O Dayspring. 2nd Wed. in Advent Evening Prayer 2018

Second Wednesday in Advent—Evening Prayer

St. Peter Lutheran Church

“O Oriens”—Is. 9:1-2; John 1:1-9

December 12, 2018

 

Iesu Iuva

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

O Dayspring, splendor of light everlasting,

Come and enlighten hose who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

 

There are two ways to think about this antiphon and its name for Christ: Dayspring, Dawn.  The first is that dawn and light are necessary for life and for ordering things so that life is possible.  The second is that dawn, daybreak comes as a relief and joy to those who live in a terrifying darkness.  Prisoners in a dark dungeon rejoice when the sun dawns on them.  Soldiers who are trapped and surrounded by the enemy rejoice when morning dawns and they have survived.

 

Light is gives the clarity and order that is required to sustain life.  Advanced disorder is death.  For example, when your body is not able to maintain the boundaries between itself and other organisms that would invade it, it dies.  The symptoms of sickness are a sign that your body is trying to keep itself separate from viruses and bacteria that want to feed on it.  But without light there can be no order and no separation; everything becomes an undifferentiated chaos.  The earth was without form…and darkness was over the surface of the deep.  (Gen. 1:2)

 

So when God created the world, the first thing He created was light, and separated it from the darkness.  Then He made lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars (Gen. 1:16).  And as a result there were different times: a time to sleep, a time to wake, a time to plant, a time to harvest.  Order as a result of the lights, and because of that order—life.

 

But if there is no light there is no order and no life.  And creation does not order itself, bring itself into being, give itself light.  Instead light, once it exists, goes out if it is not tended.  Just ask the altar guild.  Or if their opinion isn’t learned enough, you can ask the astrophysicists, who will tell you the same thing, that even the stars will not give their light forever; they too burn out after a million or so years.

 

But you would be better off asking the altar guild, since they have more wisdom than most astrophysicists.  The altar guild knows, and so does everyone else here tonight, that the created light came into being through the Word of God, the Uncreated Light.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men (John 1:4).  Creation did not order itself or bring life out of itself.

 

But this is what our world is trying to do. Finding itself out of order, it is trying to order itself.  Finding themselves in darkness, our neighbors, friends, relatives are trying to create their own light.  One invents a new sex for himself because he is told that this will free him from the feeling of being out of order.  Another tries to find wholeness in his life by throwing off what we call “traditional sexual morality”, because of the guilt and tension he feels trying to subdue his desires that go against those “traditional morals”.  We see our children or neighbors doing this and are shocked or disgusted.

 

But the same darkness has been in the world since Adam and Eve turned from the light of God’s face and hid from Him as evening fell.  We just lied to ourselves about it.  We here tonight don’t go to the doctor to change our sex.  But we bristle at what God requires of us as men and women and try to excuse ourselves.  We try to re-work God’s ordering of male and female in a way that accords with our own understanding, our own light.  Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph. 5: 25)… But that is not to be taken too literally, we say, or our wives will take advantage of us.  Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body…(Eph. 5:23)  Well, we don’t want to be doormats and slaves to our husbands, Christian women say.  The same darkness is in us as in our world.  Some people physically change their sex, but human beings have been rejecting God’s ordering of male and female since Adam took the forbidden fruit from his wife.  We flee from His light as often as it comes to us in His ten commandments, at least as we are by nature.

 

And we cannot bring God’s light and order to our disjointed selves anymore than the formless and void world could at the beginning.

 

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish… in the latter time He has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.  (Is. 9:1-2)

 

The great light that dawned in Galilee was the uncreated light, the Word of God, who created and ordered the world in the beginning so that it would sustain life.  He rose upon the human race in the womb of the virgin and the dawn broke at His baptism when He was revealed to the world.  He dawns upon us in preaching.  There we see the uncreated light of God in human flesh.

 

Because God has become man in Jesus of Nazareth, human nature has been restored to the light.  It has been re-ordered.  In Him we see humanity put back in order.  In Him we see not only one man put back in order, but we see ourselves restored to the light and life of God.  In Him God destroyed the sin and corruption we see in our bodies and souls; He destroyed the darkness and disorder from which we cannot make ourselves emerge.  All of that darkness was broken when He suffered and died for our sins on the cross, and there was darkness over the face of the whole land.  Our darkness was being dissolved by the light of light, very God of very God.

 

When He rose on the third day, He rose as the second Adam, the new man.  As we were born in the old Adam and His darkness, we are reborn in the new Adam and His light.  This is what His Word proclaims to us.  This is the dawn that rises on us in the preaching of His Word.  Jesus dawns on us.  We who walk in darkness see His great light.  Dawn comes on us like it comes to soldiers who are surrounded at night.

 

Jesus comes and tells us we are loosed from our sin and its penalty; that we are baptized into Him and so have been raised from the dead, become new men in Him.

 

When our flesh works against us and hardens our hearts so that we feel our resistance to His Word, and feel the darkness that is still in us, we confess it to Him and He absolves us.  The darkness breaks and the sun of righteousness rises upon us with healing in His wings.

 

We are overwhelmed and near despair when we see how few believe in Him, how many are falling.  He comes, and gives us the body that was crucified to redeem us and the blood that purifies us from all sin.  You have a share in the great light that dawned in Galilee, He says.

 

And when the day dawns fully, and His face appears shining like the sun in full strength, the darkness of hell, sin and death will vanish before His brightness, and so will everyone that belongs to it.  And the old us will also be gone.  But we will see one another in that light, on that day, and we will be changed.  We will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.

 

So we pray:

 

               O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high

               And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh.

               Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

               And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

 

               Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel

               Shall come to thee, O Israel!

 

Amen.

 

Soli Deo Gloria