By: The Venerable Michael J. McKinnon
Increasing Light: The anticipated joy of the coming celebration of the first Advent of our Lord grows as the Church enters the Fourth Sunday in Advent. The darkness – representing the kingdom of sin and death – with which we began this holy Season of solemn preparation is now giving way to the increasing light of Jesus represented in the Advent Candle. “In him [the Word made flesh] was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5). The light that Jesus ushers into the world is His life. It is His life which He seeks to impart to sinful man. “[T]he day shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:78b-79). The way of repentance delivers us from darkness and death and leads us to light and life in Jesus Christ. We know the way, for Christ Jesus Himself is the way. Yet, we often fail to take His hand and to walk with Him.
We are so often afraid to turn from darkness and death and toward the light and life which is ours in Christ. Why? Because darkness and death are familiar to us. What is familiar to us (for good or for ill), we identify with. What we identify with brings us comfort (after all, it is what we know). And what brings us comfort, brings us security. Thus, for the sinful man, to be delivered from darkness and death is to be robbed of what he is most familiar with. Therefore, it threatens his very identity and shakes the foundation of his comfort and security. It is the old, “better the enemy you know”. Sinful man would rather remain in, or even return to, Egypt, rather than walk with the Lord in the midst of the wilderness. It is as St. Peter says in 2 Peter 2:22, “It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire”.
We are called, however, out of darkness and death and into the light and life of Christ. He did not come into this world for us to remain in bondage to sin and death. He comes to us in the prisons of this world and says, “Come, let us leave this place.” We are called out of Egypt (i.e., the kingdom of sin and death), through the waters of the Red Sea (i.e., baptism into Christ) and into the wilderness (i.e., the journey of the Church in this present life) to walk with our God. He will feed us with manna from heaven (i.e., the Body of Christ) and quench our thirst with waters from the rock (i.e., the Blood of Christ). He will not abandon us nor forsake us. We shall be His people and He shall be our God. To enter into the Promised Land (i.e., paradise, then heaven), we must walk by faith in Christ Jesus through the wilderness. In doing so, we walk by the light of Christ and become partakers in His life. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4).
If we walk in darkness for any period of time, we shall become accustomed to the darkness. It will become familiar. We will identify with it. It will bring us both comfort and security. But if we walk in the light of Christ, we shall become accustomed to the light and the life that He brings into our souls. Light and life in Jesus shall be familiar to us. We will find our identity in Him. He shall be our comfort and our security. The darkness will give way to the light and death shall be overcome by life.
Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. It is He who walks with us in the midst of the wilderness, and He shall lead us home. Just as the first Joshua led the people of Israel through the waters of the Jordan and into the Promised Land, so the second Joshua (“Joshua” is Hebrew for “Jesus”), shall lead us into paradise.