A Devotion for Defiant Light

One of my favorite things about this time of year is the lights. Earlier this week I was driving home after a meeting at church, and suddenly, there were lights everywhere. Some houses have a sprinkling of dainty white lights, while others have all the colors of the rainbow blinking and winking from every branch, bush, and rooftop.

When I was a kid, it was our family’s tradition to drive around to different neighborhoods and look at the Christmas lights. Even in the Florida non-winter, we would blast the AC in the car, bundle up in sweaters and blankets and take in the sights. We all had our favorite houses, or neighborhoods or displays.

There’s something about the glow of light, especially during this time of year, that draws you in, and provides comfort. Each week during Advent, we light another candle on the Advent wreath, and the light grows. I also just like to sit in the glow of the lights of the Christmas tree, after the kids have gone to bed and the house settles into quiet.

The thing about light is that we don’t fully appreciate it until it’s absent. Any of us who have experienced a power outage, which is, I think all of us in the Sunshine State, the state of hurricanes and thunderstorms. We all know that the moment they power goes out at night, you realize how truly dark the night is. If you spend just one night without electricity, trying to live by flashlight or candlelight, you realize how truly dark the world can get.

It reminds me of a William Stafford poem that ends with the line: “The darkness around us is deep.”

The darkness around us is deep. It certainly feels that way this week when we each have stories of deep pain - stories that tell of loved ones who died too suddenly, or tragic diagnoses that seem to come out of the blue. We think about those facing divorce or abuse or hunger, those who carry the weight of depression, those who are not in homes where they feel safe and secure – we are people who have known and walked in deep darkness.

The darkness around us is deep. So this week I was glad to discover an Advent hymn that was new to me. The first verse begins:

We light the Advent candles
against the winter night
to welcome our Lord Jesus
who is the world’s true light.

I was struck by that word “against.” It doesn’t say we light the candles because of the winter night or in the midst of the winter night. It says against, as if the light itself is some form of resistance. A kind of protest.

That’s the place in which we find ourselves as Christians today. We live in a world where violence and chaos seem to be everywhere. There are voices all around that want us to be afraid every minute of every day. There are leaders who believe they have more power than they do and others who don’t use the power they have.

But the season of Advent is a good time to remember that we are part of a story that is bigger than the latest news cycle or political showdown. We have a God who has had the audacity to come and live among us, who knows the pains and grief of being human. We have a God who is with us now as we struggle to defy the evil in our world. And we have a God who will come again to make all things new.

John the Baptist knows this, for he proclaims:

“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

And, the best part of all of this, as Luke puts it, is that this is good news!

Wait, what? Being baptized by fire? Sounds a bit frightening, a bit overwhelming, no?

But in a world where darkness seems deep, what can stand against that darkness?

Only the light of an unquenchable fire.

Being people overcome with the light of God, the fire of God means that we stand against the darkness of the world, we shine against the pain and troubles of the world, in blazing light. We repair homes in the wake of destruction, we light candles of hope in places of despair, we travel the long, dusty roads of recovery with people, day in and day out.

Here’s how Luther seminary professor Matt Skinner puts it:

“Christians are Advent people. That is, Christians are waiting people. We live year-round in the long cusp between promise and fulfillment. We wait not in smug or anxious passivity, but in active and defiant (can we still say audacious?) hope. In Advent, set against the visceral symbolism provided by nature's cycle, we remember that we live as Christ's followers and imitators: defying so many social conventions and so much conventional wisdom, interpreting reality differently, and insisting that God will have the final word in the world's story.”
We know that God will have the final word in the world’s story.

So let’s light some candles – sometimes literally, as we pray and as we worship.

And sometimes in other ways – when we refuse to give in to fear-mongering, when we work for peace, when we resist despair.

These lights will be defiant, acts of protest that reflect the source of our light, a light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

The candle that we will light for the Third Sunday of Advent is pink and represents joy. This Sunday is also known as Gaudete (rejoice) Sunday. The name is taken from the Scripture: "Rejoice (gaudete) in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice."

Rejoice! The light that we can not conjure ourselves. It is coming. And the darkness will not stand. The darkness cannot and will not overtake the joy and the rejoicing that comes when Christ is born into this broken and battle-scarred world.

Where is the light and joy of Christmas already breaking through? Can you see it? The light that shines in the darkness? The light that will not be overcome?

In Advent hope,

Chaplain Amy