Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
August 17, 2003
Ephesians 5: 8-20
Physicists Charles Townes and Reinhard Genzel have proposed that at the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way, lies a massive black hole. You know about black holes – a collapsed mass so dense that nothing can escape its gravitational field, not even light. In the words of the physicists, “Astronomers now have a good overall understanding of the heart of our galaxy and strong evidence of a massive black hole lurking there.” Everything at the physical center of our corner of the universe collapsing into dense darkness.
Not exactly a happy thought, but I chose to share this theory about what might lie at the center of our galaxy at the recent memorial service for Jennie Boland. I shared it because in the wake of her tragic death in an automobile accident, an accident it appears that was caused by a drunk driver, those of us at the service, family and friends and pastors, were feeling a deep darkness at the center of things, a darkness seemingly no light could penetrate. All of us were painfully aware of the presence of a black hole in our hearts and souls; all of us wondering if the dense darkness just might not have the last word.
You’ve been there. You know what I’m talking about. You know what it means to struggle with the darkness, wondering if any light can possibly get through, wondering if a new dawn will ever come. You’ve been there.
At the height of the terrible bombing of London during World War II, all the residents covered or blackened their windows. A young girl asked her father why they had to cover the windows. He answered that it was to keep the light from getting out. They didn’t want the planes overhead to see any light. She thought about this for a while, then asked, “We can keep the light from getting out, but how do we keep the darkness from getting in?” Many of us were asking that question on Sunday. Many ask it every day: “How do we keep the darkness from getting in?”
“For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of the light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” You are not made for darkness, says Paul, you are made for light. So live that way, live as children of the light.
Sounds good, Paul, but how exactly how are we supposed to do that? “Well, he says, “Why don’t you start with this? Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of time…”
On Wednesday, I had a meeting at our Northern California Conference office in Hayward. It was one of those endless meetings (for all I know, it is still going on!) I had a couple of appointments that afternoon in Sebastopol, so I finally had to leave. And because the meeting was late, it was approaching rush hour and traffic was already hopelessly backed up when I left the Richmond Bridge and attempted to merge onto 101 going north. As I waited stuck in traffic – calm, cool and collected as I always am in at times like this – wondering how I would ever get to Sebastopol on time, grinding my teeth over a boring meeting I should never have attended, reviewing my busy calendar in my mind, I just happened to turn and look down at the side of the road. I had to look again because there, growing up, right out of the concrete, was a tomato plant. A tomato plant covered with red tomatoes – better looking tomatoes plants than I have at my house! Right there, by the side of the freeway, no water, no fertilizer, precious little soil, breathing car exhaust all day…a thriving tomato plant. What a marvelous affirmation of life against all odds. For busy, preoccupied, worried me, it was a gift, a moment of grace, a flash of light in the darkness. All I could do was say, “Thank you, God.”
As I was thinking about that freeway tomato plant, I found myself returning to this reflection of Annie Dillard in her classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, words I’ve shared with you before. She writes, “Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist, there also seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous. About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.
“The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second, per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings and with exact, deliberate care, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.”
“The least we can do is try to be there.” “Be careful then how you live…making the most of the time…” It is easy to give in to the darkness – to believe that there might very well be a black hole at the center of things. It seems so powerful. As one colleague has said, “It is all too easy to lose a sense of the world’s goodness. When our dreams are shattered, or our hopes are battered, our optimism often is simultaneously eclipsed….we discover that our doubts about the world’s goodness become entrenched convictions. We become embittered, cynical, or marked by a deep sadness.”
He’s right. At least he describes how I often feel. It is easy to descend into that darkness. But then I think of a tomato plant growing out of the concrete of a busy freeway. I think of a mockingbird tumbling through space; of a baby in a manger proclaimed as the hope of the world. I try to take what Annie Dillard calls a “wider view” and when I do I find there is something deep inside me that refuses to believe that there is only darkness at the center. We are children of the light, says Paul, and we just cannot give in to the darkness.
Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and author, strikes a chord within me when she writes that she is often so busy, so preoccupied, that that it is difficult for her to slow down and look inward, to discern the movement of God in her life. She says, “I wonder if I am so focused on my list of things to do that I would not notice a burning bush until I was scorched by it.” But she has a friend, a friend she describes with these words:
“I have a friend who is not as busy as I am. She takes lots of walks, and while she has never claimed to see a burning bush, she does admit to talking somewhat frequently with trees. Once, she says, she was walking along fretting about how she ought to be, things she ought to change about herself, when this big poplar tree said to her, ‘Hey, why do you worry so much? Watch me be a tree.’ So she just stood there a minute or two and watched the tree be a perfectly acceptable tree. ‘Okay,’ the tree said, ‘Now you go be you.’ And she did.”
Taylor continues, “It is not only trees that talk to her. Once it was a stunning sunset that said, ‘Do not worry too much about the world. I can handle it.’ And once it was some river rapids that said, ‘I know it looks rough to you right now, but there is a real quiet stretch a little further along. Trust me.’
How do we keep the darkness from getting in? How do we live as children of the light? Perhaps a clue is in the freeway tomato, in the free-fall of the mockingbird, in the poplar, the sunset and in the words whispered by the river, “trust me.” Says Taylor, “Trust the poplar, the sunset, the river. Trust God to inhabit every living thing and use it to announce his presence….Then stop, if you are willing. Stop and take off your shoes, knowing that wherever you are is holy ground…Drop what you are doing and turn aside, to look into every bush, every face, every event of your life – the big and the small – the hoped for and the feared, the bad and the good – look into every one of them for God’s presence and call. Believe that whatever is going on, God is in it and can be trusted.” Light at the center – not darkness.
A rider in equestrian competition was once asked about the seeming calmness of the riders as they and their horses vaulted over hurdles and other formidable obstacles. Was it second nature, something they just got used to? Hardly, responded the rider. He said that the greatest obstacle riders face is their own perception. Unless the rider can approach the barrier with a certain anticipatory confidence, with the belief that the jump can be made, he or she will never become adept at jumping. His advice to riders for overcoming their hesitation was this: “Take your heart and throw it over the fence. Then jump after it.”
Not a bad summary of Paul’s message. Dare to believe that light, not darkness has the last word; that light, not darkness, is at the center. Then live your lives that way. Even if you cannot now see the light, dare to believe in it. Don’t hesitate. Take your heart and throw it over the fence. Then jump after it. And trust that the light will be there, for now, in the Lord, you are light.
I’ve always loved these words of Henri Nouwen: “Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, ‘How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?’ Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step – what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go.” Light at the center. Thanks be to God.