December 22. 2024

Poetry for Advent “a certain height” On Love

During these Sundays we have been exploring the Advent themes of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love reflecting on scriptural passages and poems that I have chosen for each. The last Advent candle on the wreath is the candle of Love. And today I want to look at Love in a way most of us may have never considered. We will approach the manger of Bethlehem and ponder what this Love is that has been born into the world and lies sleeping on the hay. The poem for this morning is a wonderful piece by Robert Frost. It’s titled “Choose Something Like a Star” and you’ll find the words printed on an insert in your bulletin:

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud –
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says “I burn.”
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

I hope you will not mind if this morning’s sermon is not as logically structured as some. Instead, I want to take the poet’s prerogative and allow my thoughts to wander a bit through the darkness and the stars. Hang in with me, please. It is my sincere hope that in the end I will come out in some comprehensible place.

According to the legend in the Gospel of Matthew there was a star that arose in the sky, sending magi from the east to search for a child who had been born to be king of the Jews. This was a most unusual star, indeed. Not only did it appear newly in the sky, but it moved and stood so directly over a stable in Bethlehem that the wise men could find the precise spot. You and I know that this is simply a story – that stars are objects more than a million times the size of our planet and are thousands of light years distant. We know that a star that somehow moved through the cosmos and stood in a place above the little town of Bethlehem to mark the spot would have incinerated and vaporized our planet long before it reached its position above the stable. But all this is perhaps asking too much of this sort of star. It is asking it to:

Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

When, really, all a star has to say is, “I burn.” Indeed, our Christmas legend, like Frost’s poem, is metaphor through and through. And you cannot ask a metaphor to adhere to the laws of physics. Frost complains a bit about this, objecting that the star’s nature is cloaked in some “mystery”, and although allowed “some obscurity of cloud” it is not to be “wholly taciturn” and keep all its secrets from us. And the star simply replies, “I burn.”

That reply reminds me of the answer Yahweh gave to Moses on Mount Sinai when asked to disclose the divine name. The Lord said simply, “I Am Who I Am,” and then said if anyone asks my name tell them it’s “I Am”. That is a significant parallel for this morning’s theme especially considering what the apostle John had to say about “I Am.” In the first letter of John, we find these amazing words: “. . . everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” That’s another doozy of a metaphor. But God as Love may be a lot more on target than our picture of an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud. Clearly, it is the Almighty’s preference to not be pinned down any more than the star wants to be: “I am” is enough, as is “I burn.”

While we’re on the subject of metaphors, at this time of year we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but we also regard that birth as a “Light” coming into the world. In the opening verses of the gospel of John, we hear this Light being spoken of as pre-existent. John says (echoing the first verse of Genesis), “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” John goes on to say that this “Word became flesh and lived among us . . . .” John sees in Jesus the very light of Divinity – indeed, the light of Love. And he says this “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

We all need some light in the darkness. I’ve made an interesting discovery. For most of my life I found the darkness to be quite unsettling. I suppose it goes back to my childhood and fearing the monsters that might lurk in the dark shadows of the room. But whenever I went out of the house at night, I always took a very large flashlight, actually one of those dry cell lanterns that can light up the countryside – you never know what ferocious beasties might be out there in the woods waiting to devour you. But at some point I was surprised to discover that I actually enjoyed going out in the darkness (sans flashlight); the darker the better. I would go down in the mornings before the sun is up to get the newspaper (back when we still got a newspaper delivered in the early morning hours). We have a very long driveway – over four hundred feet, and it winds its way down and up and around to get down to the road. On moonless mornings, walking down the driveway when it is so black outside that I couldn’t quite make out where the drive is, or where the woods are for that matter, became a singular thrill. I made my way down by memory and by the faintest of all lights, the stars. Flashlights are very helpful, and indeed “when you’re in the dark, get a flashlight” is good advice. But it’s amazing how little light you actually need sometimes. That faint, tantalizing, mysterious light of a distant sun compels us, since we’re talking metaphors, to keep moving through the darkness, searching, discovering, finding not just the mailbox at the end of the driveway, but deeper answers.

It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

All the star wants to say is, “I burn”; all that the Lord wants to say to say is, “I am”; all the baby in the manger wants to do is cry; but when push comes to shove there’s more to learn. The light of Love that was born on the hay in Bethlehem is the child who grew to ride into the teeth of destruction on the back of a donkey, who healed, and spoke, and stood for justice, goodness, and human compassion, and defended reason and grace over against blind allegiance to dogma. And this he did even though he knew it would cost him his life. This was the Love he taught, and lived, and revealed. This was the light that he brought into the world.

I loved reading Anthony Doerr’s book, All the Light We Cannot See. The story made clear that one of the major sources of darkness is the cloak of intimidation, information control, and brutal repressiveness that was the standard operating procedure of the Nazi regime during World War II. And the “light” that transcends this darkness is to be found in the integrity, courage, and basic human goodness of individuals who rise above the bleak, temporal power of those like the Third Reich. It’s also clear that Love is a key in finding that light.

Love, as Jesus lived it, is made real not only in kisses and soft words, but in the courage to live for others, to give oneself to the cause of justice, to even sacrifice oneself for that which transcends ugliness and spite and endures beyond the grave. Beneath the baby’s cry from the cow stall, if we continue to probe, we discover a world of profound meaning. And if we continue to push the star for its secrets, we must ask more of it than how it burns, more of it than, as Frost says:

But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

No, we must find the deeper truth it discloses. Standing in the dark, looking up in wonder at its unchanging, steady light, if we are fortunate we might be led by it to a manger in Bethlehem and behold some good news for our lives that might bring to us a great joy. It is what Frost tells us we gain after patiently prodding the star for its secrets. We find:

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height

It asks perhaps just enough height to live for Love and rise above a Nazi machine, just enough height to teach Love and transcend the schemes of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin trying to protect their orthodoxy or the brutality of the Romans dispassionately stifling any resistance, just enough height to calmly proclaim Love and stand above those who panic in the face of terror attacks or call for a modern day crusade against Islam. To maintain such a height requires of us a certain degree of steadfastness – the same quality we see in those dots of light in the night sky. Frost refers to it as being “steadfast as Keats’ Eremite.” The reference is to another poem, one by John Keats that begins:

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite . . .

For Keats also there is something grand in the dependable, ceaseless vigilance of a star. He compared it to an Eremite, a Christian hermit. And Keats wished he himself were as steadfast as the star. Although he didn’t want to be a monk, he wanted his steadfastness to be found in the comfort of his “fair love’s ripening breast.” Well, that’s OK too. Love is Love. And being steadfast in love means not turning away from it. It means not turning away from the tenderness and affection. It means not turning away from the challenge of confronting the hateful. It means not turning away from the risk of living for others. It means finding and maintaining a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Put another way: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
Have a blessed Christmas.