Try To See It In Lights

Text:
December 12, 2004, Dave Philips

 

 

In my very favorite musical in the whole world, The Fantasticks, one of the characters is an old Shakespearean actor whose favorite line is, "Try to see it in lights!" Everything he pulls out of his prop box for the play he’s going to put on looks just terrible. The costumes are moth-eaten, the swords are just sticks, and he looks like he’s just spent several days standing in line at a soup kitchen. But he has the hope that if some theater lights can be shone on him in his awful costume with his ridiculous props that the whole effect will somehow be convincing.

I worked for a church when I was a seminary student that did tremendous things with lights. In the evening services, just before the preacher began to preach, all the lights were up full. But before he preached, he always prayed, and during the prayer when everyone had their heads bowed and their eyes closed, there was a little man at a switchboard who brought all the lights down in the sanctuary so that when the prayer ended and everyone opened their eyes, everything was in half light except the preacher who had a spotlight turned on him. And everyone in the congregation would give a little shudder of delight, the effect was so pretty.

In a few minutes, we’re going to be doing some beautiful things with lighting. I love candle lighting services. The candle light is so pretty. The symbolism is so wonderful. As we light our candles, we’re saying that God gives us light, and we share that light with one another. Jesus, the Light of the World, catches fire in our lives, and we pass that fire from one to another until the whole world is full of the light of Christ.

But what we dare not do with this beautiful symbolism is be theatrical. The symbolism is not just a show. Jesus really is the light of the world. The story of the birth of Jesus has been so prettified over the years that it’s easy to miss the point of it. But it’s a challenging story. Jesus says, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."¹

That is a provocative statement! It definitely rubs our culture the wrong way. It challenges all other religions and systems in the world. Jesus is God in your face saying, "Pay attention! This is important! What you do with me and my word is a matter of life or death to you!"

But having noted this, we come back to the crib at Bethlehem. And there we see that it’s not God in your face. It’s God coming to us in the most winsome and non-threatening way. God here is a baby saying, "I’m helpless before you. I need you. Please take care of me!" And who can resist such an approach?

So, really, there are two ways that God shines light through Jesus: God shines that bright, challenging light that exposes sin and hypocrisy. Remember Jesus saying, "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed."²

But then there’s the softer light that God shines from the crib at Bethlehem that is winsome, attractive, that moves us to put down our weapons and end our war with God and each other.

We really need both kinds of light, don’t we? I can remember a time in my young life when I was living a life of pretense. I was pretending to be something that I absolutely was not. An older and wiser friend took me on. And I am eternally grateful for that friend. Many people seeing a young man making a fool out of himself just avoid him. But this friend of mine cared about me. He began to challenge me. He argued with me, he poked fun at my pretensions, he shined God’s light into my life and showed me myself. I didn’t like it! I got angry with him. But in the end, I saw he knew me better than I knew myself. And I was able to grow beyond my need to pretend to be something I was not. That friend played the role of Jesus Christ showing me God’s light. It was unpleasant at first, but in the end it was exactly what I needed to grow beyond myself.

But there are other times when we need the softer, more winsome light. We don’t need a challenge, we need healing, we need hope. Another dear friend of ours from another church came to our church for the first time one day on invitation of one of our members. She came just to be polite to her friend, not because she thought there was anything she could possibly find in church that would be of any help to her.

But, unexpectedly, there was something very winsome about the people of that congregation. She was expecting condemnation, a judgmental attitude, a stiff, boring worship service, but instead she found herself swimming in a sea of love. She saw that love happening all around her, and she knew that what these people had, she needed.

She came back the next Sunday, and the next, and then she was hooked, and happily hooked. She was afflicted with a seasonal depression that would begin in October. As winter came on each year, she would go into the black hole of depression and stay there, unable to function, until after December when the days began, once again, to get longer. She had been to psychiatrists, she had taken medicine, she had even been committed to a psychiatric hospital, but nothing had helped her to get out of that debilitating depression.

But in that church she saw the healing light of Christ and watched the members sharing it with each other. She heard the Good News of Jesus for the first time in her life, and it became her good news. She confided her depression to her new Christian friends and asked for their prayers.

And, to her utter amazement, the depression left her. It has been more than twenty years since this woman was freed from her depression. I’ve had professional psychologists wag their heads at me and tell me that such a thing is impossible. And, indeed, I know it is. But there it is: this woman experienced the light of Christ in her life, and without the aid of drugs or psychotherapy, she was healed.

Which kind of light are you in need of this Christmas Eve? Do you need God in your face, like some kind of celestial Dr. Laura, confronting you with the kind of life you’re living and warning you that you need to get your act together? I needed that at a certain point in my life. I need it still when I make myself the center of life rather than God. How about you?

Or, do you need the winsome light of hope that shines from the manger, telling you that God is able to do for you what you have not been able to do for yourself? Telling you that the babe of Bethlehem is the little child who came to bring peace to your heart, to cause the leopard and the goat, the lion and the calf, to live in harmony together?³

Whatever your need, that light is here. Jesus Christ is the Light of the World. Let that healing, challenging, transforming light shine in your life so that Christmas Eve doesn’t end at midnight tonight, but goes on forever and ever."