Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing, we believe and in believing, we obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Back in the old days—well, back when I still had some hair on my head (and it wasn’t all gray)—the movie industry was caught up in the Star Wars craze. Can someone recall for us the basics of that blockbuster flick?
Luke Skywalker and Yoda vs. Darth Vader and the Evil Emperor
The Light side vs. the Dark side of the Force
Good vs. Evil
[Do you remember that old joke about Star Wars and Lutherans? You could always tell if there were some of us in the theater. Whenever a character would say, “May the force be with you,” all the Lutherans would respond… “And also with you.”]
Star Wars had at heart a sort of circle-of-life theme, where what-goes-around comes-around; what you do-unto-others will be done-unto-you. This story-line is a very successful formula. The genre doesn’t matter—this same sort of good vs. evil theme has worked well in countless movies and books: The Hobbit, The Lion King, and The Chronicles of Narnia, to name just a few.
Think about the elements that are similar in each of these stories:
- In the beginning, the bad always appears stronger than the good.
- The evil side relies on external might; the good side relies on inspiration.
- Treachery is the code of the bad characters; honor is the code of the good.
- Hatred and greed arouse those who are evil; love and sacrifice guide the noble.
And as if these features aren’t enough to fan the flames of our fervor, such plots also usually present us with a point of crisis…where
- the forces of evil have all but destroyed the powers of good, and
- the “heroes” seem absurdly impotent compared to the villains.
But, the good persevere, purity prevails, and they (and we) learn some vital lessons—about life, about integrity…about God. We come to realize that
- bad things happening do not necessarily mean that evil has won and
- though it may not be noticeable, a good Higher Power is at work and
- it almost always proves true that good triumphs in the end.
Nor is this formula confined to merely movies or make-believe. It’s no accident that the very same features are common elements in so many of our Bible stories. Think about Moses vs. Pharaoh; Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi; Esther vs. Haman; the boy David vs. the warrior Goliath; and today’s special: The Baby Jesus vs. King Herod.
The story about the Magi is one of the most magnificent, mystifying…and mournful moments in the whole history of humanity.
- Visitors from the east see a star that tells of a new king born to the Jews.
- They travel to honor the child and offer him expensive gifts.
- They check in at the palace, which arouses King Herod’s paranoia.
- They are warned to avoid Herod and return home by a different route.
- Yet, the King shows the sickness of his soul by ordering the slaughter of every child in the Bethlehem area 2 years old or younger.
It’s a story that fires a burst of emotion, that raises so many questions:
Who were the Magi and where did they call home?
Why did they care who was born king of the Jews?
And this hard one: If God warned them in a dream to avoid Herod after they found Jesus, why didn’t God simply warn them beforehand to avoid Herod in the beginning…to say nothing of the atrocities to follow?
The trouble is that we never get an adequate answer to that quaking question, Why? We can contemplate and speculate, cogitate and ruminate; but the facts of the matter will never deviate…the angel’s warning to Joseph spares the life of Jesus…and…King Herod still kills all those babies in an evil attempt to protect his hold on the throne.
It’s one of those tragic tales of sinful human nature that make us sick at heart as we search for something—anything—meaningful to say. So I was very interested to hear about a sermon on this lesson that was written by someone who himself experienced a similar kind of evil at work in his world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran clergyman in Germany during WWII. When Adolph Hitler came into power, pastors were forced to follow either a wide, easy road…or a narrow, treacherous path. If they embraced the Nazi-sponsored church, they would thrive…if they remained true to the Bible and the faith for which our ancestors died, they would find life very difficult.
Seeing the evil of what led to the horrors of the Holocaust, Bonhoeffer opposed Hitler by standing firm in his faith. Talk about a slaughter of the innocents! So I was captivated by the title of his sermon: The Dark Night of Epiphany. Now, epiphany means an appearance or sudden understanding, and the symbol of this event is light—you know, when a cartoon character gets a good idea, a light bulb appears overhead! It’s a wonderful image for all of us, for all people who feel locked in a land of deep darkness.
Yet Bonheoffer personally experienced all these critical contrasts—evil vs. good, darkness vs. light, humanity’s perceived power vs. God’s true power. So I was fascinated to see that the focus of his message is on the words of verse 15 which reads, This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet.
Listen to Bonheoffer’s words to people who were living in a land of deep and terrible darkness. Drafted into the German army, he wrote: We are entering a new year. Many human plans and mistakes, much animosity and misery will determine our way. Yet, as long as we remain with Jesus and walk with him, we may be assured that nothing can happen to us that God has not foreseen…the consolation of a life that is lived with Jesus is that, of this life, too, it will be said: It was fulfilled what the Lord has spoken.
These are meant to be words of light, of encouragement, of hope. Our thirst for that cool water of blessing, our hunger for that feast of good news, our heart-felt longing for God’s loving presence is a reality of life, no matter what the day, the disagreement, the dispute.
We all know the effects of the dark side of the force on our lives—from financial fears, to relational regrets, to world-wide worries about death and destruction, hunger and health, freedom and faith… We also worry that what-goes-around comes-around; that we will be punished for the bad we do now; that we will-have-done-to-us what we-have-done-to-others.
But if the truth about Jesus tells us anything at all, it is this—though we may find in our lives what we think is evidence of a circle-of-life, God is all about a circle…of faith. Our job is not to trust what our eyes see or what our ears hear or even what our hearts feel about the law of do unto others…or else…but simply to trust what God’s Word says to us.
Here, says the Lord, is a light shining in the darkness, a word of hope that we can dare to trust, a promise that God’s will to bless and save us and all creation is hard at work in our hearts, in the lives of our loved ones and neighbors, and in the flow of life throughout all creation—that is the circle of faith. Amen.
Pastor Scott Fuller