Light in the darkness
The Feast of the Holy Innocents • The Epiphany, 2021
Jeremiah 31:15-17 • Revelation 21:1-7 • Matthew 2:1-18
There is no doubt: ours can be a cruel, dark world. But, even in the darkest days, we can also be certain that light, warmth, and hope are not hiding too far away.
Today we celebrate our patronal feast: the feast of the Holy Innocents. We are unusual in that we are neither dedicated to a single saint of great repute, like St. John, nor a theological abstraction like the Trinity. Instead, we name a great and ongoing crowd of the innocents: generally thought of as children, but not exclusively so. We are all children at heart, after all.
I was very struck the first time I visited Holy Innocents by your spectacular banner that hangs on the wall behind the piano. Created around 2002, it is filled with baby photos from the congregation! A feast of the Holy Innocents indeed!
And what an entirely appropriate patronal dedication for a church like ours that for many years has welcomed children and their families: not just as an intention, but in all practical ways. It’s what makes Holy Innocents stand out in the diocese. We don’t just tolerate our younger members if they can behave, we have them standing around the altar, actively participating.
Of course, that sadly hasn’t happened for the last nine months, but I know the children are still with us. And I’m still holding onto the glow from our Christmas Eve virtual pageant to keep that certainty alive. There must have been about a hundred of us, of all ages taking part and mostly in costume. What a joy!
And we need to remember and hold on to joy. 2020 has been a dreadful year, and 2021 will not suddenly improve. There is most certainly light at the end of the tunnel, one might even say lights in the plural, but the reality is that we are still in the tunnel, which is an exhausting stressful place to be.
Much of the world, and certainly our country is in the midst of pandemic carnage: with the virus itself and all of its economic fallout, disproportionately burdening the poorer in our society. We have all been deprived of each other’s company. We humans are social creatures, and we need to smile, touch, laugh with each other. Our children have suffered particularly: trying to learn at home, and without the necessary and healthy interaction with each other. Parents have been stretched beyond what is bearable. Those living alone have been isolated.
We have all experienced loss, either directly or indirectly. Whether they have died of Covid-19 or other causes, we have not been able to be with loved ones during their final hours, we have not been able to gather with other family members to grieve, remember, and celebrate those lives.
We weep, and God weeps with us, taking us and our loved ones into God’s arms. Meeting our anguish with the strength and comfort of love. Just as God meets all those who weep. God is with us, Emmanuel, wiping, with great tenderness, every tear that falls.
And yet, there are signs of hope. We can scan the skies above and notice that each day is becoming a little brighter: the sun lingering a little longer in the late afternoons. The bare trees are developing buds on their branches. The growing spring bulbs are starting to show their bright green leaves above the earth.
It may be hard for us to imagine the present ever giving way to a future more of our choosing, but it will happen. To ease the pandemic, vaccines are being rolled out, even if somewhat ineptly. And there are other signs of hope in other spheres of our lives: technological developments combined with a new administration make it likely that we will be able to reduce our production of carbon significantly over the next decade. The movement towards greater gun control will save many lives. With an ever- increasing diversity in the leadership of this country, there is more hope that we can address the rampant suffocating and paralyzing racial inequity.
Those three wise men that we celebrate in the story of that first Epiphany, looked for signs in the sky. They found a bright star, appearing where no star had been before. They knew it as a significant sign of something new and promising. And they responded, making upending their lives, and making a challenging and long journey across wilderness and desert.
What shall we do with the signs of hope that we see? No-one’s asking us to leap on our camels with gifts. But just noticing is a good start: noticing that even though things seem so cold and discouraging, the earth is beginning to rewarm, and there are signs of rebirth. Perhaps we might dare to hope.
I leave you with a poem, one written just after the end of World War II by the English poet Laurie Lee. I have also included in the text of this sermon a link to the exquisite musical setting of the poem for choir by the American composer, Samuel Barber. The poem goes:
No night could be darker than this night, no cold so cold,
as the blood snaps like a wire
and the heart’s sap stills,
and the year seems defeated.
O never again, it seems, can green things run, or sky birds fly,
or the grass exhale its humming breath powdered with pimpernels,
from this dark lung of winter.
Yet here are lessons from the final mile of pilgrim kings;
the mile still left when all have reached their tether’s end: that mile
where the Child lies hid.
For see, beneath the hand, the earth already warms and glows;
for men with shepherd’s eyes there are signs in the dark, the turning stars,
the lamb’s returning time.
Out of this utter death he’s born again,
his birth our Savior;
from terror’s equinox, he climbs and grows, drawing his finger’s light
across our blood— the sun of heaven and the son of God.