Life in the Light

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio this morning.]

Ephesians 5:8-14
When I was growing up, we neighborhood kids played a game in the later hours of the night right before our parents called us in to take our baths and go to sleep. It was ‘Flashlight Tag.’ In Flashlight Tag, one person was “it” and tried to expose those who hid in the darkness. I remember that it always brought a sinking feeling when the person with the flashlight found me. I didn’t like it at all!

The Bible, you know, describes Jesus as “the Light of the world.” We like that when it means that Jesus lights our ways through life and shows us that He is the way to heaven. But sometimes, when His light is cast on us, we see the darkness that resides within our souls--the sin, the selfishness. Truth is, we don’t like that any more than I liked being found in a game of Flashlight Tag.

The book of Ephesians, from which today's second lesson comes, is divided by scholars into two main sections.

The first three chapters deal with the issue of exactly what Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection mean for the relationship of Jewish believers in Jesus and non-Jewish (what the Bible calls Gentile) believers in Jesus.

Many of the Jewish Christians looked at the Gentile believers as "johnny-come-latelies" to faith and wondered whether these believers in Jesus really were part of God’s kingdom. It may have been to them that Ephesians’ most famous passage was directed: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what He has made us to be, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile, you aren’t saved from sin and death and futility by the good works you do. You’re saved as an act of God’s charity—what the Bible calls God’s grace--toward those who believe in Jesus Christ. On the cross, Jesus did everything necessary for us to be acceptable to God. We simply must believe—or trust—in Him.

Thankful that God has loved us in spite of our sin, our mission in life is to do the good works God made for us to do centuries before we were even born.

That leads, naturally enough, to the theme of the final three chapters, the second great division, of Ephesians. It answers the question, “Now that we’ve been saved by God’s grace, how do we go about living our lives?”

Our lesson for today begins by giving part of the answer to that question. Listen: “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of the light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. [Then it says that we should spend a good deal of time in our lives on a particular mission:] Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. [And then it says:] Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”

To tell you the truth, whenever I read that last line, telling us to expose darkness, I get uncomfortable. Are we Christians supposed to go around pointing out others’ faults? I hope not because when Christians act this way, we can be awfully ugly!

A classic fictional account of the ugliness of Christian moral finger-pointing is The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s the story of Hester Prynne, an unmarried woman in colonial Boston, Massachusetts, who becomes pregnant. The town is scandalized and forces her to wear a scarlet A, standing for adultery, on her clothing. The father of her child, the local pastor, gets off scot free for years. While Hester owned her sin and became a wonderful person and a wonderful mother, the pastor became more and more miserable, something of which the solemn believers in Salem never were aware.

There will be times, of course, when Christian love will demand that we point out others’ faults. A few weeks ago, while visiting a hospital, a man, who was visiting his mother, saw that I was wearing a clerical collar and asked if we could speak. He told me that his son was so deeply involved with alcohol that he couldn’t keep a job, couldn’t do anything. What could he do?

I suggested that he and the other members of his family get a local counselor to help them put together an encounter group that would confront his son. Though painful for all involved, until the young man was forced to see that the abuse of his body, mind, life, and relationships was a soul-endangering sin, no healing could come. I told this man that I thought he and his family must ask God for the courage to cast a strong light on his son’s sins.

I believe that my advice was Biblical. But such overt confrontations over sin aren’t always the best way to help others. (Besides, we’re sinners too, you know.)

When I think of how deeply God has to dive into the slime of my sin and selfishness in order to reach me with the forgiveness and hope He offers through Jesus Christ, I conclude that as Christian, I'm called not to harshly judge others but, like Jesus, try to compassionately meet them where they are.

Bill Hybels is the senior pastor of a large congregation near Chicago. He once had a neighbor, a hard-living, cigar-chomping businessperson who had done very well financially, but didn't have God in his life. The guy was gruff and Hybels liked him a lot.

After developing a friendship with the guy, Hybels invited him to attend worship at his church some weekend. The guy came to one of the church's services and later, Hybels thanked him and asked him what he'd thought. The neighbor told Hybels he'd enjoyed it a lot. "And," he told Hybels, in language I must clean up for Sunday morning radio, "that was a heckuva sermon."

The compliment wasn't couched in dainty church language. Some Christians might have blasted the guy. Or spoken badly of him later. But Hybels recognized that the man was expressing appreciation for what God had said to him through the worship service as well as he could at that point and instead of correcting him, simply thanked his neighbor. He met the guy where he was in order to show him the love and goodness of the God we know in Jesus. You and I need to do the same thing.

I think that our lesson from Ephesians isn’t, for the most part, talking about us exposing the sins of others. It’s about something else, I think.

Annually, for years now, I’ve gone for a physical exam at my doctor’s office. I do that so that I can learn about any problems that need addressing and to avoid future difficulties. As “children of” God’s “light,” you and I are to volunteer each day to let God give us a thorough spiritual examination.

One of my favorite psalms, Psalm 139, concludes with the prayer, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Cast your light on my sins, the psalmist is praying, so that I can see them, turn from them, and walk with You, Lord! When that happens, we can seek God's power to correct those sins that might be blocking God’s power from our lives and so, be prepared for doing the assignments God has in mind for each of us every day we live.

When I was a boy, my throat sometimes became sore. I’d try to conceal this from my parents because I knew that they might make me see our doctor. That didn’t appeal to me: I didn’t want the doc shining a flashlight down my throat, poking around, looking for problems. If he did find a problem, I knew, he’d likely prescribe medicine for me. And I hated that, too!

