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Sunday, December 12, 2010

When Have You Seen The Light?

By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Isaiah 9:2 - 6 New Revised Standard Version 

² The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. ³ You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. ⁴ For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. ⁵ For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. ⁶ For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

I want to begin today by letting all of us join together in the prayer that is at the top of your bulletin:

Lord, we are still feeling the darkness. Are you still coming?
We are feeling the darkness of war and violence. Are you still coming as the Prince of Peace?
We are still feeling the darkness of selfishness and greed. Are you still coming as the One who helps us love others as we love ourselves?
We are feeling the darkness of addiction. Are you still coming as the Wonderful Counselor and the Light of the World?
We are feeling the darkness of ego and hubris. Are you still coming as the one who leads us to serve and sacrifice for others?
We are still feeling the darkness of grief and loss. Are you still coming to bless and comfort those who mourn?
Lord we are still feeling the darkness. Are you still coming?

From a prayer by Tom Emsweiler

We said last week that one of the main themes of the advent/preparation for the Christmas season is God’s light breaking into our darkness in the birth of Christ who is called by the Gospel writers, “The Light of the World.”

I want to begin with a story about Christ’s light making a dramatic difference in the life of a man who was being consumed by the darkness of addiction and depression.

The man is Louie Zamperini and his story has been told by the author Laurie Hillenbrand in her new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.  Hillenbrand is the author of the bestselling “Seabiscuit” published ten years ago.  In the opening pages of Unbroken, she says that she has written this story “for the wounded and the lost.”

Zamperini was born in the early part of the twentieth century in California and had a very troubled life as a young person. He had a prodigious amount of energy and was constantly getting into trouble with his family, with the neighbors, and almost with the police.

As a young teenager Louie discovered the sport that would turn out to save him from a probable life of crime. He learned that he was a born runner and in high school he would set one California state record after another in the one mile event.

He had the same success in his first years of college and was a serious contender as an Olympic athlete.  Then something happened in our world that changed the future for everyone. We just marked the anniversary of that event on December 7. World War II began with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Along with some of his close friends, Louie Zamperini signed up for the war effort, and in his case, his choice was to join the Army Air Corp, a branch of the Army that later became, the US Air Force.

He was trained as a bombardier in the B-24 bomber and flew, almost daily missions, until May 1943 when his plane was shot down over the Pacific and he and two other crewmen survived in two small life rafts. They were in those rafts for a total of more than 30 days during which one of the other crewmen finally died of exposure and starvation. They did manage to keep a little water available from when it would rain. They barely got by eating the occasional raw fish or albatross that would land on the head of one of the men who immediately captured the bird and wrung its neck. 

They battled, daily, with sharks that would try to get into the raft and one day a Japanese Zero plane strafed them several times until it ran out of ammunition.

The rafts finally reached a Pacific Island controlled by the Japanese military and Zamperini began two years as a Prisoner of War.

Hillenbrand’s book takes pages and pages to describe the abuse and torture and the literal horror that he and other prisoners were subjected to, particularly by one camp officer who would use his large belt buckle, and other weapons, to beat the prisoners as well as putting them in isolation from time to time.

I was amazed that any of the airmen survived at all, but because of their will, their faith, and their resilience they did survive. They were liberated in August 1945 and finally brought back to the states. Zamperini enjoyed a couple of years of speaking tours as a war hero. He got married to a wonderful young woman who became his life partner and most supportive friend through years of horror when his post traumatic stress symptoms were overwhelming. He developed a serious alcohol addiction that meant he was drinking large amounts of hard liquor each day.

In 1949, he and his wife were living in Los Angeles and the couple they were meeting with happened to mention that there was a new evangelist in town named Billy Graham and they were planning to go to one of his tent meetings. Zamperini immediately left the room when the discussion of religion arose, because he wanted nothing to do with church or religion or Billy Graham. But he knew in his heart that his life was becoming a disaster.

Over some days, his wife gently encouraged him and they wound up with about 6500 other people at the tent meeting to hear Dr. Graham. This was when Billy Graham was just beginning his ministry and he was working so hard he was near exhaustion, conducting more than one worship service a day, seven days a week. He was so engrossed in is mission of inviting people to new life in Christ that when one of his staff members brought a six month old baby to Graham he did not even recognize the child as his own daughter because he had been away from his family for so long.

On the day that Louie and Cynthia  Zamperini went to hear Dr. Graham, Billy Graham talked about the compassion and the grace and the accepting spirit of Christ. Then he spoke about the pain and the darkness that members of his audience must have been feeling, and it turns out that Louie Zamperini heard God speaking through Billy Graham’s words:

“Here tonight, there is a drowning man, a drowning woman, a drowning boy, a drowning girl, who are lost out in the sea of life.”

He talked about the Christ who offers us a new chance, a new beginning, a way to get out of the hell that we sometimes create for ourselves. And his words and his invitation to trust Christ and to turn one’s life over to Christ and follow Christ’s teachings and Christ’s example became so threatening to Zamperini that he stood up and left the tent as fast as he could.

