Scripture:
Romans 13:11-14
11Besides
this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to
wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we
became believers; 12the
night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works
of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13let
us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not
in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy.
14Instead,
put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to
gratify its desires.
Sermon
Living
by darkness or living by daylight. Living as one asleep or waking up.
The apostle Paul asks us to think about our by these stark contrasts.
“The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the
works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” For all of the
complexity of life, for all the shades of gray that we live in,
sometimes it’s helpful to put life into stark terms.
Do
you remember the parable of the two wolves that comes to us from the
people of the First Nations? A grandparent says to the grandchild,
“there are two wolves inside of you. One wolf is good, kind,
patient, loving. The other wolf is evil, mean, selfish, full of hate.
They are locked in a great struggle.”
The
grandchild asks “which wolf will win?”
And the wise
grandparent answers, “the one you feed.”
What
kind of lives are we living? And what lives will we begin today? “You
know what time it is,” writes Paul. “Now is the time for you to
wake up.” And here is where I think that Paul’s metaphor is
really helpful, because Paul recognizes that it isn’t just up to
us. We are awake when the sun is out and we sleep in the darkness. We
are affected by what’s going on around us, sometimes by light and
sometimes by darkness.
Let's
say that you have volunteered for an experiment for the local
university's department of psychology. You have a free hour, and
there's a little payment, and it might be interesting. The
experimenter ushers you into a room and sits you at a desk with an
intercom and a set of controls. He explains that another volunteer is
in the next room and you will use the intercom to communicate and to
give him an intelligence test. For a wrong answer, you will push the
button that delivers an electric shock, and this will help with
research about the effects of negative feedback on intelligence
performance. For each additional wrong answer, you will use the dial
to slowly raise the level of the shock.
So
the experiment begins. The man on the intercom does pretty well, but
as he begins to miss questions and you give him the shock, he cries
out in pain, and the cries become worse. As you continue, he begins
to protest the experiment. He wants to quit; he refuses to answer the
questions. The experimenter tells you to treat a non-answer as a
wrong answer and continue. He screams in pain.
The
truth is that there is no one in the other room. It is a recording,
and the same recording is played for each person at the desk. The
real subject of the experiment is you. How long will you continue to
inflict pain? We'd like to think that we would refuse. We'd like to
think that we would put a stop to it, but most people did not. Most
people kept on even when the dial was so high it was marked as
dangerous, as long as the experimenter was standing right behind
them, telling them to keep going. If the setting seemed normal, and
if the authority figure was a strong presence, regular people were
capable of inflicting great pain.
This
experiment arose partly to answer questions about the many regular
Germans who became a part of Hitler's organized campaign of
extermination. How did regular people carry out such atrocities? Can
we believe the defense that they were just following orders? Well, it
turns out that orders are powerful. Interestingly, people in the
experiment quit sooner if the experimenter was standing
across the room, and especially if the experimenter was out of the
room and heard only by intercom to say keep going.
The
experiment showed that we are greatly affected by our surroundings,
our situations, the people who are near to us or farther away from
us. Those who live amidst the darkness of arrogant power find it
easier to join in the work of doing harm to others because it comes
to seem normal, whether in the experiment or in Nazi Germany, or in
our own culture in certain ways.
In
scripture, the apostle Paul writes that now is the time for you to
wake up. Let us put aside the works of darkness and put on the armor
of light. He knew long before any experiments that we are affected by
our context. People tend to be moral in the daylight when they are
encouraged and accountable, and the same people might do terrible
things when the dark of night covers their actions and their
identities.
And
Paul sees this as a metaphor for all of life. It's not just daylight
or the shadow of night. If you live in the darkness of evil day after
day and month after month then you will join it just because it seems
normal. But if you live in the light of Christ then you will be
strengthened to live by the light of God's love for us, which will be
a love that reaches out to others.
What's
around us gets inside of us and affects us there. Two days ago – on
the black Friday of shopping deals and crowds – there were harsh
words and pushing and shoving and even fights that broke out among
fellow customers. Ugly scenes. Do you think that those holiday
shoppers were worse people on the inside than shoppers on other days,
or was it something about the day itself: the anxiety of getting the
right gifts before they run out, and not paying too much, and worried
about money anyway, and worn out from Thanksgiving cooking or
traveling or dealing with old family tension, and now shopping right
on top of all that, and we're sleep deprived and have been waiting in
line in the cold long enough, and if you try to get in front of me!
It
is easy to be defined by the hurt we have suffered. If we have been
annoyed by the rudeness of people in stores, or if we are frustrated
by the recorded menu when we call customer service about the new
appliance that wasn't supposed to have any problems, or if we have
been put upon at work with more that our share, then it is easy to be
short with the next person we speak to, and it is easy to cut someone
off on the road because we have already dealt with enough today, and
it is easy to hold back what we might have given, to hold back the
offering we planned to make, to hold back the kind gesture we might
have made to a friend who is having a hard time because we have been
through enough! No one seems to be looking out for me so I have to
look out for myself!
To
have these feelings is just what it means to be human living in a
broken world. God does not condemn us for these feelings, for having
darkness within when there is darkness around us. But God also does
not leave us there. Into the darkness of this world God came to give
us light, a great light to dispel the darkness that not even the
greatest cruelty could overcome.
The
good news that Paul is sharing is that we live in God’s light now,
even if there is darkness around us. God gives us the armor of light.
God surrounds us with the light of Jesus so that we put on Jesus
Christ, as Paul puts it. You know what time it is, he reminds us, how
now is the time for us to wake up from the night of that darkness,
because the night is far gone and the day is near.
This
kind of living in the light, even in the midst of darkness, is what
the church is all about. Henri Nouwen wrote that “The whole meaning
of the Christian community lies in offering a space in which we wait
for that which we have already seen. Christian community is the place
where we keep the flame alive among us and take it seriously, so that
it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with
courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us that allows
us to live in this world without being seduced constantly by despair,
lostness, and darkness.”
What
a gift, in this season of Advent and all times of the year, to
receive from God the light that makes our night into daylight, that
wakes us up from the bad sleep of going along with the tension and
shallowness around us. In the gospel of John, Jesus says “you shall
know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Free of being
shaped only by the forces that swirl around us, and shaped instead by
the light of Christ. The writer Flannery O'Connor wondered if he
might also have meant “you shall know the truth, and the truth will
make you odd,” because it is a different way of living. Because God
can save us from being caught up what's around us.
That's
what time it is. Now is the time to re-open our lives to God's light,
to renew ourselves; to forgive someone for the hurt they have done to
you; to reach out to someone you are embarrassed to have lost touch
with; to meet the neighbors you wish you knew; to reach out to the
person who is ill or grieving even though you aren't sure what to
say. The truth is that's it's less important what you say than that
you simply say it.
The
night is far gone. The day is near. Now is the time to wake up to the
light of Christ which has been given to you.
Hear
the words of the theologian Karl Rahner as I close. He speaks of this
gift that we prepare to celebrate each Christmas, this gift which we
already have been given.
“And
now God says to us what he has already said to the world as a whole
through his grace-filled birth: 'I am there. I am with you. I am your
life.
I
am there. I no longer go away from this world, even if you do not see
me know...I am there.
It
is Christmas. Light the candles. They have more right to exist than
all the darkness.
It
is Christmas.
Christmas
lasts forever.'”
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