Called to be candles

Focusing

 

Last week was a terrible week in the world.   

 

As of this writing, over 33,000 are said to have been killed in the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria just a week ago, last Monday.  Then on Wednesday, two children were killed and a number of others injured when a bus was driven head-on into a daycare in Laval. 

 

These things, on top of the other hard news we are all too used to – war, famine, poverty, are enough to make us wonder: how is a child of God to live? How are people and communities of faith to survive?

 

Do we look for a nice, safe spot to hide and hang out until the world becomes a safer place?  Or we get taken to heaven? 

 

Or do we go out into the world as it is – especially as it is, with whatever little light we can and we are, to help others find comfort and strength, find a God of love reaching out to them where they are, and find their way home?

 

I invite you come to begin your reading of this post by sharing in a prayer for the people of Turkey and Syria, that was offered this week by UCC congregations across the country.

 

God,
In the face of destruction
that tears down homes and threatens life,
we pray that your deep abiding love be felt by:

those who are grieving,
those who fear

for themselves and their communities,
those who are struggling;

and, those who are offering aid.
May they continue to be strengthened by your Spirit.
May we extend our hearts in prayer.  Amen.

 

Reading: Matt 5:14-16

These verses are near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount – a three-chapter sermon that Jesus preaches to a crowd that has begun to follow him in Galilee. 

It is important to remember that in this sermon, Jesus is not talking just to religious professionals or other especially holy people.  He is speaking to people from all walks of life in Galilee who have left their nets, their homes, their beggar bowls, and their old ways, to follow him.  Some may be rich; many are poor.  Some may be of good standing in their community; many are not.  The one thing they have in common is that life somehow has broken open their hearts to be able to love their neighbour, and to share in Jesus’ passion for the healing of all the world.

It is to them that he says:

You are the light of the world.  A city on top of a hill can’t be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket.   Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines on all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.

Reflection

 

A few months ago, on a Wednesday night, I was driving through the city to a weekly meeting of a spiritual-development group I’ve been part of for some years, and from there, home, to end a long day.

 

I was stopped at a red light at King and Dundurn, waiting with the other drivers for the light to change, and give us to go-ahead.  King and Dundurn is one of the more accident-plagued intersections in the city. 

 

It’s incredible, really, how much we rely on lights – on different kinds of lights – in this case a traffic light, to guide us and help us get through the world safely, and to navigate even the most difficult cross-roads safely.

 

Except this time, something was wrong.  The light changed, and no one was starting up to go with the green – at least, not in my lane and the one to the right of me.  I was the second car in the second-from-the-right-hand-curb lane – two of five lanes of one-way traffic that normally is quick off the mark, with a lot of drivers jockeying for lane position and priority as they speed into and through the intersection.  This time, though, only the three left-hand lanes were beginning to move.

 

And then I saw the reason.  

 

A young man – maybe young, maybe middle-aged, it was hard to know, was staggering and lurching diagonally across the intersection from the right -hand side.  He seemed to have no idea where he was, or about the danger he was in.  He was having enough trouble just putting one foot kind of in front of the other, and not falling over, as he slowly and blindly wove and staggered his way through the very middle of the intersection.

 

The drivers at the head of the two right-hand lanes were not moving – were waiting for him to pass out of their way.  They knew this man in need of protection was more important than what the city’s traffic light was telling us to do.  They knew this was a situation of real human need that the lights of this world aren’t necessarily up to handling well, aren’t good to follow, and quite simply need to be ignored.

 

But would the drivers in the left-hand lanes see the endangered man in time, hidden as he was from their vision by the stopped cars to their right?

 

I got out of my car, made sure not to get hit by a car in the lane to the left of me, and I made way into the intersection with hands raised so people would see me.  I hoped that in the dark of the night and with my usual dark jacket on, there was enough light of some kind, and enough awareness and care on the part of the other drivers, for them to see me and him, as I approached the man, took his hands and put an arm around him, and helped steer him back to the curb, the safety of the sidewalk, and the company of some people waiting there at a bus stop – at least one of them already on their phone calling for help.

Mission accomplished, I went back to my car – now by itself holding up a whole line of traffic, and I went on my way to my meeting and then home.

 

It felt good to have helped the man to safety.

 

But I wondered, was there more I could have done?  Instead of just entrusting him to others gathered there, should I have stayed to see if I could be of any further help?