That night at home his nightmares continued from his torture as a POW. Cynthia finally persuaded him to go back to Graham’s worship service again, but he insisted that when the invitation to Christ was offered that they would immediately leave. The invitation was offered, they stood up to leave, but Zamperini could not leave. God’s light came on in his mind and heart and he recalled a promise he had made to God lying dehydrated in his life raft: “If you save me, I will serve you forever.”

He came down to the front of the tent to say yes to God. They went home, he went to his liquor cabinet, and feeling no desire to drink, and he took each bottle and poured it down the sink.

He slept better that night than he had slept in years. He had no dreams about the chief of his torturers who had been haunting his dreams for years. In the morning he found the Bible that had been issued to him in early 1942 when he joined the Air Corps. He took it to the park down the street and sat under a tree and opened it to read.

Later he found it in his heart to forgive even those prison camp officers who had almost engineered his death. He found a new calling as an inspirational speaker and became available for 75 different interviews with Laura Hillenbrand so she could write the book and tell us his amazing journey from darkness into God’s light.

The book has a picture of Zamaperini skateboarding when he is 81.

“Those who have walked in darkness have now been given the great light of God,” Isaiah tells us today: “Arise shine, for your light has come.”

There is one more person we need to meet in addition to Louie Zamperini and Isaiah this morning. He shows up in the scripture readings on the second or third Sunday of advent. He was a cousin to Jesus and he even baptized Jesus to signify that Christ was starting on a new journey as God’s appointed and anointed Messiah.

When John the baptizer was teaching and preaching, he may not have been as gentle as Billy Graham. John singled out the religious leaders and told them they needed to change their ways if they wanted to get right with God. He said that the light of God was going to make them uncomfortable and that it would reveal some of the phony and self serving behaviors they had wanted to hide.

God’s light can do that even today. It is like sunshine that will uncover some of the shadows and shadowy practices that people want to keep hidden away.

To say that God’s light will be shining on and in our darkness may not be comforting; it may be unsettling and discomforting. That is part of what it means to follow Christ. We let him into our hearts and minds. He will want to help us clean up some things, turn some behaviors in a new direction.

Billy Graham addressed this when Mr. Zamperini was in the tent meeting and it is true in every worship service. Some of us are on the wrong track and deep down we know it, and we want to do something different, do something about it. Prophets like Isaiah ask us to be honest with ourselves and to look inside and see if what we are doing is actually creating part of the darkness we see around us.

The light of Christ will be uncomfortable for us and unsettling for us if we have become completely desensitized to the vulnerable and the outcast and the least and the last among us, the people for whom God is most concerned. And the Christmas story shows that inclination toward the lowly when the first people to see the Christ child are the most humble, shepherds who were at the bottom of the social rung.

Even Jesus’ mother Mary, in her song, The Magnificat, shows us that Christ will take up the cause of the weak and the hungry. Her song is a protest song that tells us that in this birth God has already provided good news for the needy and cast down the powerful from their thrones. This is one of the reasons that Herod is so rightly suspicious and very afraid of these astrologers who come to him and ask him where the new king has been born. How many wise men or astrologers were there? Take a look at your Christmas Bible survey and see what you know.

We can talk more about that next week. Next week has to do with the theme of light once again, with the, at first, puzzling words of Jesus that might seem to conflict. On one occasion Jesus says, “I am the Light of the World,” and then on a different occasion he says to us, “You are the Light of the World. Let others see your good works so they, by seeing them, may know God and come to worship God.”

It is not hard to see those good deeds, those deeds of light in this active and generous community named after St. Andrew!

Last Sunday the atrium was buzzing as our church members and friends carried their boxes and bags of Christmas gifts for needy families into our building. We had offered through Interfaith Community Services, 80 families who would otherwise have no Christmas. You volunteered so quickly to help that we were given 10 more families, and I think we could have cared for more.

In addition there have been families bringing in Christmas stockings for us to distribute, and others of you buying gifts for children who have a parent in prison and others of you choosing specific needs from our outreach tree for local persons in need.

Others of you, more than twenty of you, have volunteered to be with one of the most needful elementary schools in the south metro area. I stopped by that school last Thursday to find Betty Dysart and other St. Andrew members meeting with children after school in the after school mentoring program that is so important in a setting where 80% of the children are on the free or reduced lunch program.

You are the light of the world. You and I are asked by Christ to be the light of the world, to let Christ’s light shine through us. Our Christmas offering will do that and many of you have made plans, in your December giving, for that important gift to others and many of you will by Christmas time.

Perhaps you have heard the story about Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, when he was a boy in Edinburgh, Scotland in the mid 1800’s. He was ill as a child and spent some time in his room. One night his nurse found him with his nose pressed up against his cold window looking, intently, at something outside. This was before there was electricity and the streets were very dark.  He told her he was watching the man who was lighting the gas street lamps. He was so mesmerized because it looked like the man was “poking holes in the darkness.”

May our mission this Christmas season be to use the blessings God entrusts to us to poke holes in the darkness around us and not just this season but always.

Amen.