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Darkest Before The Dawn: Messiah (Isaiah 60.1-3) (NOTES)
Darkest Before The Dawn: Messiah (Isaiah 60.1-3) (NOTES)
Outline:
Intro: Tree of Life, this need context. My struggle. Intellectualize. Poetry. Sit
with it. Context.
THE LIGHT: (a) Arise, Shine: Command. Eden. Tree. Eat!, Good
commands, Hard Work, not without reason
(b) for your light has come: Remember historical context, your, Creation,
Glory-Weight, Apologetic
THE DARK: (a) For darkness: geographic darkness-it has dignity and
purpose. Lacrimosa, Creation, Two poets Poets. BUT, it can feel like home.
What comes up for you?
(b) but the Lord: Butt joke, most beautiful words in the Bible. The
hardest? Will. Theres a weird tension of time in this. Except Jesus:
Hopkins. Zion Dawn.
My favorite movie of all-time is Terrence Malicks 2011 film Tree of Life. Its
an amazing movie, and I could talk about it for hours. When people ask me
what its about, I tell them its about everything and nothing, all at once. Its
about the biggest, deepest, most transcendent truths and the most mundane
of human moments and pains. When I was looking it up to see the date it
came out, I saw Wikipedia calls it an American experimental epic drama
film. So yeah. If you want some insight into the way my brain works, there it
is.
Favorite movie. Meet a family in crisis. Questions about God. The way the
answers are offered is by moving to the beginning of all history and retelling
the story. We will do the same today in order to understand these verses and
the present and future it describes.
Been trying to over intellectualize this. Home group reminded me. Poetry, Sit
with it. Just important about what is arising out of the text is what is arising
out of us. So lets see what was arising out of them.
That is where our text fits in. Thats whats going on and is in the
minds of everyone.
Verse 1: The Light
V1: (a) Arise, Shine: Command. Eden. Tree. Eat!, Good
commands, Hard Work, not without reason
(b) for your light has come: Remember historical context,
Creation, your, Glory Weight, Apologetic
Creation
Light and Dark, part of Creation. Creation out of Darkness. It is good.
Darkness itself is chaos; nothingness. But darkness separated from and in
service to light is good.
Quick apologetic
Christian faith is the light through which/by which we see the world, not
impose it upon the world. It makes more sense from the inside than the
outside. It is not a separate reality, but an illuminated one.
Two poets
Two poets on Darkness and what we find in it. First, the Psalmist.
Second, Jay-Z, whos birthday is today and has a song named after this day:
Jesus turn
We can trust this promise because it is not just something in the future. A
down-payment has been made in the past.
Indian-feminist advocate and poet, Rupi Kaur. After writing poem after poem
about sexual violence against women and the deep trauma and distrust and
loss that come from that, there comes this little piece of light:
you look at me and cry
everything hurts
This is what we offer the world. Enter into the darkness of yourself and
others and society. Take hold of it as God has taken hold of you. And bring
the light of God. How?
Second, press into the darkness. Look for the little lights.
Conclusion
God brings Light alongside the Darkness, and in it we become
ourselves in the deepest and truest way. Light and Dark exist in the same
world, and in the same souls. All we can do is find ourselves in the
Nothingness, in the Gaze of our Beloved God.
This Advent, we meditate on a God who descended to the Darkness,
the Nothingness, so that dawn might break in our lives and the world, and he
could shine his glory upon us and invite us to arise into the light of his love.
So embrace the tension of the luminous darkness in the world and our
souls, confident that the light of Christ will draw us all the more deeply into
himself, our truest selves, and into the world itself.
So Liberti Church, may you do unto others as you would have
them do to us. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. AMEN.