From this:
This thing is, this all-seeing eye in the sky reminds me a lot of GladOs from Portal, which shouldn't be surprising, as it does seem like this is an eye staring deep into your face.
Now, this light is so bright you gotta wear shades, because it's pointed directly at your face. And although you and I may complain bitterly about the light shining at us, as just one more thing we don't care for about the dental office (you know, in with paying someone good money to make your gums bleed), that makes you not want to rush back. But the enormously powerful light is the thing that lets the dentist do his or her job properly. Without that amount of light shining directly at you, the dentist would have to just sort of guess where to drill . And I doubt you'd like that very much.
It gets me thinking about the head mirrors that doctors used to wear, when they'd have a massive metal disc strapped to their heads so that they could reflect the ambient light onto where they'd be looking. This would help them to see much better what they were examining or what they were planning on working on. Those, of course, looked a lot like this:
Now, why on earth am I talking about dental lights and about medical head reflectors? Well, because of the concept of the light of God. Now, in the Gospel reading from Sunday, it quoted Isaiah, saying that the people dwelling in darkness, on them has a great light dawned. And this is almost universally seen as a good thing, that it's a wonderful event that this great light has dawned on us, and we are universally the better for it. And why not? We're people who need light to see, we need light to operate, if we don't have light, then we can't operate at all.
But we only like light on our terms. We only like light when it works in our favor. We want to see, but we don't always want to be seen. We know by now that we look better once the lights are down just a little bit lower. Oh, of course, it wasn't always that way. It used to be back in the day that you would do nothing but want to be photographed, you'd want to do nothing but be in the limelight, you'd want to be seen by everyone as a beautiful and unique snowflake. But then something happened. You
became aware of your own failings, your own flaws. You became aware that you were aging, that you couldn't hold up to the army of hollywood starlets and super hunks that were churned out on tv and movies every year, and who never seem to age a day. And once you figured that out, well, all of a sudden you wanted to be in fewer photographs, you wanted to be in fewer home movies, you wanted the lights to be way down low for when cuddles happen, you want dinner to be over candelight. As the lights come up, and come all the way up, all your deficiencies are seen for what they are. And they're not going away anytime soon. So your only option is to turn the dimmer on your old brooklyn lantern way down low, and then you look a lot better.
Now, this is a major issue for us as Christians, too. We want to turn the lights down, even on the light of the world. We want to take the light of Christ, and turn the dimmer switch all the way down. Oh, sure, we don't want to turn it off, but we want to keep it on low, so that we can't be seen in all our sin and shame by his all revealing light.
When the disciples come face to face with Jesus in all his majesty, it is like the full force of the headlamp or the dental light. Every imperfection is laid bare, every sin and misdeed is shown in massive detail. And when that happens, you have two choices - either tell the dentist to stop, or to let him fix what he has seen has gone wrong.
The other day, I seemed to have flossed out a filling, and so had to make a pretty quick dental appointment to get it put back in. When I went in, the dentist turned on his massive light, gave me the sunglasses, and told me to open my mouth. When he looked in, he said 'ok, it looks like a conservative filling came out, should we put it back in?' And I was flabbergasted. I was shocked that that was even a question, really. So I said 'no, just leave it missing, that'll be fine.' And he laughed for a second, and told me 'you know, I have to get consent for everything I do. And you just sitting in that chair doesn't mean consent.'
That's true for church, too. The bright light of the law shines on us, and points out our imperfections. It shows us just how far we have to go, it shows us how much of a disaster we are, it shows everything that has gone wrong with us. And Jesus deseprately wants to be the great physician, the great dentist, carving away what has gone wrong and replacing it with what is good and proper. But just sitting in that chair doesn't give Jesus consent to do what he does.
This is why the words of Jesus in the reading from Sunday are as important as they are. He shows up on the scene after the arrest of John the Baptist, and proclaims loudly 'Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven has come near.' Repent. Repent of what? All the things that the light shows you. All the junk you don't want to see, all the junk that you wish wasn't part of you. Realizing that you're one of those people from John 3:19 - People loved the darkness, for their works were evil. Yes, we do evil, nasty things, and we don't want God to see them.
But that doesn't make them go away.
Once the light shines, you have to do the difficult work, the terrible work, of consenting to the drill. You have to consent to the surgeon's scalpel if you want the cancer to be gone. Once it has been revealed in the harsh light, then you fall wholly on the mercy of the doctor in question, who promises to take it all away. Staying in the darkness doesn't make things any better you know. It tends to make things worse. But when the light of the world arrives, it shows everything for what it is, and then we can do something about it. That is, have something done about it. In that sense, the pew on Sunday is like the dentist's chair. Jesus wants your repentance, wants your consent to begin the surgery that will save you. All you have to do is quit fighting him off, and accept his light for what it is, and what it intends to do.
PJ.
No comments:
Post a Comment