December 21, 1997

James A. Todhunter

"The Joyful Journey through the Darkness"

Isaiah 9: 2-7 Luke 1: 1 - 14

The journey to Bethlehem is a journey through the darkness. In retelling the tale, we frequently dwell on the hardships of the journey. In T.S. Eliot's famous nativity poem, "Journey of the Magi," he says:

We stress the physical discomfort, the homelessness of the couple, Mary the expectant mother bouncing along the rocky road, Joseph the distracted father-to-be, their inability to find the place to stay, the crude stable, the impoverished shepherds - all this in the dark, bleak mid-winter. We can see this journey as a kind of looking for light at the end of the tunnel, a traveling through a dark fraught with danger and fear, then emerging with great relief into the light. We keep moving because we know one day there will be joy. Each of our lives is a journey. We each have dark patches along the way. Sooner or later, all of us walk our lonesome valleys of darkness and despair. But what keeps us going is the hope that joy awaits and the trust that the pain of the present moment is not the final reality.

But this alone, true as it may be, does not account for the full meaning of the joy of the Christmas story. The full meaning is the mystery of how that joy which is to come at journey's end, is also available to us now. Seeing the light and tasting the joy now.

Something clicked for me on this when I came across the comment of a German scholar on the poet Goethe. He said that the great theme for Goethe is the predominance of light over darkness. But that though Goethe speaks of joy, the word he uses really means the same as the Latin word serenus (from which comes the English "serenity'), which means a cloudless sky, whether day or night. This suggests to me that there are two kinds of darkness - the darkness of the cloudy sky, murky or even black, as before a thunderstorm, and the darkness of a cloudless yet sparkling, starry sky. The first may be dark and foreboding, and the second, tranquil and serene.

I find this very helpful. Understood this way, the Bethlehem journey is not so much a journey from darkness into light, as a journey from one kind of darkness to another kind of darkness. It is the journey from a darkness of pain, fear, and dread, into a darkness of peace and serenity. A serenity that is joyful. But the joy we are talking about is not a forced manic cheerfulness, but the joy of serenity in the dark of night.

I talked last week to my old friend and mentor, the Rev. Mel Schoonover in Miami. Mel has been consigned to a wheelchair most of his life because of his bone degenerating disease. Now, in his seventies, he is plagued (on top of other physical woes) with painful and debilitating arthritis, and will soon have to undergo a full shoulder replacement. His wife just underwent knee surgery, and his daughter, who inherited the disease, will herself soon have major surgery. An incredibly awful situation. Yet there was something in his words that was very moving to me. At first I couldn't put my finger on it. He was facing the grim reality (not minimizing or denying it), but without despair or even resignation. He was positive, and hopeful, yet not inappropriately cheerful. What was it? Later it occurred to me that what he was conveying was a profound sense of serenity. In the darkness of the bad news that surrounded him, he was serene and joyful.

We can taste the joy, we can see the light, even before we reach the end. Life is not simply hardships to be endured for the sake of better things to come one day. Joy can be experienced in the the midst of the darkness, if we can move from one kind of darkness to another. One could even say that God, indeed, is the author of darkness as well as light. And the darkness can have a healing, sheltering power if properly understood, properly befriended. The words of the cantata we are about to listen to say this about a friendly darkness:

In the darkness of night itself, pain cannot be denied, but worry, fear, and doubting can be set aside to make room for joy.

The joy of Christmas is the joy of serenity. Yes, let the lively carols be sung, the feasting and festivity, the gifts and companionship - let all that come with dawn, with the breaking of the light of Christmas Day. But let us remember that, all those pilgrims from near and far, wise men and shepherds and angels alike, converged on that lowly stable in the dark of night. It was in the midnight hour that Jesus was born. We gather in the darkness to witness a serene joy that has come to us in the darkness. And at that moment, the gift of the Christ Child himself was welcomed with a lullaby.

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