“It's Time to Light Up the World”
Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:13-20
Sermon Transcript for August 20, 2006
By Reverend John Eley
Well, I thank you for inviting me here today to share some thoughts on the Gospel of Matthew. I want to say, too, a greeting from the Franklin United Methodist Community. I know quite a few of you live there, but many of you do not. And I just want to say a “Thank you” to Grace United Methodist Church first for being the founders and a large part of the creation of that wonderful place, but also for your continued support and the ways in which you are the light of Christ in that place, the ways in which this church reaches out to our community there and nurtures and cares for and ministers to our residents and our staff. So I want to start by saying that.
The passage from Matthew is, as I’ve said, a part of the Sermon on the Mount. He tells His followers that “they are the light of the world”. “A city built on a hill,” he says, “cannot be hid. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel and expects for the house to be illumined. But they put the lamp on a stand and it illumined all within the house.” He says, “We are to let our light shine before others.” We are to let our light so shine that others will see our good works and give thanks to God who is in heaven.
I think we sometimes have, many of us have a fear of the darkness. I was conscious of that when our children were growing up. I didn’t want them to be afraid of the dark. But you know, no matter how hard you try, children do have this fear of the dark. Not long ago, a few weeks ago, there was a storm that came through Franklin. And during that storm the lights went off and they were off for a couple of hours. And so right away the children said, “What’s going on here?” We’re lovers of candles and so I said, “We’ll just light some candles.” So they began to light a candle here, a candle there, a candle here, a candle there and before too long the whole house was aglow with candlelight. And we played charades in the candlelight. It was wonderful to get them away on a Saturday night from the television.
We refer to that which is evil as darkness. The bad cowboy always rides into town, doesn’t he, with a big black Stetson on a black horse and looking sort of sinister. But the good guy always comes into town on a white horse with a white hat on a palomino with blond hair and blue eyes. He exudes, you know, sort of the epitome of goodness and wholesomeness. The light is wholesome. The light is good. The light is pure.
Darkness can be a very scary thing. When I was thirteen-years old I got my first job. My first job was a guide through a cave. I’ve given that tour so many times through Zane Caverns in Ohio that I could give that tour even today. For the time I was 13 to 15, for two years, I would take people through this cave. There were a couple of times during the summer that we just really did not look forward to. And one time, the one time in the summer we didn’t look forward to was when the Eagles came to have their picnic. But they would go up in the campgrounds and they would imbibe a little bit too much and we would have to take these people through on a tour that were just a little bit inebriated. The other time that we didn’t look forward to was when we would have a couple of hundred gypsies invade our campground. And the reason we didn’t like that was because after they left they left such a mess and guess who got to clean up the mess?—me and the other guys.
But I remember this one summer and I was taking this group of Eagles through the cave on a tour. And at the lowest point of the cave, 136 feet below the ground surface, we were instructed to turn off the light so that everybody could see what total darkness was. And so I got to that point in the tour and I flipped off the lights and I began to tell them how no one can live in total darkness. We need the light. But I was giving my little spiel and I said, “Nothing can live in total darkness.” And from the back of the crowd I heard out of the total darkness, “If you don’t turn these lights on pretty soon, when I catch you I’ll show you what total darkness is.” I was thirteen; I turned on the lights.
Nothing can live in total darkness. We all need the light. It’s amazing if you open your Bible and you read the creation story in Genesis. I think a lot of times we connect the light with the sun, don’t we? The sun is what brings the light. If you look in the creation story, God created the light and the darkness before there ever was a sun or a moon. The light of the world is Jesus. In the 8th chapter of John, Jesus goes into Jerusalem during the Festival of Tabernacles. It’s similar to our Thanksgiving. It was a time when all Jerusalem and all the Israelites would gather there and they would give thanks to God for the harvest. They would give thanks and remember a time when they did not have homes, when they did not have cities, when they wandered in the wilderness looking for a place to belong and a place to call home. It is during this festival that come evening the temple glistened like a diamond as candles danced brightly in the courts of women. It was there in the courts of women, amidst the candelabra, that many heard for the first time, “I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall walk in darkness. He shall have the light of life. I am,” He said, “I am.” The name given by Yahweh himself to Moses has a kind of self-description now being used by Jesus maybe as a self-description. What is this Jesus is saying? Is He saying, “I am God?” Is He saying, “God is the light of the world?” Then He confirms it when He says before Abraham was born, “I am.”
The next thing we know, Jesus is having an encounter with a blind man. And someone asks Jesus, “Well, who sinned?” You know, because there was this belief that if something came upon you like blindness that your parents must have sinned or you must have sinned. You did something to displease God. Who sinned? Do you remember that story? And Jesus said, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Then an amazing thing happened. Jesus takes some spit and He rubs it on some mud and He puts it on the eyes of the man and He tells him to go wash in the pool of Shalom. And the man came back able to see. And it is suddenly dawning on those around Jesus what He meant when He said, “I am the light of the world.”
God is light. Where God is there is light. To live in the light is to live in partnership with God. How are you in partnership with God everyday of your living? How do you spread the light of Christ in this world? I was looking through your bulletin as Roger was greeting everyone, and I was noticing opportunities there, opportunities to go out in the world and be the reflection of the light of Christ. I don’t have trouble reflecting light anywhere I go. It’s more challenging for me and it is more challenging for you to reflect the light of Christ everywhere we go because sometimes the places we are in are not places where light is welcome. Sometimes the people that we deal with on an everyday basis—the co-worker, the other student at school, you name it, you fill in the blanks—sometimes those people that we rub elbows with every day are not easily welcoming the light into their lives and into their world. But Jesus says, “I am the light of the world and no follower of mine shall walk in darkness.” We are called to walk in the light.
