The following address was offered at the Opening Eucharist of the 2014 Synod of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic of the Anglican Church of North America, held in Woodbridge, VA on November 15, 2014.
In Philippians 2.15, Paul speaks of “a crooked and twisted generation”. I wonder, has there ever been one that wasn’t? I don’t think so. Every generation swims in darkness, it’s just a matter of degree. Ours is at high degree.
This past week we’ve been remembering the 100th anniversary of the beginning of that first World War that would kick off what would come to be called the bloodiest century the world has ever known. In our own century now, week by week we’re assaulted by news of wars and tumult, and unthinkable violence–Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, Mexico, and more places. In the 21st century, human beings have a seeming limitless creative capacity to induce suffering, and because of CNN and the BBC, we read about it…day after day after day. We know and pray about the profound persecutions of our fellow Christians–again Syria, again Iraq, again Nigeria, and China, and North Korea, and India, and too many more places. We hear of sickness and disease–Ebola, cancer, HIV and malaria, and more. And in our own country there seems to be a deep drift from the things that lead to life, a drift that only picks up speed. In our own country, it increasingly feels like that old description of the Jews in the book of Judges, when “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”, and that didn’t end well.
There’s a lot of darkness. There always is.
Yet God’s answer to darkness is light. It always is.
The theme weaving our Scripture readings together is light, and light in darkness.
I love that picture in Genesis 15 of Abraham standing outside in the dark when God spoke to him. You can imagine the night when God said to Abraham “Look up”. Before the light bulb and the LED and the power grid and the street lamps and headlights, in the desert of ancient Mesopotamia with no buildings and few trees to obscure the view, God spoke to Abraham and said, “Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you can..so shall your offspring be.” Can you imagine what the stars looked like that night, with no other light to compete with theirs?
“Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you can..so shall your offspring be.”
And so God, who is Love, who created the world from Love and for Love, on that night four thousand years ago God loved the world again with promise to Abraham that he would be followed by billions of lights in the darkness. “Look up….that many…so shall your offspring be?” That many lights in the darkness. With 1.2 billion Christians in the world just this moment on the planet, billions is the right range of number to talk about how many offspring from Abraham there are, a lot of lights in the night because there’s a lot of darkness.
God loves this world that was plunged into darkness, and he did so by setting things in motion with a promise four thousand years ago to Abraham about many stars. Then two thousand years ago God really loved the world by sending The Light.
St. John said of him, “1.4 In Jesus was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Then Jesus says of himself in John 12, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.”
Just a few verses before in John 12.36 Jesus says something amazing about us, “While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” Believe in the light so that you may become children of light, like stars in a dark sky, lights shining in the darkness.
This is not a metaphor.
Have you ever thought of yourself, who you actually are in Christ, as a son or a daughter of light? Do you ever think of “shining” as a fundamental aspect of your vocation as a Christian? Beyond what we say and even beyond what we do, do we realize that part of our calling in Christ is simply to shine with the light of Christ in us?
Mother Teresa is well known for what she did, but for those who encountered her it was who she was that was most profound. She emanated light. Her mere presence changed people…Malcolm Muggeridge was an atheist when when he met her. He would later write “Something of God’s universal love has rubbed off on Mother Teresa, giving her homely features a noticeable luminosity.” There it is, luminosity. Light. Shining. Luminous.
Muggeridge continues: “It was impossible to be with her, to listen to her, to observe what she was doing and how she was doing it, without being in some degree converted.” And Muggeridge was converted, wholly, and became a Christian five years after meeting Mother Teresa.
My friend Rich is a dear friend to many of us is. He’s a lawyer in DC, and a stalwart servant at The Falls Church. I visited him once in his office downtown and he was talking about the various ways he had tried to be a Christian in that place. Whether it was having a Bible on his desk, or having something that would say to someone who walked into his office that he was a Christian…he had done all that. And he went on to say that after a while he didn’t find that to be enough. He wanted to know what “What next?” Was there more he could do? So we talked about that and I likened it to this.
I said, “You know Rich, there are two ways of bringing light into this office. One way is to basically have a flashlight in your pocket and pull it out and shine it every now and then when you want to bring light into the office. The other way is to BE light and have God live so much in us that we radiate. That’s another way of bringing light into an place. You can be the light. You can be luminous.” Turns out he was already doing it.
As I was walking out of the office, I said goodbye to Rich and then another of the lawyers in the firm hustled after me and he caught up with me right before I had got into the elevator. And he basically made the point.
He said, “Hey, I just want to let you know you have no idea the difference that Rich makes in this place. It’s like Christ himself is working here.” Pretty high praise, right? And he went on just to talk about how much Rich’s presence had been helpful to him, professionally and as a believer, and how much he had seen Rich become basically a pastoral presence in the lawyers’ office by virtue of who he was, by virtue of his character.
Lights in the darkness.
Four thousand years ago, a promise to Abraham. Two thousand years ago, Jesus. Now, this year, 2014, you and me.
In that epistle reading tonight, Paul says that in a crooked and twisted generation in a world beset by darkness, we (quote) “shine as lights in the world”. Do we? Do we realize that an essential part of our vocation is to be luminous? We bear witness to the Light because we shine.
Again, Jesus: “Believe in the light, so that you may become sons of light.”
Yes, there’s a lot of darkness. There always is. And yet YES God’s answer to darkness is light. It always is. God sent The Light, and he keeps sending lights by sending us to shine in the darkness.
