He was seventeen years old at the time, and had grown up in a wonderful home. He had all the advantages of a good family life in Ottawa. He had gone to the very best schools, participated in sports events. He had been well taken care of, went on good vacations all over the world with his family. He had three siblings: two older and one younger than him. His family belonged to the church where I served. He had every benefit that a young man could have and yet, deep down in his soul there was restlessness. You see, his marks at school had not lived up to expectations, and he was feeling the pressure of failure. Every member of his family was successful. His two elder siblings had gone off to universities and earned first class degrees. His younger sibling had won all kinds of awards in figure skating. But he had no awards; no marks to suggest a first class anything. He was jealous and envious of his siblings.
He also had no idea where his life would lead. Everyone around him told him that if you don’t achieve, you will fail, and if you fail, you are a misery! He won nothing; accomplished nothing; he felt like no one. His parents, though very good people, had been distant. They hadn’t really spent much time with him; rather they had been trotting around all the successes of the others. One day, with no warning, he left home and got a friend of his to phone a couple of days later to tell his distraught parents that he was okay. But he wasn’t okay. Far from it! For weeks they didn’t hear from him. He didn’t start Grade 12 that September. There was a missing persons bulletin out to look for him, but to no avail. They had no idea on God’s globe where he was!
Then, one day just a few weeks before Christmas, I was shopping in the ByWard Market, the famous market in Ottawa, and as I was walking past a rather dark building, I noticed a figure sitting in the shadows. Thinking that it must be awfully cold to be sitting out in Ottawa at this time of the year, I thought I would see if he was okay, and as I looked into the shadows, I saw these eyes, and they were his. His beautiful wool coat that he had got from Harry Rosen was stained and salted. His toque was torn and ratty. And under a blanket beside his feet were yellow McDonald’s hamburger wrappers, for that it seems to me was the food that people were giving him from the nearby McDonald’s store. His eyes were dark and recessed into his head. He hadn’t eaten properly for ages and was emaciated.
I thought I should let him know that I knew who he was, but I could see from the look in his eyes that this was not the time or place. I went home and I assured his parents that I had seen him, and I went and informed the ministry by churches in Ottawa that helped street children. They eventually found him a few days later and took care of him. After much persuading, he was re-united with his parents. I will never forget the moment that I looked into the alley of that building. I have never forgotten the look in his eyes. It was the look that somehow the light of God, the light of the universe was no longer shining either from them or to them. Every time subsequently that I have read Psalm 80, I think this psalmist was like that young man in the shadows. The psalmist was writing on behalf of a nation that felt God’s light was no longer shining upon it. John Calvin called it “the saddest of all the Psalms”. Yet in the midst of this profoundly sad and troubling Psalm, there is a hope, an expectation of restoration even though darkness was prevailing. There would be light and change. That is why this Psalm is so poignant before Christmas. In fact, I would suggest to you it makes sense of Christmas, because Christmas is the antithesis of what was experienced by the psalmist who was writing from the shadows.
What was all this about? Ultimately it was a plea for help. You see, it was in the 700s BC and the nation was basically destroyed, the people had been forced to leave the land and were now a refugee people. The psalmist knew that, and at the beginning of the Psalm he cries out, “To the Shepherd of Israel” (notice the language) “Come and save us! The Shepherd of Israel, the Lord who is the Shepherd, come on, come and save us!” Then, in an unprecedented way, three times you will notice, there is this refrain “Let your face shine upon us.” In other words, let this face see God. Let this face understand God. He was describing what known in Hebrew as the Hester Panim, which literally means the eclipse of God, when there is somehow something that appears between God’s light and us, so that we no longer see it. There is that wonderful phrase we sometimes use it in the Benediction from the Book of Numbers: “We pray that your face will shine upon us and be gracious unto us. You will lift up your countenance upon us, and give us peace.” What they wanted was the face of God to shine upon them that in the dark places they would be able to see God.
What was it that was stopping him from seeing God? Part of it was clearly a sense of guilt. He said, “It is like our bread has become like our tears.” In other words, there is nothing to sustain us, just the tears of our grief are feeding us. We drink from the tears that we are producing, the tears of guilt and sadness. There is this sense that the enemies are making fun of them, saying “We have conquered your land. Where is your God now?” There was this sense that their neighbors were treating them with scorn. They were in the shadows, and the light of God was not breaking in. Isn’t this a human thing? Isn’t it a human experience when things are going wrong, to ask ourselves “What have we done wrong?” The young man in Ottawa was clearly feeling the power of guilt and shame. He hadn’t lived up to his parents’ love, or expectations, so he hides in the shadows. The psalmist is hiding in the shadows and Israel is hiding in the shadows, because they are guilty, they feel they have done something wrong. So often, when that powerful emotion is felt, when that destructive guilt breaks in, people feel that God’s face no longer shines upon them.
Is that not what people feel is happening in Aleppo right now? Do not the people of Aleppo feel that God’s face is no longer shining upon them? You see, there is in Arabic just like there is in Hebrew with the Hester Panim, this sense of an eclipse; that God no longer sheds his light on the dark places and that they are forgotten. But sometimes guilt is inappropriate. Sometimes it is not that you have done anything wrong; you just feel guilty because things aren’t working out, and you must have done something wrong. In Israel’s case, there was no real call here to repent, just three times, “Let your face shine upon us. Come on, save us and be gracious to us.” But they feel the burden of their guilt. They also feel this sense of remorse and regret. Oh, the psalmist looks back, and says, “Oh, Shepherd of Israel, remember the cherubim and the seraphim.” In other words, remember when we were in the Temple. “Remember King David” – remember the monarchy. “Remember the One who used to sit at your right hand” – remember all these great and glorious things. They go back to the Exodus, the times when God’s face shone upon them, when there was the expectation that Israel was going to be saved, and all good things were happening because we were the people of God. They felt God’s face was shining upon them then. Those were the days! To quote Adele, “They could have had it all.”
