LIGHT IN OUR DARKNESS
JEREMIAH 31:10-20
DECEMBER 9, 2018
SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C
CROSSROADS/PERRYVILLE UNITED METHODIST CHURCHES, MO
INTRO. How Many Religious Folks Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? (posted on sermoncentral.com)
CHARISMATICS: Only 1 - Hands are already in the air.
PENTECOSTALS: 10 - One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.
PRESBYTERIANS: None - Lights will go on and off at predestined times.
ROMAN CATHOLICS: None, they only use candles.
BAPTISTS: At least 15 - One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.
MORMONS (non-Christian of course): 5 - One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.
JEHOVAHS WITNESSES: None, too busy knocking on doors telling everyone they have the wrong lights.
METHODISTS: Undetermined - Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or a dim bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service.
NAZARENES: 6 - One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.
AMISH: What’s a light bulb?
I think we all can relate to the desire for light. When I was working on my master’s degree from the University of Missouri, we lived in Kirksville. I would study a lot at the Truman State University library, and I remember being there one night around midnight or maybe later. The library was three stories, it was near the end of the semester, and it was packed. All of a sudden, the lights went out. The darkness was overwhelming, and so were the cheers, screams and other comments! I decided pretty quickly that it was time to get out and go home, and that is exactly what I did. I can’t remember if there were lights working outside on the campus, but there were lights in my truck, and lights when I got home. There was light in the darkness. Back in 2002, my mother passed away in September. That fall and winter saw a lot of darkness. I would call my dad, we would talk, he would cry about his loss while I tried to hold it together and comfort him, then I would cry to Carol once I got off the phone. Here in Jeremiah, we see deep, heart-rendering cries for light in the darkness. Life is not good. Death and despair and suffering are all around. What does God offer to our world here?
I. GOD WILL DELIVER. If anyone needed to hear that God would deliver, it was the bunch of folks that Jeremiah was prophesying to. After going through a cycle of good kings and bad kings, smart decisions and stupid decisions, the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. Talk about a downer! A journey of over 1500 miles that would take several months to complete; when the Israelites went there, it was pretty much a one-trip. They weren’t coming back. Sure, they had no one else to blame. God hadn’t put them in this spot. Babylon hadn’t caused them to take this path further and further away from God. The children of Israel had only themselves to blame for where they were and how life was treating them. I’m sure that didn’t stop some of them from putting blame somewhere else, though.
“The manager of a minor league baseball team... was so disgusted with his center fielder’s performance that he ordered him to the dugout and assumed the position himself. The first ball that came into center field took a bad hop and hit the manager in the mouth. The next one was a high fly ball, which he lost in the glare of the sun, until it bounced off his forehead. The third was a hard line drive that he charged with outstretched arms; unfortunately, it flew between his hands and smacked his eye. Furious, he ran back to the dugout, grabbed the center fielder by the uniform, and shouted. ‘You idiot! You’ve got center field so messed up that even I can’t do a thing with it!’” (sermonillustrations.com, BLAME heading).
When I am in the middle of my valley of despair, it is easier to blame God, it is easier to quit, it is easier to do a lot of things other than trust that God will deliver. I don’t think I’m alone in that, either. Maybe that describes you as well. But what we have crying out in this passage is that yes, God will deliver! Verse 10 - the Lord will gather Israel. Verse 11 - he will deliver and redeem Jacob. Verse 17 - “There is hope for your descendants,” declares the LORD. “Your children will return to their own land.” These are words you may not need today or tomorrow, this week or this year. But now or the next season of your life, there will come a time for all of us that we need these words desperately and God will speak them to you. He will deliver! Hear it and believe it.
God will deliver
II. GOD KNOWS OUR PAIN. These verses in Jeremiah are overflowing with the pain of the children of God. Verse 15 brings their pain to a head: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” All hope is lost, the children are gone, the future is gone, and life is not worth living. This is the verse that Matthew brings into the Christmas story. This is how Matthew 2:17-18 puts it: “Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: 18 ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Almost word for word with what Jeremiah had to say. Matthew quotes from Jeremiah in reference to the execution by King Herod of all boys, two years old and under, in the area of Bethlehem in a failed attempt to wipe out Jesus the Messiah. This tragedy in the Christmas story is unexplainable. It serves no purpose of any kind. But just as there is pain in Jeremiah because of the long journey into exile and pain at the birth of Christ due to the death of these babies and the journey of Jesus and his earthly parents into exile in Egypt, it is clear that God knows the pain, he is in the middle of the pain, and it rocks his world just as much as it does theirs (Boice, 40-41).
Christmas back in 2002 was filled with pain for me. I have already mentioned that was the year that my mother passed away. Right after Thanksgiving, I got out the Christmas decorations as I do every year and started to decorate. The tree went up, we put on the ornaments, we hung the stockings. But when I turned to the outside decorations, the lights, the Nativity scene, the Santa I had for years, I just couldn’t do it. I had no joy, no anticipation of the coming of Jesus. All I had was the knowledge that my mother was gone. The pain grew even deeper as we went to celebrate Christmas that year with my family. We had presents under the tree at my dad’s house, we read the Christmas story, we had the food. But the presence of my mother seemed greater in her absence than when she was with us, and all we knew was pain.
