“What's In A Name: Dayspring”
The coming of Christ is the dawn of a new day
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Text: Luke 1:67-79
The psychiatric community tells us that very often stress accompanies personal and social change. Psychiatrists have to some extent quantified the extent to which that stress may have an impact on our lives, by looking at different transitions that we go through, and measuring precisely how stressful they can be. For indeed, who has gone through a divorce, moved, changed jobs, experienced illness, encountered a disaster in the world or witnessed the beginning of a war and not felt the power of that stress as it affects the body, mind and soul.
For those who face similar events simultaneously, the stress can be almost overwhelming. Change brings with it stress and strain. But that isn't always the case, as we have witnessed over the last week by looking into the eyes of the Georgians in Tblisi as they move into a new era, with Shevardnadze stepping down and democracy beginning. Looking into the faces who gathered in the streets, we would see that change for them was a source of joy, exhilaration and hope. Stress can be both positive and negative.
My friends, when we try to create something new or to change things in the world, we often feel those very stresses bearing down on us. Boris Pasternak, the great Russian writer who wrote during the 1950s, refused the Nobel Prize for Literature because of the oppression he felt under the Soviets. He felt that that particular regime was trying to create the “new man,” and he said: “We are in fact run over by the 'new man' in the wagon of his plans.”
You see, the Communist society wanted to create the “new man” and a new world, but in so doing they often ran over, crushed and impoverished people. Hence, the reason for the joy we see in the faces of the Georgians in Tblisi. When we try to create the “new person,” the “new man,” we are not always successful. When we tried to create the “new world order,” which many of us anticipated many years ago would bring a time of unparalleled peace, prosperity and joy, it to some extent brought many good things, but it also led to disorder and chaos, and we're all feeling the stresses of that every day of our lives when we read the news.
Even those who founded this New World - this North America - have found that maybe it is not all that it was endeavoured to be. In his book Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Copeland, who writes about Generation X, has a wonderful line: “The New World isn't new anymore.” Oh, we try to create the new, we try to fabricate our world and turn it into something good, but often stresses come that are hard to bear.
I think in many ways, the time of Christmas has become the same thing. We have lost the sense of newness that Zechariah felt in this morning's passage. Here Zechariah was singing to his baby son, who would grow up to be John the Baptist, who was to lead the way for the coming of the Messiah. The language within it is vibrant and excited. It is full of vitality - God is going to do something great and his son, John the Baptist, is going to announce it.
In this famous passage that we know as the “Benedictus,” John the Baptist is being told by his father that a new era is coming. The language, particularly in the King James version stresses this so beautifully: “The dayspring from on high hath visited us.” Another translation of that is, “A new dawn will visit us,” and it will visit us in the coming of the Messiah, in the coming of Jesus and John the Baptist is going to point the way and prepare the people for His arrival. Can you not feel that sense of excitement, that sense of vitality - God is doing something new.
That is why it astounds me that over 2,000 years have passed and in many ways the shine has worn off and the dayspring - the new dawn - has dulled almost to the point of being an evening with a setting sun. Christmas has become old hat, as it were, and is like North America - the New World that isn't so new anymore. So, I ask myself, “How do we as the people of God recapture that vision of John the Baptist?” How can we have that sense of excitement that his father Zechariah had as we approach Christmas? How do we experience again the dayspring from on high?
Well, I think we have to go back to the two very simple things that Zechariah saw the dayspring doing. First, it was ushering in a new dawn in our relationship with God. Zechariah put it so beautifully:
To give knowledge of salvation unto his people, by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
You see, for Zechariah there was joy in believing that sins were going to be forgiven. I know that we don't like to talk about sin - that's sort of the “dark days of religion,” many of us feel. But the reality is, despite the fact that we don't think that talking about sin is de rigeur, many people are experiencing its power in their lives. They are experiencing the hold of its guilt and living with a sense of darkness, and wondering how they can get out. They wonder how they can be freed from temptation's allure, how they can live as free people in a relationship with God that has a sense of joy and love.
My friends, there are many, many more people than we wish to count who feel the power and the burden of sin in their lives, and when they do it is like darkness. That is why on most Sundays here at Eaton Memorial, we begin our service with the confession of sin, the assurance of pardon and the glory of the doxology - the praise. We do it because we know that we are entering into a new relationship where we put our sins behind us and come with a sense of forgiveness, joy and light into the presence of Almighty God.
Sometimes it is good to be able to unburden ourselves of our sins. What Zechariah saw was that the dayspring - the new dawn of Christ's coming - lifted the burden off people, lifted that feeling of oppression and gave them the opportunity to enjoy the power of God. Now, that does not mean that we should be a people always going around confessing our sins at every single turn.
Rainie Chisholm tells a story of when she taught Sunday School. She once asked a little girl about forgiveness: “Can you give me an example, dear, of when you want to ask for forgiveness of your sins?”
The little girl just sat there for a while, bemused and quite worried, with nothing coming to her mind. Then her brother piped up and said: “It's all right, Laura, you don't have to tell because you're not on Oprah Winfrey.”
You don't have to continually unburden yourself. My goodness, there are more sins confessed on Oprah Winfrey than in any church in the nation on any given week! We don't need to do that over and over and over again, because of the dayspring on high who has taken those sins and removed them.
One of my favourite writers and one of the great influences in my life, as many of you will know, is Fyodor Dostoyevsky. During the reign of Czar Nicholas the First, Dostoyevsky, along with a number of others, resisted his regime and was arrested and sentenced to death. He was taken to the firing range and strapped to a pole with a bag over his head. As the command for execution was about to be given, a horseman rode in from the dark bearing a note of reprieve from the Czar. Just as the guns were about to fire, the bag was lifted off Dostoyevsky's head and he was untied and placed on a train to Siberia.
