The Law Of Love

 

Text: 1 John 3:1-7

Focus: Sin and Love

Function: to help people see how knowing God changes them

1:See what love the Father has poured on us, that we should be called the children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. ³And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

⁴Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. ⁵You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. ⁶No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. ⁷Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

Good morning! This has always been a heavy passage for me. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, there was a season in my preaching where I focused on convicting people of their sins instead of leading them to the power of Christ to be made whole and free from sin.

At the time, as a new Christian who wanted to please the master, I had a “stop sinning” mentality. And I spent my life avoiding sin.

That may sound noble and pure, but the problem with it is that I spent my life focused on sin, and afraid of it, instead of on Jesus and his love which is not retribution for our sins, but restoration from the things that break us.

I suppose it makes and made a difference how I described sin at the time. I was a good brethren, a “Person of the Book” who loved Jesus and like Peter right before he denied Christ three times, was pretty sure that my will was strong enough to resist any temptation that came my way.

And it was an important season in my life. As verse 3 says, “all who have this hope in him purify themselves just as he is pure.” Or one of the verses I remembered from my childhood from Psalm 119: How can a young man keep his way pure? By studying the word.

So, I got wrapped up in the purity culture that has dominated all religions from the beginning of time.

But then I grew in my faith.

It is important to remember that Jesus hung out with people who were considered impure. He hung out with the Lepers, who were forced to cover their faces and shout out whenever someone got near them that they were not pure. He hung out with people that the purity culture called sinners like Prostitutes and tax collectors and others. This really rose their ire. They were convinced that their standards of purity kept them in divine favor and allowing impure people into the society would lead to their eventual downfall. Purity was important and sometimes, people had no choice, there were simply forced into the impure class.

When Jesus ate with impure people, he was casting down this system that kept some in bondage and gave privilege to others. He was symbolically showing the Religious class who used purity as a way to include and exclude people that everyone is welcome in the Kingdom of God.

Everyone is welcome was a radical idea and it upset those who gained power, prestige and or wealth from the system. It was part of the political system, and Jesus’ message is indeed political as well as spiritual and he was confronting the powers that be.

All of that leads us to understand a different meaning for sin. I like to call it brokenness. The word in the Greek simply means to miss the mark. It ranges from simply making a mistake to committing an act of violence or evil.

And as we looked last week, Jesus came to save us from OUR sins AND the sins fo the world ENTIRE. (1 John 2:1-2). Everyone is forgiven their sins according to scripture. We haven’t emphasized that much in religion because sometimes religion is still about power and control. I try to make our faith about a transforming relationship with God that leads us to love one another.

Jesus set the example by loving and accepting as full participants in the kingdom those whom others felt justified by excluding based on religious dogma instead of the new commandment, Love one another.

My definition of sin, by the way, is anything that keeps us from loving others because that is how we are to show our love for God.

And again, I can focus on sin, or I can focus on connecting with the Spirit of God where the freedom lies.

I introduced the sermon with the words that this is a heavy passage. Verse 8 says, ⁶No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” That is the reason I was so sin focused.

It was a dilemma because I am not perfect and at that time, everything was a sin, so I failed all the time. And that lead me to doubt if it was all real because I prayed to not sin.

But then I studied the passage in the original language and read it to say that no one who abides in him keeps on committing sin.” The Greek makes it clear that no one who abides in God practices doing evil. They don’t make a habit of it.

I loved learning the verse from that perspective.

And that brings me back to the first paragraph of the passage about when the Kingdom of God starts.

I was taught not to sin because if I died with unconfessed sins, I probably would not make it to heaven.

But look at the passage. In verse 1 the author is amazed at the depth of God’s love that we get to be called the Children of God.

And then he clearly states that it isn’t a future blessing that God has given us. It starts here and now. Yes, there is a future blessing, but the family of God is the church here on earth.

I love the way he holds in tension the future of our eternal life and the present of our eternal life. He gives us the hope for both.

And that, he says, in verse 3 is why we want to keep ourselves pure.

So, what does purity mean if Jesus destroyed the ancient system of purity?

Well, Jesus made it clear in John when he said a whole new set of rules do I give you. And it is simple, love your neighbor as yourself.

Throughout his career, Jesus held on to this very simple message. Care for others the way you care for yourselves.

The path to God, and Jesus shows us the way to God, is through love. It isn’t through being able to abstain from temptation or emphasizing sins and an ancient purity culture. The path to God is through love.

We are still affected by the purity culture that still clouds our judgment and becomes wrong if it keeps us from loving the other.