Maybe this is a Christmas of pain for you. Maybe it is family issues or loss or separation. Maybe it is financial struggles, or health concerns, or job worries. There are lots of things that can bring us pain, even at this most wonderful time of the year. But God owns up to the pain of the children of Israel in Jeremiah, he owns up to the pain of the mothers in Bethlehem who cried out in agony while the hallelujah of the angel chorus echoed in their ears, and God owns up to the pain that you and I experience, and he owns that pain. It is not just my pain, it is his pain, and he will suffer along with you if you will let him.
God will deliver - God knows our pain
III. GOD BRINGS HOPE. Isn’t this more of a Christmas idea that we are used to? “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight”? And so many of the Christmas carols, whether they use the actual word or not, are full of hope. We hope for peace. We hope for joy. We hope for the perfect present. Our passage in Jeremiah alludes to hope - the LORD will deliver and redeem (11); he will turn their mourning into gladness and give them comfort and joy (13). And then in verse 17, Jeremiah whacks us upside the head with it: “‘There is hope for your descendants,’ declares the LORD. ‘Your children will return to their own land.’” In the middle of all this brokenness, of dashed hopes and lost dreams, God declares that there is hope!
What is hopeless in my life and yours? What have you given up on? What can you not see the end of? Where have you thrown in the towel, or on the edge of going over the cliff? Hear the trumpet of the voice of God, ringing out loud and clear, there is hope for your life, there is hope for your children, for whatever is near and dear in your life, in your future, there is hope!
“A group of students visited a psychiatric institution to observe a variety of mental illnesses. One of the individuals was a tragic case. He was referred to as “No hope Carter”... Before he began losing his mind, his doctors told him that there was no known cure for him. He begged for a ray of hope but was told... (his) disease would run its course and then end in his death. Gradually his brain deteriorated and he became more and more despondent. Two weeks before his death he paced in his small room. He was in mental agony and his eyes stared blankly. Over and over he muttered two words, ‘No hope! No hope!’” (sermoncentral.com).
Once in the Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy is thinking about his state in life. “Yesterday I was a dog,” he thinks. “Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Ohh, there’s so little hope for advancement.” It is so easy for us to fall in that trap, no matter what the cause is, and give up and refuse to hope. Folks, I have good news for you. In the coming of Jesus as a baby in the manger, in the death of Jesus on the Cross, in the Resurrection of Jesus that left us with an empty tomb, God has shone the light of his presence and his power into our hopeless situation, our broken, hopeless world, and he cries out to us loud and clear, have hope in me! Have hope because of me! Have hope through me! Christmas is overflowing with hope. Grab it and run with it for all you’re worth!
God will deliver - God knows our pain - God brings hope
CON. I think I have mentioned before the series of kids books I read years ago where the main character is a boy named Tom, whose nickname is The Great Brain. Tom and his family live in frontier Utah back in the late 1800s. One time, Tom’s dad takes the Great Brain and his brothers on a camping trip. If I remember right, they are going out to camp where Dad camped when he was a kid. They get out into the isolated wilds of unsettled Utah. As they get farther into the wilderness, Dad has to stop and think and remember what turn they took when he was a kid, where they crossed the river or whether they went over or around this hill. Finally, they are going down this valley and Dad is getting more and more excited. He tells them, where we come out of his valley is where I camped as a kid! There is a big grassy field for the horses to graze, trees to climb, a river to fish in, just the perfect place to camp. They take the turn out of the valley and come face to face with a giant rock wall. They are at a dead end. Dad sinks onto a rock and sits there, deep in sad thought. Finally, he turns to his sons. “Boys,” he admits, “I have a confession to make. We are lost. I don’t know how to get home.” The boys are stunned. What will they do? Will they have to camp out here forever? Live in a tent? Build a cabin? What will they eat? All kinds of very important questions are swirling through their minds. Then the Great Brain speaks up. “Dad,” he says, “Remember how you told us that the Indians would travel into strange new territory and needed some way of finding their way back home? Well, I have been marking trees ever since we left home. We can find our way back!” And just like that, hope returns. They find their way back home because of the marks the Great Brain had made on the trees.
I think you can see the relationship between the dark valley this family from Utah found themselves in and the dark valleys we find ourselves in. Everything is wrong all around us and in us, it is darkness behind and nothing to be seen in front. But behold, the angels, the shepherds, the wise men all point us to the little Baby there in the manger, watched over by Joseph and Mary, this Baby, God in the flesh. The light shines in your darkness and my darkness, and our darkness will not overcome it. God says it, and I believe it, and I choose to live by what God says and I believe. Find his light in your darkness, and live!
