Some of you may remember Shirley MacLaine’s book from
the mid 1980’s. “Dancing in the Light”. Shirley MacLaine was wrong in her premise at least when viewed through the lens of scripture. Shirley believed that Light could be defined by the collective knowledge of all of our various personalities as she believed that all of us have been re-incarnated many times and the process of education or learning is merely releasing that information that we already have within us.
So, if we are to “Dance in the Light” according to Shirley MacLaine, we are to see the light as coming from within ourselves. Singing our own tune to dance to. While this is a very brief description of what MacLaine claims in her book, it pretty well summarizes her stance and that of many teachers of the New Age religions in our world. That we are ouselves are god and as such are accountable only to ourselves to discover the light within ourselves and learn the dance.
Our scripture for today teaches us a very different thing indeed. We are NOT the creators of light... Only God can lay claim to being the source of Light and if we are to “dance in the light” we need to hear God’s tune and learn that dance instead of writing our own tune.
There is a strong distinction between darkness and light in the whole of scripture, this passage is no different. We are able to be in the light because God has called us to it. The light has dawned in our lives becasue Christ has been made available to us.
Today is “Christ the King” Sunday in the life of the church. This is the last sunday of the Christian year and on this day we celebrate Christ as being the center of our universe. Not ourselves as Shirley and most of the new-agers would have us believe.
How is it then, that we can understand Christ as the center of our universe from our text for today?
First of all, as verse 13 points out, he has rescued us from the power of darkness and called us into his kingdom. A kingdom where we can know true redemption and forgiveness of our sins. Talk about a bright light of a new day!
Secondly, Christ is the firstborn of all creation. Meaning all things that were created were created by him. What was the first act of Creation? “Let there be light...” Because light has come into the world, the darkness was eliminated. Because the light of Christ has come into our lives, the power of darkness cannot prevail in our lives. Praise God, we don’t have to cave in to the power of darkness in our lives.
Because of the sacrifice of Christ and because of the light of an Easter dawn nearly two thousand years ago we have victory over all of the darkness of our world.
It’s sort of like this:
I was beginning to get really concerned about the engine in my Blazer a couple of moths ago. It was beginning to run pretty rough and I was remembering what it was running like a couple of years ago when I ended up having to have a new engine put in it. I looked at my checking account balance and began to worry about how I could afford a major repair bill or the cost of a new vehicle. It was about 10:00 one
evening when I decided to look under the hood and I couldn’t see anything wrong even with a flashlight. So, I went on to bed thinking the worst and had a pretty fitful night of sleep while I worried.
First thing the next morning I went out to the garage and looked under the hood again and saw the spark plug wire on the front right cylinder was laying along a piece of metal and had a huge burned place on it from shorting out against the engine block. I put a new plug wire on that cylinder and it began to run like it did the day I bought it. It was all a matter of light. Once the day had dawned, I could see the problem in a matter of minutes and as a result was able to fix the problem with a $2 plug wire rather than a $2500 repair bill at the Chevy garage.
Light has a way of helping us in that way. Light will allow us to see problems, diagnose them and then come up with solutions to the problem. When we are in the light of Christ, we can see the things in our lives that aren’t in line with his will for us and are able to fix them.
Light not only helps us to see the things that are wrong, it can also help us to see some very good things as well.
Just yesterday afternoon, I went to see “Riverdance” at Sangamon Auditorium. At times the lights went out and we weren’t able to see anything on the stage at all. But, when the spotlights came on, we were treated to some pretty impressive visual spectacles as well as the sounds of the music and dance! If it had been totally dark in the theater the whole time, it wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive! So it is whith the light of Christ in our lives. When we are walking in the light, we can see some pretty impressive things. Walking in the light, we can see
what our fellow journeyers are doing to make this world a better place. We may even benefit from our participation in the kingdom by being blessed by the loving actions of our fellow Christians. I am always impressed by the people I have been privileged to work with on this journey. You don’t have to look too far to see the beauty of the kingdom of God in action. People right here in our own backyard are doing some pretty amazing things to share the light of Christ with
the world. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, Comforting the heartbroken. Hmmm... Sounds like a familiar call doesn’t it? Just open your eyes and look to see the amazing things that God is doing through his children. In fact, look around you and see all of the beauty of the world that he has created. It is much easier to see the beauty of the world when we are viewing it through the light of Christ. In acknowledging that it is God who created the world, and that it is Christ who is the king of our lives, we will see the world through his eyes and we will see beauty beyond description in even the simplest of things.
Light not only helps us to see problems and helps us to see beauty, but plain and simple we need light to see our way through the darkness of the world.
I like to sleep in the pitch darkness, but this wasn’t always the case. When I was a kid, I used to have to have a nightlight burning at least until I fell asleep and then my parents could turn off the light. But, laying there in the darkness, I could imagine all sorts of monsters lurking in the night. And a little bit of light was almost worse than no light at all because things that are familiar and even helpful in the light of day can take on ominous shapes and forms when we can’t see all of the details. Plus, it is easier to make your way safely down the hall without tripping or falling or stubbing a toe if you should need to take care of some kind of business during the night... If there is a light burning. You may think you know the way around your house so well that you can go anywhere in it in the pitch darkness, I guess I can’t speak for you, but I can just about guarantee that if I try walking barefooted through my house in the middle of the night without any lights on, I will be absolutely assured of finding the leg of a chair that I have forgotten to push back into the table or a piece of furniture that has been moved or something to trip on. Several times in my life I have managed to find these items with the smallest toe on my foot and end up hurting for weeks with a broken toe as a result. Amazing the pain that can come our way if we don’t have enough light to see by.
Plainly and simply, I want each of us to see how difficult it is to “dance in the dark”... We also need to understand that there are many people in this world who claim to know light, but have only found a counterfeit light which is really only darkness disguised. Shirley MacLaine was wrong. She has NOT discovered how to “dance in the light”... becasue she
has not discovered the true source of light in the person of Jesus Christ. What we each need to do is to find the light of Christ and then be reflectors of that light to a world where darkness prevails.
If Christ is truly King in our lives, then we have found the light. If we are trying to see our way through the world without the light of Christ we need to learn how to find the light, so we can truly learn to dance!
In the next four weeks, we will move into the season of
advent... The season of light. We will come to understand what it means to each of us the Christ has come and brought light into the world. But for now, we need to admit where we are. Either with or without the light if we have it, we need to learn the dance, if we haven’t got the light, we need to find it... Like the wise men of long ago. Look for the light and
follow it, we’ll never go wrong if we do!
