The travel brochures say practically nothing about it, and yet it is one of the largest features on the landscape of two’ adjacent states.
Two incorporated cities encompass include a great deal of it, but very few people live there. It’s mostly hundreds of square miles of nothing.
The official highway map of the state of Virginia shows it in a whole series of little squiggly symbols, each of which is supposed to look like a clump of marsh grass, but the map says very little more about it.
The official highway map of the state of North Carolina labels it in tiny little letters, uses no squiggly marsh grass symbols, and says absolutely nothing about it.
I am talking about the Great Dismal Swamp. What a name for a piece of geography! The Great Dismal Swamp: acres and acres of water and wetlands, marsh and mud; half land, half river; part waste, part wild; much of it ugly, barren, useless, even ridiculous, at least to those seeing it for the first time. And obviously whoever named it had little regard for its potential -- the Great Dismal swamp. Sort of makes you want to give up, doesn’t it? Sort of makes you want to run the other direction, any direction, and put some distance behind you.
Who could fall in love with anything called the Great Dismal Swamp? Hey, fella, where are you from? Who, me? Oh, well, my home is the Great Dismal Swamp.
No wonder Virginia just puts it on their map with squiggly marsh grass symbols and says nothing else. No wonder North Carolina doesn’t even use the squiggly little symbols -- North Carolina already has plenty of things to apologize for!
The Great Dismal swamp. But now I remember that when I was a boy, I used to buy penny packages of bubble gum -- that dates me, doesn’t, penny packages -- pre-inflationary price, pre-Iraq, I guess? -- and in those bubble gum packages there was not only a two-inch square of sugary, minty, tough gum, but also, it was wrapped in what was supposed to be a short comic strip. Do you remember that?
The thing that I remember about those comic strips is that they were at one and the same time a brief adventure story for kids and also a short advertisement for a battery manufacturer.
The story line was almost always the same: two kids, a boy and a girl, were out in some dangerous situation. They faced imminent danger. One thing and only one thing could save them, and that would be if the old rusty flashlight they just happened to have with them would light up bright enough and long enough that some grownup could find them.
And so, as you turned over the little gum wrapper, chewing madly as you read to see how it all came out, sure enough, little Susie, acting properly submissive to her big brother Johnny, in those innocent days before feminism, would suggest, “Oh Johnny, what if the flashlight doesn’t work?” And brother Johnny, brave and stouthearted, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, patriotic, and all the rest, would push the switch and behold, the sky would light up and they would be saved. Why? All because they had packed that flashlight with “Eveready” batteries.
And so in one particularly gripping episode, which was so powerful I needed a second package of gum just to get through it, Johnny and Susie were lost in the Great Dismal Swamp. There wasn’t room in one little piece of paper to tell us how they got lost out there all by themselves, but the artist did have room to show us trees with limbs that reached out and tangled your hair and clouds that hovered about four feet off the ground and ‘gators that lurked only inches beneath the surface of the water. The place was the Great Dismal Swamp, and never mind that ‘gators do not live as far north as Virginia and North Carolina! The picture of danger was indelible. Johnny and Susie were goners, for sure, this time.
But behold, Susie stumbles -- girls always stumbled and looked weak in those days -- Susie stumbles over something on the path, and, quite naturally, shrieks. But Johnny, bigger, braver, more trustworthy, loyal, helpful and patriotic than ever before, picks it up, and what is it? A flashlight; a flashlight that is caked with mud and crud and baked-on rust. Surely this is of no value. Surely this cannot help. But Johnny points it up to the sky, presses the switch -- and voila, a strong bright beam of light that reaches all the way to the 6th Fleet at Hampton Roads and brings most of the U. S. Navy out to rescue two kids from the Great Dismal Swamp.
Why? Because the flashlight had been equipped with Eveready batteries! The Great Dismal Swamp, terrible, deep, forbidding, and awful that it was, could be conquered by the ever-powerful Evereadies!
Wherein lies a parable.
