October 17, 2004

Marietta T. Smith

Scripture: Matthew 5:14-16; John 1:1-9
 Isaiah 60: 1-2, 19,20

I will read the Isaiah passage and the passage from John now and the passage from Matthew is referred to in the sermon, so you will hear it when I come to that.

From Isaiah chapter 60:

From John 1:1-9

This is Acolyte Sunday, as has been evidenced by having all these Acolytes stand and be recognized for their service to the Church. It is a day in which we recognize them for their service to God through His Church. Acolytes serve an important function in our Church. They carry the light of Christ into the service, and light these candles. The message of these lights is here to remind us that Jesus Christ is the Light of the world. This is a central theme of our Christian faith. It is a reminder that God’s own Son is here present with us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Light is a wonderful creation of God. It is the first thing God created. We read in Genesis account, in chapter 1:

. . .darkness brooded over the face of the deep and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Then God separated the light from the darkness and the light He called “day” and the darkness He called “night.” And evening and morning, it says, were the first day and God said, “That’s good.”

Farther down in the chapter we see that God created the greater light, the sun, and the lesser light, the moon. We know that the moon, of itself, has no light, but reflects the light of the sun.

In Exodus 13 we read how God provided assurance for the Hebrew children, on their Exodus journey, by giving them the assurance that He was with them in the cloudy pillar by day and the fiery pillar, the light of his presence in the fiery pillar, at night.

Isaiah 9, verse 2, says: The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them has the light shined.

A footnote in one of my Bibles says that light here stands for God’s blessings, God’s presence, and God’s revelation incarnate in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Isaiah, chapter 60, verse 1, you heard me read: Arise, shine, for your light has come . . .

In the New Testament Gospel of John reading we heard: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . and without him, (without this Word, without Jesus) was not anything made that was made. And we also read: In Him was Life and that Life was the Light of men.

The Interpreter’s Bible says of these verses: “At the creation, the Word of God called light into being that there might be life in the world.”

So also, the psalmist (Psalm 36:9) says, For with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light.

Just as all life proceeds from God, so the possibility and the faculty of vision come from Him. The light of men means the light which shines for men to give them the means of recognizing the giver of life. One source I read said, “What a gift light is to the world. It determines everything we see. It is the conveyor of color and shape. It is the swiftest carrier of energy in the universe. Nothing can move faster that the speed of light.”

With the invention of the LASER beam and its ever increasing use in the treatment of cancer and tooth decay and its use in military efforts, it may very well be that light is the most powerful thing in the world. Light is a very practical thing. The process of photosynthesis, we know, is the process by which plants convert light into energy, that makes them green and that helps them give off oxygen into the air. Light picks up water from the sea and wafts it over the land to fall as rain. Light brings us joy. The bright beautiful sunlit days that we have had lately are a welcome change from the rainy season we had and bring smiles to sad-looking, grouchy-looking faces. We all love the sunshiny days, don’t we? We’ve had some beautiful weather these last days. The sunlight in the cold winter warms our bones.

John said that he was not the light, but he came to bear witness to the light. In chapter 3 he said that light had come into the world but people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up. But those who do what is true come to the light in order that the light may show that what they did was in obedience to God.

So we come to the Matthew Gospel lesson for today, chapter 5, verse 14:

Jesus spoke these words to His disciples and whoever else was present when He gave His Sermon on the Mount. You are the light of the world. Notice, He didn’t give them a choice. He didn’t say, “You can be the light of the world if you want to, if you feel like it, or on certain days of the week.” And He didn’t say, “You can be the light of the world sometime out there in the future, but not right now.” But He did say, You are the light of the world. And He meant now, this very moment, in this very place.

