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Too
many Christians live too much of their lives in the shadowlands of fear.
There are many things to fear in this world. but the worst is
irreplaceable loss. What if I lose somebody I love? What if I lose my
job, or my home, or my health? What if my 401K tanks? But every one of
those fears carries with it an even greater, more unsettling fear, the
fear of God himself.
I’m
not talking about the reverent respect that every created being owes to
the creator. I’m talking about the nagging fear that God is out to get
us.
Let
me ask you a question: do you think that God delights in your friendship
with him right now?
Do
you think he takes as much joy, as much pleasure in his friendship with
you as he does in his friendship with Billy Graham, or the Apostle Paul?
For some of us, even the suggestion that God wants to be your friend
sounds strange. You can see him forgiving you. You can see yourself as
one of the beneficiaries of the grace that flowed to the entire human
race through the death on the cross of Jesus Christ.
But
the thought that he would delight personally in his friendship with you
is just not the way you understand life to be.
And
the problem we run into, of course, is that we know ourselves too well.
We know our failures. We know the thoughts we have that were not exactly
loving, or kind, or Christian. We know all those times and places and
events when we fell so far short of who we know God wants us to be.
We
know God created us to be his men and women. We wanted to be that
person. We feel like we let God down, and let ourselves down, too.
The
truth is, when we think about God, we are far more comfortable with
words like he has “accepted” and “forgiven” and “tolerates”
than we are with the idea that he delights in us. If we picture
ourselves standing before God in heaven, we might almost expect him to
look at us and say, “Now what was your name again?” The truth is,
our job performance—our performance in our job of being God’s
people—has been so weak that we worry about being fired.
We’re
relieved that he at least tolerates keeping us around, but we’re sure
that God’s attitude toward us is not all that friendly.
As
I said, people live in the shadowlands of fear. Even as Christians, we
are afraid of God because we know our performance falls short of what it
ought to be, and there will be some way he is going to make us pay for
those sins.
And
this brings us to the problem of pain, the single most difficult problem
that we Christians wrestle with, and often wrestle over and over and
over. Why do we suffer in this world? Especially why do we suffer if we
are held in the hands of a loving and merciful God who wants only the
best for us, like a good father does for his children? Could it be that
God is giving us what we deserve?
I
am acutely aware that many people come to the Christmas season with
nothing but resentment for God. They have been through some rough times
or maybe still are in the rough times.
Those
who have lost a loved one, especially a spouse, find Christmas to be all
but unbearable. The first Christmas without them is the toughest. Part
of the healing process is to live through the memories of happy holiday
times, or anniversaries or birthdays. Note the use of the phrase “live
through.” You have to go through this pain, not around it.
There
are other losses, not as acute but full of pain. Think the people in
Florida are having a good Christmas as they try to rebuild their lives
after the hurricane season that wouldn’t quit? Almost everybody has
some Christmas they look back on as a sad, even a bitter time.
I
remember a Christmas where I attended midnight Mass, alone, and when it
came time to pass the peace I looked around at all the people hugging
and loving each other and I never felt so lonely in all my life. I
thought, “God, did you come to earth for everybody but me?” And I
left Mass and went off to weep like someone who had been abandoned, not
like someone who had been adopted. That was one of the lowest moments of
my life. It was also one of the last times I ever attended a Mass. I
made my home in the shadowlands.
I
chose the “shadowlands” title for this sermon deliberately,
borrowing the title of a play and a movie of that name about the life of
C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite Christian authors, someone I quote
frequently.
Lewis—his
friends called him Jack--was a famous writer and professor at Oxford
University in the years around World War II and after. But Lewis lost
his mother when he was nine years old, and he closed off emotionally,
unable to have a real intimate relationship. He was a very stuffy and
proper man, a confirmed bachelor who only wrote about life from a
distance. An observer, not a participant.
Then
one day he met an American woman named Joy Grisham, who admired his
writing and came to England to meet him. They develop a rather chilly
friendship but she returns to America.
One
day Joy comes back into his life, but this time with a big problem. She
and her young son are in England and want to stay, but are due to be
deported. Lewis agrees to a paper marriage.
Then
one day they learn that she has cancer in her leg. Even though the
treatments are rough, they manage to keep her alive while Jack learns
something about love and people that previously were only words. They
marry again, this time meaningfully.
When
Joy is very near the point of death, there is a scene in the movie, the
two of them talking, which goes like this: “I can’t bear to see you
in pain like this.” “It’s all right, Jack, it keeps me quiet.”
Lewis: “When death gets close, you find out whether you really believe
or not.” Joy: “Didn’t you always say ‘real life hasn’t begun
yet,’ Jack? You’d better be right. I’m tired, Jack. I just don’t
want to leave you.” Lewis: “I know. I don’t know what to do, Joy.
