Keep the Light On 

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36  

December 2, 2012[1] 

In recent weeks, I have told a lot of stories about my Dad.  It’s time to give Mom some air time.

When I was a college student and home for the holidays or Summer Break and went out during the evening, I could always count that when I returned home, Mom would leave the porch light on for me.  She didn’t always wait up for me, but this was a way that she could connect with me.  She let me know that she had not forgotten me.  She was expecting me.  It was a great sight to see when I pulled in the driveway.  This was a practice that she continued, long after Carol and I were married.  Whenever we would come home, Mom would leave the light on for us.

It was quite a different welcome than my oldest brother had received one night.  He had developed a habit of staying out much later than his curfew time.  He thought he was avoiding detection by turning off his headlights before driving into the drive way.  He would take off his shoes when he entered the front door and tiptoe quietly in the dark to the steps, taking pains to step over the ones that would creak.  The door to the bedroom that George, Bill and I shared—dormitory style—was right outside my parents’ bedroom.  One night, my mother decided to welcome George in her own special way.  She took a jar of peanut butter and smeared the peanut butter all over the doorknob to the bedroom.  I wish that I could have seen the look on George’s face when he reached for the door in the darkness.  I also wish I could have seen the look on Mom’s and Dad’s faces as they waited in the darkness to welcome George home, to remind him that they were watching!

I greatly preferred the porch light treatment, myself!  That light was a beacon of welcome, of expectation, of hope.  It proclaimed the message that Mom was waiting for me.

When Jeremiah wrote his words of prophecy to the people of Israel, they were sorely in need of hope.  For years, they had been living in exile, taken away from their homeland after the City of Jerusalem fell to the armies of Babylon.  They had failed to listen to the warnings from God’s prophets, and now they were paying the price.  We say that they longed to go back, and sometimes we read the poetry from Psalm 137 expressing how much they grieved for their homeland.  I wonder, though, if that was true for all of them.  Did all of the exiled Children of Israel long to go back, or as time went on, did they adjust to their new surroundings, fit in with the culture, adopt the ways of their new homeland?  It would be hard to blame them.  After all—they were not in Babylon alone.  The Babylonian captors brought all the best and the brightest with them.  These were the "up and coming" class from Jerusalem, and it is likely that they formed their own community within this foreign land. 

Besides, it’s not as though they always were the most devoted people.  That’s what got them into trouble in the first place—they forgot the covenant they made with their God.  My guess (and this is only my speculation), was that if they would forget God in Jerusalem, they would forget God in Nineveh.  Maybe they remembered their cultural holidays for a while—but did they remember Who it was that brought their ancestors out of Egypt, provided food and water in the wilderness, and brought them into the land that had been promised them?  Did they remember to tell the stories of their faith to their children (Deuteronomy 6:7)?  Did they remember the commandment to love the Lord their God “with all [their] heart, and with all [their] soul and with all [their] might (Deuteronomy 6:5) and to love their neighbor as themselves (Leviticus 19:18)?  Did they remember that they were called to be a chosen people, a people set apart?

It can be so easy to be drawn in by the temptation to blend in, to look just like those around you.  I had the gift of being born to some of the greatest parents around, but I knew that we were different, and I wanted to blend in.  I now can see that trying to blend in was my own sort of exile.  Not an exile of physical separation, not an exile of rebellion, but an exile nonetheless in which I left behind a part of who I was.

My guess is that few among us would call ourselves exiles—at least not in the physical sense.  Yet exile comes in many forms.

Sometimes, exile is external.  I truly doubt that any of us would knowingly choose to live in the exile of disease, hunger, or oppression. 

Sometimes, our exile is internal.  Forms of exile such as worry, doubt, guilt, shame.

And sometimes (perhaps most of the time), our exile is some combination of both.  The exile of loneliness takes the combination of the external circumstance of being alone, and responds to that external circumstance with an internal emotional reaction that we call loneliness.

Without wanting to trivialize the real pain that many people are experiencing in our world, I would identify yet another form of exile—the exile of estrangement—estrangement from our deepest selves, and from our God.  So many times, this exile of estrangement is the result of some other form of exile.  The exile of disease can lead to the exile of hopelessness.

