A light shines in the darkness

A reflection on John 1: 1-5, 10-18, Jeremiah 31: 7-14 and Ephesians 1: 3-14, preached Sunday, 4 January 2009

I’ve been rereading some of my recent sermons. “Why on earth would he do that?” you’re thinking. Well, I wanted to check just what it is I’ve been saying to you in the last few weeks. We had four weeks of Advent – the Sundays of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love – and then Christmas Day and last Sunday, the first Sunday of the Christmas season. All of those opportunities for excitement and rejoicing in anticipation of the coming Good News. But after revisiting those sermons, I’m starting to think I may be a miserable sort of person.

It’s been good news and bad news, with plenty of opportunity to think about the bad news: there’s been wandering in the wilderness and AIDS and war and poverty and injustice and loneliness and sadness, and a church in decline in Australia, and even on Christmas Day I managed to talk about the Millennium Goals and the millions of people dying unnecessarily each year, deaths which we have the resources and the ability to prevent.

Cheerful soul, aren’t I? It seems I’m not so much a glass half-empty person, as a “someone took my glass and drank it, and even when I did have a glass, it wasn’t as big as everyone else’s” kind of person.

In my defence, however, I want to say that from the very beginning I have been putting the bad news together with the good. My starting point was to suggest that good news only makes sense in the presence of those things which are not good news. I’m not talking about bad news because there is nothing else. I’m talking about bad news and the Good News which breaks into that and transforms it, removes it, converts it.

There is a light which shines in the darkness.

In the beginning, all was darkness, and God said, “Let there be light”! John tells us the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

There is bad news, but the Good News is greater.

By way of illustration, my sermon on this Sunday six years ago (yes, I even read sermons from other times and places) my sermon was all about Australia’s refugee detention centres, and it was about the prevailing attitude in some circles which seemed to suggest that refugees somehow brought their bad news upon themselves. Six years later, detention centres are no longer headline news in our country. Somehow, good news has replaced the bad; a light has come into that particular darkness.

Of course, that is not to suggest that we no longer have refugees in our country or that we no longer have detention centres, or that there is not still much work to do. Terrible damage has been done to an unconscionable number of people, some of which will never be healed. But there has been and continues to be a move towards the light of reason and compassion. A light shines in the darkness.

And those who believe in the light have been a major part of the change which has taken place. Christians have proclaimed the necessity of good news for those living in darkness.

It’s not often that I use three readings from Scripture on a Sunday morning. In part, it’s a time thing; it’s also a “how on earth can these readings go together?” kind of thing.

But this morning we have heard from Jeremiah and Paul and John, and all three of them are about how good news overcomes bad, about God’s great desire for hope, peace, joy and love in our world, in this time and in this place.

Jeremiah proclaims, “Sing! Exile will not last forever.”

Paul says, “Rejoice and give thanks. There is forgiveness for sin, and adoption for orphans.”

And John pronounces, “There is grace upon grace.”

Grace – that extraordinary love which imposes no conditions, no limits, no exceptions. In the face of all that would deny it, there is grace.

So, what will 2009 be like for us?

For the world at large, I’m imagining that it will be more of the same: more economic crises, more job losses, more natural disasters, more unnecessary sickness and death, more ills for the health of the planet; but there will also be more acts of random kindness, more cures developed, more children raised in healthy families, more expressions of love and compassion, more efforts to heal our fragile earth, more good news even as there is more bad news.

And for the church? What lies ahead in 2009? I’m imagining that Christianity will also experience both good and bad news. It’s likely that, in the developed nations, people will continue to turn away from traditional expressions of the faith in search of a different spirituality which they feel speaks more directly into their lives; and it’s likely that in many other parts of the world – Asia, South America, Africa – that Christianity will continue to grow as more and more people see how the Good News of Jesus Christ is extraordinarily applicable to their everyday lives.

And for us? The fact remains that we live with the former reality rather than the latter. That is the bald bad news. But the Good News is that there is a light which shines in the darkness. And the darker things appear, the more clearly the light shines.

The spirituality which people in our culture so desperately seek at this time is still the spirituality of grace, of love, of compassion, of relationship, of all those things which lie at the heart of our faith, that have always lain at the heart of Christianity, and will always remain at the heart of Christianity. The Good News is still good!

One extraordinary part of the grace of God is that we are invited, indeed commanded, to work with God in bringing Good News. We need to remember that it is God who is at work – each of our readings makes that abundantly clear; Paul says, “With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to God’s good pleasure” – it is God who is at work and we are asked to join in with whatever it is that God is doing.

What will God do with us in this place in 2009? I don’t know. But I do know that, whatever it is, whatever it looks and sounds and feels like, it will be Good News.

The celebration of the meal we share each Sunday morning reminds us that the central metaphor of our faith is that of death and resurrection. We believe that God brings new life out of death. And we are called to hear and to speak words of hope, new life, new possibilities in a future with God.

Jeremiah, Paul and John tell us that God breaks into the world, for all those who are in need, in need of love and in need of hope. We are called to live hope-filled lives, proclaiming that God is with us, and praising God for God’s blessings.

A light shines in the darkness! Amen.

