Liberation in the Light
Lent 4 – March 18, 2012
Several years ago I went to see the movie The Others in the movie theater. It was a ghost story of sorts, set just at the end of World War II on the island of Jersey. It's about a mother, Grace, played by Nicole Kidman, and her two children, Anne & Nicholas. Her husband, Charles, had gone off to the war, and had not yet returned. It's a good spooky, suspenseful movie, leaving you wondering what's going on nearly until the end of the film.
Anyway, one of the things that has stuck with me from the movie happens near the beginning, when new servants arrive to work at the house. As Grace is giving Bertha, the head servant, the tour of the house, she goes from room to room, locking each door behind her as she goes, and pulling the drapes shut as well. The home is shrouded in darkness, which Grace explains is for the safety of her children. They are photosensitive, and must never be exposed to light stronger than a candle, lest their skin get burned. It certainly adds to the mood of the movie!
As the story progresses, Bertha tries to persuade Grace to try again, to let a little light into the dreary, dark house – it's possible, she suggests, that the children could have outgrown their sensitivity. These things sometimes happen, and how will Grace know unless she tries? But of course, Grace refuses. She is terrified of what the outcome might be if Anne and Nicholas are exposed to sunlight. She wants only to protect them, refusing to see that there may be another way, that light may now not be something to be feared.
What an appropriate image to go with the gospel story today, with its talk of light and darkness, which is such a strong theme woven throughout the whole gospel of John, really. We hear in this very familiar passage that God loved the world in this way: God gave his only Son – not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him! But John follows that up by saying that those who don't believe are already condemned. “And this is the judgment,” he says, “that light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light...” (vs. 19 & 20).
Now of course, Anne & Nicholas hadn't done anything evil. Neither, really, had Grace, in keeping them out of the light. But there's just something so powerful in their utter fear of light that reminds me of this gospel - because I think this is true of us too. We prefer to hide out in the darkness. We hang up heavy dark drapes in the windows of our souls. We carefully go from locked room to locked room, lest any light sneak in. It's as though we think we can hide from others; hide from ourselves; hide from God if we stay in the darkness; that perhaps all of our flaws and failures, our warts and our wounded-ness will go unseen in the dark; that we will be safe from judgment and condemnation and punishment, if only we can stay in the shadows and stay out of sight.
Think about that for a little bit. Who among us likes to come clean? Sometimes, yes, on our better days, when we realize we've messed up, we might come to someone we've hurt or wronged, and admit to it; we might be able to be brave enough to ask for forgiveness and seek to heal what we have broken. But what about those times when no one knows what we have done, or what we have neglected to do that we should have done? The times when no one really needs to find out, and the temptation is so strong to keep it to ourselves, to lock it behind closed doors, to pretend as though it never happened? More often than not, those secret sins start to eat away at us, growing and taking on a life of their own in the dark; the secret becomes even more of a problem than the original misdeed itself. King David put it so well in Psalm 32: “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long” (vs. 3).
What do we think will happen if we screw up our courage and go into the light? We fear that we will be rejected, condemned, pushed away, if we dare to reveal who we really are, if we are brave enough to acknowledge our sinfulness and our need. When we sit and stay in the darkness, the darkness gets to working on our imagination – like a little kid hiding under the covers in the dark at bedtime, afraid of what is lurking there, too caught up in the fear of what is under the bed or behind the closet door to get out of bed and turn on the light and see that there was really nothing there to be afraid of. And so we get caught there, dreaming up worst-cast scenarios, and refusing, like Grace, to entertain the possibility that light is nothing to be feared after all, but something to welcome and embrace!
At the end of The Others, as the unseen intruders seem to be taking over more and more of their home (I told you this was a ghost story, didn't I?), one morning, Grace is thrown into a panic when she gets up and discovers that all of the curtains, every single one, have been taken down. They have disappeared. She's screaming, the kids are screaming – they are terrified! She races to cover them with a drop-cloth that was covering the furniture, still seeking to protect them. Now I'm not going to give away the end of the movie, if you haven't seen it, but ultimately, it turns out that light no longer has power to hurt them. It is only in the clear light of day that they, Grace & Anne & Nicholas, are able to come to grips with what has really been going on in their home – and it's in that light that they are liberated. They are set free by admitting the truth – first to themselves, then to each other.
That's what John reminds us of in these words from Jesus today. Jesus, the Light who is coming into the world, the Light that shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it, this Light, his light, is not something to be afraid of. We don't have to hide away in the dark, fearing what will happen if he saw the truth of who we are. He already knows. He knew when he set aside the glory of heaven to come to earth to die on a cross. That's why he came! To shine his light in our lives, in all of the dark corners, in all of the locked rooms. He came to save us from our own darkness! It's only by coming to the Light that we can be healed. It is only in the Light that we can know freedom. Light is what liberates us to live as God created us to live! Come to the Light, live in his light, and learn there of his great Love for you!
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment