I don’t even remember why I dropped by that day. But, over 30 years later, I still remember. I still remember my shock, my disgust. The carpet looked so stained, so dirty, I
didn’t even want to walk on it. And the
tables looked like someone had beat on them with a hammer, and then smoothed a
sticky glaze of sweet, liquor to camouflage the damage. And the bar, I didn’t even want to put my
hands there, thinking I’d catch something deadly just by contact.
But get this. I had been in this very place countless times
before, yet I had seen none of this. This
club was one of the “go to” spots for my college buddies and me to hang out and
try to get dances from the co-eds in the art school across town. But all the times before, I had seen it in
the dark. That place had never had the
lights on. Now I knew why. The
dark can hide all sorts of ugliness.
Just look at the news
of the last two months. Name after
name of quite famous folks found doing things under cover of darkness that have
shocked everyone. Household names even discovered
engaging in the most awful and abusive behaviors towards others. For years, the darkness hid the ugliness. The preacher Dwight Moody put it well. Character is what you are in the dark.
But how many want of us want everything in the light? You likely have things about yourself, things
within you, that you’d rather not see the light of day. It’s funny.
As a child, I was scared of the dark. Now, I realize. The dark can become
a pretty comfortable place to be. In
the dark, you can ignore things that you’d rather not see. In the dark, you can do things that you’d
rather others not see.
In the dark, you can hide. You can hide from others. You can hide from God. You can hide even from yourself. But in
that dark, you miss so much of what you need to see. You become so much less than what God
intends you to be. Yet even so, the
dark can draw you in, even before you realize it.
How many times have you realized something too late;
some habit that you avoided looking at too closely; some health issue you kept
overlooking; some problem in a relationship that you kept sweeping under the
rug; or some other painful truth you refrained from facing. And by the time, you faced it, well, the
damage was done. Someone once put it
this way. Hell is truth seen too
late. How do you live a life where you become free
of that darkness? How do you discover
the way to freedom, to a life lived in the light, in the best sense of what
that word means? In this very familiar
story, God shows you the way. Let’s
listen and hear what God has to say.
It can seem easier to stay in the dark, especially
about things in yourself or others you’d rather not see. But in the end, that darkness blinds you
from the very things you need to see most.
Most crucially, it blinds you to the one truth that frees you from the
darkness now and forever. How do you see
that truth? Here God shows you. God tells you, only when the light shines do
you see that the truth that terrifies you actually opens you to a joy and
freedom that nothing can overcome.
Do you notice something a bit unusual in this famous story? Do you notice when the shepherds get
scared. They don’t get scared in the
dark. Heck, they’re totally fine with
the darkness. No, what terrifies them
is the light.
Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the
glory of the Lord shone around them,
and they were terrified.
Now certainly, just an angel showing up would disturb
anyone. And this glory that shone
around them sounds like it was no flashlight. This glory had to have been something pretty
big.
But beyond that obvious point, God is pointing to
something deeper not only about these shepherds but about everyone. In most folks, if they’re honest, what
terrifies them the most isn’t the darkness, it’s the light. Why? It’s
in the light that people can most easily see your flaws and imperfections. And no one wants folks to see those things,
even to see the little ones.
When I grab lunch in my office, I always make a point
of taking off my shirt while I eat. I
know. If I don’t, no matter how careful
I am, something will end up getting on my shirt. And I hate when that happens. I realized how much I hate it just a few days
ago at Costco. My son and I were taking
advantage of all the samples. Then it
happened with the Italian olive sauce on the cracker. Not all the sauce made it to my mouth. A huge glob landed on my shirt. Then to top the embarrassment, my son
immediately and loudly pointed it out. “Daddy,
you’ve got a stain on your shirt!”
Now, on that trip to Costco, I saw no one I knew, yet I
still felt mortified. All of a sudden, I
felt as if everyone was looking at me, the poor klutz who can’t keep his shirt
clean. Human beings just don’t like
looking bad. No one wants others to see
their frailties and flaws, even if it’s simply a stain on your shirt.
So, what do you do instead, you hide them. You keep them in the dark, as much as you
can. But in that darkness, two terribly
dangerous things usually happen. First,
in the darkness, your failings might even become greater, but your ability to
see them, grows less and less. Or, the exact opposite happens, in the dark, your
failings become big enough to almost swallow up your life.
Just a few days ago, I was walking around the church
sanctuary with a volunteer. And he
pointed out a place on a wall in the entrance are of the church that had been
patched, but left unpainted. It looked pretty awful really. Yet, as I thought about it, that patch had
likely been there for at least ten years, and in all that time, I can’t remember
ever noticing it. Has that ever happened
to you? You have some place in your
home that’s in disrepair or just doesn’t look right, but you hardly notice it
anymore. So, when do you notice it? Usually it’s right before a guest comes over
or worse than that, when your guest notices it for you.