It isn’t always pleasant to have our sins exposed, any more than it’s pleasant when, at our physical, the doctor finds some health issue that needs to be addressed. God's prescription for us may be difficult to swallow. God will want us to get rid of our sins. Because we tend to fall in love with our sins, parting with them can be very difficult.

The sins we love can be many different things—taking too many deductions off of our income tax, sexual intimacy outside of marriage, acting holier-than-thou with coworkers or family members, giving money first-place in our lives, wanting to keep up with the Joneses, boozing it up, cutting others off in conversations or in traffic, or a thousand other ways that sin can grab hold of our souls.

But whatever sin we specialize in, when God points our sins out, we have two choices and two choices only: (1) Keep on sinning and walk away from God; or, (2) Turn from the sin and ask God to help us live life God’s way.

When we make that second choice, we’re really living the words of an ancient church song that comes at the end of our lesson from Ephesians: “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you!”

And it’s this choice—the choice of turning from sin and asking God to help us to live life His way—that allows the bright light of Christ to shine on us and helps us to wake up to all the positive possibilities in our lives on earth and all the great things heaven holds in store for followers of Jesus.

As we continue to move through Lent, this time of spiritual renewal, may we all keep asking God to wake us up, to shine His light on those habits of which we may not even be aware that are keeping us from enjoying the close relationship with God He wants all of us to have.

Ask God to shine a light on your path so that the joy of Christ fills you and your whole life expresses thanks to God for the new life God has given you through Jesus Christ! Amen

One and Only Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (March 2, 2008)

These passes are designed to help the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I serve as pastor, to prepare for worship. Others are invited to come along for the ride, since we use the same appointed lessons as most Christians in North America and throughout the world. (See here.)

The Lessons:
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

General Comments:
1. While there are several themes shared by some of the lessons, one underlying theme informs them all: the utter reliability of God for those who trust God completely.

This isn't to say life with the God revealed on the pages of the Old and New Testaments is easy. In Psalm 23, David speaks of traveling through a dark valley, which can represent anything from despair over our mortality to a tangle with death itself. In the Gospel lesson, John 9:1-41, we read about the experience of a blind man given sight by Jesus, whose trust in Jesus earns him the condemnation of good religious folks. (He's even excommunicated, which is what the text is talking about when it says that the man was driven out. The word in the Greek of the New Testament is ekballo.)

Yet all four of the texts, in the face of life's realities, are filled with an affirmation of God's reliability. "I shall not want!" the psalmist declares. "Lord, I believe," the once-blind man says as he worships Jesus.

2. The theme of God's reliability is presented in a different way in the first lesson. Samuel, an Old Testament prophet and judge, had, at God's instigation, anointed Israel's first king, Saul. Saul's reign turned out badly. That's because Saul, as happens with many leaders, began depending on himself rather than on God. (He did this even when he defended his actions with pious explanations.) This made Samuel understandably depressed.

While Saul was still in power, some years before he died, God instructed Samuel to go to the town of Bethlehem, specifically to the home of a man named Jesse. Once Samuel was there, God said that He would reveal who Samuel should anoint to become Saul's successor. Seven of Jesse's sons were brought to Samuel. God told him not to anoint any of them, though apparently each looked like a king.

God told Samuel, "The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

Finally, David shows up, the youngest of the lot. "The Lord said, 'Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.'” That's exactly what Samuel did.

David, who would go on to be both a great king and a notorious and repentant sinner, is described elsewhere in the Bible as "a man after God's own heart." And this--his dependence, his commitment to following God even when God told him things he didn't want to hear--was the source of David's greatness. David, apparently, didn't look like a king. The runt of Jesse's litter, his father hadn't even asked him to come to the feast that the town was preparing when the famous Samuel arrived in Bethlehem. Somebody had to take care of the sheep; inconsequential David was the choice. But the inconsequential shepherd boy would become the greatest king of Old Testament times, not because of anything intrinsic to him, but because of his utter reliance on God.

The blind man given sight by Jesus depended on Him, in spite of the rejection of his fellow Judeans, including even his own parents. This may have seemed like particularly subversive act because Jesus didn't look like a king. But through the eyes of faith, this man saw that Jesus was the King of kings!

3. David, the shepherd boy turned king anointed in our lesson from 1 Samuel, would later write Psalm 23. It begins, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want."

In the ancient near East, the term shephed was applied to kings. Here, the psalmist is saying that God is king. This would have been, and remains, a political statement, as is the blind man's impolitic confession of Jesus as the God worthy of his worship.

In this political season, when pols promise much and people get swept up in the excitement of supporting this or that candidate, it's good for us to remember that the Lord we meet in Jesus Christ is our only true shepherd, our only worthy king, the only One Who can lead us through the valley of death's shadows into the sunshine of eternity.

4. The motif of light and darkness also runs through three of these lessons.

Those who have Christ in their lives are light, according to our lesson from Ephesians. Because of the light of Christ in us, God gives the power to discern what is true and good, sometimes by showing us what is false and wrong, often in us.

God guides those who dare to follow trustingly through the valley of the shadow of death.

The once blind man was given the ability not only to see physically, but to see Christ as His one and only hope.

Just some thoughts. Please pray that our Catechism class goes well on Saturday and that we have a safe and fun experience with the Bible Bowl on Sunday afternoon.