“The Light with All Things”
Ephesians 5:8-14
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/26/17
Let’s take a
walk. It’s an afternoon like last Thursday, a quintessential spring day. We’re
at Persimmon Ridge – you, me, and Todd, my energetic border collie. We park
under the pines in front of the Head Start building. Walking uphill past the
playground, Todd stops to sniff the fence. He gives it a canine salute.
We climb the winding path of Luke’s
Trail up to the ridge where golden sunlight pours from a white-hot spout in a crystal
pitcher sky. At four o’clock the light angles down through the still-bare
branches of oaks, hickories, maples, and tulip poplars. It pools on the brown remnants
of last year’s luxuriant foliage. As the sun warms the moist soil beneath the
brittle leaves, the earthy fragrance of decay rises into the cool air. We can
almost feel the rich darkness underfoot receiving and relishing the warmth.
We cross the
power line above the water park and begin the serpentine descent toward the
creek. In the shady dampness on the other side of the water, trout lilies
spread their waxy leaves dappled with shades of green. They do resemble trout
holding in a lazy stream, while sunlight plays in the mottled designs on their
backs. On a fragile stem above the leaves, soft yellow blooms bow toward the
earth as if self-conscious of their own tender beauty. Nearby, bloodroot and
rue anemone flaunt their white brilliance with shameless delight.
Working our way up the steep
backside of Walter’s Trail, we throw a stick for Todd. He may bring it back to
us, or he may wait for us catch up with him, then dare us to wrestle it from
his mouth.
At the upper end of Walter’s Trail,
we take the gravel road up toward the water tower. Wine berry brambles, thick
with tiny thorns, burst from the hillside. With the sun behind them, the canes
glow a translucent burgundy. In another six weeks, we’ll go back and pick the
sweet, red berries. Marianne will make us a pie.
Before reaching the water tower, we
turn onto John’s Trail and follow that ridge. We duck under and step over
fallen branches. After crossing the power line, again, we drop back to the
gravel road behind the ball fields. Here and there along the way, purple
violets, periwinkle, and sprouts of new green in the understory declare winter a
memory.
On our walk, new
life is a testimony of the light’s continual work. I receive it as a promise
that a holy and creative radiance burns at the heart of all things, a reminder that
light, not darkness, is the ultimate reality.
Reflecting on the creation stories
in Genesis, Philip Newell writes, “To say that light is created on the first
day is to say that light is at the heart of life. It is the beginning of
creation in the sense that it is the essence or centre from which life
proceeds. At the heart of all that has life,” says Newell, “is the light of
God.”1
Redemption,
then, is not the giving of light to that which had been hopelessly dark. It’s
the washing away of a darkening pall. Redemption reveals that which has always
been our truth, but which we have forgotten, ignored, or refused. Much
Christian teaching has declared something quite different, namely that
condemning darkness is our fundamental reality. Theologians have called it
“total depravity.” We deserve eternal
punishment, and unless we say this
and do that, God will abandon us to hell.
One denomination
declares it somewhat gently: “God…will bring the world to its appropriate end…and
Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned
to Hell…The righteous…will receive their reward and will dwell forever in
Heaven.”3
Jonathan Edwards, the
eighteenth-century guru of “revivalist” theology, declares it less gently. In
his long, terrifying, and often-quoted sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God,” Edwards says:
“The God that
holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome
insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards
you burns like fire…you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes,
than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours…O sinner! Consider the
fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and
bottomless pit…that you are held over in the hand of that God…
“Therefore, let every one that is
out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come…‘Haste and…escape to
the mountain, lest you be consumed.’”2
If not always in
that tone, that is still the message of much Christian preaching.
It seems to me that when
evangelism starts to feel like blackmail, we’ve crossed a dangerous line. We
are assuming that loathsome darkness is our essence, and that God loves only
those who, by terrified conformity to a narrow and controlling dogma, earn the light. If that’s how a person
views God, how will he or she treat others?
“Everything
that becomes visible is light,” says
Paul. He calls us to “live as children of light” because that is who we are. It’s who we have been
from birth. It’s who we will be in whatever it is that eternity may look like.
Because life
is not all sweetness and happiness, God comes to us in Christ. The nineteenth
century Scottish author George McDonald spoke of the Incarnation as “the coming
of a ‘real man’ to those who are ‘half-unreal’, to show them the light that is
hidden in the depths of [all things]”4
All
things: Including the earth, which sustains us and will outlive us, but
which requires our grateful, loving, and cooperative stewardship today if
future generations are to eat, and drink, and breathe.
All
things: Including our neighbors – no matter where they come from or what
they believe or don’t believe. If we dare to claim to be fashioned in God’s
image, and fail to look for and honor that same image in all others, our claim
means nothing.
All
things: Including, and may be the hardest one, ourselves. The less gracious
we are to ourselves, the more we try to deserve God’s love, and the less kind
we are to neighbor, stranger, and the earth itself.
The closing
words of today’s passage remind us that not even death darkens our deepest heart.
“Sleeper awake!” says Paul. “Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
On Easter, the grave will reveal to
all things that in all things shines the
everlasting light of God.
More cold, dark, and painful nights
will come for all of us. But the light of Christ is revealing our sinfulness as
a hunger for belonging and a thirst for wholeness. The light of Christ within
us reveals our despair as a burdened love for this world. A bright, new beginning
is the destiny of all creation. It’s not ours alone to claim or to enjoy.
As trout lilies, bloodroot, and
violets are to springtime, may we live as grateful witnesses to resurrection, testaments
to the light that surrounds us, fills us, enlivens us, and claims us as its own.
1John Philip Newell, The Book of Creation: An
Introduction to Celtic Spirituality. Paulist Press, New York, 1999. p. 3.
4Newell,
p. 14.
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