The Light Was Still There

Blessed be God who forgives all our sins; God’s mercy endures forever.

I was reminded this week, among so many reminders!, of new rhythms being established. I began to ponder these new rhythms against the old ones and found myself seeking eternal everlasting rhythms. Or should I say looking for reassurances of them. or perhaps resurrections...

And then I remembered spring, March 20, and I let that hope, that eternal assurance sink into my bones, into my soul. Seasons, and sure enough green shoots became sacramentally visible.

I am fortunate that March 20 is also my wedding anniversary and besides giving thanks to God for David, I also give thanks for the memory of that day in 1976 in Baltimore when the first day of spring came to us with blue sky, sunshine and 85 degrees heat! Needless to say we did not use the heaters dispersed on my family home’s porches; what I needed was a different dress!!! Yet somehow those sweaty inconveniences gave way to love and light and deliciousness and beauty which ruled the day.

And then, as we awaited a flight the next morning at the airport hotel, we heard and felt the strangest noises: a cold front swept in and our room and our car were battered by hale, temperatures dropped into the 30’s, darkness fell as dramatically as the day dawned! When expectations of rhythms change we are often thrown into anxiety.

My point is this: one of the rhythms which lies within the seasons is dawn to dusk, darkness to light. In these times when darkness seems to take up more than its fair share, I am “As I write these days, daily sacraments, ordinary moments, not only become extraordinary but also rearranged and reordered” The Reverend Dr. Martha Tucker | Spring, 2020 Liturgeemails

reminded of the hymn Abide with Me (a link to it appears below) and especially of the lines: Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away...Thou changest not; Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.

In the midst of these often threatening changes there is God, pointing us out of the gloom. Expanding upon Elijah, God is in the wind, God is in the seasons, God is in the light AND in the darkness.

Today’s lectionary is replete with these rhythmic contrasts: light and dark, valleys and hills, safety and threat, hunger and bread, sickness and health. It reads much like the times in which we live!

At its center the Gospel tells the story of Jesus healing the blind man with mud, earth and spit, adamah. And while I have preached on this before, as have others, on this being a story of metaphorical blindness, and while we certainly need to address our blindnesses as we do our trespasses, today I am called to focus on a story of actual blindness told by Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Learning to Walk in the Dark. Is that not what we are in the midst of learning now?

She tells the story of Jacques Lusseyran a blind French resistance fighter who wrote And There Was Light. His descent into actual blindness occurred after several years of leading a sighted childhood. But that “normalcy” led to a boyhood school fight which left him losing one eye and blind in the remaining one.

Like the Bible tells us, blindness led him to the margins of society and was treated by society as a punishment for some sin. His mother refused to relegate him to chair caning or residential homes for the blind. His father always respecting his dignity reminded him to speak about his deep spiritual life which continued and deepened with his injury. He recalls the greatest gift was no pity, just covenantal love.

Turning to his inner world he made the discovery which would sustain him all his life: “The only way I can describe that experience is in clear and direct words. I had completely lost the sight of my eyes; I could not see the light of the world anymore. Yet the light was still there.”

The light was still there...rest there for a moment.

In these times of darkness and gloom may we also know, in ways previously unknown, that the light is still here. God is in the darkness.

I have spent a lot of time these last few days closing my eyes, often in exasperation, but more often to listen. Music has come to me in new ways. Memories can enlighten the heaviness. Laughter seems to shine like lighting a match in a dark room.

Perhaps this enduring light, the light which Jesus restored with adamah, earth from which human potential was created to begin with, is the sacrament onto which we might cling these days. It is the outward and visible sign of that grace which while invisible simply does not go away. It causes our hearts to burn even if we are not physically together chewing on bread. It causes our hearts to burn even if we are not physically hugging each other and baptizing each other because in the midst of it a spark of the memory of goodness and dignity and beauty is still there.

I invite you to abide though the darkness deepens. Remember the words “I am with you always.” Always. And imagine Jesus wiping your eyes, or your hands, or your feet, with creative, healing adamah. And imagine closing your eyes and listening for that still small voice, and seeing behind your eyelids something still shining. God is in the darkness. And the light is still there!

“Look down O Lord from your heavenly throne and illumine this night with your celestial brightness; that by night as by day your people may glorify your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” AMEN (BCP)