The Lord God says, "I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Where do you and I live? In the Great Dismal Swamp, that’s where. In a world of need, a world of ugliness and unrelieved pain for tens upon thousands of people, a world of hunger and warfare and degradation and danger. The world in which you and I are called to live, unless somehow you have managed to find a cocoon in which to sleep, is a place of no little dismal danger. Lives are destroyed in this dismal world. Souls are lost and do drown forever in this terrible swamp. People find nothing but wilderness, nothing but a barren landscape in this world. Ask them when they face death and they will tell you, as often as not, "I wish it could have been different. I wish I could try again."
And the trouble is that in the middle of all that dismalness, all that swampiness, a good many of us are whimpering little Susies and little Johnnies who would like to be brave, but we’re not. We think we don’t know how. We’re intimidated by the Great Dismal Swamp. We see only the doom and the gloom, we see only the tentacles of disease and the murky waters of economic uncertainty. In this city we see the ’gators disguised as drug merchants threatening to gobble up our very lives. And we are scared. Everywhere I go, I run into people who are scared.
But the issue is that we have forgotten that we do have the Eveready light. We have forgotten that we are the evereadies who, though rusty and dusty, wet and bewildered, can still shine. And the light that we have, whether we know it or not, is a light which cannot be put out and which will drive back the darkness of this night.
The prophet Isaiah saw a world like ours. He knew the harshness of warfare; he had experienced the terror of death and disease and poverty. But Isaiah knew that the people called Israel were chosen by God for something very special. And Isaiah knew too that even when the people said, “We labor in vain and we spend our strength for nothing and for vanity" -- that even when they were very down on themselves, God’s purpose was that they should become a light to the nations. Light. God’s intent is always that we be light. Evereadies. And it does not matter if you are rusty; you hold in your heart the light of Christ and you are chosen.
May I put it all in plain English? We Christians have the light. We really do. We have something that can penetrate the worst the world can throw against it. And no matter how little you have used it, no matter how poorly you and I have taken care of it, we do have the light of God’s truth in us and it is sufficient to make a difference.
I seem to spend a sizable proportion of my time and energy convincing folks that they can be somebody and that they can do something for the Kingdom. I am not entirely sure how we ever got into this terrible thing of assuming that we have nothing to give to meet the demands of these days. I don’t know where we got the idea that we are nobody, nothing, useless. I don’t know where it came from, I say, unless it was from the pits of hell itself! Because I know that the Gospel allows us no such luxury!
When Jesus Christ enters your heart and your life, He makes a difference, He makes a permanent change, and even though you misuse it, even though you may for a time turn your back on it, you are still filled with more truth and more light and more spiritual power than a non-believer. Susie, pick up that light and turn it on; you are an Eveready! Johnny, flash that light bravely into the darkness of this world, you are an Eveready. And the Great Dismal Swamp can be conquered by Christians who take the time and exercise the effort to share their witness.
I have found in recent years that I do not have any stomach for cutting back, for retreating, for reducing what we are trying to do. I have found as I have worked here among you that I get very, very uncomfortable any time someone says that we cannot do what we used to do or cannot afford what we used to afford. I just don’t like retreating. I just don’t have any interest in cutting back from where we ought to go.
Susie, grab that flashlight and push back the darkness. You are an Eveready. Johnny, be truly brave and let that light shine, you are an Eveready. Christian, do not whine, do not make excuses, do not talk about how ill prepared you are. With years of Sunday School lessons and scores of sermons and, one would hope, hours at least of Bible study and prayer in your experience, you are more than ready to meet the Great Dismal Swamp. You are an Eveready. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine!
"You are the light of the world …let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven."
II
But, more than that, shine that lamp on the far horizon. Turn that flashlight to the skies and beyond. I told you that Johnny and Susie on the gum-wrapper comic turned on that rusty, dusty old flashlight with the Eve readies inside and found the Sixth Fleet all the way up to the Hampton Roads! Pretty good going for one little flashlight down deep in the thick underbrush of the Great Dismal Swamp! But that too is part of the parable.
The prophet Isaiah saw that the danger for God’s people always is that they will use the light they have on themselves and will not share it far enough, broadly enough.
The Lord says, "It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. “
You see, the danger always is that we get caught up in doing church work and forget to do the work of the church. We get caught up in doing the daily routines of being church, being Christians, and we forget what it is to be the church at large in the world.
