My besetting sin, if you must know, is procrastination. Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow, for somehow tomorrow always seems to be even more than only a day away. It seems to be an eternity away, and so what if I do not do today what my To-Do list says I am to do? Who will know and who will care? I will do it tomorrow. There’s always more time.
So, after a Sunday here, with preaching and hospital visits and committee meetings and Journey teaching, when Monday morning comes, my only thought is to relax, sleep late, sip coffee, read the morning paper, and act as though next Sunday is on the far, far horizon. Let me not even think about preaching again, not right now, please! (By the way, when I get to heaven one of my first questions to the Lord will be, “Did you have to put a Sunday in absolutely every week?”). But then I have to come out here for staff meeting, and folks want to know what I am going to preach and how I am going to handle this or that, and the illusion that I can avoid working disappears into the harsh glare of the afternoon sun. The illusion that there is always more time vanishes.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Do you know that phrase? The Land of the Midnight Sun refers to those places near the Arctic Circle where the angle of the earth’s axis brings weeks or even months when the sun does not disappear in the summer. In parts of Alaska, as well as of Greenland and Norway, Sweden, Russia, Finland, in spring and in summer the sun disappears below the horizon only for a short while, or not at all in some places. I am told that in the town of Svalbard, in Norway, the northernmost town in Europe, there is no sunset from about April 19 to August 23! Now that’s my kind of place! That’s what I need! A land where the sun never sets and where, therefore, it feels as though you never run out of time. A place where you can always look up from what you are doing and think, “I can wait. I don’t need to do this now. There’s always tomorrow, next week, all light, all sunshine, merrily we roll along.” Wouldn’t it be sweet to live in the Land of the Midnight Sun and feel that deadlines didn’t matter and timelines were infinitely flexible? My kind of place.
Except that if there is polar day, there is also polar night. If there is the Land of the Midnight Sun during the summer, then during the winter it becomes a land of near darkness. If there are places where all seems light and bright, those same places turn to gloom and doom later in the year. Twilight at best, profound darkness in some places, so much so that people suffer serious depression, and some even go into something like a dream where they cannot distinguish fantasy from reality! There is a downside to living in the Land of the Midnight Sun, for much of the year has to be lived in the gathering gloom, where little can be accomplished and where hearts grow cold and bleak.
And so, procrastinator that I am, if I did live in the Land of the Midnight Sun, how would I respond? What would I do with all of that daylight? Sad to say, I would probably postpone everything until just before the seasons changed to perpetual night. Sad to say, I would probably waste my opportunities and find myself in utter darkness.
If we are to be followers of the Christ who is the Light of the World, then we must make use of the light, while it is available, for the night comes, when none of us can work. If we are to be faithful to Jesus, we need to work as He worked, taking advantage of the light we have. For the time is coming, and now is, when darkness may engulf our world.
I
As Jesus and His disciples walked along one day, they came upon a man who had been born blind. The text labels him a beggar. And, indeed, we know that in Jesus’ day, throughout Judea there would have been many such people – the lame, the blind, the diseased – all of them at town gates or in the streets, asking for help. How many did Jesus stop and help? We don’t know. It may be that even Jesus did what you and I do – mumble something about not being able to help everybody and then hurry on past. Even Jesus might have been overwhelmed by the vast variety of human needs thrust at Him.
But this time was different. This man’s case was special. This man’s situation turned into a teachable moment. Jesus’ disciples decided to ask one of those theological riddles that comes up in every generation. “Why was this man born blind?” They started from the premises firmly fixed in their culture: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Aside from the fact that it is ridiculous to suppose that an unborn baby could sin and therefore deserve punishment, the larger premise is that sin requires punishment and that disability comes from sin. “So which was it, teacher, the man or his parents, that caused this darkness?”
Jesus did not hesitate. Jesus saw this moment for what it was. Jesus did not procrastinate. Jesus acted. Jesus taught. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” It’s not about what you think God did in the past; it’s about what God is going to do now, so that you will have insight.
