“Dayspring from on High”

Advent Hour – December 21, 2011

Revelation 21:22-26/Psalm 36:5-9/Matthew 24:23-27

Fr. Roberto M. Jorvina

Remember that you are seated with Christ, even though we may be standing.  We are in Day Five!  Advent Hour is perhaps like an easy gym machine that connects to our spiritual part and tells us its condition.  Are we happy that it is now two days away before we end? Or are we excited because we are coming closer and closer to God?  This is what Advent should bring: a renewal of our relationship with God.

Being the first Season of the year, it is like the rudder of the ship that sets the course of our lives for the rest of the year.  Whatever 2012 may bring, we are sure that God is here with us.  We are sure of His presence and He is the only Source of our lives.   Advent should bring to us a greater understanding of the things of God.  It must erase all the false voices that we hear all around us that try to distract us and rob us of the very things of God.  It is supposed to bring our focus back to God and God alone, to lift up our hearts.

The call of Advent is, “Come up here!”  Sursum Corda!  As we do, we see one Throne.  We see one Altar.  We see one Law-giver.   The pattern of our lives is set.  It establishes our lives to proclaim, as Israel does, the Shema: “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.”  This is what Advent should bring into our lives.

Today, we focus on “Dayspring from on High.” The term comes from the Canticle of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist.  In Luke 1:78, it is rendered “Sunrise from on high,” from the New American Standard.  In some translations, it is the “Radiant dawn.”

Our visual of the sun in the Sanctuary is a very strong proclamation.  Traditionally, Christmas and Advent is associated with the star.  The sun is not a star because they are two distinct heavenly bodies.  The sun is a vivid proclamation of God. In our Advent Hour before, we used to have a small star that would grow; it had its meaning.  I like the sun because it shows to us the intensity, the brilliance, the majesty of God’s commitment to us.  The very life we have received is not a speck, not something obscure or a small thing.  It is the very fullness of God of which we have been given, of which we have been blessed with without measure.  John said, “You have received the Spirit without measure.”

Even though we celebrate the seven days, there are really fourteen rays of the sun which shows a double portion of God’s blessings upon our lives. This is the commitment of God, the strength of God, the power of God, and the fullness of the life that we have received.  It is not hanging on the thought that we have just a received a portion. It is not still looking to a Babe in a manger which the star of Bethlehem led the people to.   It is looking forward to the life and the realization of that life that we have in us.

Malachi 4:2 says, “The sun of righteousness has come with healing in its wings.” Isaiah 30:26, “The light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heal their bruise.” Light brings healing. Our lives may have been bruised by tragedies, by things which we have faced, but the Dayspring on High is the healing to that bruise.  Light restores us to bring us to the newness of everyday, to restore our lives into that which God intended it to be.

The light, the sunrise, things are made new.  Yesterday perhaps had been failures, shortcomings; but every morning, the sun rises to proclaim the newness of life.  The old is gone; the new has come. We don’t need to hold on to our old habits.  We don’t need to say, “Well, I am just a Filipino – poor, decrepit, impotent, and unable to do anything.”   We can see the dayspring rise from the East and make the proclamation: the very character of God is sure to rise as the sun; the dawn that comes everyday – dependable, on the dot, on time.  When the very need is there, God is there to meet that need.  As sure as the sun rises, something will always be counted on.  Our lives must be lived by faith in the same way.

The gospel in Matthew 24 talks about the coming of the Son of Man.  It warns us about the false Christ who will appear in many different places.  It is distinguished from the Son of Man, in His coming.  It is like the lightning that flashes from the East and goes through the West.  In Bible terminology, East to West talks about unending, boundless, limitless scope of God in humanity and in the universe.

The coming of the Son of Man will mean not like the false Christ of economics, politics or education that will promise you certain things but will actually have nothing.  The coming of the Son of Man will be as from the lightning, East to West, that will encompass every scope of our lives.  Nothing is left undone.  Everything is made new.

In Revelation 21:22-27, we see here the response of creation. Even before God created the sun and the moon, there was already light.  Light was proclaimed on the first day; the sun and the moon, the greater and the lesser light, on the fourth day.  In Revelation, we see the reverse.  The sun and moon may not be needed anymore because there will be one light in that city of God in which the light will be the Lamb.  I am not literally talking that the sun and the moon will be gone.  What it shows is that the very source of our lives goes beyond the physical, the natural.  We are elevated as God’s people through our realm of normality, which is of God, not of men.  Our lives are defined not by our limitations but by God’s creation.

In the new creation, the light is there.  In the new creation, the city of God, the gates will never be shut.  Isaiah 60:18 says, “They will call their walls salvation and thy gates praise.” The gates are praise; it will never be shut.  God’s people will now respond in the way God created us to respond – in unending, unceasing praise.  Our lives will be praise to Him.  The gates will never be shut. This is what we were created for.  We were not created to gripe or complain. We were not created to criticize.  We were not created as a spring that spews out bitter water.  We were created as a spring that should bring out sweet water.  The gates praise and will never be shut.

In our lives, we see this. There will be endless praise in our lives.  As a result, we can fulfill what Jesus proclaimed, “You are the light of the world.”  It is not a matter of what we think or what we feel. He said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do men light a lamp and put it under a peck measure, but on a lampstand in order that it may proclaim the light.”

Isaiah 60:1 says, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” If you recall your English lesson, it is in the present perfect tense which shows a past action but is perfected in the present.  It is completed in the present life.  “The glory of God has risen upon you.” We have that glory now because Christ, in us, is the hope of glory. That glory is with us; He is with us now.  The Dayspring is light breaking through the darkness.  Isaiah 60:2 says, “Darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you, and His glory will appear upon you; nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

When we talk about the glory in the Church, many times it is a vague concept that many people have.  We see glory as smoke, incense or some cloud that has no matter.  In the Old Testament, the world “glory” is literally rendered as something that can be put on a scale and weighed.  It is something that has material reality. It is something that is tangible.  It is not intangible incense smoke that is the symbol of the glory of God.  True glory in the incarnation is the Word made flesh and dwells among us.  This is the true glory that we have in our lives.

We are the bearers of the light and the life of God, in the good works. Let your light shine by the good works that we do, recognizably attractive works; eye-catching works; excellent works; works that would say, “Behold, the Christ!” We were made by His excellencies.

The Church today sets the course to be that attraction, to be that excellent work.  We bear the light, the Dayspring from on High.  We show it forth to the world. When the Bible talks about the glory of the Lord, it indicates and implies that God wants Himself to be recognizable to the world.

You and I are the channel of the Dayspring from on High so that the world can recognize us that God and the light is not some concept, something impotent, something powerless, something without substance, but something that is awesome and life-changing. It is darkness to light; sickness to healing; hopelessness and despair to hope; poverty to riches and prosperity. That changing becomes the light of God because God is light.

Like Zacharias, we can say, “Through the tender mercy of our God, the Dayspring from on High, has visited us to give life to those who dwell in darkness and to make us walk in the light of peace.”