2020.12.24 | Let It Shine!
“Let It Shine!”
The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, CA
Christmas Eve 2020
John 1:1-5 (NRSV)
Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on the injustices of our world, and Christmas 2020 is no exception.
In fact, Christmas 2020 might offer the penultimate example of light shining in the darkness, and highlighting the stark disparities between rich and poor, fed and hungry, housed and homeless, white and darker, colonizers and indigenous, temporarily able- bodied and persons with different abilities, the followers of Christ, and followers of every other prophet and deity known to humanity. And the list goes on.
Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on the injustices of our world, because the Christmas message projects God’s vision of how things ought to be right next to the way things really are, and so doing, illustrate the profoundly skewed nature of the two.
II
Consider, for example, the bright light that Isaiah’s words shone on our world--and how far off the mark we find ourselves from the vision that God told that Ancient Israelite prophet to share in chapters 11 and 61:
Isaiah 11: 6-ff
The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Isaiah 61: 20-25
No more shall there be..an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime
They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat;...
They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord...
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mount, says the Lord.
III
Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on the injustices of our world, and it has a way of revealing how racial injustices, health disparities, and environmental crises are so woven together that it is virtually impossible to know where one social sin begins and the other ends.
This is because the prophetic light that shines through the Christmas story and reveals the truth that the darker your skin, the lower your wages, and the iffier your immigration status, the more likely you are to test positive for COVID-19, get sick with the virus, live in substandard housing near an environmental superfund, lose your job because you aren’t able to report for work, spread the virus because you live in close quarters with a lot of other people who are in the same boat as you, and die before your time.
Every media outlet in the United States has carried stories about the heroism of our first responders (including firefighters, ambulance drivers, and law enforcement personnel), healthcare workers (including nurses, doctors, technicians, and aids), and school teachers and allied workers (many of whom are of Anglo and East Asian descent), and their heroism is to be applauded and emulated.
And at the same time, part of our confession as a society today is that too little mention has been made of frontline workers who labor on farms and ranches to raise the commodities we need, transport them to market, prepare and serve the food we eat, and scour the packing plants and packing sheds where livestock is butchered, produce is processed, and food is cooked and served--and by whom? Answer: low wage, workers of Latinx, African American, and Pacific Island descent.
IV
Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on the injustices of our world, and calling us to account, but that is not all. The Christmas message also shines a light on the path from where we are to where we need to go. And this light, which is the light of Christ, is so bright that those who see it and follow it can not miss it or stray from its course.
Consider the example of Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer, who was born October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves, and the twentieth and last child born to Jim and Ella Townsend. Her parents were share- croppers, who primarily raised cotton in Sunflower County, Mississippi.
Fanie Lou married a sharecropper named “Pap” Hamer. They worked in the fields together, where she also served as a timekeeper and in the landlord's house where she worked as a domestic.
In the 1950s, Hamer began attending political meetings, and in 1962 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to her town, she learned at one of their organizing meetings that African Americans had a constitutional right to vote, and she was moved to register to vote the next day. She knew that this would be a dangerous decision, but she did it anyway
When Hamer and others went by bus to the Montgomery County Courthouse the next day, they were immediately taken to jail and beaten. Hamer suffered long-term psychological effects, permanent kidney damage, and partial blindness from the beatings she received in the jail that day.
After she was released, she was thrown off the plantation, received threats and was shot at; but Fannie Lou Hamer was deterred. She was on a mission. She was shining a light on social injustice, and she was inspiring others to let their lights shine.
Fanie Lou Hamer became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote. She went on to co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), and in 1964 her group challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention to admit persons of color to their delegation--and won.
Hamer was invited with the rest of the MFDP officers to address the Convention's Credentials Committee about their concerns and later the entire Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. She described for conventioneers in the hall and for millions of TV viewers the ways that African-Americans in many states were being prevented from voting on account of illegal testing, poll taxes, and intimidation tactics.
At the end of her speech, Hamer began singing a song that many of us learned in childhood: “This Little Light of Mine.” It became her “signature song” in the civil rights movement. Many people were moved to join in the singing with her on the floor of the convention that day, and more importantly, many were strengthened in the struggle by her witness.
As a result of Hamer’s courage, two delegates of the MFDP were given speaking rights at the Democratic Convention that year, and the others were seated as honorable guests. This decision unleashed a wave of change within the Democratic party, so that by 1968, the party adopted a clause in their rules demanding racial equality in representation from every convention delegation.
And, dare I say, Fanie Lou Hamer lit a candle that lit the way for Barack Obama to become the 44th President of the United States of America, and she lit a candle that lit the way for Kamala Harris to become the 49th Vice-President elect of the United States of America.
Fannie Lou Hamer did not have the benefit of much formal education, she suffered mightily for having the courage to state her convictions, and she died at the young age of 59; but she did inspire numerous people to let their lights shine in the darkness and cast light on the road from a democratic disaster to the prophet vision that Isaiah cast in the 8th century BC.
V
In a similar fashion, I believe that people from all social locations are being called right now, this Christmas Eve 2020, to let our lights shine and to become first responders for justice.
I believe that we are being called to sound alarms about the inequities right under our noses. I believe that we are being called to form a human chain that ensures that we and others make it out of the collapsing social constructs that are holding us back. And, I believe that God is equipping us with the gifts and graces, even now, that we need to reshape the social constructs of our time in ways that lead to wholeness and holiness for the sake of the Gospel and the Cosmos.
That’s the Christmas message tonight, clear and simple. It’s an invitation to light one candle, make one pledge, and take one step toward the transformation of this mess we’re living in toward the vision that God cast for us and for all--mindful that the words of John’s gospel are trustworthy and true: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. (John 1:5)