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Not content to let two months go by without making a little headway on my M.Div degree, I signed up for two courses this summer — the first course is really a practicum project related to my ministerial internship, while the other is a pretty intense introduction to urban and social ministry; in fact, that’s the name of the course: Introduction to Urban & Social Ministry.

Each week we spend several hours visiting a multitude of ministry sites and service agencies, listening to staff, asking questions and talking with the people they serve. Though each organization has a unique mission statement and a slightly different target group of clientele, I think it’s fair to say that all of them are focused on making the world, and specifically central North Carolina, a little better representation of the Kingdom of God.

Several of our visits have been incredible, eye-opening experiences, but this week was particularly meaningful for me. We didn’t have a regular class session this Monday because of the holiday, but we were still assigned independent visits for the week. So Saturday night I found myself sitting in the back row of my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I needed to attend the meeting for class, but apart from school, this was an important moment for me as someone I am close to was celebrating a new Spiritual Birthday — the one-year anniversary of an addict’s last commitment to get clean and stop using. It was much more exciting, and more important, than celebrating a biological birthday.

As I sat through the meeting listening to speaker after speaker giving personal testimonies, reading passages from the NA book and encouraging one another through their struggles, I was struck by the simple honesty that pervaded the group. Every time someone stood to speak, whether it was to deliver a keynote speech or to ask a short question, the first words to come out were always “I’m David (or Charlie, or Bobbie or Rachel) and I’m an addict.” It didn’t matter if the speaker had gotten high that morning or if he had been clean for 30 years. There was not a stigma of shame or embarrassment associated with the label — something I’m sure takes many, many meetings like this to overcome — it was just the simple truth. “I’m a human, and I’m an addict.” These were authentic people.

I left the meeting that night wondering what the world would be like if everyone was as honest with themselves, and as authentic with others, as this group of humble addicts. I went home. I went to bed. Then I went to church.

Our Sunday school passage that day came from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians:

For you all are sons of the light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of the darkness. So then, we must not sleep as the rest, but must stay alert and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we are of the day, we must stay sober by putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, our hope for salvation.

For God did not destine us for wrath but for gaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that whether we are alert or asleep we will come to life together with him.

Therefore, encourage one another and build up each other, just as you are in fact doing.

1 Thessalonians 5:5-11 (NET)

Paul is writing to the church in response to questions the believers had about the Parousia, but his instructions are meant to be a guide for daily living at all times, not just in the final days.

The metaphor of light and darkness is an oft used one. In my experience, Christians like to think of living in the light as leading a righteous life; that is, avoiding the major pitfalls of sin and obeying God’s law to the letter. In contrast, being a child of darkness implies living a life marked by sin, day-in and day-out; a life totally separate from God and the law.

I think there may have been a little more depth to the “light” Paul spoke of than we tend to acknowledge; we have a way of trimming God down to size when he gets too big for our tastes. From time to time, we may fool ourselves into believing we are living righteously, pleasing God with our good works and outdoing those poor fools who still choose to walk around in darkness. I heard it said today that there are really only two kinds of people in the world: Baptists, and sinners. I’m afraid a handful of people from my own faith tradition aren’t the only ones to fall into this trap of ignorance. Such thinking proves at least one fact with absolute certainty — those who call themselves righteous have yet to stumble out of the dark their religion has pulled them down into.

I think the “light” Paul spoke of is best described not as righteousness, but as truth. Truth with God, truth with others, and especially truth with one’s self. Jesus has called us to live our lives within the truth of his Creation, of his Divinity, of his Humanity. We must accept the truth that we will never measure up to the righteousness of God, but we can accept his Grace and continue striving to live within his will for our lives.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that doesn’t put much value in authenticity or in truth. We put on different facades when we go to work, when we go to school, when we go to church, when we’re out with our friends and when we’re at home with our families. It’s expected of us, and those who don’t follow the status quo are often penalized for their lack of conformity.

What would happen to our world if our churches began to live and breath with the same spirit of honesty and truth that pushes that group of recovering addicts to better themselves, to value true fellowship over fleeting pleasure and to walk together on the journey that leads them closer to God? What would happen if before I got up to deliver the invocation this Sunday, I felt compelled to tell the congregation that “I’m David, and I am a sinner,”?

I think we would begin to see the light of Christ a little more clearly.

I arrived late.

