“I’ve found it is the small things
that keep the darkness at bay.” That’s Gandalf speaking to Galadriel in the Hobbit movie that just came out this weekend, and I haven’t been able to shake the words from my mind. In fact, the full quote is even better, so if you’ll indulge
me for a moment, Gandalf says, “Saruman believes it is only great power that
can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the
small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts
of kindness and love. Why [did I choose] Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am
afraid, and he gives me courage.”
I saw The
Hobbit on Friday about an hour after I first heard the news about the
school shooting in Connecticut.
And I don’t even really know what to say about it since it’s all so horrible
and familiar. This shooting may have affected us more because of the innocence
of the victims and the number of dead, but the narrative is something we’ve
heard before. We live in a small world. We know about things that happen across
the country and the world in the blink of an eye, and this is most certainly
good and bad. There are seven billion people in the world, and with so many people
in so small a place there’s plenty of shocking events to go around. When something
happens the media eats it up. We are told in subtle ways how to feel, what
should shock us, and who or what is the enemy. Quickly, every tragedy becomes
an issue of debate about what could or can be done to avoid it: power against
power. “Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check,”
says Gandalf, “but that is not what I have found. It’s the small things that
keep the darkness at bay.”
When Isaiah proclaimed the message of freedom for the oppressed that we read today it was a message for the little people—for the Halflings and children among us. Isaiah came “to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn” (vs 2). When Bilbo was living in his hobbit hole with all the food he needed and his nice things he had no need to be comforted; his life was already comfortable. And most of us spend most of our lives in hobbit holes until something wrenches us out. But when Bilbo is drafted for his adventure with the dwarves he goes for reasons that at first he can’t understand. It only comes to him when he has the freedom to return home and chooses instead to stay. It is then that Bilbo says, “I know you doubt me. I know you always have. I often think of Bag End. That’s where I belong. That’s home. You don’t have one. It was taken from you, but I will help you take it back if I can.” When tragedy comes we are called, like Bilbo, to enter into the challenging road ahead, to comfort those who mourn and to proclaim a God who loves justice, hates robbery and wrongdoing; a God who has made an everlasting covenant with the people (vs. 8), and a God who promises to bring us home.
When Isaiah proclaimed the message of freedom for the oppressed that we read today it was a message for the little people—for the Halflings and children among us. Isaiah came “to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn” (vs 2). When Bilbo was living in his hobbit hole with all the food he needed and his nice things he had no need to be comforted; his life was already comfortable. And most of us spend most of our lives in hobbit holes until something wrenches us out. But when Bilbo is drafted for his adventure with the dwarves he goes for reasons that at first he can’t understand. It only comes to him when he has the freedom to return home and chooses instead to stay. It is then that Bilbo says, “I know you doubt me. I know you always have. I often think of Bag End. That’s where I belong. That’s home. You don’t have one. It was taken from you, but I will help you take it back if I can.” When tragedy comes we are called, like Bilbo, to enter into the challenging road ahead, to comfort those who mourn and to proclaim a God who loves justice, hates robbery and wrongdoing; a God who has made an everlasting covenant with the people (vs. 8), and a God who promises to bring us home.
There is much to fear if we go
looking for it. The television and internet powers-that-be do their best to
find all the worst of it and remind us that it is out there, and I suppose in
some way that is their duty. That is, after all, what we want—transparency,
reality, not sugar-coated but with all its warts. We would feel oppressed
if we didn’t know. We want knowledge. It’s the Garden of Eden and the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil lived out again and again. All we want is
more--even when it breaks our hearts. While it’s true that knowing whether a
horrible thing happened or not does not change that it happened, it’s also true
that we oppress ourselves with our need to know. We have become slaves to the
eye-gripping nature of tragedy, because we think on some level that we can
prepare ourselves and rid ourselves of all evil.
It’s a dangerous world out there,
and mostly we can’t fix it. We can maybe make better policies, instill safer
safeguards, tighten our borders (I know we have—my car got searched not once
but twice coming back from Canada in the last month); we could make strides to
understand mental illness, take guns off the streets, institute harsher
penalties for crimes, offer more to rehab offenders; we could do so many things
and maybe some of them need to happen, but political power and policy cannot save us. Isaiah’s a
pretty lowly little prophet, but that doesn’t really matter because it is not
Isaiah who is going to turn the world upside-down; it is God. From verse 1, “The
Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good
news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives, and release to the prisoners.” And that’s what God is sending each of
us to do. He’s doing it in Newtown, CT.
He’s doing it in Oregon; in Syria; in China, wherever next week’s awful
news is going to emerge. The power of our laws cannot bring us all the way to
safety. They try their best, just as most of us try our best to make sure that
we—and our families—are protected, but power cannot assure us finally that we are
safe.
Why does Gandalf select Bilbo for
the journey? Because Gandalf is afraid, and when we are afraid we are not in
need of more power to protect us but small things—little acts of kindness and
love. Otherwise, we will get overwhelmed. There are ten million
people who have died from hunger so far this year; that is not OK. Eight thousand
children under five years of age have died worldwide so far today—most from
preventable causes; that is not OK. Tragedy births more tragedy. The person who
loses a family member pays their grief forward for others in the form of
depression and mental illness. That’s the story the media is going to tell, and
it sells because it is the primary way that we identify with the world—power against
power. We want to be victims; victims, whether of a dragon named Smaug or a
serpent in the Garden.
The solution is not in the debates
over big issues. The solution has never been about power. In fact, the solution
is not a solution at all—it is a promise that comes to us in
the smallest of things in this Advent season. It is a promise that remembers
all the innocent children killed by King Herod,
because those deaths are what ushered in the messiah; a messiah who came not
to fix the world but to save it. And he comes as the
smallest of things. Just a baby. Just a manger. Just a little, small thing.
On this third Sunday in Advent we traditionally
celebrate the gift of love, so today we remember that all love comes in small
acts of kindness, and we should also remember that love makes us afraid. When
we love we open up the possibility that our hearts will break, and so we cling
to the small things—not a hobbit but a baby, born in a manger for the sake of
all the children and the adults who were children. Isaiah and Gandalf both proclaim
that great power cannot hold evil in check. It is the ordinary deeds of
ordinary folks, small acts of kindness and love—the only things that have ever
mattered.
So, if you want a grand solution, think small.
Think a baby in a manger, stinking as barns do and dirty. Think simple. Think a
gift that does not depend on our response to it, nor whether we can make things
right. Think of home. Think of helping those who need help, because all of our
comfort means nothing if we don’t give it away for the comfort of others. Think
of the Christ child, because we are all afraid and in need of courage and we forget the small things first of all.
And lastly, think of love. Because the world of love
continues after death; it is proved by our grief and saved by a child.[1] It
is the small things that keep the darkness at bay.
Amen.
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