Dostoyevsky never got over the cruelty of that moment. On the train, a woman gave him a copy of the New Testament, and it was the only thing he had to read during 10 years of confinement in Siberia. He describes his encounter with Jesus Christ in this magnificent book called the New Testament. He felt: “as if a new day had dawned in his life.”
The bitterness and hatred that he had for his enemies, the sin and temptation that he felt in prison were somehow washed away by the power of Christ, so much so that he said, “If it was ever proved to me that Jesus Christ is not truth and I had to make a choice between the truth and Jesus Christ, even then I would choose Christ.” Why? Because for Dostoyevsky it was Christ who gave him his soul's new day and his chance to begin again.
My friends, there are many people who need that sense of joy in their lives, who need that sense of release in their lives. A new relationship with God - yes, a new relationship with God - a new dawn, like a new day from the dayspring from on high who has visited us. That's what Christmas is about.
It is also about a new relationship with each other. Maybe this is something we should dwell on, on this Outreach Sunday. I think it is fair to say that many of us become cynical even about the power of the dayspring and the new dawn, when we see the darkness in the world around us, when we see what has been happening over the last couple of weeks in Afghanistan or in our own neighbourhood, not some distant place, when we read about the death of a 12-year-old boy and the violence that resides in the hearts of many of his peers. Children maliciously at war with other children. When I think of the state of many of the poorest of the poor within our city and the ignominy, the poverty and the oppression under which they live, I think I can understand the darkness that comes upon people.
When they wake each day they do not see the dawn as a dawn of opportunity, they see it as one of simple survival. When people are living like that they need some hope. The church of Jesus Christ for 2,000 years has taken the words of Zechariah to heart. We haven't always practised them, God only knows. We haven't always been faithful to them, Jesus knows, but they are still the truth. Zechariah wrote that the purpose of the dayspring was to give light to those who sit in darkness, and “to guide our feet in the ways of peace.”
Now, the word “peace” here is better translated into the Hebrew as the word shalom. Shalom is God's wholeness, God's will and intention for the world before sin ever reared its ugly head. God's harmony, God's grace, God's peace at work, where there was harmony between people and God and harmony amongst people and within their souls. There was a moment in time when, after the exile, the Israelites recaptured the vision of shalom and believed that if they were going to build a new Jerusalem they must build it on the basis of that love, that justice, that hope that only comes from God - the peace of shalom.
Zechariah looked into his son's eyes and said: You're going to prepare the way for shalom. You are going to pave the way from the dayspring on high. You are going to bring about a new dawn.
My friends, the church of Jesus Christ for 2,000 years has believed that it's a new people. We can only be a new people if we understand the power of the dayspring working in our lives and when the power of the dayspring works in our lives the world changes.
I've been reading something I haven't read for quite some time: How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I feel like a child whenever I read this. (You're probably all thinking, “Well, you must read it often!”) When I read this, I sense there's something powerful going on. I can identify with the Grinch, because I think the Grinch is like a lot of ministers. We look at Whoville - the world - and we see that everyone is enjoying themselves. They are busily buying presents and they are caught up in the materialism of Christmas and, like the green-faced Grinch, we look at them and say, “Isn't this terrible, people are enjoying themselves and buying things! This is just awful, this is crass materialism.” But we all do it. I do it.
But I feel like the Grinch and sometimes I feel like taking gifts away from people in order that they can be purer and better and concentrate on the real meaning of Christmas. (Of course I would hoard the gifts for myself, but that's another point.) But I feel like the Grinch sometimes and I look down on Whoville and wonder what on earth is the meaning of Christmas. Well, the Grinch did that and he stole the gifts - but he was surprised, because:
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow...
But the sound wasn't sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!
Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
”It came without packages, boxes or bags!“
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
”Maybe Christmas,“ he thought, ”doesn't come from a store.
“Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!”
The Grinch realizes that the sled full of gifts is going to fall over the cliff and he risks his life to make sure it doesn't. And when he thinks he can't do it, he begins to cry, and as the tears pour out of him he thinks that he is leaking, because he's never cried before and he doesn't know what the tears are. And then the most telling moment: The sun begins to rise behind him and a beam of light falls upon the Grinch and he is forever changed. It's the new dawn of realizing what Christmas is all about. It's realizing that it's about Christ and the dayspring and a world that desperately needs people to love it as the dayspring loves it.
This morning we say farewell to the ministry of The Reverend John Harries and we will have an opportunity to say a few words to him personally a little later on. But I've thought over the last few days about what the dayspring and joy mean and I remember that just over three years ago, when my mother died, it was John who wrote me the most beautiful letter that I think I've ever received in my life, so beautiful that I read it at my mother's funeral. But then, as the days went on and sunset was followed by a new day and many more sunsets and many more new days and six months passed and we approached Christmas, there was a knock on the door and it was John again, just popping into my home to see if I was going to be all right on this first Christmas without my mother. I felt as if somehow a new dawn had come - a light, a hope in the midst of definite feelings of darkness.
The Christian faith, the Christian ministry, the Christmas Gospel, the message of Zechariah, the new dawn is about precisely what John did. It is bringing the word of hope when there is darkness, the word of peace when there is conflict, the word of charity in the midst of poverty, the word of shalom when the dayspring on high has visited us. May He visit you this Advent. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.