The rest of my group had made it to Caswell early in the afternoon. My summer class ran long and I wasn’t able to leave Raleigh until nearly 7 p.m. By the time I got to the western bank of the Waterway the sun was just slipping under the distant horizon, leaving a telltale stream of orange clouds in the evening sky. As my Jeep lurched to the top of the bridge, Oak Island light station let off four quick blasts of brilliant white light, like a battery of cannon fire hurled right at me. Coastal highways seem to give my iPhone a hard time with navigation, but as long as I could keep the lighthouse in sight, I would be fine.

I pulled past the guard house and made my way to the barracks. The sun was gone now; darkness had settled in for the night. I parked the Jeep, said a quick prayer and sat in silence for a moment, letting all the worries and unfinished tasks from the last few days drift out of my mind so that I might focus on the week ahead.

I climbed out of the Jeep.

My shoes nestled into the soft beach grass as my lungs began to soak up the warm, heavy coastal air. I glanced over at the ruined fort to find my path to Hatch Auditorium, where our youth group would be finishing up their first night of worship. I set off towards Hatch, pushing through the gentle sea breeze that flowed over the tops of the dunes — my path clearly marked in the darkness by the soft glow of a yellow moon.

I had seen Fort Caswell many times before, but this time was different. My first visit to Caswell was years ago with my dad; as a young boy, the concrete tunnels and musty storerooms buried under the dunes provided endless opportunities for adventure. When I returned as a 17-year-old on a summer youth retreat, the fort still held a certain level of intrigue, but my free time was taken up with finding a quiet moment alone on the beach with my love interest at the time.

Tonight is different. There are no sounds of gulls chirping or kids playing; the only noise that pierces the silence is the occasional rustling of sea oats, stirred to life by the soft breeze. As I stroll alongside the ruined fortress — concrete pillars laced with black streaks from centuries of abuse by wild weather, yet still doing their best to hold up the crumbling brick walls — the fort begins to speak to me with a new voice. It tells a story of great sadness, and great joy; a story too complex for me to listen to in my youth.

Tonight, as I stroll alongside this squat fortress from another time and era, I am swept away to Nuremberg. I see the grand parade grounds, the grassy plains surrounded by a stadium apparently built for giants, though no one seems to know where the giants have gone off to; their playground sits empty and neglected. I see the grand coliseum — a massive structure seemingly lifted straight out of ancient Rome and planted in the German country side, where it was nurtured and allowed to grow far beyond the vision of its original architects.

In the years following World War II, the German people had to make a tough decision about what to do with these grandiose building projects of the Third Reich. They were the work of a regime that stole its power from the souls of innocents; they were tools used to oppress the unwanted members of society and boost the already dangerously inflated egos of those in power. They were also public works projects that had cost a great deal of public resources. Should they be maintained and used by the new government, or should they be destroyed as a symbolic act of total rejection of the Nazi movement?

The solution to the dilemma was an ingenious compromise; Germany did both. These monuments, built to celebrate the “triumph of the will” that drove the National Socialists, were to be left standing, but they were not to be maintained or used in any official capacity. The coliseum was left intact, but unfinished. The parade grounds formerly used to organize and prepare the Third Reich’s elite fighting force were open to the public, now to be used for soccer matches, picnics and kite flying. The icons of the Nazi party were quickly destroyed. The core stone work endures, but it continues to take further abuse from vandals, edged on by the inevitable decay of time and nature. Nothing is done to preserve the sites, but neither are they officially condemned. Their foreboding presence is a haunting reminder of what has been; a constant admonition of the danger that always lurks in the shadows whenever men gather.

In much the same way, the gutted remains of Caswell stand as a physical reminder of our own dark history. This fortress from the American Civil War has it’s own story to tell, and it is largely a story of human tragedy — even if our war-infatuated culture doesn’t like to freely recognize the evil that drove that conflict.

Yet Caswell’s story doesn’t end in tragedy. As my walk draws to an end, I remember the wonderful vacation I shared here with my father — one of the few trips we took together that has only memories of laughter, joy and discovery attached to it. I think of the camp week I spent here as a high school student, of the friendships that were nurtured under ancient live oaks and on grassy dunes. I think of the love I share with Kristen, and how the time we spent together at Caswell laid the foundation for our relationship to take root and grow. I imagine the thousands of young people who have encountered the Living God of All Creation here for the first time, and the many more who allowed a few days of solitude at Caswell to loosen the chains that had been preventing their faith from taking root, from digging deeper into the life and mission God has called them to.

I stop when I get to Hatch. The sounds of worship leak out through the stone walls and fade away into the night. I take another deep breath of sea air, and I’m filled with one thought.

Isn’t it just like God to take something like Caswell — something scarred and broken by human hands — and do something wonderful?

I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next.