Sermon: "In the same way as the prophets before you"
We don’t really know about darkness anymore. Aren’t you amazed any time you get away from the city and see the real night sky – how bright the stars appear and how dark the night really is away from the city’s night-time glow of street lamps, well-lit houses and commercial buildings, and the bluish glow of TV and computer screens that seem always to be on?
We forget what darkness is really like, and that it’s still there. Until there’s a power outage. Then we know darkness, the power of a candle, and how much of a gift light still is.
Jesus said to the people around him, “You are the light of the world.”
He was speaking to people who knew darkness and the value of light. They knew the necessity of lighting candles and the oil lamp every night -- lighting and relighting and relighting again every night of their lives – every night of the world.
They also knew the value of each and every light. Without street lamps on every corner and every ten or twenty metres in between, without the incessant artificial glow from the city all around us, they knew that if someone in that corner of town did not light their candle, or someone in the house at the end of that field did not light their lamp, their light would be missed. The light would be less; the darkness would be greater.
Today is All Saints’ Sunday – a day to remember and celebrate all people of faith, hope and love through whom some part of God’s light shines into the darkness of the world.
And who are they? Who are these people – these saints, whose light is missed if they do not shine? Who, if they fail to let their light shine, leave the world that much darker a place?
This week The Spectator printed a letter to the editor from Alasdair Paterson of Waterdown who is one of many who stood for several hours on a Burlington bridge to greet the procession of Nathan Cirillo’s body home to Hamilton. The experience of that day and of the people who shared it moved him deeply, and after describing what he saw and felt he ended his letter with these words:
To the people who
preach intolerance and hatred, and who initiate this and any other kind of
violence against the innocent and those who stand up for them: now, more than
ever in my life, I know something you don’t seem to realize. We outnumber you – in immense proportions –
and we outdo you in courage, and kindness, and love. There is nothing
you can do to win this fight. There will
be peace one day, and you might be part of it.
I hope so. But with or without
you, it will happen.
This
letter helps me remember that the saints – the heroes who keep God’s world going
‘round without spinning completely out of control, are ordinary people. People like you and me, who are basically
good, kind, compassionate and caring for the well-being of others and of all
creation.
Jesus
sums up some of this in the verses we read today. It’s a passage we know as the Beatitudes,
because in the Latin version of the New Testament – the only version the
Western church had for a millennium, each of the verses starts with the word
“beatus” – the Latin for blessed or happy, and the noun form is “beatitudo” –
blessing or happiness.
The
form of the verses is drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures. Just think of the Psalms, like Psalm 1 that says
Blessed
(or happy) are those
who do not follow
the advice of the wicked,
or
take the path that sinners tread,
or
sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law
of the Lord,and on God’s law they meditate day /night.
They
are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its
season,and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.
The
wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind
drives away…for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
In
other words, those who live in accord with God’s law, in harmony with the way
the world is made to work by God’s good design, will be happy in a way that can
only be called “blessed.” There is a
peace and stability, a sense of meaningfulness and good purpose that comes from
living in right relation with all that God has made, that is greater than any pleasure
or comfort that may come from the passing whims and trends of our time.
In
the Beatitudes Jesus is giving definition to the kind of life that lasts and
that has eternal meaning and significance, the kind of life that is part of how
God intends the world to be, and how it will be in the end.
Blessed
are the poor in spirit, he says – those who live humbly, not puffed up and
feeling entitled, but living gratefully as servants of others and their
needs. Blessed are those who mourn and are
not afraid to take on themselves the sorrows of others. Blessed are the meek and the merciful, those
who hunger and thirst for justice for all, the pure in heart and those who make
peace and who work for reconciliation and shalom. Blessed are those who are willing to be
persecuted, ostracized, ridiculed for doing and saying the right thing.
Rejoice
and be glad, he says, for great is your reward from God; you are part of the
kingdom of God, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets and spiritual
heroes and ordinary saints who were before you – all those who were in their
time the light of the world, like you are in yours.
The
things Jesus mentions are meant to be ordinary virtues. The Beatitudes are meant to be a normal way
of life for all. That’s probably why it
feels so good when we actually manage to live this way. As hard as it may be sometimes, it kind of
fits who we’re meant to be, and who we are at the deepest level of our being.
But is
that the case? Alasdair Paterson and
thousands of other Canadians took the time a week ago Friday to do the saintly
thing to mourn with the Cirillo family, to acknowledge publicly their own poverty
of spirit, to act out their longing for a more peaceful and reconciled world,
to join with others in quietly and meekly praying for God’s blessing on our
time and on all people. They took time
to light their candle and uncover the lamp of their deepest, most godly spirit
for all to see.
But is that how we live all the time?
Last
week Roberta Davis posted a challenging photo and caption on her Facebook
page.
My
first thought when I saw that post was a self-righteous little “Yeah! Take that you rich people! Thank you, Roberta!” (I think there was even a little mental fist
pump that went along with it.)
And
my second thought was, “Oh yeah…that’s me too, isn’t it? Do I really want to think about this any
more? What’s the next post I can click
to?” And I went on to find something
else.
Living
the Beatitudes is not easy. It takes
intention. It takes thought and careful
discernment. It takes the discipline of
recognizing the temptations of our day to live less blessedly than this, and
resisting them. It takes the willingness
to recognize the distractions of our time that offer us a more artificial or
superficial kind of happiness, and to renounce them. It takes the clarity of thought to remember
that the darkness of less-than-right living is inside us as well as out there,
and we also need ways of opening ourselves – again and again, to the light.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer in his classic study of the Beatitudes called this need to be
discerning and to renounce what is less than God’s will for human life “the
cost of discipleship.” He in his time,
like the disciples in Jesus’ time, knew what darkness is, and that it always
is. He in his time, like we in our time,
also knew how easy it is to be lulled by artificial light generated by the
powers of our day.
But the
darkness never really goes away, and every generation, every age, every culture
and every situation is in need of light – in need of people who live the
Beatitudes – who live in this world the way we are meant to, in intentional accord
with God’s good will for all that is.
The
candles must be lit and relit, the lamp must be uncovered and uncovered again
and again every night after night. And
if someone in some corner of town does not light their candle, if we in our place
here do not uncover our lamp, the light we are meant to be really is
missed. The light will be less; the
darkness will be greater.
No comments:
Post a Comment