Not now! Now it is “if only”. It was the great John Greenleaf Whittier who wrote: “For all the sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest of these is ‘It might have been’.”
Can you feel the sense of disappointment? They are heartbroken like that boy in the shadows in the ByWard Market. God is no longer looking at them. But if the Psalm ended there you would have tragedy and existential angst. But it doesn’t! The psalmist calls for restoration, “Restore us, O God, and save us” he says. “Restore us” – bring us back and save us. “Let your face shine on us.” He hasn’t given up. He believes God is going to act in spite of the guilt, in spite of the remorse, in spite of being lonely, he believes God is going to do something great, and that their guilt and their fears are going to be turned around.
This brings us to Christmas. One of the most inspirational things that I have read recently was about the Pearl Harbour memorial. Seventy-five years ago, going back to December 7, 1941, we have remembered Pearl Harbour – “A day that goes down in infamy!” As I read stories about Pearl Harbour, I was astonished by one of them – and it is not from the side you would think! It is from the Japanese side! It is about a man called Mitsuo Fuchida. He was one of those who flew on the sortie that bombed the ships in Pearl Harbour. This young man had grown up in a good home with well-educated parents, gone to a military school, after being been brought up in the cult of the Emperor. He loved his mission. So when it came time to choose those who were going to fly the sortie on those ships in Pearl Harbour on December 7th, Fuchida was one of them. Of the seventy that went on his sortie, he was the only one to return alive. It was his voice that went “Tora! Tora! Tora!” – “Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!” We hit them! We were successful! He then went on another sortie some time later on the Battle of Midway, and there he was shot down and held captive, but eventually released. He found his way back to Japan, and in 1945, he joined the Imperial Naval Air Force Operations. This was when he got word that something amazing and tragic had happened. Hiroshima had been bombed. He was one of those who flew his plane over the site of the devastated Hiroshima. All he could think is “What have I done?”
While all this was going on in 1942, Jacob DeShazer, a young American was flying for the United States. He flew on an attack of Japan. His plane was damaged and he landed in China, where he was held prisoner. Eventually, he too was released, but during that time he became a Christian. He read his Bible, trying to figure out how he could handle all the hatred, death and carnage he had seen, and been part of. He realized that only in turning to someone greater than himself could he face it.
In 1950 at a conference in the United States, Mitsuo Fuchida and Jacob DeShazer met for the first time. These two men talked about their guilt and grief, pain and sorrow. DeShazer shared with Fuchida the Scriptures and the story of Jesus of Nazareth. As Fuchida heard the story of Jesus birth and humble ways, his life and ministry, beatitudes, crucifixion and resurrection, he was filled with an incredible sense of peace. He wrote these words:
The morning of December 7, 1941, I lifted the curtain of warfare by dispatching that cursed order, and I put my whole effort into the war that followed. But after buying and reading my Bible, by meeting those who were willing to forgive me and pray with me, my mind was impressed: it was captivated by Christ. I think I can say today without hesitation that God’s grace has shone upon me.
This is no surprise to those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth because Christmas is the very thing that restores the hope from the brokenness of those who live in darkness, and in the shadows of guilt and despair, of those who feel that their life is not of worth or value, or who think they are forgotten by the powerful and the influential. After all, is not The New Testament the fulfillment of all the psalmist asked for? The psalmist said, “May the One who sits on your right hand come to us.” In the Book of Colossians, Paul writes: “Jesus sits on the right hand of the Father.” We call Jesus Christ, as they do in the Scriptures, the Prince of Peace. He is called the One who will save the people from their sins. This is why he is called Jesus. He is the One who is the fulfillment of all that Israel hoped for and prayed for. When the psalmist cried out ‘Make your face shine upon us and be gracious unto us’, how does God reveal God’s face to us? He reveals God’s face to us in his Son, and his Son looks upon us, and his radiance shines upon us, and his example leads the way for us, and his graciousness and kindness changes us.
“When we were living in darkness” says the Gospel of John, “the light shone and dwelt among us.” This is the fulfillment of all the hopes of the psalmist. This is the restoring of hope and if you think that this is merely words and nice theology, believe-you-me my friends, it is way more than that!
A few days ago the young man who committed the murders in Charleston, South Carolina, in June of 2015 was found guilty, and now they are going to decide his fate. When that young man, with hatred in his heart for people of colour, went into Emanuel (God with Us) AME Church and slaughtered those people, immense violence was unleashed in a House of God. There was a young woman, called Nadine Collier, whose mother was one of those killed during a Bible Study, reminiscent of what happened to the Coptic Christians just a few days ago in St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo. She said this the day after: “May the Lord forgive him, and may I forgive him.” Forgiveness is the only thing that gives us freedom. Forgiveness is the only thing that enables us to handle the darkness of this world. Forgiveness comes from the Son of God.
My friends, we are living in a world where there are many dark corners, where there is much hatred and bigotry. There are shadows aplenty in this world and you don’t have to go far to see them. There are people huddled in the ByWard market corners of our own society; in war-torn buildings when bombs are falling all around them; in fleeing buses; there is much darkness. But in those places of darkness the face of the Lord can still shine. This Christmas, this should be our restored hope, for Christ has come! Amen.