A couple of weeks ago, on the First Sunday of Advent, the Cherub Choir, which is the littlest kid’s choir made up of Pre K through second graders, sang which may be my new favorite Advent song. It’s not Lo, He comes with clouds descending, although that is lovely. It is not Comfort, comfort ye my people, which is another excellent one. It is not even O come, O come Emmanuel. It is this:
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
Isn’t that a great Advent song? I know you must be thinking Bingham is crazy. That’s not an Advent song, it’s an anytime song, it’s a kid’s song. Yes, it is an anytime song and it is a kid’s song and I never thought of it as an Advent song until the children started singing it on that First Sunday of Advent. Then it dawned on me, it transformed for me the meaning of this song. They were up here singing it, and we had only one lonely Advent candle lit. It was such a little light, and here they are singing “This little light of mine.” I thought, “Yes! This is Advent.” This is what Advent is all about—the coming of the light. We are preparing for the birth of Christ, who is the light, as John says in his prologue that we will hear in the Christmas season. This is a season of light. Think about the trees we put up covered in lights, and how we surround our houses with light. This past week we celebrated two great Saints full of light. We had Saint Lucy’s Day and the Virgin of Guadalupe. At our Evening at St. Mary’s we heard the legend of Lucy, whose name means light, coming in with candles on her head and bringing light to people. The story of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the story of the resplendent light all around Mary. And of course the archetypal image of light during Advent is the Advent wreath and how each week we light more candles. It is such a little light, and yet it is more than that. Each week during Advent, my family tries to eat dinner by just the light from the Advent wreath. That first week is hard with just one candle, but it is enough. By the fourth week, four lumens seem like an abundant gift.
This is a season all about light: getting ready for light, celebrating light. The remarkable thing is that at this same time the world is getting darker and darker as we approach the winter solstice and we tilt back towards the sun. And in the midst of that we are pushing back against the darkness with more and more light with each passing day. This is more than just the literal lights that we are lighting, it is what we were meant to do by people who follow Christ, the one who is the light. We are to bring light, to bring our light into the midst of the darkness.
And there is so much darkness in this world. Whether it is darkness at the world level, the national level, our local community, or our individual lives, there is so much darkness. But we, as people who follow the light, are sent by God to take and shine our little lights. The light we are shining is not our light, but it is God’s light. It is Christ’s light that we are shining out into the darkness that we encounter in this world.
During these weeks of Advent we have been hearing in the first lesson a reading from Isaiah. In the first week of Advent at the end of the reading, we were invited by Isaiah into God’s light. Isaiah has this beautiful image of what it means to be in God’s light. God wants to fill our imaginations with his vision of this world. In the first week it was the vision of swords being turned into plowshares. The vision of the darkness of violence and the tools of death being transformed into tools of life, as farming brings food that nourishes people. It is life-giving, a transformation of violence into life, of death into life. Last week we had more of that vision from Isaiah. It was the vision of the wolf and lamb lying down together. We have moved from a vision of an absence of violence to a vision of reconciliation. A vision in which the predator and the prey can work on getting along, and maybe get to a place where they can rest comfortably in each other’s presence. We talked about how hard that is, but it is the vision of what happens when the light is shining fully.
We move into this week, and we have another part of the vision from Isaiah. In this one we have moved from the absence of violence to reconciliation to this week’s vision of thriving, a vision in which every single person is able to thrive. Isaiah uses a beautiful metaphor of the wilderness becoming a place full of pools of water, a place where life can thrive, where little shrubby desert grasses become rich reeds of the swamp. This is a transformative vision of thriving for all of God’s people, for all of God’s creation, for all creatures, for all the land. That is the vision that God wants to put into our imaginations. That is the light that God is shining out into this world in the midst of the darkness, the suffering, the pain that we experience.
It is our work to help bring that light. The work that any of us can do individually is just a tiny little light, but that is what we can do. We shine our little light, the reflection of Christ’s light, the reflection of the vision in every decision we make, every act that we take that aligns itself with God’s vision of the world. It is a vision of hope in a world of despair. We are called by God to be people of Advent, people who light lights, who shine lights out into this world.
So my friends in Christ, join me this Advent and shine your light. Shine your light as brightly as you can in whatever darkness you encounter. Shine your light.
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
Let is shine, let it shine, let it shine.
AMEN