Prodigal God

A reflection on Luke 15: 1-32 - Sunday, 18 March 2007

On our first trip from Darwin to Alice Springs we camped one night at what was then called the Devil’s Marbles. There were four adults and six young children in our group. We pulled up at about 5.30pm, set up our tents, got a fire going, cooked dinner, fed the children and got them to bed. When all was calm we sat under the stars and talked about the day that had been, the one that was coming, and the amazing experience we were having.

At about 8 o’clock another vehicle pulled into the rest stop. It was a truck towing a 40 foot (or 10 metre) caravan. The people got out of their truck, started their generator, and then disappeared back inside their van. They switched on their lights, turned on their television and their air-conditioner, presumably cooked dinner on their electric stove, and had a hot shower. We were left wondering just how much of the outback they were experiencing when they weren’t prepared to leave behind all the comforts of home.

Sometimes I think it can be like that for us. We talk about wanting to experience new things, about wanting to be changed people, about repenting and being transformed by the love of Christ, but we’re not willing to let go of old ways.

Repentance

Last week I spoke about repentance. Repentance is more about our turning to God than it is about that from which we turn. And today’s gospel reading is a further illustration of this.

Did you know that the word prodigal means extravagant, generous, lavish, abundant, and plentiful? We usually interpret it as meaning wasteful or spendthrift, but it also means extravagant, generous, lavish, abundant and plentiful.

It has only been in later manuscripts that this parable has been given the title of “the Prodigal son”. Early manuscripts had no such titles. Historically our interpretations of this story have focused on the younger son, on the repentance of the son, on his learning his lesson; and the story has been used to remind us of the need to repent. That interpretation is both valid and helpful.

But I want to suggest there is another layer to this story. I want to ask, “Who is it who is being extravagant and generous? Who is it who is being lavish, abundant and plentiful” The word prodigal can be applied to the father as much as it can to the son. When we apply the word prodigal to the father then we are more likely to be focused on who is turned to rather than what is left behind.

When we turn again to God, when we repent, we find ourselves face to face with this prodigal father – this parent who is extravagant and generous in love and lavish in forgiveness.

A reckless God

The passage tells us that the father runs to meet his son. This patriarch, this well-respected man in a long robe, gathered his garment up around his knees and ran to meet his son. He doesn’t wait for his beloved son to come begging. He doesn’t make him hang his head in shame. He runs to meet him, to gather him into his arms, to kiss him, to welcome him home. It is good to remember this is how the father expresses his forgiveness for the son long before the son speaks words of repentance.

This story is the culmination of a series of stories in Luke’s gospel about the nature of God. The story of the prodigal is preceded in Luke’s gospel by the feeding of the four thousand and the feeding of the five thousand; by the story of the lost sheep and the lost coin. Every one of these stories points to God as anything but cautious when it comes to love and forgiveness and reconciliation.

A resentful brother

Yet, even in the face of that wonderful good news, there is tragedy in this parable. The tragedy lies with the older brother. He has done all the right things. He stays and works with his father. He acts to protect the family honour. He is responsible.

But in the end that isn’t what matters. Being responsible doesn’t provide him with reconciliation. It leaves him estranged from his father and his brother.

I wonder if you share my sympathy for the older brother? Being responsible is a valued characteristic in our society and in the church. while being careless with money, as the younger brother was, is frowned upon.

One of the things that happens for us is that whatever we value we tend to project that onto God. So when we value responsibility we construct a picture of a God who rewards responsibility and who disapproves of irresponsibility. But that is not how it works in this parable!

Luke tells us we have an extravagant, generous, and lavish God who embraces us with love and forgiveness. This parable serves to disrupt our image of God. It offers us a new image – a prodigal God.

A new creation

This new image of a generous, lavish, extravagant God isn’t one we can put alongside the old disapproving God who only rewards responsibility. We have to let go of old ways of knowing God in order to embrace new ways.

If we return to my experience of camping in the Northern Territory: the people who hold onto their known ways of living miss out on the starry sky and the stillness of the night.

Paul writes:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation

This passage is part of Paul’s argument that when we become Christians our approach to people and to life will be based in a new value system. In Christ we are a new creation, and this means our values, our attitudes and our behaviour will be different from that of the world.

We will live in ways which reveal the prodigal God we have discovered when we have turned again to God.

Philip Yancey, in his book Amazing Grace puts it well:

If the world despises a notorious sinner,
the church will love her.

If the world cuts off aid to the poor and the suffering,
the church will offer food and healing.

If the world oppresses,
the church will raise up the oppressed.

If the world shames a social outcast,
the church will proclaim God’s reconciling love.

If the world seeks profit and self-fulfilment,
the church seeks sacrifice and service.

If the world demands retribution,
the church dispenses grace.

If the world splinters into factions,
the church joins together in unity.

If the world destroys its enemies,
the church loves them.

That is the vision of the world which Luke shares with us when he writes of a God who will leave the 99 in order to search for 1, a God who will feed the hungry, and a God who will run to meet those who have turned towards God.

It is this prodigal God who says to us:

‘Quickly, bring out a robe--the best one--and put it on; put a ring on your finger and sandals on your feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this child of mine was dead and is alive again; she was lost and is found!' And we will begin to celebrate.