And then the great principle that every procrastinator needs to know, the great but simple truth that every Christian needs to respond to: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” Now is the time to do what God is calling us to do, for the time will come when it can no longer be done. Jesus could have spent all day every day either procrastinating and planning, or He could have run Himself ragged doing anything and everything. But He did neither of those things. He watched for the opportune moment, the moment full of possibilities, and He seized that. “Carpe diem”. Seize the day. Seize it while you live in the Land of the Midnight Sun, for if you do not, the night comes when no one can work.
I believe that we as a culture are already entering a time of darkness. I suspect that we have been living in the Land of the Midnight Sun, but that the seasons are turniing on us. We have been living in sheer optimism, thinking that things financial would just get better and better, forever and ever, amen. The Dow Jones went up and up and up and we thought it would never end; but now our economy is imploding, and it may be a long time before it recovers. We are leaving the Land of the Midnight Sun.
We have elected a president who comes into office with a plateful of problems unlike anyone since Franklin Roosevelt, but he comes into office with euphoria, people thinking that his charm and his intelligence will be able to solve it all tomorrow. Yet even in these first days there are signs of resistance and suggestions that he is not omniscient; this little Land of the Midnight Sun may not last very long, and then where will we be politically?
And spiritually? I see this culture heading in two different directions spiritually, and frankly, both of them represent the coming darkness. This culture is abandoning healthy spirituality, mainstream Christianity, and is running headlong either into secularism or into entrepreneurial religion, and I am not confident there is much light in either one. We are running into the secularism that lives life without any apparent need for God – not just the kind of secularism that buys atheism ads for buses, but the secularism that lets people kill a child to acquire his jacket or that leads financiers to cheat the vulnerable out of their savings, with no thought that there is a God who holds us accountable. Secularism, the coming darkness after years of living in what we called Christian America. Or, if this culture is not running toward secularism, it is running toward entrepreneurial religion, toward churches that owe more to Madison Avenue and to Hollywood than to Jerusalem or to Athens, churches where you can be anonymous, get your emotional fix, and imagine that if you do some happy-clappy you have worshipped the living God. I see this culture, so long nourished in faithful, personal, relational churches, running away from it all and heading toward dismal, dark emptiness.
If I am right about any of this, then now is the time for us to be the light and for us to use the light that we have. Now is the time for us to be front and center about the truth we know. When Jesus saw the man born blind, His compassion was moved, but not only His compassion – also His sense of strategy. It was a teachable moment. It was a moment in which God wanted to be at work, so that those around would understand the work of God. It was time to stop the saunter along the twilight road, and let the full light of God’s truth shine. It was time to open the eyes of the blind and let them see.
Have you considered that we may be in such a moment? Have you considered that this may be our time, our time to set aside doing church as usual and to move forward boldly? Have you considered that the days of doing church where you could just expect that people would move in and look for a church home and end up here all hunky-dory – that those days are waning? And yet, all around us there are the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely. There will never be another time better than now to reach them, love them, and care for them. Who knows but what this is our moment, this our time, to work the works of God, while it is still day, for night comes when no one can work?
The Land of the Midnight Sun – ah, how nice it was when people just fell all over themselves to participate in churches – responsible, relational, caring churches! But that day is just about over. This is the day of which Jesus spoke, “We must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day.” Do note that the operative word is “work”.
II
And, brothers and sisters, if we will do that – if we will touch the lives of the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely – while it is still day, the results will be spectacular. The benefits will be bountiful. If we will just be who we are – a church that takes the Scripture seriously and reads it responsibly, a church that worships in spirit and in truth, a church that has compassion built into its DNA – if we will be who we are and will act promptly when God gives us opportunities, then think what can happen.
