WE'LL LEAVE THE LIGHT ON FOR YOU

Nathan Attwood

Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church

"But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him." Luke 15:20.

Since 1986, the national spokesperson for the budget hotel chain Motel 6 has been a man named Tom Bodett.  Tom Bodett was already a voice actor and radio personality when he made an initial radio commercial for Motel 6 in which he ad-libbed the famous catch phrase that became the tagline of every radio ad to follow: "I'm Tom Bodett for Motel 6, and we'll leave the light on for you."

Those commercials were witty and humorous, using Bodett's deadpan delivery to chuckle at the not-fancy accoutrements of a hotel that took its name from its early budget-conscious price of a nightly stay--$6. The ads expressed the adequacy of Motel 6's rooms; clean, safe, basic, cheap. 

The greatest feature Tom Bodett celebrated about Motel 6, however, was the priceless quality of the tagline. "We'll leave the light on for you" was a way to communicate that a weary traveller could find a welcome at anytime, a safe place of hospitality and rest. It was that feeling Tom Bodett captured in his tagline that created such a successful ad campaign and caused Motel 6 to grow exponentially as a result of it. We all need to feel like the light has been left on for us.

At my own house, my wife loves to leave lights on and I love to turn them off. She finds the lights comforting and they make her feel safe. The lights make it hard for me to sleep and it bothers me to waste electricity. So, most nights, she's turning the lights on and I'm turning the lights off.

The exception, however, is any night we are waiting for someone to come home. Sometimes my daughter has been out with a friend and we are waiting for her to be returned to us. Sometimes we have an out-of-town friend coming to stay with us and we are waiting for them to arrive. Sometimes we are waiting for a delivery--Walmart, pizza, whatever. In those times, we leave the porch lights on. The porch light communicates welcome and creates a sense of safety on a dark night. It helps the person coming to our home navigate their way to our house. It says, "Here we are, we've been waiting for you, come on in."

Many years ago, country musician Trace Adkins had a song that expressed this same spirit. The song was called, "Every light in the house is on." The song told the story of a man whose wife had left him. As she left, he told her he would leave the light on for her. He left not only the porch light on, but every light in the house. In the cheesy 90s music video (complete with some of the most awkward dancing in music video history) Adkins installs high powered lights that make the whole house glow like the Griswolds place at Christmastime. Eventually, the radical communication of welcome and desire for reunification melts her heart and she returns.

I don't imagine the porches had lights in Jesus's time. But if they had them, the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son would have let them shine all day and night. Jesus's famous parable says that the wayward son made up his mind to return home and ask for a place as a servant. But his father saw him from a long way off. As soon as he spotted his son way off in the distance, he ran to meet him and escorted him back home with joy and reconciliation, with a party. That's leaving the porch light on.

In another parable, ten young women are awaiting the opportunity to enter a wedding celebration. The night gets long. Some of them have made provision to keep the lights burning as long as it would take. Others did not prepare for a long wait and their lamps burned out. Jesus told us to be like the wise virgins, the ones who were prepared to keep the lights on as long as it would take to welcome the bridegroom and celebrate the wedding. Maybe the point of the parable is about the readiness, the perpetual preparation, the unwillingness of God to give up shining the light to welcome his people to his party of loving restoration. Maybe the story is about our preparation for welcoming God, or God's people, especially the wanderers, our call to never let the light go out, always to keep the door open and the welcome extended. I'm inclined to think the parable is about all these things. Keep the light on.

We leave the porch light on in many ways. There's an organization called "National Safe Place" that gives places an opportunity to be a place a teenager in trouble could go for welcome and protection. If a person was being harrassed, threatened, exploited, or otherwise made afraid, any place that put a distinctive "SAFE PLACE" sign out front could be a place that person could go to be protected and given resources to be sheltered from harm. 

I have a sense that the world needs more porch lights left on. Many people walk through this life looking for safety, welcome, grace. I imagine some of them have found churches to be inconsistent places of welcome and embrace. Jesus called us to "let your light shine before others." Undoubtedly, when Jesus taught this in the Sermon on the Mount, he meant that we should live so virtuously in a dark world that people would be drawn to the goodness of our living. I wonder if he was also teaching us to be a place and a people of welcome and grace, a people whose friendship and care was safe enough that lonely travellers on the dark highways of life could know they could pull over to find hospitality, care, and rest. 

Perhaps you need to find a porch light left on for you. If so, please know God is a God who leaves the light on, whose welcome and care never ceases and knows no limits. And for those of us who claim the name of followers of Jesus, may we be agents of a gracious Father, people who, in our individual and collective life, never let the light go out and always keep the door open.