For example, In our culture, Trans people, Gays, Lesbians, Bi-sexual and Queer people are still considered unclean by many who profess to love others unconditionally. And there can be sin attached to that when the system denies them the same civil rights that most of us have.

And again, in our political culture, the People of Color who are desperately seeking to save their lives at our border are denied access even at legal border crossings. And according to Jesus, there is one name for them, Neighbor. It isn’t drug runner, rapist, murderers, or illegal. Those are terms meant to kill your conscience so that you do not obey the command to love them as neighbor. Don’t fall for it, it is propaganda.

Last week my neighbor who listens to what I call “angry talk radio” all day was going on about how they are bringing diseases that we are already vaccinated against. He was calling them impure and is motivated by a political party who is choosing nationalism over their professed Christian faith.

As one who is called to teach what Jesus taught, I ask you to keep your eyes focused on the command to love your neighbor as yourself when you consider the political ramifications of how we as a nation either obey or refuse God with the refugees at our border.

And we have reverted to the false notion of pure and impure when we think of people on the other side of the aisle from us politically.

This kind of dualism does not reflect the love of Christ for everyone.

Now, we have to end on a positive note by looking at the last verse from the text.

Let me paraphrase it: “Everyone who examines a situation and does the right thing is righteous.”

We are made right in the eyes of God by doing the right thing. I call it following the way of Jesus.

And that message to love our neighbor as ourselves is as simple as do the right thing.

Forgiving the World

 

Text: 1 John 1:1-2:2

Focus: Forgiveness

Function: To see the universal nature of forgiveness

1:¹We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— ²this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— ³what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. ⁴We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

⁵This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

2:¹My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, ²and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Good morning and Happy Easter celebration. I have been focusing on the power, the meaning and the witness of the resurrection during my morning meditation.

Easter gives us hope and calms our fears in the midst of death and darkness. God is the light and now we also, are the light of the world and God is shining through us.

This passage, the confession, or the acknowledgment of sin in our lives is part of the foundation of our Christian life.

John, the author, tells us that if we deny that we have ever sinned and are not willing to confess our sins, then we make God out to be a liar since God said that we are in need of restoration.

I fear that in preaching about sin, people will get the wrong idea and will be filled with shame and lose the hope that the resurrection provides for us.

Early in my ministry, I realized that uncovering sin was meaty material for preaching and I was constantly making people aware of how much they need a savior.

And it is important, I believe, to God, that we acknowledge our need for restoration, or a savior.

I have often said that the church is made up of those who are humble enough to admit that they are not completely self-sufficient and they they are willing to depend on God for help and strength.

He tells us to confess our sins. The word for confess literally means “to say the same thing.” I believe that it means to admit something is not right.

Sin is probably best understood as brokenness. And Salvation from Jesus is healing for our brokenness. John is telling us in these early verses to humble ourselves and admit our need for God. We then see that God has indeed provided a way for us to life a meaningful life in a broken world.

When I say that I am saved, I am saying that I am in the process of restoration from God. God is healing me. God is restoring me. And I need a lot of restoring.

As I mentioned, I used to preach a sin focus and our need to overcome sin in order to live lives pleasing to God.

And then early on, God started showing me that instead of focusing on the fact that we are indeed sinners, I needed to focus my preaching on the power of God to live the life of love and sacrifice that serving Christ is all about.

We have been blessed to be a blessing to others.

And God has forgiven us. God is restoring us to spiritual wholeness. And that has also has consequences to our emotional and physical well being.

He starts out chapter 2 with the acknowledgment that we have not yet achieved the love for others and wholeness that God wants for us. So he tells us that when we are feeling this brokenness and it is affecting our well being, don’t lose hope but look up, or outward to God by admitting again, that we need God’s help.

I read that to say, “Don’t beat yourself up when you make a mistake.”

I love my therapists words that mistakes are actually learning opportunities and chances for us to grow. And well reasoned adults do learn from their mistakes and move on.

And Christ is here with us to give us the strength and hope to move on.

We are indeed born from above with God’s power when we give the Spirit of God the control in our lives.

It is God’s promise to us to be with us and to help us grow more and more into the image of the Christ, the light of the world.

And I emphasize that because it is also God’s job, the success of this is not in our hands anymore, but it relies on the promise of God for us.

And again, the promise is for the Spirit of God to dwell in us to give us the power to love like Jesus loved.

Some theologies will say that if you believe the right thing then you are saved and if you don’t believe those things, you are not saved. I love verse 2 of Chapter 2. Jesus died to save the sins of the world entire.

