2-3-08

I hope singing that song brings back some memories for you. Perhaps of a distant time, when life was simpler and less stressed. You might imagine yourself in Sunday School, girls in dresses, boys in slacks, a portrait of Jesus hanging on the wall, and a flannel board as the latest technology in front of you to communicate the morning's Bible lesson. Sentimental thoughts of a time past.

Actually, "This Little Light of Mine" is an Afro-American spiritual. It was sung in black churches many years ago, as the congregation was preparing to leave the church and go back out into the world.

The world to which they were returning was often hostile and unfriendly toward them. Dark if you will as they were discriminated against. Yet they had been to church. So now charged with the spirit of their faith, they could exit singing, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine...Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine." This was powerful witness.

More recently, though still fifty years ago, this song was joined with "We Shall Overcome," to become one of the anthems of the Civil Rights Movement. Again the faithful would sing it upon discharge from the rally, as they prepared to go out and witness in a sometimes dark and brutal world.

So I would have you hold in your minds another image of this simple song in addition to your own sweet Sunday School image, and that being an image of people called into a movement to change the world, and willing to put their lives on the line to do it. "This little light of mine" is no song for sissies.

It is based upon scripture, upon the teachings of Jesus, no sissy himself. He spoke it in his famed Sermon on the Mount, as you heard read this morning, "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they will see your good works and give glory to God in heaven."

Jesus had in mind changing the world. He did not show up because the world was sweet and light. He showed up because the world was brutal and dark. And God was not happy. But instead of doing the flood thing again with Noah, God decided to send God's Son, that we might see the light and be saved.

Jesus is the light. This is one of the titles associated with Jesus in the Bible, especially in the Gospel of John. Jesus is "the light of the world. Whoever follows (him) will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." (John 8:12)

"In him was the source of life, and that life was the light of the world. This light has come into the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it." (John 1:4-5)

So Jesus is light. And calls us into the light of day. Jesus calls us to follow him that "our light might shine before others, that they will see our good works and give glory to our God in heaven." This is not stuff for sissies. "This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine..."

This is well to remember on this the last Sunday of Epiphany. Epiphany, which means revelation, has as one of its symbols, light. Epiphany is a dawning, an awakening, a revelation in the dark of the God who lights up our life.

We are about to leave the light of Epiphany and enter Lent. A season that begins with ashes, encourages sacrifice, advises introspection, admonishes critical self-examination, and ends on the cross. Lent is not the light days of the Christian calendar year. Color Lent dark, as in the shadows of the cross. Indeed, its liturgical color is purple. Before we begin Lent, I wanted to give you one last opportunity for epiphany. So let's stay in the light a bit longer. It is what we are supposed to be as the church. "A light unto the world," as the prophet Isaiah put it. (42:6)

Which reminds me of another song, which I have used as an illustration before. In fact, last time we sang it, but not this morning, we've got to get out on time and to the game, "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning." Familiar? It begins, "Brightly beams our Father's mercy."

Philip Bliss, the composer, was an itinerant musician out of Pennsylvania in the 1860s-1870s, who heard the great evangelist Dwight L. Moody preach one day in Chicago. Coincidentally, Moody, who is also considered the father of modern Sunday School, modern being 150 years ago, also influenced another composer, Henry Dixon Loes, who wrote "This Little Light of Mine." It's a small world, isn't it?

With Bliss in his congregation the firebrand Moody used a historic illustration in his sermon about a ship trying to find Cleveland harbor one "dark and stormy" night.

The true story goes something like this: the captain of the vessel approaches the lighthouse set on the hill, and shouts out, "Is this Cleveland?" The lighthouse keeper shouts back, "Quite true, sir!" The captain asks, "Where are the lower lights?" (The lights that line the shoreline.) "Gone out in the storm, sir," replies the keeper. "Can you make the harbor?" Responds the captain, "We must, or we perish."

With only the main light of the lighthouse above to guide them, the ship sails past the lighthouse into the harbor's darkness. With no lower lights to outline the shoreline, the ship misses the channel and crashes against the rocks. It is a terrible tragedy. Many lives are lost.

Moody, the preacher, brings home his point:

"Brothers and sisters, the Master will take care of the lighthouse. Let us keep the lower lights burning."

From this illustration Philip Bliss wrote his hymn:

Brightly beams our Father's mercy

From his lighthouse evermore;

But to us he gives the keeping

Of the lights along the shore.

Dark the night of sin has settled,

Loud the angry billows roar;

Eager eyes are watching, longing,

For the lights along the shore.

Trim your feeble lamp, my brother!

Some poor seaman, tempest-tossed,

Trying now to make the harbor,

In the darkness may be lost.

Let the lower lights be burning!

Send a gleam across the wave!

Some poor fainting, struggling seaman

You may rescue, you may save.

As we depart from Epiphany, if we want an image for the church, the church is the institution that is to keep the lower lights burning. God will take care of the lighthouse. The purpose of the church is to bring that light on down to the shoreline, that others might find safe passage into harbor.

And it is what we are supposed to be as individuals, keepers of the light. Which brings me to one of my all time favorite illustration regarding light, usually reserved for Easter. Mrs. Walker and the Sandy Hook Lighthouse, as she tells her story to a reporter.

"I was living at Sandy Hook when I met Jacob Walker. He kept the Sandy Hook Lighthouse (New Jersey). He took me to that lighthouse as his bride. I enjoyed my life there for the lighthouse was on land, and I could keep a garden and raise vegetables and flowers.

After a few years my husband was transferred offshore to Robbins Reef. The day we came here I said, "I won't stay. The sight of water whichever way I look makes me lonesome and blue." I refused to unpack my trunks and boxes at first. I unpacked them a little at a time. After a while they were all unpacked and I stayed on...

My husband caught a heavy cold while tending the light. It turned into pneumonia. It was necessary to take him to the Smith Infirmary on Staten Island, where he could have better care than I could give him at the lighthouse.

I could not leave the light to be with him. He understood. One night, while I sat up there tending the light, I saw a boat coming. Something told me what news it was bringing. I expected the words that came up to me from the darkness, "Were sorry, Mrs. Walker, but your husband is worse." "Is he dead" I said. "Yes," they answered.

We buried him in the cemetery on the hill. Every morning when the sun comes up I stand at the porthole and look in the direction of his grave... Sometimes the hills are white with snow. Sometimes they are green. Sometimes brown. But there always seems to come a message from that grave. It is what I heard Jacob say more often than anything else in his life. Just three words: "Mind the light.'"

Mrs. Walker was 70 years old as she told her story to the reporter. Her husband had died 32 years before. Mrs. Walker had 'minded the light.'

Whether as the church or as Christian individuals, Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they will see your good works and give glory to God in heaven."

As I have been saying for the past five weeks, blessed Epiphany. Now let's move on to Lent, season of sacrifice, being mindful of Isaiah's words, "The kind of fasting I want is this: Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free. Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own relatives.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wounds will be quick to heal. I will always be with you to save you; my presence will protect you on every side. When you pray, I will answer you. When you call to me, I will respond.

If you put an end to oppression, to every gesture of contempt, and to every evil word; if you give food to the hungry and satisfy those who are in need, then your light shall rise in the darkness, and gloom will turn to the brightness of the noon day."

In other words, for God's sake, "lighten up!"

Amen