Homily

Today as we continue to celebrate the feast of the Holy Theophany, I would like to point out an image that is used a great deal in our services. In the tropar for Theophany, we sing, "O Christ God Who appeared and enlightened the world, glory be to You!" And in the kontakion we sang, "You have come and revealed Yourself. O Inaccessible Light!" In the Pre-sanctified Liturgy when I bless with the candle, I say, "The light of Christ enlightens every man coming into the world." In the Resurrection Matins it is, "Take light from the Light that never dies, the Light which is Christ the Lord." Then in today's Gospel, we hear, "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light; and upon those who sat in the region and the shadow of death, a light has arisen." The theme of light and Christ as our light was one of the favorite symbols of our Fathers in faith.

As you can imagine, I have to walk a lot between the church and the house. So how far away would you say the house is? Half a mile? I know that path so well I can walk it in the dark. But here is the interesting thing that most of us who live in the city can attest to: in the winter it's usually not all that dark at night. The winter clouds that are generally in our skies reflect the lights of our city back to earth, and unless you are losing your night-vision, you can see pretty well to get around most of the time. Sometimes, if the cloud cover is not very thick, the light reflected back is not quite as strong, but for the most part that light, plus the street lights or yard lights that may be near by, that light is pretty helpful for getting around. You wouldn't want to try and read a book under this light for very long, but it is a light we kind of count on without even thinking about it, or else we would all be carrying flashlights with us any time we went out after sunset. But we don't. We know we'll always have enough light in town to see by, whether it is from all the lights that are everywhere to be found at night or from the reflected brightness of our lights hitting the nighttime sky with its clouds. We are very dependent on the lights that we have created, the lights we can turn on, the brightness that we cast over the darkness. In fact I think it's safe to say we have made urban night lights for ourselves. They are rather constant for us, so much so that we take them for granted. When was the last time you city dwellers thought after sunset, "If I'm going out tonight, I better take a flashlight?"

But last Friday night the sky was as clear as can be and there was no reflected light shooting back from the cloud cover, but just the heavenly lights of the stars and planets and those lights grab your attention. We find them to be beautiful and interesting as they move across the black sky and the light they reflect to earth can be dramatically different, especially when the moon is full versus when it is new. Sadly, we don't see all that many stars in the city sky because the man-made lights that are everywhere and all around us overpower the brightness of the heavenly lights, so we can only see a small portion of them.

We are not as St. Matthew writes, a people sitting in darkness, at least not in the literal sense. And yet we are the people who sit in the region and the shadow of death. Where shall we find our light and our life?

It seems to me that as we have conquered the darkness of night through technology and science, we have opened the door to temptation. The temptation is to forget God. Of course there is nothing wrong with technological and scientific progress and development that is capable of making our lives better in so many different ways. The problem is, the temptation is to believe that since we invent and create we automatically know how to use what we have invented for our own good. We become, more and more, convinced that science and technology and the material comforts and pleasures they can provide are, in fact sources of enlightenment, the products of the creative genius of humanity, and it is so very easy to become so engaged with those products and services that we forget God. Worse than that, we even have some people telling us we don't even need God because there is nothing greater than the power of the human mind in this universe (except maybe aliens who want to share their advanced culture with us.) Science and technology are not morally good or bad, but it is how we use them, for we are the agents who must decide how they should be used. The temptation is the same one Adam and Eve faced in the Garden: "Should we obey what the Lord has told us, or should we eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil? Then we ourselves would know what is good and what is evil."

This is the road our society is traveling on today: We ourselves know what is good and what is evil. We have split the atom, we have walked on the moon, we have lit the night sky, we have made the internet which contains all the knowledge of the universe PLUS Facebook. We are truly enlightened without the need for any sort of guidance from a deity. The result is that we close in on ourselves, and that is WHY we do not find ourselves to be a better society or a better culture. We have handed over the power of life and death into the hands of ordinary people and we tell them they can choose which one they want for themselves or for another. We have allowed references to faith to be driven from the public square and the schools and the general life of people to such a degree that "Christmas" becomes a dirty word, and while it might be fine to say "Bless you!" when somebody sneezes, to say "God bless you!" could become an offense against the sneezer. We close in on ourselves. The country is not more important than me, the family is not more important than me, the marriage is not more important than me, even the children are not more important than me. And this is what it means to sit in the darkness and the shadow of death, even as people cry out, "We make our own light, we don't need any other. We can even light up the night sky."

Let us not slip into this way of thinking by blindly or carelessly or by default accepting the premise that we really do need to follow our own path and walk by our own light. There is only one true and unfailing light for our lives: Jesus the Christ. It is our great and totally undeserved glory that He should call us to Himself. It is our duty and our privilege and our honor that we can share His light with our world.