Devotion on CW 23:3, December 11, 2002 * Midweek Advent 2 * Professor Dan Leyrer

It was the hot summer of 1988. My wife and I had been married a little over two years, I was finishing up my vicar year, we packed up the car and headed to Indiana for a family reunion. This reunion was held at the group camp of an Indiana state park where there were, shall we say, “rustic” cabins for each family to use for sleeping. Our first night there we found out how rustic the cabins were. Once night fell we heard the unmistakable fluttering and squeaking sound of bats. I tried to convince my wife that the sound was coming from outside the cabin. She was not convinced. And she was right. Those bats were flying around inside the cabin, just over our sweating heads, and more importantly, just over the head of our 1-year-old baby girl. Now I know that bats are our friends and they eat mosquitoes and all that. But bats are creepy. They are creatures of the darkness that just gave us the willies. That night we were not going to share our cabin or our daughter with the bats. We let them have the cabin. We went somewhere else to try to sleep, but not before we had been awake half of the night.

One phrase that I had learned from the Psalms (from saying them responsively in church growing up) kept coming to my mind that uncomfortable night: “More than they that watch for the morning” (Psalm 130:6). Waiting for the morning light that would put an end to that long night really meant something to me. Normally, we don’t long for sunrise. We have safe, cozy places to sleep and plenty of lights in the house if we need them. In fact, it’s fair to say that most mornings we’d prefer for the light not to come so soon, so we could stay in bed a little longer. But what if the only light we had was the sun. What if after sunset it was only darkness until sunrise. What if the night meant danger and death while they day meant life and safety.

That idea of night and day was very real for people who lived long ago, without all the artificial light we have today. And that’s the idea of day and night—where life and safety depend on the day—that was in the ancient hymnwriter’s mind when he penned the third stanza of Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel:

Oh, come, O Dayspring from on high,

And cheer us by your drawing nigh;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

What is dayspring? Well, it’s sunrise. The KJV used the word “dayspring” to translate the Greek word for “dawn.” It was also the word the ancients used for the compass direction “east.” Think about that. The sun rising in the east, the first light of dawn that turns night into day—that’s a dayspring. When we sing those words in the hymn we are recognizing Jesus as a light that means life and safety.

You’re already thinking of something Jesus said about himself. “I am the Light of the world,” he said. “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). Christ thought of himself as the light that was essential for someone to live. The very last name our Savior called himself in the Bible is in one of the last verses of the last chapter of the last book, Revelation. Guess what that name is. “Morning Star.” When he tells us how he is, when he tells us he will return, Jesus wants us to think of him as the rising sun that chases away the darkness.

Zechariah knew that. When his son John, the one appointed by God to be the Forerunner of the Christ, was born, Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit to prophecy. His prophecy about his son John and his Savior Jesus became a song the Christian church put into its worship. We often call it the Benedictus today and in it what did he call this Jesus who was coming? “The Dayspring from on high to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Lk 1:78, 79). The Savior whose coming at Bethlehem we celebrate this Advent, the Savior whose coming on the Last Day we look forward to this Advent, is a Sunrise who puts death’s dark shadows to flight!

And that is the deepest, darkest shade of night there is—death. We all go through dark spots in our lives, times when things are not going so well, when people are not treating us so well, when relationships we thought were solid, crumble because we’ve made mistakes. Those dark spots are real and they are tough but somehow we know we’ll come through them. We know, with the Lord’s help, we’ll see the brighter side of things pretty soon.

But what of death’s dark shadows? Who can overcome that darkness? Oh, how death overshadows me when a loved one dies and sadly I ponder the good I could have done for them in this world but I didn’t. Oh, how death descends upon you like darkness when you go to a funeral and you are reminded that you, too, shall die. Oh, death, you dark cloud, you dark shroud, how you cover us when we think of you as the Bible calls you: “the wages of sin.” What darkness is in my soul when I think that my demise is proof that I am sick with sin, that I have offended my God. Death is darkness.

Friend, if your life right now is filled with that darkness of death, that is, if you think of death as the ultimate enemy that cannot be overcome, then you need to hear about someone who can. It’s not you and it’s not me. It’s the Dayspring from on high. It’s the Emmanuel to whom we sing, “Oh, come, oh, come.” It’s the Babe of Bethlehem who grew up to be the Man of Sorrows. You see, he took your sins and mine to the grave and he left them there. He conquered death, he overcame the enemy, he rose from the dead and left our sins behind. He removed them from us.

To die is not to stand before God covered in your sin, but covered with Jesus’ holiness instead. To die is not to be assigned to everlasting shame, but to enter everlasting happiness. Death is the doorway to eternal life. Why? Because Jesus went into death first and conquered it! Forever. It’s no wonder that in the place the apostle Paul talks the most about death, he concludes by saying: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54). The Dayspring from on high has put death’s dark shadows to flight.

Benjamin Franklin and a colleague in the Continental Congress took a break from discussing the problems of the newly formed union. Franklin’s friend was pessimistic about the future of the United States. He told Franklin that the dismal future of the United States was symbolized by the setting sun that had been carved into the back of a chair in the meeting room. Franklin looked at the same bit of woodwork and said: “You see a setting sun. I see a sun that is rising. And it makes all the difference.”

Brothers and sisters, there is only one Sun who chases the shadows of death to cheer your walk through life. He’s the Sun of Righteousness, the Dayspring from on high. And he has risen for you. God bless you as you prepare to greet him.

Amen.