This is how it works. We too are those who lived in darkness. Jesus comes into the world as light, and by his mercy we have been drawn to it, and believed in him, and when we do, Jesus’ spirit enters us so that we too can shine his light into to the world. It’s not us. It’s Jesus living in us, his Spirit shining through us, his life being lived through our lives, our bodies being his body, our hands being his hands, our radiance being his own shining through us.
This is Paul again in Galatians 2.20, “It is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me.”
In our Gospel reading today from Matthew 5, Jesus tells us who we are, and in our identity is our vocation. V14 “You are the light of the world.” He does not say to us, “I hope you’ll be the light of the world” or “Maybe you’ll the light of the world.” No, “You ARE the light of the world.” This is our identity as followers of Jesus, this is our vocation as his disciples. We are to be light in order to bear witness to the light. We are to be luminous to continue the mission of him who brought light into the darkness.
Our lives are the ones now that give an alternative to those around us to the culture of death and those who walk in darkness.
And then Jesus says something very interesting: V16, Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
In other words, this shining of the light that is in us, Jesus in us, has something to do with what we DO. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works.”
Brothers and sisters, where there is darkness, we of all people must engage it. Intentionally. We are the light bearers. Whether it is around the world, or in our own country, or in our own neighborhoods, in our own churches, in the lives of the people we encounter…. in the words of St. Francis, “Where there is darkness, let me sow light.”
What is the darkness in your specific context? Your vocation is to bring light to it.
And friends, there is only one way to really do this. It is to stay connected to the Light. If I’m going to shine, it is only because I’m connected to the power source.
A simple illustration.
A lamp will not work unless it’s plugged in, and it will not shine unless it stays connected to that power source.
Among other hats that I wear, I lead a non-profit called Coracle. One of our ministries you may have heard of is our place for retreat in the Shenandoah Valley called Corhaven. It means “rest for the heart”, “refuge for the soul”. You can come. Your people can come. The tag-line of Coracle is “Spiritual Formation for Kingdom Action”. “Spiritual Formation for Kingdom Action”.
The order and syntax is really intentional. Kingdom Action absolutely matters. What we DO matters. Syria and Iraq and Africa and Ferguson and DC and our own cities and our country and our own communities are crying out for more light! Our good works to engage darkness and brokenness and sin and suffering is critical, and indeed to engage it is our calling as followers of the One who intentionally engaged brokenness. However, the ground of this action is our own spiritual formation, that is each one of us becoming more and more like Jesus himself, by his Spirit, and staying connected to the power source so that we can shine, in whatever dark place that God calls us to shine. “Spiritual Formation FOR Kingdom Action”.
And so dear friends, this talk tonight is not a “Get out there” talk. It’s a “Stay connected” talk. I am and you are fully aware of the darkness in the world and in our country and communities, and this is not a “Do Something” talk. This is a “Go Deeper” talk. This one’s not actually about getting out there and doing something, it’s about going deeper and BEING something, a light in the world because The Light is shining through us.
The older I get, the more I become aware and convinced and convicted to what I’ve come to know is true. And you know it too. Once you taste this truth, you never want to go back, you never want anything but this reality, and you only want more of it. The truth is this: God can do immensely more through me than I can ever do for God. God can do immensely more through us than we can ever do for God. Just like there’s a world of difference between living FOR Jesus and living WITH Jesus, so also the difference between what I can do for God and what God can do through me is night and day. It’s the difference between darkness and light.
Many of us here are priests, or deacons, or other leaders in the church, and all of us here are servants in the church. The great occupational hazard of this is that too often we get so busy doing things FOR God that we sacrifice our being WITH God. Yet it is the being WITH God that is source our ability to do anything FOR God that has power and lasting meaning. There is a way of doing ministry that actually impedes God’s power flowing through us. And who has time for that? Life is too short, the needs are too great, the darkness too thick, and the Light too gorgeous.
Tomorrow we’ll hear SO much about such great ministry that is happening amongst us and through us. Amen and Hallelujah!! I expect to be deeply encouraged. And may all this ministry not impede our intimacy with the One who makes it possible. It’s wearisome when we are ministers of Jesus but not connected to Jesus.
So the best way to bring light into the darkness in this crooked and twisted generation is to stay connected to Light.
You’ve heard it said, “It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. Indeed, and better, “When you’re overwhelmed by the darkness, the question is Am I luminous? Am I connected to the Light so that I can be that candle?”
So here are the questions: How’s your devotional time? How’s your love affair with Jesus? How’s your prayer life? How’s your Sabbath? How’s your rhythm of spiritual retreat, those times set apart to simply be with your Father who loves you, and wants to talk to you, and refresh you, and empower you? (Put power inside of you?) What have you said No to recently so that you can say Yes to staying connected to God?
God can do immensely more through us than we can ever do for God. If we are going to be who we are, the light of the world, we must stay connected to him who is the Light who came into the world. And the world needs this, now as much as ever, if not more, in our generation.
I want to close with a prayer of petition and desire adapted from a hymn many of us love.
O Father, We want to walk as a child of the light; We want to follow Jesus.
You set the stars to give light to the world; The star of our lives is Jesus.
In him there is no darkness at all; The night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God. So, Shine in our heart, Lord Jesus.
So, Shine in our heart, Lord Jesus. Amen.