Sunday Sermon: Come to the Light
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Text: Isaiah 9:1-3
Series: Glad Bethlehem's Living Light
Third Sunday of Advent: JOY
Samuel Miller was the dean of the Harvard Divinity School back in the 1960’s, which as most of you know was a most tumultuous time in our nation’s history. In his book, The Dilemma of Modern Belief, which he wrote in 1963, but could very well have been written today, Miller tells the story of a performance he attended by the comedian Karl Valentin, whom Miller called “the last of the metaphysical clowns. Miller says that as the curtain lifted, the stage was completely dark except for one small circle of light in the middle. Into that light Valentin stepped in his magnificent clown costume and began to look intently all around that small circle of light. A policeman appeared on the scene, saw Valentin looking around and asked if he had lost something. Valentin replied, “Yes, the keys to my house.” Realizing the gravity of the situation, the policeman joined the clown in the search. Together they searched for a long time, until finally the policeman asked, “Are you sure you lost it here?” To which the clown answered, “No, I lost it over there,” pointing to a dark corner of the stage. “Then why,” asked the by now exasperated policeman, “are you looking here?” To which Valentin the clown shrugged his shoulders, and replied, somewhat matter of factly, “Because there is no light over there.”
As Miller noted in his book, that story pretty well summarizes the plight of where so many people are today with respect to their struggle to believe in God. Like a misplaced necessity, too many have decided where God is to be found, assuming that no one could ever find God in the dark places of life. And as a result, they miss out on the many ways God has drawn near to us in our very darkness to be with us and to support us and to lead us out from that darkness to a better place, one that enables us to know His immeasurable joy.
That missed opportunity also describes the situation the prophet Isaiah faced at a time in his life when God’s people had made too many wrong assumptions about God and as a result were looking for Him in all the wrong places, causing them to be in danger of missing out on the immense joy God had for them to know. The ninth chapter of Isaiah deals with a time in the nation of Judah’s life when the same Assyrian army that had decimated their cousins to the north in Israel were now threatening to do the same to them and all because of how earlier in the fifth chapter Isaiah had explained to them that they had been “putting darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isa. 5:20). In other words, they had been living a lie and denying the reality of the situation that was before them, the very real possibility of their losing everything God had given them because of their disobedience and their drift farther and farther and farther away from God. Consequently, they had landed in a place, spiritually speaking, of “darkness and distress,” where “even the light would be darkened by the clouds” (Isa. 5:30).
That’s not a good place to be, is it? It’s not a good place to be because when you find yourself in such a place, you can’t see your way out, you can’t work your way out, you can’t find your way out. You become so mired in the darkness that eventually become acclimated to it so that you come to assume that such is your lot in your life and you must find a way to be comfortable in it, because God will never find you in such a dark place.
Or will He? Now, you can understand and appreciate the radical notion Isaiah announced to his people that a new day was about to dawn, one that only God could have made possible. Whereas in the past God had humbled the places to their north, Zebulun and Naphtali, tribes of the Northern Kingdom, by allowing the Assyrians to overtake them, God would honoring them by doing something remarkable in a backwoods place like Galilee, beyond the Jordan, in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee. There in the land of deep darkness, Isaiah tells them, a light would dawn. God would find them in their misery, draw near to them in their darkness, and do something only God could have done so that their darkness would give way to light and their misery would be replaced by joy. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. You (God) have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you (O God) as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder.”
Isaiah points the people to the day when God would draw near to them through His promised Messiah to lead them to a place of never-ending joy. All that would be required of them is that when that day comes, His people will open their hearts to him and receive him as the hope of their salvation and the source of their perpetual joy. But of course, that requires faith on our part. It requires our willingness to wait patiently in the darkness for God to come to us and when He does, to embrace the light that He brings.
When I read the Gospels, I find it incredulous and inconceivable that so many would have missed out on the joy that God sent Jesus to bring. Why is that the case? How is it that people would have avoided the salvation that God sent Jesus to make possible? In the third chapter of the Gospel of John, as Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus God’s sending him to earth to be the light that shines in this world’s darkness, he tells Nicodemus, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
We have a choice. We can either remain in the darkness, which admittedly allows us to stay put and not have to go through any radical change, but which is a path that never leads to any sort of deep joy. Or we can take the risk of making ourselves vulnerable, exposing ourselves to the light Jesus brings, embracing the grace that comes from it, and experiencing in the process immeasurable joy.
So, what choice are you prepared to make today?
Some years ago, when bungee jumping was the craze, Denise Richardson, a talk-show host on PBS, was tasked with doing a story on the phenomenon. Needless to say, she wasn’t ecstatic about the assignment, but when you’re in the news talk business, you go through a lot to be able to talk about it. When the day arrived, her instructor proceeded to perch her on a bridge platform twenty-two stories above the water, and to use a Christmas phrase, Denise was “sore afraid.” When her instructor told her first to get in touch with her feelings, which made no sense to her whatsoever given the fact that she was clinging frantically to the bridge rails. “As long you give in to the fear,” said her instructor, “that’s all you’ll feel.” “But if you jump, if you leap from the bridge, you’ll find that fear replaced with a sense of exhilaration you cannot imagine.” But Denise wasn’t convinced and kept clinging to the bridge rails. Then taking her hand, the instructor looked Denise directly in her panic-filled eyes, and told her calmly but firmly, “Look, up here is pain. Down there is joy. Which would you rather know?” And with that word, Denise let go, and only then discovered how her instructor was right.
Sometimes it seems safest for us to stay in what we think is a bright enough place when what we need, what we long for, what we have lost requires us to walk to the edge of that light and take one step more. And when we do, what we only then will come to see is that God is present in that very place to bless us beyond belief and to enlarge our souls, increase our joy, and flood our world with a light, the very light of life, we would otherwise never know.
“Come to the light, ‘tis shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon me. Once I was blind, but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus.”