Transcript
Through the written word, and the spoken word, may we know your Living Word, Jesus, Christ our Savior. Amen.
Ready or not, Daylight Savings Time has ended. The evenings are drawing in. We don’t need a calendar to tell us what our eyes can plainly see: daylight dwindles, night grows. Thankfully, we do have a calendar, which means we can pinpoint precisely the moment when the darkness of this season will begin to recede–it will happen right about the time we celebrate the birth of Christ. Because we live according to two calendars. First, there is our common calendar that names what we can plainly see with our eyes. We are heading into the shorter days and longer nights of winter. But then there is our second calendar, the one that shapes our worship in the church, and on that calendar November 1st, the Feast of All Saints, which we observe together today, marks the beginning of a very special period of time.
The Anglican writer Maggie Ross has called this period from All Saints on November 1st to the Presentation of Our Lord or Candlemas on February 2nd, “the church’s Night Office.” If you know the rhythm of daily prayer kept in monastic communities for centuries, then you know that the Night Office, like Morning prayer or Evening prayer, is a set time for prayer, but the Night Office, traditionally, was midnight prayer. Those in monasteries who kept the Night Office offered prayers in the deepest dark.
I promise I will not ask you to set an alarm for midnight prayer. Yet I think those Christians who prayed faithfully in the depths of the night were receiving a gift we also should desire to receive. They were learning to see in the dark. They were learning to see with eyes of faith. And the dark—whether it is the midnight of each day, the winter midnight of each year, or those dark nights of the soul, those midnights of hardship and suffering that can visit us even when the weather is bright—well, darkness can be the making of us. In the dark, the real and the metaphorical dark, with eyes of faith wide open, we can see things of God that cannot be seen in any other way. Job told us this was so, didn’t he? As we heard in last week’s wonderful sermon from Bishop Emmanuel.
Now, what do I mean by “learning to see in the dark,” well there is a word we find in Scripture that can help us with this, but for those of us reading in English, we only find this word in certain translations. In a King James Bible, you’ll find this word 1,298 times. In the Revised Standard Version, you’ll find this word 1,100 times. If you open an NIV or New International Version, a translation we do love to use here at Good Sam, you’ll only find this word used once. The word—now that I’ve hopefully stirred up your curiosity—is this: “Behold.” In translations that use it, we find that the very first word God speaks to his newly created humans is Behold: in Genesis 1:29 we read, “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.’” In other words, God is saying to us, “Look—really look and see and comprehend—I am your God, and I will feed you.” That kind of seeing sets us on the path of life. That kind of seeing helps us live without fear.
Of course, “behold” is an archaic word. It’s an antique. We don’t use it in our ordinary lives any longer. So why should we use it in our Bibles? And many wise translators have decided we don’t need it. Sometimes they translate the Hebrew and Greek as “see.” Sometimes they just leave it out altogether. But if we can hold onto this word behold, I think it can help us hold on to a special way of seeing. Throughout Scripture, when God or his angelic messengers say, “Behold” they are reminding us that it is possible to see in the dark. It is possible to see invisible things, like the kingdom of heaven. When God says “Behold,” he’s saying “open your eyes,” “pay attention,” but also, he’s saying, “Sit with this wonder. Really look at it. Hold it in your gaze. Meditate on it. Behold, and you’ll be changed.” You’ve heard “seeing is believing,” but this is more: this is seeing is believing and being changed by what we have gazed upon.
And so let’s try it today. Right now. With today’s Scripture readings before us, let us behold three things. Because these three things can utterly change our experience of darkness. First, this: Behold! Jesus weeps. As we read in the gospel of John today, Jesus’s friend Lazarus has died. His sister is full of sorrow and questions. God is with them, in the flesh. The very God who could have stopped this awful thing from happening. And God is crying. Behold, the tears of God.
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In today’s reading from Revelation, we hear “a great voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.” God has shown us that a day is coming when there will be no more tears. No more death. Behold, the former things are passing away.
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Today, on the Feast of All Saints, we behold the great cloud of witnesses. We remember heroes of the faith. We remember those ordinary saints who passed the faith on to us. And most importantly, we remember that the dead in Christ are not dead but live in the presence of God. As we profess in the words of the Apostles Creed, we believe in the communion of saints which means that we believe in our belonging to one another. We may know loneliness, but we are never alone. Behold!
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We have seen that God cries with us. We have seen that God is making everything right. We believe that God has not abandoned his own to the grave. As we enter the dark of these coming months, as we journey from All Saints through Advent and on to Christmastide and Epiphany, let us not forget to behold. As we worship, as we read Scripture, in our daily prayers, may we see more and more deeply because we see with eyes of faith.
I know I said we would behold three things; but here is an extra, a special fourth: Behold. The next generation of the saints of God. We belong to them. They belong to us. Together, we are Christ’s own.
Our Father, thank you for helping us to see the reality that lies beyond our time-bound world. Thank you that you have knit each one of us together in our mother’s wombs and have also knit us together with saints past and saints future into one communion in the mystical body of your Son Our Savior, Jesus Christ. Come then, Lord, and help your people, bought with the price of your own blood, and bring us with your saints to glory everlasting. And while we wait, here in the dark, help us always to keep our gaze on YOU. For you are near to the brokenhearted. You are near to us. Amen.
