Sunday, February 5, 2017

"You Are the Light of the World". A sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.


"You Are the Light of the World"

Matthew 5:13-16; Isaiah 58:1-12




            We’re in the second of five weeks of passages from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mountain, as told by Matthew.  In last week's gospel lesson we heard Jesus speaking the Beatitudes:  "Blessed are the poor in spirit...  the mourners...  the meek... the merciful...   Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you....  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven."[1]
            How must these words have sounded to the motley gathering of Jesus' followers-- the cast-down, cast-off, downtrodden riff-raff that had latched onto this rabbi from Nazareth and were his congregation that day on the hillside.  In Jesus they caught a glimpse of a new way, the way of love and life.  They caught a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.
            Then Jesus moves on from comfort to something we might hear as more challenging.  "You are the salt of the earth,"  he says.  Switching metaphors, he continues, "You are the light of the world."
            But did you notice?  As Professor David Lose reminds us, Jesus doesn’t say,  "If you want to become salt and light, do this...." Or, "before I'll call you salt and light, I'll need to see this from you...." Rather, he says both simply and directly, in the present tense:  "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world."[2]  These are words of blessing… affirmation… and commissioning.   We are salt and light now, not in some distant future.  Jesus’ teaching is not only about what the Kingdom of God is, but about who we are, and what our lives in this new realm look like. 
            You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.
            Do we believe that?  In the eighth chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus says, "I am the light of the world."  Through Jesus Christ, like no other, we have seen the light of God shining.   Who else has so illuminated our hearts, enlightened our minds, and guided our paths?   Christ is the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
            But for Jesus to turn to us and say, "You are the light of the world."  Are we ready to believe it--that Christ sees in us the very light we have seen in him?  Because that's what our text tells us.: "You are the light of the world."
            The light that shone in Christ shines in us.   The light shone in Christ with a special brilliance which we can only dimly reflect.  But the light is still here, and it's our job to draw back the drapes in our lives and let it shine.  We are called to make a difference for others in the world.  
            The good news is that—to be the light of the world-- you don’t need to be an expert in theology.  You don't need to go to seminary.  You don't need to be able to speak eloquently.   All you need to do is have love--and share it.
            Christ gave us a gift of unspeakable worth when he told us that we are the light of the world. We have something precious to offer one another and the world. Our lives have great meaning, because we're part of God's plan to save the world. We are the light of the world.
            Now, Jesus must have anticipated the resistance to his trust and confidence in us. So he used a playful image to make his point. "No one lights a lamp and then hides it under a bushel," he said.  "They put it on a stand, and it gives light to the whole house.  Let your light shine so that others may see your good works and give glory to God..."

            As Christians, we're called to let the light shine in our lives, for all to see. Christ calls us to be lights that illuminate...lights that brighten the world...lights that light up the lives of others. 
            So-- how are we to do this?  The passage we heard from Isaiah can help us.  Those few verses list one specific thing after another: "Loose the bonds of wickedness...  undo the thongs of the yoke... let the oppressed go free...break every yoke."   In other words, we need to care about the disadvantaged.  If the system is unjust, we need to work to reform it.
            "Share your bread with the hungry," Isaiah says.  Help to feed those who don't have enough to eat, as we do when we collect our Two Cents a Meal offering and in our work with Gleaners and in other ways.
            "Bring the homeless poor into your house," Isaiah says.        "Don't hide yourself from your own flesh." Stop avoiding certain areas of Dearborn or Detroit as though the people there aren't part of our human family.  Stop thinking about calamities in far-away places as something that happens to someone with whom you have no relationship.  We are all family.
            Remove the pointing of fingers and speaking wickedness, Isaiah says. Stop blaming others and gossiping and treating others with contempt.
            Do these things, says Isaiah, and "then shall your light break forth like the dawn...then shall your light rise in the darkness."  Let your faith find expression in concrete acts of justice and love. 
            God knows we can't do all this on our own.  In Christ, God comes to us, broken in heart and broken in body, to be with us in our brokenness, to lighten our darkness.  God comes to us, not with rules and demands that overwhelm us, but with gentleness that invites and attracts and encourages and empowers and lightens our darkness.  God comes to us, claiming us and sending us forth from this place to illumine the lives of others...  to be the light of the world.

            What does being salt and light look like?  I think it may look different in different times and contexts.
            I know I’ve shared the story of Le Chambon before, but not for a while, and I think it’s a beautiful and amazing story.
            There’s a small mountain village in south-central France called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.  The people there are descendants of the Huguenot Protestants, who were victims of religious persecution.
            When the Second World War broke out, Jewish families began to arrive in the train station at Le Chambon, trying to escape the Nazi death camps, and the residents made their village a refuge for them. Most of the village went to the same church.
            Now, of course, it was illegal to help these refugees, and the region was under occupation. But this small village of around 5,000 people defied the law. They took Jewish families into their homes and into the school, fed and clothed them, helped them obtain forged identification papers, and smuggled them across the border into Switzerland.  It is said that in the years from 1940 to 1943, there was not a wine cellar, an attic, or a hayloft in the village that had not sheltered a Jewish child.
            There was never a report that any refugee had been turned away or betrayed to the authorities by the citizens of Le Chambon. During the course of the war, it is estimated that this town saved the lives of somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 Jews, mostly children and young families.   
            In 1990, the town was one of two collectively honored as the Righteous Among the Nations by the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Israel for saving lives in Nazi-occupied Europe, along with the Dutch village of Nieuwlande.
           
            After the war, the pastor of the local church was interviewed and was asked what motivated the heroic courage of this community to risk their lives and property for people they did not even know? The pastor responded that they were not trying to be heroes. They were simply trying to be Christians. This is what it means to be salt for the earth–-to so believe in the love of God and the call to justice that we stand apart from what is expected and normal.[3]

            Friends, you and I are the light of the world.  We are called to be the light that makes plain the justice way of the kingdom of God, in our time. Jesus calls us simply to be the people God has created us to be--to exercise the gifts we have been given, faithfully, and lovingly.
            So-- be the light.  Be the salt.  Be the person God created and called and gifted you to be.  Don't try to be anyone else.  Rejoice in the uniqueness of who God created you to be.  Brighten the corner of the world where you find yourself, and don't hide who you are.
            Let your life radiate with the love and joy and peace we have in Christ. Put your light out there for all the world to see.  Let it shine, friends!
             Let it shine!



Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
February 5, 2017



[1]Matt. 5:3-12
[2] David Lose, “Commissioned to Be Salt and Light”, at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3062

[3] If you’d like to read more about this, I highly recommend Philip P. Hallie’s book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (Harper, 1994).

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