June 26, 2011 | 8:00 a.m.

Rising in Darkness

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 112
Isaiah 58:1–9a
Matt. 5:13–20

“Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart’s full of hope, you can be persistent when you can’t be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing.”

William Sloane Coffin

Often we hear the word “startle” in the prayer John Buchanan prays before the sermon: “Startle us, O God.” It’s not a word I use or otherwise hear often. But I ran across it in something that civil rights activist John Perkins wrote:

When I am told that the world with its growing number of victims can at any time explode into a state where possibly all of us will be victims, I am not startled because I have seen too many people already victimized by a cycle of poverty which has manufactured brokenness since as long as I can remember. When I am told that the fabric of life and culture as we know it is threatening to unravel, I am not startled because I have seen the tattered remnants of many lives already destroyed by the faceless power of oppression.

But what does startle me is the church and the lack of response by the people whom God has called to be salt and light in a decaying world of deepening dusk. It startles me when I look out and see that the only people equipped with the faith, the love, and the values necessary to redirect life in our society and heal some of its many victims are without a comprehensive strategy. We need a quiet revolution!

A quiet revolution. That may be a new way for you to think about the role of the church: challenging the status quo so the world becomes more like God intended. The scriptures are full of the teachings of Jesus and the prophets that proclaim we are to be distinctive from, and witnesses to, the world around us. Yet that might be a foreign concept. Saul Alinsky, the renowned community organizer based in Chicago, once said,

I’ve been asked . . . why I never talk to a Catholic priest or a Protestant minister or a rabbi in terms of the Judeo-Christian ethic or the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. I never talk in those terms. Instead I approach them on the basis of their own self-interest, the welfare of their church, even its physical property. If I approached them in a moralistic way, it would be outside their experience, because Christianity and Judeo-Christianity are outside of the experience of organized religion. They would just listen to me and very sympathetically tell me how noble I was. And the moment I walked out they’d call their secretaries in and say, “If that screwball ever shows up again, tell him I’m out.” (Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, p. 88)

His perspective startled me. To think he felt that it was outside the experience of organized religion to live out the values of Jesus’ teachings! We do need a quiet revolution. "To be a Christian," writes Bishop Will Willimon, “is, in part, to be reminded on a weekly basis that we are meant to look at the world with different standards of judgment than those that operate in the world." We are called to be salt of the earth and light in the darkness.

The prophet Isaiah proclaimed that our light would break forth like the dawn when we loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, share our bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into our houses, clothe the naked, and connect with our kin. These actions are pretty straightforward and doable.

Light broke forth when Protestant Christians in the village of Le Chambon, France, during World War II risked their lives to hide Jews in their homes, sometimes for as long as four years, providing them with forged I.D. and ration cards and helping them over the border to safety in Switzerland. These Christians of Le Chambon, with their history of persecution as a religious minority in Catholic France, empathy for Jews as the people of the Old Testament, and the powerful leadership and example of their pastor and his wife, acted on their conviction that it was their duty to help their "neighbors" in need. They rejected any labeling of their behavior as heroic. I saw a documentary, Weapons of the Spirit, that featured interviews of some of them years later, and they basically didn’t have much to say. Essentially they felt "things had to be done and we happened to be there to do them. It was the most natural thing in the world to help these people." They simply did what they understood their faith called them to do: be light in the darkness, salt of the earth.

Frederick Buechner wrote that the Christian is called

to live with the hands stretched out both to give and to receive with gladness, . . . to work and weep for the broken and suffering of the world, . . . to be strangely light of heart in the knowledge that there is something greater than the world that mends and renews. . . . Maybe more than anything else . . . [it] is to know joy. Not happiness that comes and goes with the moments that occasion it, but joy that is always there like an underground spring no matter how dark and terrible the night. . . . It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full.

Being light of the world is having joy that is always there no matter how terrible the night. We bring hope in the midst of despair. An official high in the secretariat of the old League of Nations was once asked whether he had noticed any difference in the way the Christians functioned with regard to the practical functioning of the League. He was himself not a Christian. The official thought for a minute and then responded, “I have observed that when disputes and conflict reach such a level of acrimony that one wonders whether the League can endure, it is the Christians who come back the next day ready to begin again as though nothing had happened.”

William Sloane Coffin said, "Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart’s full of hope, you can be persistent when you can’t be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I’m not optimistic, I’m always very hopeful." We are light of the world through hope.

I like the song “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Going to Let It Shine.” One of the reasons I like it is because of the word “little.” I have often felt that who I am and what I can do to shine God’s light is miniscule in the face of the enormity of the world’s darkness and pain. As I’ve gotten older, I seem to have accepted that, regardless of scale, we are called to do what we can—both individually on a day-to-day basis, and collectively over the long haul—to show God’s compassion and live God’s hope.

I didn’t know what total darkness was until I went on a tour underground into Colossal Cave. Down, down into the cave a group of us walked, led by our guide. There were low-wattage lights along the cavern walls. Eventually we arrived at a huge underground room. The guide warned us she was about to turn off the lights. And then she did. Pitch black. I couldn’t see a thing. Not even my hands. Nothing. I had never experienced that before. There we were, a group of maybe thirty people in that space, totally unable to see one another or anything.

The guide kept talking. It was reassuring to hear her voice. After a few minutes, she struck a match. It was amazing. One match in a pitch-dark area the size of a football field. And the entire space was illuminated. I could see everyone else in the group. I could see the cavern ceiling above. I could see the distant walls. All from a single tiny flame.

We must not underestimate what it means for us to be light in the world. When Jesus said, “You are the light of the world,” he was pronouncing probably the highest compliment and the greatest challenge that was ever proposed to the followers of Jesus. “You are the light of the world.” Imagine. We, as Jesus’ followers, are to be what Jesus is.

In a world full of falsehoods, we are to speak and serve the truth in love. Surrounded by suffering, we are to be bearers of mercy. In the face of entrenched evil, we are to be courageous witnesses to the good. We are what God does in the world. We shine God’s light through the commitments we engage in together in outreach and mission, education and worship. We shine light by the ways we care for others, the ways we welcome strangers, choose to forgive, advocate for the voiceless, and help those who may be stumbling to get back on their feet. Even though others give up, we are to be among the stalwart who live hopefully, come what may. Even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Wow. Sometimes I don’t feel up to it. Do you? God help us. Which is probably the point.

When Jesus said, “You are the light of the world,” he was using an image that was familiar in first-century Judaism. Jerusalem was called “a light to the Gentiles.” A respected rabbi was often called “a lamp of Israel.” But when they said things like this, they were very clear that they did not mean people ignited their own lamps. A common Jewish expression was that “God lighted Israel’s lamp.” Whatever “shining” faithful people might do, it was borrowed light. Not like the sun, but rather like the moon. And so it is for Jesus’ followers. We don’t produce our own light. We are called to reflect God’s light. This is God at work. We should not rely upon our own strength or ability but upon God as our source of power, love, and courage. When we let our light shine before others, it is not to draw attention to ourselves, but to bring glory to God, the Source of Light.

Harry Lauder, an early twentieth-century Scottish entertainer, used to describe the lamplighter who strolled by his boyhood home each evening to light the gas lamps. He would light the lamp in front of the Lauders’ house and then make his way up the street, back and forth, from one side to the other. In the deepening twilight, the boy would eventually lose sight of the lamplighter. “But,” he explained, “I always knew where he was by the avenue of light he left behind him.” We are summoned to be like that.

Wherever you are this week, you can illumine a corner of the world. Don’t overlook your capacity to be a light in the darkness. It is a sign of God’s abiding presence, accessible to you, shining through you.