When Jesus mentioned the city that was set on a hill that cannot be hid, He probably was thinking of a city named that was Sephoris, built up on a cliff, overlooking the little village of Nazareth. It certainly would qualify as a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden. Jesus also said that people do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel but on a lamp stand to give light to the whole house. Lamps in Jesus’ day were bowls with one side of the rim pinched together so you could put a wick in it and then pour oil in the rest of the bowl. And that is what they had for light. There weren’t any fluorescent lights; there weren’t candles; there weren’t matches; there weren’t any kind of lights like we have today. And it took some effort to keep those lights going, so that when they left the house, they would put a bushel measure over the lamp so that it could burn without any risk until they returned. In John’s Gospel, chapter 9:5, Jesus told His disciples, While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

William Barkley says that this statement of Jesus, and then His command that His followers be the light of the world, meant that He was demanding nothing less of them than that they be like Him. And friends, He is demanding nothing less of us than we be like Him. As Barkley says, it is not the demand of Jesus that we should produce our own light, but that we shine with the reflection of His light. The radiance that shines from the Christian is lit by the presence of Christ within the Christian’s heart. Remember I said that the moon has no light of its own but reflects the sun? So it is that as the moon is the reflector of the sun’s light, so Christians ought to be reflectors of the Son’s light. Our Christian lights are to be seen. Again, Barkley says that there can be no such thing as secret discipleship, or either the secrecy destroys the discipleship or the discipleship destroys the secrecy. A person’s Christianity ought to be visible well beyond the four walls of the church. It should be even more visible in the ordinary everyday activities of the home, or the school, or the workplace, or the play place, or the community or the world. Jesus did not say, “You are the light of the Church.” He did say, You are the light of the world. . . Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify the Father who is in Heaven.

Our good works then, are supposed to point to the Father. Christians never think of what they themselves have done but of what God has enabled them to do. The goodness that is conscious, that points to itself, that seeks attention to itself, is not the Christian goodness.

Let your light so shine before men. . . . Just how is it we are supposed to do that? What is it we can do? Did you listen to the words the choir sang:

"Frustrated brother,” the song says, “see how he tries to light his own candle some other way.”

Is it possible that this frustrated brother might be one of the men under the bridge whom our elementary department is trying to help? Could it be that these children are lighting the dark corners of their world?

“See now your sister robbed and lied to, holding a candle without a flame.” The reason there is no flame in that sister’s candle is possibly because she has been physically or emotionally abused by the one who is supposed to be taking care of her who has pledged to love her and cherish her. Could she be one of the women who is housed at the Shelter Home because she can’t stay at home for fear of her life or a threat to her children? Is it possible that those who volunteer over there are lighting the world of those battered women?

Go down Church Street to Harper Avenue and turn left, and just two or three doors up is the Helping Hands Clinic on the left side of the street. Visit there on a Monday night or a Thursday night and see those volunteers who otherwise would have no means of medical care, no way to get much needed prescription medicines for their illnesses. Watch those volunteers deal gently with those needy people. Could it be that the candles of hope this place hands out are lighting their world.

Go on down Church Street to College Avenue and turn right and go down a block or so to the building on the left just before you get to the Church, that houses the Lenoir Soup Kitchen. See the people who come in there for lunch five days a week because they don’t have much of anything else to eat at home. Or maybe there is too much month at the end of their money and they are trying to stretch it to make it to the end of the month or to the third of the month, whenever their check comes in. Or maybe there is somebody there in the winter time who has the choice of being warm or having something to eat and they choose to be warm at home because they know they can come to the Soup Kitchen and get a hot meal on a cold winter day. Is it possible where this also is a place where the lonely, the tired and the worn can find a candle of hope to brighten the darkness?

And even this sanctuary is a place where people can come who are in need of having someone to shine the light of Christ’s love into their world. We never know just what is going on in the lives of those who are here when we come in and sit down on a Sunday morning. We would probably be shocked at the burdens some of our sister and fellow Christians carry around everyday.

As the song says, “We are a family whose hearts are blazing, so let’s raise our candles and light up the sky.” And when you come in here of a Sunday morning you can pray for the person beside of you, or to the right or to the left of you or behind you or across the way, somebody you may know. You may know some of the burdens they carry; you may not, but you can pray for them anyway, and in so doing, light up their world.

This is the way we let our light shine. This is how we glorify the Father which is in Heaven. What are you doing to light up someone’s world? How brightly is your little light going to shine today? In the name of the Father, because of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord, help us to light our candles and help us to light the world with Your love and with your presence. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Go Light Your World