"Stargazing" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | December 31, 2023
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
When I was a kid, my family had a tradition of going camping every summer at Yosemite National Park. We set up our campsite with cousins, aunts and uncles, and at the center of it all was a large tarp where we would roll out our sleeping bags and sleep under the stars. One of my most cherished memories from childhood is that snapshot image of the stars in Yosemite at night: the pine trees making an irregular frame for the dark blue sky and the scatter of stars above. I still think of Yosemite as the most holy place I have ever been, though a part of me wonders: Who are we, human beings, to call one place more holy that another? Perhaps it’s the memories themselves that are sacred.
When I was around ten years old, I began to have trouble seeing those stars. You might suspect the usual culprits: smoke or smog or light pollution. But in this case there was a very ordinary explanation. That was the summer before I learned I was nearsighted, and needed glasses to see.
From that summer on I would still watch the stars at night. But I would have to decide when I was done, fold up my glasses, and tuck them into a case in my sleeping bag for when I went to sleep. It took away from the magic of it all, just a little bit, but I try to remember that all of it is a gift: the trees on the ground, and the stars in the sky, and my eyes, and even my glasses (thank God for glasses). All of it is a gift. All of it is grace.
Today, as we gather for worship, we are still in the season of Christmas. We are still in this season where we celebrate God’s generous gift of becoming human, and living among us in the person of Jesus. In his sermon on Christmas Eve, Luk described the light that of Christ that came into the world on Christmas. He reminded us to look up to the stars and remember that light; to appreciate how the light of God shines through the darkness. When the world feels dark and hopeless, in the midst of war and confusion, in the midst of grief and loneliness—the light of Christ still shines. Look up at the stars: that was one of the messages that I heard loud and clear in Luk’s Christmas sermon. Look up at the stars, and remember the light of Christ.
But what do you do when you look up, and can’t see the stars anymore? What about those times when we are nearsighted, metaphorically speaking? When the glasses are packed up and tucked away and all we can see is shadows, and a faint glow of sky? It is all too easy to be spiritually nearsighted, these days. There is so much to look at right in front of us that can sow seeds of fear or doubt: war, gun violence, mistrust of “the other,” environmental crisis, politics. All of these things in the foreground tend to block out that deeper spiritual vision that connects us to God. We lose sight of the light of God’s grace that has shone forth from the beginning of time, and is shining still.
Now, I think it is natural for our faith to ebb and flow. It is a normal, and even healthy thing for there to be times when we feel the love of God so clearly, and other times when our faith recedes into the background. To keep with the celestial metaphor, I think our faith is like the moon. While the moon waxes and wanes, with the face of the moon reflecting more or less light, the light of the sun is always there. It is always the same.
The author Flannery O’Connor, who wrote grim stories of the American South in the mid-20th century, picked up on this same imagery of the moon in her prayer journal. Flannery O’Connor, a devout Catholic and deeply thoughtful person, wrote these words:
“Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.” [1]
In O’Connor’s private writings, she worries about herself getting in the way of the light of God—I think that is something we can all relate to. She goes on to talk about how her desires for professional success, and her expectations about faith (couched in phrases like “I must” or “I should”) get in the way of a deeper, more authentic faith. She wrote these words, as a prayer to God: “Please help me to get down under things and find where You are.”
Sometimes it is ourselves—our egos, our aspirations, our frailty, our unsureness—that gets in the way of faith. But sometimes it is a combination of ourselves and the world around us; the world that seems to conspire to block out the light of God. My prayer is so often the very same as those words that Flannery O’Connor prayed: “Please help me to get down under things and find where You are.” Please help me to see the moon in all its fullness. Please help me to see the stars that shine all the way across the galaxy to reach me, one single person who is so deeply loved by God.
Sometimes we need to put on our glasses to see the stars. Sometimes we need a little help to feel the wonder; to feel the warmth of God’s love again. For me, there are a couple of different pairs of glasses that help me see God more clearly. One of them is tradition. The hymns, the prayers, the creeds, the beautiful churches our spiritual ancestors built—all of these things help me move past my nearsightedness to see God more clearly. Another set of glasses that helps me see God is time spent with the people that I love. I know that those glasses can sometimes get foggy—because families and friendships are complicated. But I still believe that we can see the love of God more clearly when we experience the love of other human beings: family, friends and neighbors. Another set of glasses that helps me to see God more clearly is simply looking out of a window. All too often in life we are spiritually nearsighted because we are literally looking at our computers, or our phones, or the kitchen sink that is full of dirty dishes. We forget to look up, to look out. Look out of your window at the trees, or the cars, or even the cracks in the sidewalk, and reconnect with the gift that it is to be alive.
The words of scripture are another set of lenses through which we can see God more clearly. Today’s passage from the Gospel of John, from which we get that image of light, is particularly helpful to read and recite over and over again. These opening verses are sometimes called the “Hymn to the Word,” because they are written in a poetic format distinct from the rest of the Gospel of John. Many scholars believe these words predate the Gospel, originating as a kind of hymn spoken and memorized by early Christians [2]. It’s likely that early followers of Jesus returned to these words again and again, as a kind of creed or statement of faith to shore them up through difficult times.
While I value the creeds that we have—the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed most notably, creations of the fourth and fifth centuries—I also love the idea of returning to the first chapter of John as an alternative creed that contains the core pieces of our Christian faith. This Hymn to the Word is a kind of cosmic creed that relies more on symbols than historical moments in the life of Jesus. These words inspire us to take a long view; a deep view: a view as deep as the stars in the sky:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Try saying those words over and over again.
We might not always see the stars in the sky, or the light of the sun as reflected in the moon. But that light is always with us. And the light of Christ is always with us. I’m sure the coming year will be full of highs and lows. I’m sure it will be full of periods of faith and doubt. Remember to look up to the stars. Remember to seek God through a different lens, when your eyes grow dim. And remember to take these words with you into the new year: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Amen.
[1] Flannery O’Connor. A Prayer Journal (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).
[2] M. Eugene Boring, An Introduction to the New Testament: History, Literature, Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012).