Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My! Psalm 139:7-12 & John 1:1-5 October 29, 2017 ~ Pastor Jo Ramsey Who can forget the movie The Wizard of Oz? There are so many vivid scenes and songs We can picture Dorothy s red slippers and her little dog, Toto. Envision munchkin land and the yellow brick road. We can practically hear the tunes Somewhere Over the Rainbow and We re Off To See the Wizard. I remember watching the Wizard of Oz with my cousins on Thanksgiving back when there were three TV channels and no dvd players. It was a rare treat reserved for my grandparents basement rec-room. To me, it was full of thrills and chills...i mean you ve got that wicked Miss Gulch who threatens to steal Toto and the terrifying twister, where Dorothy s whole family disappears climbing into the storm shelter without her. Then, there are the horrible flying monkeys and the wicked witch of the west. They aren t friendly. Eventually, Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz, who seems pretty formidable himself.
In between, Dorothy must make a perilous journey on the yellow brick road full of scary encounters. Remember those terrible trees throwing apples? Later, Dorothy enters a dark and creepy forest with her friends. The tin man warns them that it s probably full of lions and tigers and bears. Dorothy exclaims, Oh my! Soon, as if to bolster themselves and propel themselves forward, they begin chanting and marching together. Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! In just a few steps, they face their greatest fear! A roaring lion. who turns out to be cowardly! They had nothing to be afraid of after all, or did they? The Wizard of Oz is tame compared to the movies we watch today. We like spine tingling thrillers and spooky suspense movies---well, most people do. What s your favorite? It, with the scary clown, certainly seems to have hit a nerve. Who can forget The Blair Witch Project and Silence of the Lambs? I didn t sleep for three weeks after I saw The Shining, and never even bothered with Friday, the 13 th. I still think Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock was one of the best scary movies ever. How about you? We ve nearly arrived at Halloween---a holiday dedicated to all things scary and spooky. We like our haunted houses, costumes, candy and trick or treat. It all started 2000 years ago, when Celtic peoples began celebrating Samhain on November 1 st. Samhain marked the end of harvest and beginning of winter, when the veil between this world and the other world was open. The night before, the Celts believed the spirits of the dead returned as ghosts and roamed around. People would leave food and wine of their doorsteps to please them and keep them at bay. And if they had to go out, they d wear masks so the ghosts would mistake them for fellow ghosts. By the 8 th century, Christian church had adopted November 1 st as All Saints Day, a day to celebrate those who have passed away. And many of the Samhain traditions continued on what they called All Hallow s Eve, or Halloween. This includes traditions such as souling which involve going door to door begging for soul cakes in exchange for prayers or guising, when children would dress up and go door to door, telling jokes and reciting poetry for treats. They carried carved turnips to scare off ghosts.
We love Halloween. This year, Americans will spend a whopping $9.1 billion on Halloween--$3.4 billion on costumes, $2.7 billion on candy and the same on decorations, $4 billion on greeting cards. Halloween is now the 2 nd most commercial holiday behind Christmas. Why do we celebrate the darkness and fear? Mainly, because It s fun! And with all the lights in our world, and the cars and the busyness, we rarely walk in dark, sleep out under the stars, sit quietly by a fire in the dark. We don t get enough dark. Scaring ourselves can be great when we ve chosen to do so when we ve gone to scary movie or haunted house or we re telling ghost stories around a campfire. It gives us a big rush and makes us feel alive but ultimately, we re still in control. It s the stuff we cannot control that s truly scary, and there s plenty of that to go around. From worries about our world threats from other countries, like North Korea, to environmental fears, like the melting ice shield or natural disasters--- to fears for our children, that someone will hurt them or take advantage of them, that they ll succumb to the temptations of drugs or alcohol--- to anxieties about ourselves, that we ll get cancer or Alzheimers or run out of money, that we ll be abandoned, that somehow, if people really knew us, they wouldn t love us anymore. Even kids have fears---that a monster s under the bed, that their parents could split up, that they ll get lost in a big store. Our fears are very personal and particular to our own situation and they go way beyond being afraid of the dark. The writers of the Bible knew a lot about fear and darkness. From Genesis to Revelation, darkness is used a synonym for ignorance and sin and evil and death. Our Old Testament lesson this morning. Psalm 139, includes the Hebrew word for darkness, choshek. Chosek appears 98 time in the Old Testament. It can literally means night, obscurity or darkness, and figuratively, signifies misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow, wickedness, distress, dread, evil, sin. In our passage, we learn that God can see in the dark. It has no power over him. He finds us, even when we flee there or find ourselves there.
