In every home, there are a few corners that never seem to get cleaned! You
know the places that I’m talking about. Some are under the stove. Others are
behind the refrigerator. The really nasty ones are in the garage behind a pile
of boxes that you set aside months ago – or maybe even years ago – and you just
never got around to doing anything with them. It’s easy to overlook those
corners. They were clean once upon a time! But then they got dusty, and all
kinds of dirt built up in them. Spiders found out that they were safe back there,
and they built their webs over top of all that dirt. The dirtier the corners
got, the less we wanted to clean them. Pretty soon, those corners were
completely buried under dust and dirt and spider webs. And then, it was easier
to ignore them altogether than to try to scrape out all that crud!
Now, if we decide to clean out those dirty corners, we know
what we need. We need a strong light to help us see what’s really in there; we
need an assortment of cleaning tools; and we need lots and lots of motivation
to get into those corners and dig out the crud. When we find that motivation, first
we head over to Home Depot and buy a high-intensity light so that we can see
what we’re doing. Then we put on old clothes, roll up our sleeves, pick up a
broom, a mop, a bucket, and a bunch of rags, and we get to work.
But we have dirty corners in our lives, too; and those aren’t nearly as
easy to clean out. Some of those dirty corners contain memories that we’ve
hidden away. We throw our secrets into the farthest corners of our lives so
that no one can see them; and we’re secretly relieved when spiders spin their
webs over top of them and hide the dirt underneath. Other corners of our lives
don’t have any secrets in them; they’re just stuck just in out of the way
places where we don’t go very often. We don’t clean those corners out much, either.
The problem is that sometimes those corners give us trouble. One day, we realize
that something is nagging at us. Sometimes, it turns out to be the dirt in one
of those corners that we never got around to cleaning out. Now, we can’t just
run over to Lowe’s and buy a high-intensity light to help clean out a corner of
our life. It takes a different kind of light to do that – the kind of light
that only God can give us.
One of the names for the Child whose birth we are awaiting is the
Dayspring. We sang that in the introit this morning. “Dayspring” is a very old
term for the dawn, that time of the day when light appears and darkness
vanishes. That’s an appropriate name for God’s Messiah. After all, God has been
associated with light since the most ancient times. Light was God’s very first creation,
beams of beauty into the dark, chaotic mess that once was the cosmos – way back
before God organized it into galaxies and stars and planets. In Psalm 104, the
psalmist describes God as “wrapped in light as in a garment.” Wherever God
goes, light goes with him. You remember what John said in his first letter:
“God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.” And in the text of
Isaiah that we heard this morning, the prophet promises that “the Lord will
rise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.” God doesn’t keep that light
to himself. He shares it with all of us. This child that will be born to us
comes to bring God’s light into a world of darkness. “Light and life to all he
brings…” That’s what Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn “Hark! The Herald Angels
Sing.” Light and life comes from Christ. And that’s the only kind of light that
will help us when we want to clean out the dark corners of our lives – the
light that God offers us in the life of his Messiah.
We need the light of Christ when we decide to poke around in those dark
corners of our lives. After all, the dirt in there can be mighty deep and caked
in. And we all know what that dirt is made of. It’s made of anger… resentment…
grudges… fear... Sometimes, we don’t even realize what’s in there! The remains
of an old argument might be buried way down deep – so deep that we’ve forgotten
all about it. But that dirt is still hanging around, influencing our decisions
and our actions in ways that we don’t want at all. The only way to get rid of
that dirt is to shine the light of Christ into that corner so that we can see
what’s there and get rid of it. Now, that’s a frightening prospect to some
people. None of us want other people to see our dark corners, do we? We’re
afraid of what might happen if we let anybody see the dirt that’s in there. We
feel like Pig Pen in the old Peanuts comic strip, grimy with dirt and surrounded
by clouds of dust. We even worry that God might not love us. But God loves us
no matter how deep the crud is in our dark corners. Christ doesn’t shine his
light into our lives to condemn us. He brings God’s light to us so that he can heal us! The gospel of John talks about light
and darkness all the time; and it claims that “God sent his son into the world
not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
Salvation, not blame, is what God is all about.
And that’s a good thing, because we’re not the only people who have
cruddy corners to be cleaned out! The world is full of them, each one caked
with dirt of one kind or another. Our public programs are full of them, even
though those programs were set up with the noblest of goals and the best of
intentions. All of them have a corner somewhere that’s full of corruption and
greed. Our judicial system certainly has some cruddy corners. Although we say
that justice is impartial, the reality is that it is riddled with bias and
prejudice. And do I need to say anything about government? There are so many
dirty corners in government – ours or any other – that I hardly know where to
begin. The world is so full of dirty corners that it is easy to cry in despair,
“Where is the Dayspring? Where is the Messiah? Where is the Light that God
promised to send us?” Hang in there. He’s coming! When all seems lost… when the
darkness is the deepest… when there seems to be no light around us at all… he
will appear.
Author Mary Winifred tells a story about
realizing the power of God’s light. “I was tired,” she writes, “after working
long hours on a project that seemed as though it would never come to fruition.
A friend had invited me to spend a few days at her home on the New Jersey
shore; and one morning, after much encouragement on her part, we got up early
to see the sunrise over the ocean. The morning was dark and the misty breeze
that hit our faces was uncomfortably chilly. As we watched in silence, suddenly
from the edge of the water’s horizon came the huge golden roundness of the sun…
My tiredness and depression [were lifted]. …It is in just this, often
unexpected, surprising way that Christ the Dayspring enlightens our souls and
spirits.” [Hasten the Kingdom, 1966,
Liturgical Press, p. 32] “O Dayspring,” she prays, “…bright clearness of the
light…, I watch for your coming to unravel the darkness, to [reveal] the
unknown, to unmask the shapes and shadows of the night, and… to discover the
secrets of righteousness and justice….” [Hasten
the Kingdom, pp. 32-33] During this time of Advent anticipation,
that is our prayer, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment