The Language of Advent
I love the season of Advent - the sanctuary decked in vibrant blues; moody, contemplative hymns; the anticipation that builds as the weeks move toward Christmas. During this season, many of our hymns and appointed Scripture readings utilize the imagery of light and darkness. This imagery carries layers of meaning - day and night, illumination and shadow, understanding and ignorance, happiness and sadness, good and evil. To our modern ears, the language of light and darkness also conveys tone and color, and specifically race and skin color. As the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney wrote, “However neutral those words were in the scriptures, [in] our world they have been mapped onto human flesh with evil intent.”
As a culture, we are becoming more attentive to language that intentionally or unintentionally causes harm or further isolates marginalized groups. Many of us have moved to use more expansive language for humanity and, in the church, for God. We are being made aware of language that is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist, and are choosing, to varying degrees, to do the work of using different words.
We are a culture steeped in white supremacy, and, as individuals, the intersections of our identities and life experiences give us varying layers of privilege. In this cultural landscape, white people have centered ourselves and our own experiences, often not noticing the struggles of others until they affect us.
As the church, though, we are called by God to be different. We are called to notice, and attend to, people at the margins. We are called to love our neighbor, which we cannot do apart from listening to what our neighbors actually need.
Our neighbors who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color have said that it is harmful to come to worship and hear that “children of darkness” are evil, while “children of light” are good, or to sing “let the light banish darkness.”
It is tempting to brush off these requests as “political correctness.” It’s challenging to make changes to things that are beloved in our personal traditions. Rather than view this work through the lens of restriction or loss, it may be helpful to focus on the ways attending to our language and using a greater diversity of imagery actually expands our understanding of God, Scripture, and the world around us.
In the season of Advent, there is such depth and richness to be found in the metaphors of light and darkness, particularly when we understand they are not binary, but rather complementary. As Dr. Gafney shared in a tweet, “I have come to appreciate Advent so much more without the light/dark binary. Rather, I see darkness as the generative space in which light is conceived and from which it is born. Both holy, both life-giving.”
Darkness is a place of mystery and expectation. It is the place where hope lives. It is in darkness that gestation and growth take place - deep in the soil or nestled in the womb. Darkness provides space for much-needed rest, and relief from the bright sun and scorching heat. In the beginning, God’s creative work happened within the darkness that covered the face of the deep. Our Savior’s birth was announced at night, twinkling stars shining brighter because of the darkness of the sky. Under cover of darkness, the Holy Family found safe passage to Egypt.
As you prepare for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, there are many ways to attend to this language. The simplest, perhaps, is to invite yourself and others into the practice of noticing where binary uses of light/dark show up in the hymns, prayers, and liturgy. What messages might this language convey? Are there other words that better express the meaning you intend?
Some alternative words for “light” include illumination, brilliance, dawn, brightness, radiance, clarity, divine spark, and glow. Other words to use in place of “darkness” are gloom, shadow, bleakness, obscurity, dusk, twilight, shade, and hiddenness. These words bring to mind different images, which may offer new insights about the text. An example of these alternative words can be found in the Christmas Eve liturgy written by members of the Disrupt Worship Project. The Christmas Proclamation reads:
The people have stumbled in the abyss for so long but now have their paths illuminated. For those dwelling in a land of deep shadows, radiance shines forth.
In the beginning, when the world was in chaos, the divine Spirit hovered over the waters. In that same beginning, there was the Word; and the Word was in God’s presence, and the Word was God.
God brought forth the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night and declared them to be good.
In the fullness of time, the Word, that divine shine, put on flesh to stay among us. And we saw the Word’s glory, filled with grace, filled with truth.
In Jesus, brilliance illuminated the world, and the shadows did not overcome it.
We have been given the gift of glow. Sometimes it is a flicker and sometimes it is a blaze, but the divine shine is within us; it is what we carry into the world.
The places of shadows and stumbling yearn for the radiant beams we carry, this holy night.
As we anticipate God’s coming into the world, we keep awake, ever mindful of God’s call to love our neighbor. It is for this reason that we attend to our language, and work to express with depth and richness the fullness of God’s love for the whole world.
Additional Resources:
Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor
God’s Holy Darkness, Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick. illustrated by Nikki Faison
“Joyful is the Dark” All Creation Sings hymn 1096
Embracing the Light & the Darkness in the Age of Black Lives Matter, Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
ADJ Webinar “The Language of Advent.” swpasynod.org/ministries/diversity
Pastor Kerri Clark
Associate Pastor of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, McMurray
rev.kerri.clark@gmail.com | 724-941-7467