Sermon manuscript:
The prophet Isaiah speaks about the coming Christ hundreds
of years before he was born. Isaiah says in our reading tonight: “People
walking in darkness have seen a great light. For those living in the land of
the shadow of death, the light has dawned.”
Walking in darkness is bewildering. You cannot see where you
are going. You cannot anticipate problems or dangers. You might not get to
where you are going because you don’t know the way. You might not even know where you are supposed to be going.
This is a good description of us. What is life all about?
You might get almost as many explanations for what life is all about as the
number of people that you encounter. Everybody has different ideas of what
happiness is. There are different goals for life. On good days people try their
best to get to where they think they will be happy. On bad days people don’t
even try. They make peace with the darkness, bide their time. Are they waiting
for it all to be over?
Since some people try more and other people try less, it
might seem as though they should not be put into the same group. It might seem
as though some people have their stuff together. They’re going someplace. But
this is an illusion. We are all in the darkness. It’s like being in a cave
where there is no light whatsoever. Whoever is in that place is in the
darkness. It doesn’t matter if people are moving around a lot, or a little bit,
or not at all.
Perhaps it is nobler to be moving about. At least that’s
trying. The thought is that if you keep trying, and you never give up, then
maybe you will find the light. Maybe you will arrive at happiness. But this
almost makes the situation worse. If everywhere you decide to go is necessarily
going to be the wrong place to go, then you are always only busy getting to the
wrong place.
It’s like Sisyphus from Greek mythology. His punishment in
Hades was that he had to roll an immense boulder to the top of the hill, only
to have it roll back down to the bottom again where he’d have to start all
over. Fighting against the darkness, looking for meaning and happiness, sounds
like it’s the thing we should be doing. What good is it, though, if all the
striving comes to nothing?
In contrast to this dreary darkness, Isaiah’s claim, God’s
claim, concerning the Christ, is just as stark and grand as it sounds. “People
walking in darkness have seen a great light. For those living in the land of
the shadow of death, the light has dawned.” There is darkness and there is
light. All live in the darkness no matter how relatively successful each might
be. The light—that’s Jesus. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. He is the
light that no darkness can overcome.
This sounds like it is automatically a good thing. Our
problems are solved. In a place where everything is pitch black, to have the
light suddenly appear, that’s marvelous. There’s no other way of getting out of
the darkness than by this great light. This is true, but the light of Christ is
not always welcome.
Jesus says, “This is the judgment: The light has come
into the world, but the people loved the darkness more than the light. They
loved the darkness because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does worthless
things hates the light, and does not come near the light, otherwise their works
would be exposed.”
This, at least, has to be said in defense of the darkness:
Darkness seems to give us the freedom to pursue what we want. We do things in
secret without really having to think about it, because nobody’s going to know.
What isn’t known won’t hurt us. We learn this as little tikes. The darkness
seems to give us the freedom to do what we want.
So we should not think it is strange, that when this great
light dawns upon us, that we can end up hating the light and loving the
darkness. We don’t want to make a clean break with our life of doing what we
want. There are things that we would like to continue to do in the darkness
even after the light has come. It is not uncommon for Christians to want to
bring a little piece of hell with them, some sin that has given them solace or
satisfaction over the years. But that is not possible. The light obliterates
the darkness.
This can seem to be a great hardship, but really it isn’t. There
is a great delusion with secrecy and darkness. The lie is that what we pursue
in the darkness is good because we enjoy it. It’s the spice of life. It’s like
an alcoholic thinking of his alcohol as his medicine. He can’t do without it.
But the alcohol is not giving him life. It is dishing out death, one dose after
another. So it is with all that gets pursued in the darkness. There is an
implied promise that we will be blessed by pursuing such things. But all that
gets accomplished is that we become more fearful of God and his judgement. The
last thing we want is for the light to come and expose what we have been doing.
A further delusion is that if we abandon those things that
we love to do in the darkness, then life will be boring and lame. But God is
not stingy with his blessings. God is well pleased with us creatures doing our
creaturely things. He wants us to eat and drink and be merry. Intimate love is
so well pleasing to him that he crowns it with the birth of children. A trick
gets pulled on us when we think that pursuing illicit things in the darkness is
the only way we are ever going to be truly happy.
One old Christian thinker said that evil is not able to
create anything. It only takes things that are good and twists them, perverts
them, so that they become shameful. There might be a bit of truth lurking in
the idea of taking something of hell with us into heaven. Whatever is truly
good, whatever comes from the Creator, that gets twisted in the darkness, this
goodness is stored up for us in heaven. It is the darkness that we have to
leave behind, not the goodness. It is the lying that we have to leave behind,
not the enjoyment.
Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows
me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Jesus is
good. Light is good. The light purifies and gives life. These things are true,
no matter what anybody might say about them. Jesus has not come to take
anything away from us except the darkness, the lies, and the sins. He does not
take away. He gives.
The first thing from which everything else must flow is the
way that God accepts us and takes us in as his own. Isaiah says, “For to us
a child is born, to us a Son is given.” This is speaking about Jesus. Jesus
was born and given as God’s gift to us. As the Redeemer and Mediator he
reconciles sinners with God. For the sake of Jesus, and his cleansing blood, we
do not need to be afraid when God’s light exposes our lives. For the sake of
Jesus we are well pleasing to God.
Once we have understood that God accept us, saves us,
justifies us in Jesus, we can begin to live a new life. Jesus says, “I am
the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will
have the light of life.” Taking up our cross and following Jesus, we learn
from him what is good and what is evil. What is good is love. What is evil is a
bad conscience before God, and a fearing of his light.
Slinking about, fearing exposure, is not good. It never has
been good. It never will be good. That’s because it is alienation from God from
whom all good things come. Jesus’s redemption overcomes this alienation and
reconciles us to God. Every single one of us has been redeemed by Jesus.
Through him we can live in light. Then we are not living in dread, fearing
exposure, but are looking forward to more light and more life from God.
Apart from Christ there is only
darkness. Nobody knows what he or she is doing as they search about for
happiness. It inevitably ends with the futility of death, as Solomon says in
Ecclesiastes. “But,” as Isaiah says, “To us a Child is born, to us a Son is
given.” “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. For
those living in the land of the shadow of death, the light has dawned.” He
does not come to take away anything from you except the lies and the sins that were
never really good for you anyway. Trust in him. Follow him. Then you will not
walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
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