If you get up for a drink in the night or go to the loo, or
let the cat out at 3am when you are being head butted as she is having a
sponsored walk round the pillow round your head, you think, I needn’t put the
light on. Even your house you know well, feels very different in total darkness.
Light makes it easier to journey, even a single little light.
I live up a tiny lane and there are no lights until you get to my front door
where a security light comes on. When I have meetings in an evening in the
winter, I see people coming along the lane with torches to reach it safely.
We need to anticipate the light coming to shine in the
darkness when we are in the darkness and to believe it will come.
I am thinking about Candlemas. It is officially in the church calendar the end
of the Christmas season. I keep a crib out in my house until February 2nd.
In the Gospel of Luke, we meet Simeon.
Simeon, old, righteous and devout, was looking forward to the
consolation of Israel, perhaps to the peace of Israel, perhaps to its freedom
from the Roman yoke. The Holy Spirit rested on him and had assured him that he
would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Now the Spirit led him
into the temple. Simeon took the baby Jesus into his arms and uttered what have
become the familiar words of the Nunc Dimittis, one of the most beautiful
prayers we have I think.
Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace:
according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation: which you have
prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the
Gentiles: and for glory to your people Israel.
Simeon spent his whole life waiting patiently for God’s light
to come in a new way, and when he saw Jesus, he found peace, and he found
life’s journey was complete. He didn’t know God’s timing, but he knew that that
light would come. Can we not just simply say and sing that God is light, do we
expect it to shine even when life is grotty? Is our attitude optimistic and do
we live in expectation even when others think we are crazy to do so?
Someone in the Circuit said to me recently, “the trouble with
you is that your glass is always half full, and you are always so positive.” I
am a problem for this person because they like to moan about everything and
nothing is ever good enough, and they keep me on my toes. Perhaps you know
people who cannot ever believe anything good will happen. Sometimes they need
us to walk alongside them a lot pastorally.
This last week we have remembered the Holocaust and the 70th
Anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz.
I have a DVD in my DVD cupboard I have never watched. I saw
the film on the DVD at the cinema and it was so horrific I had to keep turning
away. I took a girl to see it on a date. She dumped me not long afterwards.
Schlinder’s List is not a girl’s idea of a romantic date really. If you
remember the beginning of that film, a candle is lit at the beginning and then
is blown out and the film turns from colour to black and white. 3 hours later,
a candle is lit again, the film turns back into colour and all these elderly
people are at a memorial to those lost in the Holocaust in Jerusalem, and you
realise quickly you haven’t watched a story, you have been caught up in a
period of history that involved real people, ordinary people, just like you and
me, born into a certain circumstance, wiped out for being “different” by an
ideology that strove to be perfect, without any deviations from the mother
race.
I watched a programme on Wednesday night called “The
Holocaust – An Act of Remembrance” – three stories were told. One a lady who
fled as a child in the 1930’s to Switzerland. She later wrote children’s books
including one about her childhood being taken away called “When Hitler Stole
Pink Rabbit.” Now it is a set text in German schools. One a lady who survived
Auschwitz who tried to tell her story moving to this country after it and found
people didn’t want to know. The last one though really got me.
It was a female rabbi who had traced her family back to
Lithuania. There all the Jews in her family’s village were rounded up, put in
the synagogue for three weeks with no food or water, some dying, but not
allowed to remove the dead bodies, then without warning, the survivors were
root marched to a wood, children murdered by their heads rammed into trees,
like Psalm 137 that horrific bit “blessed be those who take your children and
dash their heads against a rock.” And everyone else shot.
There was an image of a very elderly man in a wheelchair at
an act of remembrance, the only Jew left in that village. A scene of utter
disbelief as people collectively remembered the unspeakable.
I found awonderful piece of writing in a new book about
where God might have been in all of this.It ends "they can’t
take your prayers away from you."It’s like those words in Cologne Cathedral where Jews hid in the
basement to escape Nazi tyranny.At the end of the war, fragments of a poem,
believed to have been written by a Jewish child. were scrawled on the wall.
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining and I
believe in love even when there's no one there and I believe in God even when he is silent I believe through any
trial there is always a way.
We anticipate the light coming in hard times, we need to pray
for it, and expect it. Prayer is important, we need to turn to God, who will
come.
Then we need to be the light for people.
I love that story from China where in a factory suddenly all
the lights went out and the entire workforce were in the dark.
It is always a nightmare when we have a power cut and we
cannot remember where the candles are and worse any matches. Anyway, the
factory manager said to everyone, “put your hands in the air.” Everyone put
their hands in the air. He said “you know old Chinese proverb say, many hands
make light work.”
It is pretty dark out there for people at the moment, people
are struggling financially in many places, struggling to feed their families
turning to food banks, people are lonely, needing companionship and support,
others have major health struggles which make the future feel frightening.
People need to know from us that God in Jesus enters the darkness and gives
light within it. People around us need to know that there is
something concrete and real that can help them get through their crisis, not
words, but action. We know if we light a single candle, it makes an amazing
difference. God is in the darkness to transform it, and I believe today’s
church can only be credible and have a future if we are prepared to enter the
darkness of the world, instead of getting on with our cosy programme and
pretend all is well with life and hope that the suffering and messy things of
the world go away.
A lady called Patricia St. John was in Sudan when war
refugees flooded that country. They had suffered terribly and had lost
everything, yet those among them who were Christians still gave thanks to God.
Patricia said that she stood one night in a crowded little
Sudanese church listening to those uprooted believers singing joyfully.
Suddenly a life-changing insight burned its way into her mind. "We would
have changed their circumstances," she said, "but we would not have
changed them." She realized that God "does not always lift people out
of the situation. He Himself comes into the situation. . . He does not pluck
them out of the darkness. He becomes the light in the darkness."
Remember the old hymn we used to sing in Sunday
School: God make my life a little light
within the world to glow; a little flame that burneth bright, wherever I may
go. Remember the last time the UK won Eurovision (another of my weaknesses is
Eurovision) - Love shine a light, in every corner of my heart, let the love
light carry light up the magic in every little part let our love shine a light,
in every corner of our hearts
We thank God for being light, we expect that light to
shine and we are challenged to be light for others. Can we go out in our world
whatever that means this week and be a positive presence, I hope so.
O God, who in the work of creation commanded the light to
shine out of darkness: we pray that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ may
shine into the hearts of all your people, dispelling the darkness of ignorance
and unbelief, and revealing to them the knowledge of your glory in the face of
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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