Walking in the Dark

The First United Presbyterian Church

“Walking in the Dark”

Rev. Amy Morgan

December 15, 2019

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Luke 1:49b-55

"My soul magnifies the Lord,

 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

 51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

 54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,

 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

It was hilarious to watch. The youth group had set up an obstacle course, and one of our brave leaders volunteered to navigate it – blindfolded. The leader was given a few moments to look over the course and try to remember the path through it.

But the really funny part was that as soon as the blindfold went on, the youth started rearranging the obstacles. I know that a really good pastor (or a decent person, for that matter) would have stopped the kids and told them that wasn’t nice or fair.

But it was so funny. I couldn’t help but watch and laugh as the leader bumped into tables that hadn’t been there a moment ago and stumbled over pillows strewn across a path they thought was clear.

I tell this story because we typically hear Mary’s song with great seriousness and reverence. Perhaps we even hear a profound call to justice. The song has a fancy title, even: The Magnificat. Musical renditions of it inspire awe and deep contemplation.

But the truth is, Mary is doing exactly what those kids in my youth group did. She is rearranging the furniture on us.

Most of the time, we think we know how to navigate through the obstacles of life. If we get sick, we go to the doctor. If we need a new job, we update our resume. If the car breaks down, we take it to the mechanic. We know the lay of the land. We have learned how to avoid pitfalls and sidestep major catastrophes.

And we know this because we’ve been paying attention. We watch out for what has tripped up other people, and we avoid making those same mistakes. We observe how the world works – how people get ahead and what makes them fall behind - and we negotiate our lives accordingly.

But then we get blindsided. With an illness that can’t be cured. A gap in our employment that spirals into unmanageable financial crisis. A repair bill that far exceeds our means.

Or maybe it’s a move to a new place, or a new stage of life, or a new relationship. Even in a positive situation, we can suddenly find ourselves without our bearings, trying to find our way through life’s obstacles without a clear vision of where we’re going and what might get in our way.

And before we know it, we’re bumping into things we didn’t suspect were there and stumbling along paths we thought were clear. Old memories and long-forgotten resentments. Feelings of anger, anxiety, or depression. We’ve lost our way, and nothing is where we thought it was supposed to be.

And you know what Mary is doing? As she watches us stumble and totter around blind and helpless? She’s laughing.

And, unlike me, she has every right to.

First of all, Mary is not standing outside the obstacle course, watching the pieces move around on us. She’s been in this obstacle course all her life, and when she sings the song we heard today, she’s right in the thick of it. She’s an unwed, pregnant teenager. In a time and place where that could get you killed. At the very least, it ruined your life, and probably the life of your whole family. It definitely spelled ruin for the child you were carrying. Her life is one, big, oppressive, insurmountable obstacle.

But God does something amazing for Mary. In choosing her to be the theotokos, the God-bearer, God removes Mary’s blindfold. And in this miraculous experience, she is able to see that God has rearranged the furniture. The obstacles aren’t where they used to be – obstacles hindering the poor, the lowly, the hungry, the oppressed. Instead, they’ve shifted around. And now it is the proud, the rich, the powerful who have obstacles to overcome – obstacles they can’t see and don’t expect.

It’s a great, cosmic joke. And it’s hilarious to watch. And that is why she laughs and sings this song. It isn’t some grave, reverential dirge. It is slapstick comedy. It is a tea party on the ceiling.

Reinhold Niebuhr once preached that “Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer… The intimate relation between humor and faith is derived from the fact that both deal with the incongruities of our existence.”

There are plenty of folks in this congregation going through all kinds of obstacles that do not seem the least bit funny right now. People facing terrifying diagnoses, the death of loved ones, painful relationships, financial struggles, and more. We’re all walking in the dark, trying to get through some kind of obstacles. Obstacles that hurt when you run up against them or trip over them.

Mary’s laughter doesn’t make light of our pain. She’s not making fun of us. She’s laughing at the incongruity of our existence. And, in laughing, she seeks to transform our pain.

Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, said in a recent interview with Krista Tippett for her program, “On Being,” that “To move from grief, to mourning is to move from a place of sheer loss to a place of acknowledging the loss, and in mourning the permanence of the loss, it can’t be fixed, but also, it creates a space, in mourning, for you to make sacred the pain so that the rest of your life is transformed by it. It allows the possibility of a future, mourning does.”

There is almost always laughter at funerals. Especially, and most appropriately, when we are telling stories about the life of the person who has died. The incongruity of it alone is funny. We have stories of this person living. And now they’re dead. It’s absurd. Yes, it is painful and sad and difficult. But it also makes no sense. So much so that we sometimes just have to laugh.

And that laughter is mourning. It recognizes the permanence of our loss. Whether it is loss of a loved one or loss of purpose, loss of meaning or loss of our health, however we have lost our way along the obstacle course of life, the path to mourning comes through laughing at the ridiculousness, the incongruities of our existence. If we can laugh, we can mourn, making our pain sacred and allowing for the possibility of a future.

When we are blindly stumbling through the obstacles of life, when everything seems to be shifting around us, we can get stuck in grief. We can stop and simply refuse to move for fear of getting even more lost, of encountering more pain.

But Mary’s laughter transforms our grief into mourning. It reminds us that we may feel like there is nothing but pain ahead. But, in fact, there is a way through, there is a possibility of a future. Not in spite of the fact that things aren’t what they used to be, but because things aren’t what they used to be.

God is moving the furniture around. God chose a young woman with more obstacles than we can imagine to help create the path forward for all humanity. Her laughter is there to guide us as we walk in the dark. Her laughter is there to give us hope that one day God will pull the blindfold from our eyes, too, so that we can see what God is doing around us. And when that happens, there will be laughter.

There will be laughter at funerals when we see that the real incongruity is that we think a person’s life has ended when in fact it has begun anew. There will be laughter in hospital beds when we see the incongruity of the frailty of the body and the strength of the human spirit. There will be laughter in jail cells when we see the incongruity of the injustice of our systems and the freedom proclaimed by Jesus Christ. There will be laughter emanating from every lonely heart, every hungry belly, every overworked and underpaid body when we realize that the reign of God is all around us, and we have no idea how to navigate it because we think we know where things are and we are too proud to take off our blindfolds. 

I finally took pity on our volunteer youth leader. Not by letting him take off his blindfold, but by giving him a guide. One of the students was assigned to give him directions for where to go and what to do. It still didn’t make the course easy. He had to duck under things and climb over things he couldn’t see. And the kids kept changing the obstacles around. But he made it through eventually. And then he took off his blindfold. And he turned around. And he laughed. Harder than any of us. The incongruity of his experience, of what he thought was going on versus what was really happening around him, was hilarious.

So go ahead and laugh. At all of life’s incongruities. It is the beginning of prayer, the prelude to faith, the path to transformation. But let’s also remember to guide one another along through life’s shifting obstacles. Some of us have been through this course. We have taken off our blindfolds and seen how ridiculously hilarious it all is. And so we can help one another along as we walk in the dark together.

To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.