That We All May Be One

One of my favorite Evening Prayers in our Book of Common Prayer is one that reads like this: “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by thy great mercy, defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.” That prayer was written in a time when darkness was much to be feared and people worried about “perils and dangers” which might confront them on a given night, or were concerned that they might die in the night with no time to repent or prepare for death.
But the prayer can also be understood as asking God to shine light into “our darkness,” into the darkness of our minds and to give us true understanding. All three of our Lessons from Scripture this morning have to do with God shining light into our darkened minds. In the First Lesson, God guides the prophet Samuel through a long discernment and elimination process through all of Jesse’s sons before finally arriving at his choice of David to be anointed king in place of the late ruler Saul.
“Do not look upon his appearance or on the height of his stature…” God says to Samuel, “for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (I Samuel 16:7) God was teaching Samuel how to really see!
And that’s the point of our Gospel lesson today as well. It’s not only about Jesus bringing physical sight to a blind man. It’s also about John’s conviction that Jesus is the light of the world. The long process of Jesus healing the blind man– and the interrogation the man faced after that– is paralleled by Jesus trying to bring spiritual light to the Pharisees who were blind to the fact of who he was and to the truth he was trying to proclaim about God’s goodness.
“As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world,” Jesus says (John 9:5) But his opponents are unwilling to accept that and get downright huffy about it, “Surely WE are not blind, are we?” Only to hear Jesus’ withering response, “If you were blind, you would not have sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” (John 9:40-41) Jesus was willing to be infinitely patient while the man born blind comes to faith, but the smug ignorance of the Pharisees kept them in more darkness than the blind man had ever been in!
Finally, all this is summed up for us in the Epistle to the Ephesians, “For once you were in darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light – for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:8-10) “For everything that becomes visible is light. Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14)
What does it mean to say that Jesus is the light of the world…and that we are to live as children of the light? Well, we are baptizing and confirming some folks here this morning. And the service we will be using to do that tells us exactly what it means to say that Jesus is the light of the world…and tells us something of what it means to live as children of that light! You and I will shortly join the baptismal candidates’ (parents and godparents) and the confirmand in renewing our own vows in the Baptismal Covenant. We do that every time we baptize and confirm…and at the Easter Vigil as well.
You remember that the first part of this Covenant is a question and answer form of the Apostles’ Creed. “Do you believe in God…I believe in God the Father Almighty. Do you believe in Jesus Christ…I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only son. Do you believe in the God the Holy Spirit…and so on.
The point of that Creed is to remind us that Christians have experienced God in three different ways — as the One who created the whole universe…as the One who became visible and understandable to us in Jesus…and as an ongoing spiritual presence and reality in the world today.
In other words, we actually believe that because of Jesus and because of his Spirit we have become “enlightened” as to what God is really like. When we look at the life and the ministry and the teaching of Jesus…and are informed by his Spirit…God is no longer in darkness for us but in the light. God is no longer completely invisible, but actually becomes visible in Christ. When we look at Jesus, we see what God is like! That’s the first part of our Baptismal Covenant.
And the second part of the Covenant tells us something of how we are to live now that we know that about God. We’re to come to the Eucharist every Sunday to hear apostolic teaching from the Bible, to break bread together, and to pray.
We’re to try to do what the letter to the Ephesians told us this morning (to try to do what is pleasing to the Lord, by doing what is good and right and true) but when we fail, to know that we can tell God we’re sorry and start all over again.
We’re to share our faith with others in words and by the way we live our lives. We’re to seek and serve Christ in other people and love our neighbors as ourselves. And we are to work for justice and peace in this world and respect the dignity of every…single…human being we ever run across!
That’s what it means to live as children of light! And that’s what we are praying those who are being baptized and confirmed…and all of us as well…are going to be doing. Living as children of light in a dark world.
“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by the great mercy, defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.”
Enlighten us as to your true nature, O God.
And help us to do what is pleasing to you, what is good and right and true.
For only then can we be living in the light; as you are Light!
Sleepers, awake! Rise from the dead! And Christ will shine on you!

This entry was posted on April 1, 2014 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Blogroll, Church Life, Ecumenical, Emergent Church, Religion, Scripture, The Episcopal Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.