Light through the cracks

June 7, 2020, Edgerton Congregational UCC

Genesis 1: 1-5; Matthew 28: 16-20

(You can find a video version of this here as part of the whole service at Edgerton Congregational UCC.)

In the beginning…there was chaos…there was darkness.

That’s how the book of Genesis begins, the first words of the Bible. That was so long ago. And yet, chaos…darkness - they seem so much a part of life on this day as well, don’t they?

And then a wind from God’s breath, God’s spirit - swept over the waters. 

“Let there be light,” God said. And there was light. And it was good.

In 2008, Canadian composer and poet and singer named Leonard Cohen was doing a concert in London. He sang a song that he had written some 20 years earlier - a song it had actually taken him a full decade to write.

You may know Cohen from one of his hits in the 1960s - “Suzanne.” He is more well know today for the song “Halleluiah.” But this song that caught my attention is called “Anthem.”

 As he introduced it to his audience in London, he said, “We are so privileged to be able gather in moments like this when so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos.”

There are those words again - darkness and chaos.

It seems like that’s what it is like for many of us today. Just like it was in the beginning, there is chaos, there is darkness. Yet we are so privileged to be able to gather together this morning, even if it is at a distance connected through Facebook. 

“The birds they sang
At the break of day,” Cohen’s song began.
“Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be.”

But soon he gets to the chorus that can frame this morning’s reflection.

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in…”

And God said, let there be light and there was light and it was good.

And it’s the cracks where the light breaks through.

In a video at Cohen’s performance in London, there’s a scene of a cloudy grey sky with a slim crack in the clouds where the sunlight shines through. 

There’s a landscape with a narrow canyon and as the camera moves forward, it opens to a sunlit waterfall touched by a rainbow.

“There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in…”

When John was writing his Gospel, his account of the life and message of Jesus, he begins with these words: “In the beginning…was the Word.”  Then he writes what came into being in that Word was life and “the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

“There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in…”

I invite you to think with me for a moment about the places of darkness we live with right now. 

It may be a darkness in your personal life - the death of a loved one, an illness, a relationship that is shattering, economic hardship, a deep sense of uncertainty about the future. 

It may be the darkness we see in the world around us - a pandemic that threatens life and livelihood. Pandemonium that disrupts the normal order of life. The murder of a black man on the streets of Minneapolis, the daily threats to people of color in our world, our own anxieties about how we relate to one another - to those we love and to those we fear.

There are no shortages of places of darkness.  But the more important question for us is where are the cracks that can let the light get in?

They are not always easy to find. Sometimes they surprise us - the clouds breaking apart, the waterfall just around the corner of the dark canyon. But we need to keep our eyes open for them when they are not so obvious.

There have been no shortage of cracks where light gets in at our hospitals over the past few months where medical staff not only work to heal bodies but to help people connect across the very real barriers that keep them apart.

In the midst of the chaos on the streets in the last two weeks, over and over there have been places where light has broken in as people protect one another from harm and deter others from inflicting damage to property. Not all of them were successful - there is still darkness, yet the darkness could not overcome those moments of light.

Cracks have let the light shine on the racial injustices, the manifestations of hatred in our nation.

And we have seen people sharing the stimulus payments they got from the government, getting food to people who need it, helping with child care, do all manner of things to help each other survive the impact of this pandemic.

And don’t sell short those places where light shines through in very simple ways - with prayers for each other, with notes of encouragement sent, with a phone call to just check in.

As we notice those cracks, perhaps we can widen them just a bit more, let a little more of the light get in to our lives and to the lives of those around us.

You may have noticed that a theme in the early part of our worship today is that of the Trinity. Even though that notion of Trinity is one of the distinctive marks of Christianity, it is also one of the most confusing and - over history - and one of the most contentious. I don’t intend to replay either the theology or the controversies over the Trinity today. But I would like to stay with the image of light as I offer one way of thinking about the multiple dimensions of God.

This was an image used by some of the earliest Christian writers. It’s pretty simple.

Think of the sun, the source of light.

Think of the beam of light coming from the sun down to the earth. 

Think of how that light not only illumines the area around it but warms it as well.

All one light but functioning in three distinctive ways.

And God said, let there be light.

The Word was the light of all people.

On Pentecost, the light of the Spirit filled the room and propelled Jesus’ followers out into the world.

That takes us to that short second scripture reading we had today from the Gospel according to Matthew, a reading where the words “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” helped shape Christians’ idea of God as Trinity.

Jesus 11 closest followers - Judas was gone by this time - went up the mountain with him. It is after the Resurrection. They have gone through the grief of his death, the amazement of him being among them in a new way. They have walked with him, eaten with him, listened to him. 

First, notice this line - “they worshipped and they doubted.”

Really? They still doubted? And yet they worshipped him?

Doesn’t that sound like just about every gathering of Christians on any given day? We gather to worship. We come with our doubts. Maybe there will be cracks where a bit of light will break through. But we never really figure out this whole God thing, this Creator, Jesus, Spirit thing, this Trinity thing. And that’s OK. We are in good company with the people who knew Jesus best.

It’s the end of this passage that I really want to focus on, though. It’s Jesus talking to the eleven - and to us.

Teach people my message, people everywhere, he said.

I don’t think he was talking about adult ed classes here. I don’t think he was talking about missionaries inserting themselves into cultures they do not understand and forcing people to be baptized - things Christians have done far too often over the centuries, including the way we treated the tribal people of our land. 

Thomas Long, one of the wonderful preachers of our era, says when Jesus was sending out his followers to take on what seemed like an impossible task: “Go into all the world and cure cancer, clean up the environment, evangelize the unbelievers and, while you are at it, establish world peace.”

I think Jesus’ message was both simpler than that and harder than that.

What was Jesus’ message? What was his command?

Well, there was the long version is that section of the Gospel of Matthew we call the Sermon on the Mount. It’s worth reading every now and then.

There is the vivid example he gave his followers at the Last Supper when he washed their feet. “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Ah, so being a teacher means serving.

And then there words that are crystal clear at that same Last Supper: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Now he is about to leave his small band of followers. He sets out the words used across the centuries for baptism. They should baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

When we were baptized with those words, we were commissioned follow the way of Jesus. But in the process, whether water was dabbled on our heads or we were plunged into a pool, we were immersed in the whole being of God - a God who creates, who redeems, who sustains. We were not left powerless. God’s light now breaks into our lives.

That takes us to the last words of Jesus on our earth. 

“Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Can there be a better message in a time when chaos and darkness seem to be dominating our lives? 

At the very beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew, he calls Jesus “Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.” Matthew ends with the same idea - God is with us.

Maybe what breaks through the cracks that we find is not just light, but the light of God. Maybe what breaks through the cracks that we find is not just light, but the love of God.

Maybe what breaks through the cracks that we find is not just light, but a path to serve and love each other.

Let’s watch for those cracks. Let’s let the light in. 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in