The Third Sunday of Epiphany, 22 January 2023
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
’The people sitting in darkness saw a great light, and light dawned upon those sitting in the region and shadow of death.’ [1]
I think it’s pretty uncontroversial to suggest that we are living through dark times right now; so many are seeking the light of comfort, help, and the hope of new beginnings.
Every day we hear of people like Rona, a disabled mother and her daughter who has special educational needs, who sat in the cold and dark over Christmas. Rona had struggled to cope with rising energy bills and got into debt with her supplier. Without warning, her supplier switched her smart meter to prepayment mode, leaving her without gas and electricity.
'I assumed it was a power cut,' Rona said. 'I had no way to make any calls, so my daughter and I were left in the dark all night with no heating, lights or means of making any food. I was really anxious.'
Her local Citizens Advice spoke to her supplier and found they’d switched the smart meter to a prepayment one.
Rona is on the priority services register, and in a wheelchair and unable to access her meter, but none of this made a difference to the energy company. She now relies on her sister or brother in law to go to the post office to help her top up her meter.
She said, ’Over Christmas I went without energy because the credit ran out, and the post office was closed, so my daughter and I sat there cold, in the dark. How can I live like this?'
Rona’s story is not unusual. Citizens Advice report that 3.2 million people across the UK ran out of credit on their prepayment meter last year because they didn’t have enough money. Prepayment meters are typically more expensive than paying by direct debit, and charities have criticised the energy suppliers for trapping people in poverty by forcing hundreds of thousands of customers onto these meters when they fall into debt. [2]
And we’re more than aware of the many thousands of others who are literally in the dark today: people sitting in darkened hospital corridors awaiting the delayed attention of exhausted medical staff; pensioners sitting in their cold dark living rooms, huddled under blankets and hungry for lack of money to eat, and heat and light their homes; mothers whose wages from two jobs are nowhere near enough to make ends meet, fearing eviction; fearing starvation; paralysed by fear.
Is there a different way for our society to organise ourselves? Is there a way for us to let the light in?
Sometimes we’re in the dark because we simply won’t open our eyes. Like the group of sheep stood frozen behind a farm gate, saying ‘We’re stuck in this field and there’s no way out!’, unable to see that there is open space all around the gate into which they could freely roam.
In a time of darkness, is not the role of Christianity to be a source of light to those who sit, currently, unable to see how they can make ends meet, paralysed by anxiety about their future.
For into a world whose leaders, would bleat, ‘We’re stuck in this field and there’s no way out’, Jesus came preaching ‘Good news to the poor… recovery of sight to the blind’. Into a world where country girls like Mary were denied the power to effect change, she saw in God’s choosing her his intention to ‘cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly,’ to ‘fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty.’ [3]
Christianity began on a shore of Lake Galilee where Jesus met a group of men at their workplace, a family fishing business, and called them to a new vocation: to spread light into the darkness of their place and time. In a world whose powers will have us believe that 'We’re stuck in this field and there’s no way out’,
Jesus is the great light shining upon people whose whole existence is described as 'sitting in darkness and in the region and shadow of death.' He is light and will give light, by his teaching and healing, by his suffering and his rising, and through the community of his disciples. It is a magnificent Epiphany message! [4]
- It insists, there is another way; there is a way out … and indeed, it is the way; it is the truth, it is the life. [5]
As Christians in a fallen world we are engaged in a battle of ideas — but not for the ideas themselves. No Christian has the luxury of being an intellectual, a theologian, a theorist. Our ideas, Christ’s ideas which we embrace, must serve the people. [6]
Now, some will say that an institution which has for centuries cosied up to power and wealth, is today incapable of bringing light into darkened corners of our troubled world. But at the grassroots this is disproven by the plentiful activity of those in and around our churches who feed the hungry, work supportively with those in debt, campaign for the renewal of broken public services, give their spare rooms over to refugees, protest for the planet, host meetings for recovering addicts. Sometimes they’re criticised for what they do; sometimes they meet fierce opposition. But they keep reaching for the light.
For as Jesus’ first followers found, so might we: that ‘the call to discipleship demands more than an assent of the heart; it invites an uncompromising break with business as usual.’ [7]
Notes
[1] Matthew 4.16 in David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A translation.
[2] Isabella McRae, Millions are going without heating or hot water because they can’t afford to top up their meter. Big Issue,12 Jan 2023
[3] Luke 4:14-22, Luke 1.46-55.
[4] F. Dean Leuking, in Roger E. Van Harn, ed, The Lectionary commentary, Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts. The Third Readings: The Gospels, p.24-26
[5] John 14.6.
[6] ‘We are engaged in a battle of ideas — but not for the ideas themselves. No socialist has the luxury of being an intellectual. Our writing must serve the people.’ Ronan Burtenshaw, Editorial: The story of 'Enough is Enough' Tribune, Issue 16, January 2023.
[7] F. Dean Leuking, in Roger E. Van Harn, ed, The Lectionary commentary, Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts. The Third Readings: The Gospels, p.24-26
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