When I forgive someone who has hurt me, I am just doing what Jesus did for me already. He forgave me before I trusted in him.

We have taught that Jesus forgave the sins of the world entire from the cross. The author of the hymn “When He Was on the Cross….” has us imagining Jesus, in his divine power, looking through time, present, past and future, at the birth of every human soul and saying that he has forgiven them. He has forgiven me.

It is a beautiful image the God forgives each and every one of us.

For some reason, this Kairos, I have been more aware of the kind of people we are serving in the prison. I think of the young man who killed the man I did the funeral for and I realized that some day I may very well be sitting at a table with him, not knowing who he is and will be offering him unconditional love and forgiveness. When I look at the incarcerated men when I am doing a Kairos weekend I don’t see “offenders.” I see forgiven men. Men for whom Jesus’ forgiveness counts because he died on the cross for them as well as me.

God’s love and forgiveness are indeed universal. God, through the Spirit of Christ is restoring the world entire to him.

And again, the fact of the resurrection proves it.

So let us celebrate Easter by allowing ourselves the hope the disciples had when they realized Jesus actually rose from the dead and conquered their fears. That hope causes us to be born from above because we look to God for direction in life.

Why Are You Weeping?

 

Text: John 20:1-18

Focus: Easter

Function: To help people see resurrection in their own circumstances.

20:¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed, ⁹For as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, ¹²and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

He is risen!

Happy Easter everyone.

This is a day of celebration as we consider what it means that the resurrection has come and death is no longer the fear of human existence.

I want to focus on how the Christ reveals himself to Mary, who then becomes the first witness to the resurrection according to John’s account.

Someone said that if we wanted to be Biblically accurate this morning then we should also have a woman proclaim the good news to us today.

And to focus on Christ’s revelation to Mary, let us look at verse 13. The story, according to John is that Mary is at the tomb and the stone is rolled away and Jesus isn’t there. So, she leaves and runs to tell Peter and John who then run to investigate. They find the tomb empty and begin to believe Jesus rose from the dead. And then, according to John’s account, the men leave Mary behind who is just standing there weeping.

She glances again into the tomb and this time it is not empty, but two angels are there and they ask the salient question of Mary: “Why are you weeping?”

And the answer is obvious to me. She is weeping because she loves Jesus and she misses him terribly.

Indeed, Jesus has come into her life and has changed the story for her.

She was an outcast, probably forced into human trafficking in order to just survive and therefore, she was impure according to Jewish social and religious values.

And again, Jesus changes the narrative of her life. He restores her miraculously and completely accepts this so called outcast into the community of those who follow Jesus’ teachings.

It is important to me to emphasize the significance of Jesus’ relationship to Mary. He changes the social order by bringing into the group of followers, along with he 12 chosen disciples a woman of whom all the religious officials of the day would object to on the religious grounds of their purity culture.

At the time, they believed that accepting such a woman would certainly bring the wrath of God on the nation since they were appearing to tolerate evil.

And Jesus changes the story. It was upsetting to the religious leaders because he is sending a message to them about the value of their purity culture verses the value of a person who needs restoration.

They are interested in the power and control that their religious standards give them. Jesus is interested in a relationship with the woman. And Jesus lives again to have a relationship with us through his Spirit.

Jesus looks at the woman and sees her need.

And now she is reborn, from above, by the power of the Holy Spirit and she is extremely grateful that the one who had once been an outcast is now a valued member of God’s community.

And the religious folks have a hard time with God’s mercy and they resent the Lord for it.

So, the answer to the question, why are you weeping, as I mentioned is obvious.

But these are angels talking to her and they are messengers of God conveying, as God often does, in mysterious language designed to get them to think, a message to her to get her to believe.

So they question her and ask her to look into her heart.

I find that encounters with the divine lead me to the kind of questions that increase and build my faith as I look with God at my own heart.

She again emphasizes that she misses Jesus and will be comforted by seeing him, even if he is dead.

And then the Lord reveals himself to her.

And again, I love how the story unfolds:

Outside of the tomb is now a man standing there who wasn’t there before.

It is Christ but she supposes him to be the gardener. And then he speaks her name and she is familiar with the way he speaks and she realizes that it is indeed Jesus in a different body, but indeed risen from the dead.

And her sorrow is turned into joy and she becomes the first evangelist.

And it seems to me that this is the second time she has experienced resurrection in her own life.

First when Jesus sets her free and now, when Jesus comforts her in her time of sorrow.