Whatever its cause may be, exile seems to have a common effect:  exile separates us from living authentically as the Children of God.

Jeremiah’s message is meant for us too.  There is hope.  An expectation that things will not remain this way forever. A righteous branch will arise.  Justice and righteousness will prevail one day.  And on this first day of Advent, Jeremiah also is telling us here today that there is hope. 

But it is right here that the preacher has to be careful.  As a result of so many Disney stories and Hallmark Movies, it becomes so easy to reduce hope to wishful thinking, a superficial expectation for a happy ending.  Too many times, we limit our understanding of “hope” to mean delivery from external circumstances.  Don’t get me wrong—I believe in the words of that great hymn that testifies to “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.”[2]  But I also recognize that sometimes, people living in the shadow can’t see the sunshine that is creating the shadow.

So for those shadow times, what do we do?  Jeremiah proclaims a message.  Let’s look at that message again.

Jeremiah proclaims a message of certainty.  “The days are surely coming …” (v. 14).  Jeremiah proclaims to those who can’t see the light that, even though they can’t see it, the light is there.

He proclaims that this message is not his own human message, but God’s message.  Whenever a prophet uses the phrase “says the Lord” (v. 14), that phrase signals that the prophet is not speaking for himself but for God.  Do you notice that the word “Lord” appears in all capital letters?  In Jewish tradition and practice, the name for God could not be pronounced or written down because it was sacred; so instead, they used four consonant letters—in our English alphabet, the letters are YHWH.  Over time, people began to fill in vowels between these letters and spoke the word “Yahweh” or “Jehovah.”  When Bible translations use the word “Lord” in all capital letters, they are referring to the One whose name could not be written or spoken, the sovereign God.  It is this God who is in charge.

“I will fulfill the promise I made” (v. 14).  Jeremiah affirms that not only does God remember His promises—but he fulfills them.  Our hope is not in the whims, the oaths, the “pinkey-swears” of humankind; our hope is in the promise of God.

Jeremiah’s message of hope is for a definite date and time:  he says “in those days and at that time” (v. 15).  Jeremiah is a message of certainty and specificity, even when the external evidence doesn’t support the conclusion.  But it is not a message tied to our time; it is a message of what will take place in God’s time.

Jeremiah’s message is assurance that God is at work in our world and in our lives.  Jeremiah’s message from the Lord assures us that “I will cause …”  (v. 15).  In a postmodern age, where we no longer trust physical or spiritual realities, the Lord assures us that there is some order to the universe.

“A righteous Branch will spring up for David” (v. 15).  For all the hopes and dreams that Israel placed in the great King David, David and his offspring were a sorry lot, indeed.  Our hope is not for more of the same; our hope is for a “righteous branch.”  This branch will execute justice and righteousness.  This is not just a reference to punitive justice, (an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”); this is justice and righteousness in which all people will be treated as God’s children.  Not better; but not worse either.

“Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety” (v. 16).  We shall one day experience the “City of God,” that Kingdom that Jesus spoke of—the Kingdom in which those who mourn will be comforted, those who are meek will inherit the earth, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied, those who are merciful will receive mercy, and those who are pure in heart will see God (Matthew 5:4-8).

That promise is there, but we can’t see it.  We have lost our way of seeing things spiritually.  In our exile, we trudge along in the darkness. 

But the message of Advent is that God has His light on.  There is hope.  If we look for hope outside ourselves, we might miss it.  But that light that God has kept burning for us is a light that is internal.  It may take some work to see it again.  We may have to peel back layers of resentment, false expectations, grudges, guilt and shame to see it.  But that light is there.  The light “shines in the darkness, and the darkness [has] not overcome it” (John 1:5).  Thanks be to God!

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[1] Preached at Cunningham United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia on the First Sunday of Advent.

[2] Thomas O. Chisholm, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” United Methodist Hymnal, (Nashville, TN:  The United Methodist Publishing Company, 1989), 140.

Copyright © 2012 by Thomas E. Frost.  All rights reserved.