5th Sunday after Epiphany
Texts: Matthew 5:13-20;
Is. 58; 1 Cor. 2
RISE, SHINE, YOU PEOPLE
This weekend of our annual meeting we are lifting up the theme of
prayer. As we enter a year of
emphasizing outreach into our neighborhood, we want to keep in touch
with our God through
prayer. Otherwise, what we bring to our neighbors might be someone
else's spirit, not God's.
And the theme of our lessons today puts this in terms of light. We are
called to be a light to the
world. Our lives are to reflect the light of Christ. I think that it
takes a constant life of prayer to
make sure it is Christ's light that we are reflecting, and not
spreading another form of darkness.
It is very important I think today, to spend just a few moments making
sure we know what the
light is. Which is light, and which is darkness. Are we sure we know
which is which?
We need to be very careful here because I submit to you that is going
to seem very strange at
first. We'll have to develop it with stories. What I submit to you is
this: the very darkness which
Jesus came to shed light on was our habit as human beings of seeing
things in terms of light and
dark. In other words, we have this habit of setting ourselves up as the
judges of who belongs to
the light and who belongs to the darkness. We see ourselves as
belonging to the light and
someone else as belonging to the darkness. It is this habit of ours
which is itself the darkness that
Jesus came to shed light on. Why else would Jesus let himself be judged
so, as a person of the
dark? First, he was accused of hanging around with sinners, with those
of the darkness. Then he
was condemned as one of the darkness and executed accordingly. It is
only the light of Easter
morning which begins to open our eyes to the darkness of our entire
game of deciding who's in
the light and who's in the dark.
Besides the cross itself, the quintessential story about this darkness
of ours is in John 9, the story
of the man born blind, the story in John's gospel in which Jesus
proclaims himself as the light of
the world. Elements of story:
- Disciples start right out playing that game
- Jesus won't play
- In fact, this man's blindness is an occasion to see God's glory:
God don't make no junk
- As the story develops, the blind man sees better and better,
while others become
increasingly blind, until we read: They answered him, "You were born
entirely in sins,
and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out. They were
playing that same
game as the disciples, and what's the result: driving him out, just
like they would do to
Jesus.
35Jesus heard that they had
driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do
you believe in the Son of Man?" 36He answered, "And who is
he, sir? Tell me, so
that I may believe in him." 37Jesus said to him, "You have
seen him, and the one
speaking with you is he." 38He said, "Lord, I believe." And
he worshiped him.
39Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that
those who do not see
may see, and those who do see may become blind." 40Some of
the Pharisees near
him heard this and said to him, "Surely we are not blind, are we?" 41Jesus
said to
them, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say,
'We see,'
your sin remains.
Do you see? When we think that we can determine ourselves who is in the
light and who is in
the dark, then we are most blind. For the darkness is our sin of doing
just that, a sin which leads
to driving others out. If we are going to be about reaching out and
welcoming people in this year
at Emmaus, then we need to be in constant prayer that we reflect the
loving forgiveness of Jesus
rather than the darkness of our usual judgmentalism.
Yesterday, I led a bible study for the first time with our guests from
the homeless shelter. It was
truly a valuable time of sharing. They really opened up and shared.
Elements of story:
- Grateful for the help, but sometimes hear judgmentalism
- I started to feel indignant
- Then I realized I need to see my own darkness
Yes, we need to pray this year as we reach out to others with Jesus'
loving forgiveness, because
we have this habit of turning even forgiveness into occasions for
judgment first. We have this
habit of turning a call to be holy into a call to be holier than thou.
We can even turn the
brightness of Jesus' loving forgiveness into the darkness of our
judgmentalism. But, in a life of
constant prayer, of staying in touch with Jesus' loving forgiveness we
can change things. We can
change ourselves into better mirrors for reflecting that loving
forgiveness. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Emmaus Lutheran,
Racine, WI, February 6-7, 1999