And God says that we are called to do more than save ourselves. We are called to a world of need. We are called to do more than build our own church; we are called to build a worldwide fellowship of redeemed people, we are called to a world of need. And our little lights, feeble though they may seem to us, can, with the power of the Eveready Christ, shine all the way around this world. "You are the light of the world ••• of the world". "No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house."
Oh, how I would love to urge you this morning to make no little plans, but to enlarge your dreams, enlarge your plans. Oh, how I would love to be able to get inside every heart here and push you to see beyond this moment and this month and this year and help you see God’s future for you and for his world.
Someone has published a book that is nothing more than the accumulated high school senior photographs of famous people. The editor studied the biographies of a lot of well-known people -- actors, politicians, and the like -- and then dug back and found their high school annuals and printed their pictures as they looked when they were high school seniors. And it’s amazing how ordinary, how plain and unassuming most of the great and near-great looked when they were seventeen years old!
By the way, I can say to our youth, "Take heart". If you think we look funny now, you ought to see what we looked like in high school!
But in this book what struck the editor was not only the photographs of all these notables but also the text that accompanies most of these pictures. Very few of them were voted "most likely to succeed". Almost none of them got the Mr. and Miss Congeniality award. Hardly any were class officers or appeared to be leaders in any outstanding way. Ordinary people living ordinary lives in ordinary places.
But now they are stars. Now they are somebodies. What was the difference? What made them achieve? For most, it seems it was that they dared to dream great things. They dared to bank on things that never had been and to try them. They saw large possibilities and walked into them. They let their lights shine, and on a broad scale, on a grand scale. And ordinary people who use what they have and who see possibilities where others see only dangers -- these are life’s winners. These are the Evereadies who penetrate the Great Dismal Swamp and who summon the fleet.
Oh, my friends, we could be on the very edge of greatness, even though we are just ordinary folks. But I believe we have the potential for greatness. There are among us those who have intellectual and spiritual resources that could make a difference. There are those who have time to give and money to give and ideas to give. We have properties, we can have good facilities, we have a strategic location -- we could do some power-filled ministries in this city, and those ministries could have redemptive influence around the world. One and only one thing do we lack -- just turn on the Evereadies - just let our light shine for all, a light to the nations.
Here we are in this capital city -- what one of our banks calls the most important city in the world. What if we were to dream the dream of studying and acting on the issues that shape our day and time? Lighting a lamp and penetrating the darkness, the murkiness, with truth and action.
Here we are with 26 years of history as a multiracial congregation. They said it couldn’t be done but we have in some measure done it. What if we were to dream that dream over and over again and enlarge it to include all persons, black and white and red and yellow and brown, old and young, rich and poor? What if we were to send out the light signal that says, "Salvation over here …for all nations". “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
Here we are, participating in the missions programs of two great denominations, sending a few dollars out now and again and enjoying a little correspondence with a missionary or two. But what if we were to put our bodies on the line too? What if we were to pray that some of our brightest and best young people were to answer God’s call to missionary service?
What if we were to organize a work project and go overseas, a dozen or so of us, and lay our hands on something that needs to be done? God says, "It is too small a thing to just sit here and raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."
Oh, men and women, let’s get excited about our mission as a people! Let’s get excited about reaching others for Christ! Let’s get excited and committed to getting engaged in ministry to others in the name of Christ! Let’s decide this morning that we are not nobodies, we are somebodies, we are everead1es who can bum brightest when the night is gloomiest.
And do you know why? Do you know why all these grand statements make sense? Do you know why it is not just craziness to speak of being a light for all nations? Do you understand why it makes perfect sense to think of being a lamp that lights all in the house? Do you know why it is guaranteed, absolutely guaranteed, that we will not drown in this great dismal swamp?
Because Christ is King. Because Christ is King. Because he who began as a gleam of hope in the heart of God before time began, He who came as a tiny squalling infant into the Great Dismal swamp of the Roman province of Judea, he who spoke and taught as no one else ever did, He who went to the tree whose limbs reached out and grasped him and shoved Him under the murky waters of death --because He is alive. Because the icy grip of death could not hold him. And because the Kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.”
Because the light shines in the darkness and the darkness could not put it out. Eveready. .