 

Was the little that I did, enough to count as light in the darkness of our time – part of God’s Light, no matter how little?  A spark of human compassion, no matter how weak?  A candle’s worth of holy caring for someone else’ well-being, no matter how limited?

 

Was it enough to help remind those who were at that cross-roads that night, that the real Light of the world that saves life and serves fulness of life is often different from the lights of the world?  Aand that the way we are meant to navigate our way through the world is not just to jockey for position in the lane we want, to get where we want to be, but along the way and at every cross-roads, to do what’s needed to serve the well-being of all?

 

The point of lights is to help us get us through the world well, and the light of God is about acting out the love of God in the world, and for all the world – particularly for those most in need of knowing it. 

 

And was what I did that night at that crossroads, enough to count as that?  Or was it just a minimal spark, a mere flint-strike that I didn’t let grow or catch into something more – into something more helpful and really illumining than just helping the man off the road?

 

I still wonder about that.

 

The light of God has to do with something inside us as human beings.  A particular knowledge and understanding of God breathed into us in our creation, and at our birth as human persons.  A knowledge of, and an openness to God that we are called to keep and to protect, to feed and nurture in ourselves in ourselves and in one another in whatever way we can in our living.  A knowledge and understanding of God who is love, who comes to us with understanding and forgiveness, whose heart’s purpose is to bring about healing, redemption, and the well-being of all.

 

And this light of God – being the light of God’s love at work in and for the world, has more to do with how we let it be known and acted out in the midst of the world’s affairs, than just what we know in our heads and our houses.

 

I’m helped a great deal these days by those who suggest – even insist, that God and the true light of God is not so much something we carry within us, as a kind of private possession or gift inside us.  Something that sets us apart as holy or godly, regardless of what we do or don’t do for others’ well-being, as if compassionate action and going outside of ourselves for the well-being of others is somehow a bonus extra to knowing God, rather than actually the way itself that we really come to know God.

 

They say – these people that teach me, they say that God and the true light of God, the real presence of God, are what we and others discover between us, when we reach out in some loving, caring, understanding, forgiving, helping way to someone who needs it.  That it’s in the interaction between us – between us and them, that God happens, and becomes present, and is illumined both to them and to us – to the other, and to ourselves.

 

Which makes me think -- thinking back to the question of "enough?" that I've wondered about -- that maybe it’s not a question of how little or how big is the thing we do, the action we take, the gift we give for someone else’s well-being.  That maybe it’s more simple the matter and the fact itself of the doing, the acting, the giving that makes God real, and that brings to light God’s love at work in the world – both for us, and for them; for the giver, and the recipient of the gift.

 

Because remember who Jesus is talking to here, in the Sermon on the Mount. 

 

It’s not just the super-religious, and not just those who are well-regarded and well-positioned in the community – you know, the celebrities, the stars of the day, the happy-shiny people, the successes of the world who we think are the ones to follow.  Nor is it the super-givers, the great philanthropists, the much-admired pillars of charity in the community who have what it takes to move mountains with a fistful of good deeds.

 

No.   

 

It’s all – rich or poor, religious or not-so-much-so, greatest or least, well-regarded or much-despised – all who have left what they have known behind, in order to follow Jesus and his way in life.  It’s anyone whose heart has been broken open by life and the world’s sorrows and traumas, to care in a new way about their neighbour in whatever way comes to them, to be willing to reach out in generous care to another with whatever they have at hand, and to really want the world to be a place that is good for all.

 

You are the light of the world, Jesus says – when you come out from a safe hiding place and from behind the walls and lines that divide and protecr, to let God’s light, to let God’s love be seen in the way you reach out to and relate to others around you – especially those who are broken and in need of that light and that love.

 

A Closing Meditation (by William Brodrick)

 

We have to be candles,

burning between

            hope and despair,

            faith and doubt,

            life and death,

            all the opposites.

This is the disquieting place

where people must always find us.

 

And if our life means anything

            if what we are goes beyond holy* walls

            and

            does some good,

it is that somehow,

by being here,

            at peace,

we help the world cope

with what it cannot understand.

 

 

* Brodrick's context led him to say "monastery walls."  My first thought was to replace it with "church walls."  But then it seemed helpful to acknowledge that there may be more structures in life -- more than just monastery and church, that we count as holy places, but which in their own way and at times protect us against being part of the light of God in the world.