The Greek word for darkness appears in our New Testament passage from John 1, skotia. Again, it can mean the actual night, or things unseen, done in private, but usually it means ignorance or immorality, and their miserable consequences. John understands that the light of Jesus shines in the darkness and it will not be overcome by it. In her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor notes, Christianity has never has anything nice to say about darkness, Because of this, Taylor says the church is tempted to promote a full solar spirituality that focuses on staying in the light of God around the clock. But she says the faithful need to discover a lunar spirituality, which recognizes that humans need both darkness and the divine light. She suggests that the Bible includes a minority report. Darkness isn t always bad. Many stories are set at night or include darkness. In Genesis, God makes all of creation from the dark. In Exodus, God promises to come to Moses on Mount Sinai in a dark cloud. Abraham meets God in the darkness. Jacob wrestles an angel in the middle of the night. Angels announce Christ s birth to the shepherds at night. The Magi follow the star to Bethlehem. Jesus meets Nicodemus in the after sunset. Mary comes to the garden before dawn, and meets the resurrected Jesus. There s so much that happens in the dark that is essential to the Christian story. We understand instinctively that darkness can be scary or soothing. It can be disorienting and disturbing or restful and refreshing. It is mysterious and exciting.. It s everything we do not know, cannot control, and scares us. But God is there in the dark with us. We can trust that God sees us and is not overwhelmed. The great hope in the Christian message is not that we will be rescued from the dark, but if we are able to trust God in the darkness, we may discover what seems like an end may be a new beginning. All of us live through seasons of darkness. During these "dark nights of the soul" we are vulnerable, and much more likely to allow God's Spirit to speak to us in profound ways. That s when transformation can take place -- even in the dark. So we must not fear periods of darkness in life. They are often a doorway to a new phase of life, a threshold, an invitation to move on from where we are to where there is more for us to learn. It isn t easy. Most of us prefer what we might call the the sunny uplands of experience, when health, happiness and success abound. But we learn far more about God and life and ourselves in the darkness of fear and failure than we ever learn in the sunshine. The darkness, thank God, passes. But what we learn in the darkness, we possesses forever. Isaiah 45 says, I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord.
Taylor puts it this way, New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark. God is with us in the dark. He is sovereign over the darkness. We must trust that the dawn will come. Our challenge is learning to walk in the darkness. Howard Chapman, who grew up with missionary parents in Sierra Leone, West Africa, shares an experience that helped him learn to navigate these dark. He says, Flashlights were very important to us. You never walked anywhere at night without a flashlight. First of all, there were no streetlights, so you needed a flashlight to keep from tripping and falling. But the other problem was snakes, deadly venomous snakes that were nocturnal, hunting at night. If you stepped on a cobra or a black mamba and it bit you, you could be dead in a matter of minutes. I remember one night, Chapman says, walking with my mother along a path. It was very dark. I was only about 5 or 6, and I kept bugging my mother to let me carry the flashlight. She finally agreed, but told me that it was not a toy and that we needed to be careful because of snakes. That kind of freaked me out a little and made me nervous. I started shining the light off into the underbrush and tall grasses at the side of the path. My mother did not put up with that for very long. She snatched the light away from me and asked me what I thought I was doing. "Looking for snakes," I told her. "No," she said, "we are not looking for snakes. We are looking at the path ahead. As long as there is nothing ahead of us we keep walking. If we see something, we stop. It will be afraid of the light and will go off into the dark. When it is safe, we go on. But the light must always shine on the path ahead." Jesus said, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." Jesus lights up the path directly in front of us, showing us when it is safe to take the next step. Sometimes we get impatient with that. We get distracted and overwhelmed by our fears. We stare intently into the underbrush terrified by the dangers that might be there. But Jesus is there, saying to us Look this way! I am with you. Wait here for now, or Your next step is safe. Come on. Follow me."
You are never alone not in the daylight. Not in the nighttime. Not when you re trick or treating, or sick and weeping. There may lions or tigers or bears, but God is with us on the journey. He can use the darkness to bring new life. All we need to do is trust Him and put one foot in front of another. And then one day, God will lead us into the light and we ll find ourselves saying, there s no place like home. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.