I remember in seminary, and I know Bishop Lawson knows this bishop who is now deceased, but Bishop William Hannon was my Professor of History of Methodism. And he would walk around and stick his thumbs in his pants and he would walk around and just sort of pace back and forth. And he would walk around the table and he would regale us with stories of early Methodist who were the light of Christ in the world. And every now and then he’d say, “Brother Eley, what do you think about that?” And he would expect some sort of an intelligent response from us. I remember that one day he said, “You know, I don’t believe in clergy burnout.” He said, “I believe if clergy burned out, they weren’t on fire to begin with.”
I don’t’ know if that’s true. I think even if we are being the light of Christ, we still have to take care of ourselves. Jesus took care of Himself. There were times that He had so much of the disciples and all the people around Him, He sent them on ahead in the boat and He said, “I’m going up to the mountain; I’m going up to a quiet place where I can be renewed, where I can ingest some of the light so that I might send the light forth.” Many of you know that my favorite mantra that I remember every day is words that Mother Theresa said when she got her Nobel Peace prize. And there were people standing around, reporters trying to decide what they were going to ask a saint. And so one reporter went forward and said, “Well, Mother Theresa, how do you do everything that you would do? How do you go on the streets in Calcutta where hundreds of people are dying every day and you minister to one here and you minister to one there? Don’t you ever feel overwhelmed by all there is and all the sickness and the dying?” And that little bit of a woman said, “You know, young man, I do what I can, where I can, with what I have.” How much would the world light up if we all had that mantra?
You know, the other thing, the reason that I remember that and I use it too, is because the needs are great. Most days I am challenged with more than I am able to do humanly possible. And I remember what she says because I do what I can, what one human person can. And it’s up to all of us to do what we can. As Jesus said, “Those who are my followers walk in the light.” They share the light. They are the embodiment of the light. They illumine the darkness wherever they go because they are my light. Ann Weems wrote a poem called “Morning Star”:
There are those times when
all the stars are torn from our skies,
and morning will not come.
We try to make our way
in unlit passages,
frightened, desperate, and despairing.
We cannot see,
for wherever we turn
the night continues,
And yet, it is
into this impenetrable night
that the Child is born.
Tearing through the seams of darkness,
the Morning Star appears
in our eyes and in our hearts.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen
a great Light.When Jesus said, “I am the light of the world,” He was saying, “If you want to maximize your life, you must bear to live life from the circle of light. What does it mean for us who call ourselves Christians? We need to rediscover the Jesus that we knew and the Jesus that we fell in love with in our youth. We need to rediscover the Jesus that we sang about so long ago in our youth, that simple song, “This Little Light of Mine”. Remember that song? Can you sing it with me?
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
This little light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
You know, maybe to rediscover Jesus, it will require us to become innocent as little children. To rediscover Jesus is to take Jesus out of the pew and into our homes and into our schools and into our offices and our places of work, to embrace Jesus as Lord and to allow Him to be our mentor, our companion, our teacher on location. In the New Testament the accent is on discipleship. To live as people ready to light up the world, we need to struggle with the tough questions that don’t yield easy answers winning the respect of the world by winning the world’s minds. To save the world but lose the mind of the world is never to win the world at all. We need to live as people in the light. We must ask what it will look like if we are all light, if we all share that light of Jesus Christ. We need to daily ask, “What is your will for me in my living this day?” To ask, “What does the Bible say about a particular subject or issue?” To ask what Jesus might do in a particular situation or to ask how I love and how I give grace a chance every day. What can I do today to let the light of Christ shine through me to others?
If you look in the 5th Chapter of Ephesians, Versus 8 and following, Paul reminds the church, “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what some people do secretly but everything exposed by the light becomes visible for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore He says, ‘Sleeper, awake, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.”
Philip Bliss wrote a song called, “The Light of the World is Jesus”. Maybe some of you know it; it’s an old time hymn.
The whole world was lost
In the darkness of sin,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Like sunshine at noonday,
His glory shone in.
The Light of the world is Jesus!No darkness have we
Who in Jesus abide;
The Light of the world is Jesus!
We walk in the light
When we follow our Guide!
The Light of the world is Jesus!Ye dwellers in darkness
With sin blinded eyes,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Go, wash, at His bidding,
And light will arise.
The Light of the world is Jesus!No need of the sunlight
In Heaven we’re told;
The Light of the world is Jesus!
The Lamb is the Light
In the city of gold,
The Light of the world is Jesus!Come to the light, ’tis shining for thee;
Sweetly the light has dawned upon me.
Once I was blind, but now I can see:
The Light of the world is Jesus!Let us pray. “Eternal and everlasting God, we do give you thanks that you are the light illuminating everyone and everything. We pray, Lord, that your light would shine upon us, that your light would sweetly dawn upon us. Take off our blinders, oh God, to the injustices in the world around us. Allow your light to shine through. Allow our sin-blinded eyes to be open. Help us daily to reach out to those around us to be the light of the world so that others may see our good works and give glory to you, oh God. In the name of the risen Lord we pray, to the Lord of Light, Amen.”
E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman