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At this time of year, I’m more conscious than usual of the daily transitions from darkness to light in the morning, and back again from light to darkness in the evening. After we turn back our clocks in early November, the sun begins to set around 4:30 to 5:00 in the afternoon. It feels strange that it grows dark so early, before most of us even think of preparing our supper. What I notice in these weeks between when we turned our clocks back on November 5 and when we mark the winter solstice on December 21 is, that in midst of these shorter days and longer nights, I become more aware of all the lights that illumine our way through the darkness as we make our way toward the warmth and light of home.

But in order to more vividly experience the light of the stars, we first need to experience the darkness of the night sky. To more fully appreciate the miracle of the headlights on the car, we must realize how dark is the road that lies ahead. And to know more fully how the flashlight illumines our way, we first have to experience the utter darkness that surrounds us, even if for just a moment, before we switch on the flashlight to make clear the path ahead.

In the 2018 film, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, based on the 2008 novel, in the opening scene we meet four people walking through some very dark woods late one Friday night. They are lively and raucous, having just enjoyed a secret pig roast and some homemade spirits (in a time when war-time rationing forbade both those delicacies), and now they’re out past the curfew being enforced on the Guernsey islands during their occupation by German military forces during World War II.

The four revelers—named Dawsey, Isola, Eben, and Elizabeth—are subsequently stopped by the night patrol officer and asked to give an account for violating the curfew. In the stress of the moment, heightened by their drunkenness, the best answer they could come up with was that they were returning home from the weekly meeting of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Of course, the night patrol officer finds no mention of this society in the list of approved community gatherings. When he threatens to visit their meeting the following Friday, they have no choice but to convene the imaginary group to evade further suspicion.

These four, joined by matriarch Amelia, Elizabeth’s daughter Kit, and (later) Eben’s grandson Eli, gather their books, prepare some potato peel pie, and begin convening every Friday, going far beyond what was needed to throw off the Nazis’ suspicions. What the members of this literary circle discover, through sharing books, food, and conversation, goes beyond mere love of narrative. They find that the darkness they are experiencing in the German occupation created an unsought-after opportunity: for they are illumined and encouraged simply by being in one another’s presence, sharing the gifts of compelling stories, simple food, and meaningful conversation and, in so doing, deepening their relationships with one another. When one member of the group is later taken away to a German prison camp, the others rally around to support each another in their grief and raise the child who is left behind. All the while, they continue to meet together on Friday evenings, reveling in the light to be found in one another’s company and the love of literature that they’ve come to share.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, meeting in someone’s home once a week to share food, drink, and stories, all under the threat of a repressive regime, may remind you of others who gathered together in just this way about 2,000 years ago. Early Christians living throughout the Roman Empire in those first few centuries after Christ also met in homes (and sometimes in catacombs) to share scripture, interpretation, music, and the Eucharist—at first with a full agape meal, and later with just bread and wine. The earliest church building discovered by archaeologists is the house church at Dura Europos in present-day Syria. On the outside, this church retained the appearance of a private home, making it less obvious to the authorities. But inside, the home was renovated to include dedicated spaces in which to share the worship service that culminated in Eucharist, as well as a separate space where immersion baptisms took place. It was in this period that the scriptures read each sabbath moved from scrolls to something new called codex, which were stacks of papyrus gathered together in a form more like the printed Bibles we read today. In these early house churches, in a mainly oral culture where very few had access to written copies of the scriptures, these small gatherings of Christians sharing the holy scriptures and communion were the main way that Christians would have been able to hear and learn the stories of Jesus and their forebears in the faith.

In our opening prayer (or collect) for today, the first Sunday of Advent, we hear echoes of Paul’s letter to these very Christians who met in house churches around Rome, as we pray that God will give us, too, the “grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.” Throughout the Bible, metaphoric language of light and darkness is pervasive. This language is so commonly used because light and darkness have been embedded in human life from the beginning of time. Every 24 hours the earth rotates, which we experience through the rising of the sun and its setting. Every 365 days, the earth journeys around the sun, which we experience as the changing of the seasons. As one author has described, “The earth’s days and seasons are defined by the planet’s relationships with the sun’s rays—their presence and absence, the distance they travel to reach us, and the angle at which they arrive. These cycles of darkness and light have shaped creatures, ecosystems, and communities across generations and continents, and the depth of this shared reality makes it a rich source for liturgical language.”

We know what it is to see more clearly in the light of day—or with the light we create with a fire, or a candle, or through flipping on a switch. And as poetic as it sounds to “cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light’ or, as we hear in Isaiah today, “to walk in the light of the LORD,” I wonder what that looks like for us in the course of our daily lives. How do we put on the light of Christ? And how do we walk in God’s light?

While it’s not one of today’s appointed scriptures, I believe that Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, gives us one clear answer for how we can put on the armor of Christ’s light and walk in his ways: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” Here we have a clear picture of what putting on the armor of light looks like: It looks like offering one another unconditional love. Making space in our lives for joy. Being channels of God’s peace. Waiting with patience. Looking at one another through the eyes of kindness. Freely sharing what we have with others. Treating one another, and ourselves, with gentleness. Being devoted to one another and to God with great faithfulness. And as we embrace all these fruits of the spirit, we are exercising self-control. As we dress ourselves in these attributes, we find that we are walking in the light of God—and against such things, there is no law. As Paul wrote elsewhere, in his letter to the Romans, “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

The members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society were, along with people around the world, living amidst the darkest of circumstances—and yet, in the midst of this great darkness they didn’t just see a great light, they created it by continuing to meet together and by giving one another the love and the courage they all needed to persevere. While we never wish to go through difficult times, and the people of Guernsey certainly never embraced their five-year occupation by the Nazis, what this story shows us is an example of what many of us have seen and experienced in our own lives: that in times of discouragement and darkness we become more apt to notice—and even become—sources of light.

For Dawsey, Isola, Eben, Amelia, and Elizabeth, the works of darkness they were casting aside were not their own. Rather, as they persisted in meeting together and putting on the armor of light, they were casting off the darkness of the Nazi regime—which perpetrated some of the darkest works history has ever known. It was a long occupation—for these characters, and for the real-life people of Guernsey—five years living as prisoners on their own island home. But each day was one day closer to their eventual liberation in 1945, when the war and the occupation of Guernsey ended. And so it is for us—each day that we live, we are another day closer to our salvation, to a future that’s bigger than our past.

As Paul wrote to the early Christians in Rome, our “salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Amen.