You’ll have to tell me what to do.” Joy: “You have to let me go,
Jack. I’ve loved you so much.”
Joy
slips away, and Jack is anguished to lose this remarkable woman, who was
so emotionally vibrant, and more anguished because he can’t seem to
talk about meaningful things with her son—his stepson. In the middle
of his middle aged years, Jack has been broken open by his encounter
with Joy. He is broken open by love. He cannot stop himself from feeling
for this woman, and to his horror, realizes that in her terminal cancer,
he does love her, desire her, want to be with her more than anything in
life. And all that he has written before were empty echoes of what real
life is all about.
My
dear friends, there are two great emotional elements of life that shape
us and make us who we are—pain and joy. People, however, live in the
shadowlands, afraid to experience either one of them. In fact, it is
probably impossible to experience joy without experiencing pain.
But
the light that came into the world at Christmas 2000 years ago shines
into these shadows.
God
is not content that any of his children, any of his friends, should
spend their life in the shadows. His son Jesus Christ bears his light
where we are hiding and says, “Look into the face of God. Tell me what
you see there. Do you see someone who wants you to be in pain? Or do you
see someone who wants to help you get through the pain, get through to
the other side so you can know the fullness of joy?”
The
movie Shadowlands is a story about the promise and pain of two
people’s relationship, made all the more poignant by Joy’s struggle
with cancer, a struggle that she lost. But an underlying theme of the
movie is also a theme for Advent. It is the theme that God is present in
and through human suffering. It is in the shadow times of human
existence, Lewis believed, that we experience the comfort of God’s
presence. After Joy’s death he wrote, “It is incredible how much
happiness, even how much gaiety, we sometimes had together after all
hope was gone. How long, how tranquilly, how nourishingly we talked
together that last night.”
One
thing more you need to know about this story: Joy, who was born and
raised Jewish, had become an agnostic, someone who lives in shadows of
her own without the light of faith. Can you see the hand of God bringing
these people together, so that one can experience joy, and the other
faith?
Besides
the 66 books that make up the Bible there are a number of so-called
“Aprochryphal” books, writings that are not considered worthy of
acceptance as divinely inspired but still worth the reading. One is the
Book of Baruch, a prophet who is talking to people who have been
defeated and exiled and pointing to the presence of God in their midst.
He writes, “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O
Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory of God. For God
will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory.”
Here
the word “glory” doesn’t refer to pomp and ceremony, the way we
usually think of earthly glory. Rather, glory refers to God’s living
presence. Israel has been defeated, crushed, broken, exiled, but still
God will lead his people with joy. Advent is meant to point us towards
the possibility that we can find this encompassing comfort, this light
of his glory, in the shadowlands of our lives.
Jack
Lewis wrote a book, I believe it was the last book he ever published,
called “Surprised by Joy.” Yes, there is a very definite double
entendre there. He wrote that the awakening of his spirit to genuine
pain also awakened him to real joy and real love and real hope in the
resurrection.
After
Joy’s death, Lewis wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love
anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung, and possibly be
broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your
heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with
hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in
the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
“But
in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It
will not be broken—it will become unbreakable, impenetrable,
irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy,
or least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place
outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and
perturbations of love is Hell.”
This
discovery that love and joy was worth the risk of pain was the light of
God’s glory for Lewis. For me, this comforting light of God’s glory
came in a person named Robin, who convinced me that I was not doomed to
live abandoned and alone and unloved, and brought me back to church.
I
don’t know what this light will represent for you, but I know that the
light is God’s answer to the voice of Isaiah crying “Comfort ye,
comfort ye my people.”
The
light came into the world to tell us, as Jack discovered, that even when
we struggle in the shadow of the valley of death, that there is life and
light waiting for us on the other side of our pain, even on the other
side of the grave. Here is the good news of Jesus Christ: even though we
cannot heal ourselves, God is here to help us heal. He knows that we are
broken people, and still he delights in us. He doesn’t want us to live
in pain, but the process of moving through pain to joy is his way of
healing us, and not just healing us but making us stronger where we have
been broken.
What’s
more, the Light that comes into the world illuminates our path to a
place God has created, a place where there are no unhealed lives,
another kingdom, another place, where there is no brokenness, no
separation, from ourselves, from each other or from his divine love.
I
remember reading a story about a young father who was out in the yard
playing with his young son, roughhousing the way dads and boys love to
do. As they were playing, dad turned the wrong way and caught the boy in
the cheek with his elbow, really smacked him. At first the boy looked
stunned, like “How could my dad do that?” And you could see the
tears start to make big puddles in his eyes. But then he looked at his
father’s face, and instead of anger or something that even a toddler
can recognize as condemnation, he saw only love and concern and
sympathy. And the little boy laughed in delight to have his dad so close
as they hugged.
This
is why the light came into the world. So that you and I could look into
God’s face and see Dad.
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