What happens in your house can happen in your
life. In much of the news regarding sexual
misconduct that has come out, it’s been striking to notice the difference in
awareness. The folks, largely women, who
have experienced mistreatment have never forgotten it. But those who did the deed, often can’t even
remember. In life, when you hide your ugly
places, you can hide them so well, that you don’t even notice them. You don’t notice the habit that has gone out
of control. You don’t pay attention to a
pattern of behavior that hurts the people you love again and again. You don’t realize how a thought you carry or
resentment you harbor is twisting up your whole life. And you don’t want to see it, because well,
seeing that reality feels like it hurt too much. But in reality, it’s already hurting you. It’s
simply become a hurt you’ve grown used to having.
On the other hand, what you keep in the dark, instead
of becoming less noticed, can actually become bigger than ever. It’s
why the brother of Jesus, James wrote in his letter the following sort of
strange sentence: Confess your sins to one
another that you may be healed. How can
just telling someone else your failings heal you? It heals you because once you put it in the
light, it loses its power. It loses its
hold on you. And once free of that
power, of that shame, you become free to move forward. In fact, lots of folks find help in therapy,
simply by having a place that feels safe to share their faults and
failings.
So, on that dark night, when the angel showed up,
those shepherds weren’t just terrified because of the light. They feared what that light exposed in
them. I used to think that folks in
Jesus’ day considered shepherds to be outcasts. But when you look at how the Bible celebrates
shepherds, that doesn’t
make much sense.
But still, being a shepherd didn’t put
you on the highest rung of the social ladder nor the religious one either. Shepherds had a hard time keeping religiously pure as their leaders
defined it. And they couldn’t keep the Sabbath because sheep need constant
protection. Being a shepherd also meant you spent most of the time away from
society, hanging in the fields with your sheep. But maybe shepherds preferred it that
way. There they avoided society’s judgment. There they didn’t have to face how far they
fell short of others’ religious expectations.
And maybe that’s exactly why God showed up there.
Because in the midst of their terror at
the light, the angel brings these amazing words. “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing
you good news of great joy for all the people.”
Standing in God’s light can be terrifying
at least at first. I can think that the
white shirts I wear still look white.
But when I hold it up to something that is actually white, well, they
don’t look so good anymore. And the brightness
of God’s goodness, God’s holiness can do the same.
But here’s the difference. If you think of your failings like a stain
on a shirt, that can be scary. After
all, some stains don’t come out. You have to cover them up instead. And to
avoid staining in the first place, you have to avoid anything that hints at
something God wouldn’t want. In Jesus’
day, that’s how religious folks thought of sin, of moral failings. They saw it as a stain that becomes almost
impossible to wash away.
But in this story, God gives a different
picture of God’s goodness, God’s holiness, and of our failings and faults. Here, God’s goodness comes as a light. And that light overwhelms all the darkness,
inside and out. So instead of the judgment
and condemnation the shepherds fear, they receive good news of God’s deliverance
for everyone, not simply the morally upright, but for everyone. They even receive a special calling, to be
the first bearers of this good news to the world.
In their story, God shows you the way to freedom
from those things you keep in the dark. Here God tells you. Your
failings aren’t some stain that can’t be washed out. No, they are a dark place that the light of
my love blows away. In my light, God
says, you don’t receive the judgment and condemnation you fear. No, you receive the grace and forgiveness you
need. You discover a God who sees you
as you are, ugly places and all, and doesn’t walk away. No, this God come so close that in Jesus, he became
one of you. No, Jesus did more than that. Jesus took your darkness into himself. That’s what happened to Jesus on that
cross. Darkness literally fell upon
Jesus. The light of the world fell into darkness. What
does that mean? If God is light, then the further you are
from God, the darker things become. That darkness takes you away from the
ultimate source of all life, all beauty, all truth. That darkness Jesus
took on. God became cut off from God. Why did God in Jesus enter that darkness for
you? In Jesus, God did it so that his light
would defeat that darkness now and forever.
Jesus took on the darkness, including your darkness, so he might give you
the light; so that you might become the very radiance of God. In that ultimate gift, Jesus brought the
light so close that God’s love has now shattered the power of that darkness
forever.
A Greek monk named Symeon, wrote
so stunningly of that light, that his words have now lasted over a thousand
years. Symeon wrote this beautiful prayer.
We awaken in your
body, O Christ, As you awaken in our bodies.
I wake up inside
Your Body Where all my body, all over,
Every most hidden
part of it, Is realized as joy in You
And You make me,
utterly, Real,
And everything
that is hurt, everything That
seemed to me dark, harsh, shameful, Maimed,
ugly, irreparably Damaged, is in You transformed
And recognized as
whole, as lovely, And
radiant in Your light.
That is what Jesus
has done, and still yearns to do in your life.
In that light you have nothing to fear.
For that light brings you good news of great joy that is for all the
people. And all you need to do is say yes, yes to that
light, yes to it entering every painful regret, every dark secret, every broken
and shameful place bringing a light no darkness can overcome. What dark places do you carry? Where do you need to say yes to that light?
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