Brightness Is a Parlor Trick
The sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. – Malachi 4:2 (NRSV)
Anybody can be bright. Anybody can learn to shine and sparkle and make the people ooh and ahh. Being shiny, even blindingly so, is a parlor trick. And it sure doesn’t mean you’re good. I don’t believe in Satan or all the mythology around him, but if I did, I might point out here that he’s often called Light-Bringer, a.k.a. Lucifer.
Brightness doesn’t mean a thing, says Malachi, unless it also comes with healing. The Sun of Righteousness isn’t the Sun of Righteousness unless there’s healing in its wings. Want to know if the person in front of you is God, or at least in league with God? See if what they do, what they say, what they vote for, is healing—for themselves, for others, for anybody.
And just for the record, some things that healing is not:
- forgetting or pretending
- denying
- passing a hurt along
- passing laws to make it illegal to talk about the hurt
- telling people it’s all in their head
- reserved for some, denied to others
- a proclamation instead of a process
- the same as cure
If a shining someone has arisen before you—in person or on your feed—and is asking you to listen to them, or vote for them, or worship them, ask them to tell you the story of their own healing. Ask them what they think healing even is. And then ask them this: by their words, their deeds, their legislation, their work, their art, their life, to whom have they given a taste of it?
Prayer
Make me bright, God—but then make me a healer. Amen.
About the AuthorQuinn G. Caldwell is Chaplain of the Protestant Cooperative Ministry at Cornell University. His most recent book is a series of daily reflections for Advent and Christmas called All I Really Want: Readings for a Modern Christmas. Learn more about it and find him on Facebook at Quinn G. Caldwell.