We are called to this difficult task [of transformative love even of our enemies] in order to realize a unique relationship with God.”[5]

The incarnation – the story of God drawing close to humankind in and through the life of Jesus – is about a unique relationship with God. That’s what the gospels are all about. Advent is preparing a way in our lives for just such a relationship. Advent is beginning the great turning of the world. Advent is understanding that “in a dark, confused world the Kingdom of God may yet reign”[6] in all our hearts.

Light just one candle – or two, or three, or four, or a thousand, and prepare the way of the Lord. Amen.

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[1] Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (San Francisco: Harper, 2006) 62-3.

[2] Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010 edition, originally published in 1963) 47.

[3] Ibid. 48.

f[4] Ibid.

[5] ibid., 49-50.

[6] Ibid., 164.