This man born blind, this man whose eyes Jesus touched. What did He do? Well, he was obedient, for one thing. He went to the pool of Siloam, as Jesus told him to do. He washed his eyes, and he received his sight. Jesus acted promptly, seized the opportunity, to give this man his sight; and the man acted promptly, he did what he was asked to do. No questions, no bickering, no finger-pointing, no rationalizing – he just went. “I went and washed and received my sight.” Sounds like Julius Caesar’s triumphant, “Veni, vidi, vici” – I came, I saw, I conquered. I went, I washed, I see.
And then what? With what result? Well, everybody around him began to put this thing into a framework they could understand. They hadn’t been willing or able to see God at work before, so they pondered this strange happening. “No, it’s not the guy who used to sit out here and beg; it’s somebody who looks like him.” “No, I am the one, the very one.” “Well, how did this happen? Explain yourself to us.” “Jesus put mud on my eyes and told me to go to Siloam and wash, and I did. That’s all.” “Jesus! Can’t be! He doesn’t observe the Sabbath, He doesn’t do church right!” “Jesus! Can’t be! Jesus is a sinner, Jesus is counter-cultural!” And our man born blind, our man who had lived in polar night, cried out, “I tell you, Jesus is a prophet. Jesus is of God. Jesus did this for me.”
Oh, look at it! When we serve others in the name of Jesus, they know who did it. They know it was Jesus’ people who did it. They know it was the followers of the Light of the World who did it. And when those we serve have their eyes opened to the truth, because that truth is not just preached at them but is offered to them with compassionate hearts, they will respond. They will see Jesus.
This week, arriving in the same mail delivery one day, I got two notes. One of them was from one of you, expressing love in an eloquent and fulfilling way. You know who you are, and I thank you for it. The other card was from the sister of a man whose funeral I conducted six months ago, and she reported that she and her family still talk about the message and what it meant to them. I report this not to suggest that I do anything extraordinary in ministry, but rather to suggest that on occasion – probably all too rarely, but on occasion – I have come out of my profound procrastination, lingering in the Land of the Midnight Sun, and on occasion I have stumbled into obedience and promptness. Once in a while I manage to seize the Lord’s moment to serve. And the results are people whose lives are changed, whose minds gain insights, whose eyes, once blind, now see. Oh, if it can happen to me, it can happen to you. If it happened to the man born blind and his cultured critics, it can happen to Gaithersburg and its cacophonous crowds. It can, it must, it will. I washed, I went, I see.
Brothers and sisters, God has led us out of darkness into His marvelous light. But now as children of the light, do not linger long, thinking we have all day to do what God has called us to do. Act promptly; seize the moment; touch with compassion those who hurt; and, above all, name the name of Him who has called you to obedience.
Dwell not long in the Land of the Midnight Sun, where all seems light and bright, for the darkness is coming. Tarry not long in euphoria and doubt, for a crucial time is on its way. After all, we are the people who should know all about that. For one spring afternoon, long ago, they took the best and the brightest out to a hill called Calvary. On that spring afternoon the sun refused to shine any longer, for the day of bright expectations had passed. On that spring afternoon darkness came over the whole land, as He stretched out His arms to embrace us all. And He died. He died there. Darkness, blindness, made to be sin who knew no sin, sealed in a stone cold tomb.
But …but … on the third day the Son arose. On the third day, new life! On the third day, new hope! Don’t you just have to tell somebody? Don’t you just have to report this to someone, that “the whole world was lost in the darkness of sin, [but] the light of the world is Jesus.” I cannot hold it in any longer, that “ Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in, the Light of the World is Jesus.” I want somebody to know it, “Ye dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes, the Light of the world is Jesus. Go wash at His bidding and light will arise, the Light of the world is Jesus.”
I don’t want to linger in the Land of the Midnight Sun any more. I don’t want to fantasize about a sweetness and light kind of place. I want to live in the world as it really is, with all its gathering darkness, and tell them about a Savior who is able to deliver. And I want that kind of church too. I want it now.
“Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, For the good or evil side … and the choice goes by forever ‘Twixt that darkness and that light … Tho’ the cause of evil prosper, Yet the truth alone is strong; Tho’ her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own.”
