When the buider and I laid off the corners to excavate for my house we oriented the longest side toward the south southwest. By placing most of the windows on this sunniest side, we hoped to capture some of the free heat of every cloudless winter day.
This orientation was to have an unexpected consequence each Advent; one that we could not have anticipated.
As sun moves southward toward the winter solstice, our apparent sunrise actually becomes earlier; closer to the time listed in an almanac. In the summer the rising sun is blocked for several hours by a hill to the northeast; in the winter sunrise is almost directly over the notch in the hills carved by Fishel Creek as it makes its way from its headwater springs at Brown’s Orchards.
For a few days at the end of November the morning sunrise streams through my office window, then through the narrow hallway leading to the rest of the house, above the kitchen counter-wall before coming to rest squarely on a doorway frame on the far side of the great room. The red-orange glow is as focused as a theater spotlight.
This apparition is at its peak on November 30, the Festival of St. Andrew the Apostle. St. Andrew’s Day determines the beginning of Advent: The Sunday nearest is always the First Sunday in Advent. If November 30 falls Monday through Wednesday; Advent begins the Sunday preceding; Thursday through Saturday Advent begins the Sunday following.
After much searching I found a small icon of St. Andrew to hang on that sunlit doorframe. Now, on those days surrounding the Apostle’s festival, the icon’s gold leaf glows with an ethereal radiance for a few minutes at sunrise, for a time just long enough to pray the Benedictus of Morning Prayer:
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
--Luke 1:79-80
Surely more than ever, our nation and our world stand in need of this mercy. And the icon of St. Andrew can teach us much about how that mercy may come to shine in all the dark places.
The compassionate mercy of our God is a gift of grace, free and undeserved. The saint on the icon, though surrounded by gold, radiates no light of its own. Only when bathed by the focused beam of the rising sun does it emit a glow.
So also for St. Andrew the Apostle, who had no claim of any special talent or ability. My friend and pastoral colleague Jeffrey Wilson has written of St. Andrew:
He never moved to center stage, but played well an essential supporting role. He was, so someone observed, the great introducer. Three times St. Andrew took someone to Jesus, first and perhaps most significantly his own brother Peter, who Jesus appointed to head the earthly church. Andrew’s was a ministry of moving along the fringe of the crowd and making sure someone got the attention he needed when otherwise his needs and gifts might have been ignored.
But when touched by grace, touched by the One who is light from Light, Andrew would emit a glow of grace sufficient to mark him unmistakingly as a disciple of Jesus. Even foreigners and strangers saw that reflected light; some Greeks at Passover approached Andrew with the deepest yearning of the soul: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
Our journey this Advent and Christmastide is a one that is surrounded by light. We begin the new Church year by hearing Isaiah’s prophecy of peace, which concludes:
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!
--Isaiah 2:5
And our journey is completed on Epiphany with another prophecy of Isaiah:
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you....
Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
--Isaiah 60:1,3
Throughout this season, may we so radiate the light of Lights that others would see Jesus in us; that they would walk with us in the light of the Lord; and that we all would be guided into the way of peace.