What I see in the resurrection is that it happens for all of us. Hope happens for us even in the face of death because God changes the story and restores life.

In the midst of our suffering, at our lowest point sometimes, the Lord shows up to comfort us.

She loved him and he did not abandon her even though they took his life.

For in the power of the resurrection, we see the continuing love of God for us manifest in our own experiences of suffering, a form of death, and resurrection, a new life.

We no longer let the fear of death control us because we rest in Divine love.

So, Happy Easter, everyone!

The Coming Kingdom

 

Text: Mark 11:1-11

Focus: The kingdom of God

Function: to help people see the Kingdom of God instead of the Kingdoms of Mankind

11:¹When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples ²and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. ³If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this: ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” ⁴They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, ⁵some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” ⁶They told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it. ⁷Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. ⁸Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. ⁹Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

“Hosanna!
    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
¹⁰     Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

¹¹Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Good morning and welcome again to our time spent together celebrating Palm Sunday.

I have always found it sort of ironic to celebrate this at the beginning of Holy Week considering all the tragedy that is about to befall the Lord.

We are reading today from the book of Mark, it is the shortest of the gospels. We have fragments of a document that is older than Mark and Luke and many believe that Mark and Luke used this earlier account of the gospel as an outline.

I find it interesting that the different authors were given to and designed to reach different audiences. John for example, was written to influence the Eastern Culture in India, and Christianity had an huge influence on the roots of Buddhism.

Matthew was written for the Jewish people, it was not written in Greek, but in Arabic and we don’t have any source fragments left. Matthew, in this account focuses on Jesus cleansing the temple after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Mark simple states that the temple was indeed his final destination, but that he went there and looked around.

It is sort of surprising because Mark was written to the Roman Culture/audience. It is what I call “The action gospel” because it has the word immediately in there 43 times. The Romans are much like us and they identified with power and strength and Jesus is portrayed as Christ the Victor in the gospel. For the Jews it was the OT law. And John identifies with the philosopher and the mystic.

In 2 Corinthians Brother Paul said that he changed his tactics of preaching to meet the needs of the crowd.

In the gospels, God changes the tactic between them to meet the needs of as many people as possible, It shows me the magnificent nature of God’s great love.

I wonder if that is why Kairos works so well. It is just as diverse as the gospels and the different team members from different backgrounds and theologies are used by God’s creative power to reach the men individually where they are at.

God wants to restore the world God’s own self.

And in this story this morning, I see the power of community. I have always remarked on the tragedy of Holy Week and have wondered if the same crowd that was crying out to Jesus to heal and restore their land to prosperity came back disappointed a week later and turned on him.

I wonder if the mob is that fickle that they could be praising him on day and 5 days later calling for his murder. I tend to believe that it was for the most part, two different crowds. Two different groups of people. One group of people, the ones who cried out for his death had not yet gotten the message.

Friday at Aaron Tigner’s funeral, I spoke of Jesus at two funerals. One at Lazarus’ funeral where he reacted uncontrollably with emotional pain and then his own funeral when he forgave the men from the cross.

I was very nervous to bring up the forgiveness part because I was aware that the family was looking for serious revenge and were hoping to find the killer before the police. I needed to address that so I said this: Jesus prayed to God for the restoration of the men that had just judiciously murdered.

I preached about the day when the lion shall lay down with the lamb and we will not learn the ways of war anymore.

Restoration. That is what God is about through Jesus and the Holy Spirit in this world. That is what God was doing with Jesus back then and that is what God is doing with us today. Christ is still on the earth in us. We are trying to bring the world back to the love of God.

And there is great power in community. We see during Holy Week the power of community for good and for evil. We see the power of community today in political rallies and we see people who were and are generally sane believing whatever lie their side feeds them. And they get passionate about it. I get passionate about it.

But God is calling us to bring the world back to Him. Sometimes we have to call out the evil and the injustice in this world. And for some reason, Mark does not mention the cleaning of the temple; Jesus again calling out exploitation of the poor. Nope, I believe Mark wants to focus on the Charismatic, Spirit filled power of Jesus during the event.

He is showing us the power of Jesus to change the story and give people hope. It is important that we focus on that hope.

I mentioned politics because our passion for God and our patriotism can get conflated or mixed together. I believe the root of Christian nationalism, which I believe to be a cult, comes from that mixing of Patriotic fever and our love for God.

I would not be true to scripture if I said that this was not a political event on Palm Sunday. Jesus on the colt of a Donkey instead of a conquering war horse was definitely a political message. It was a message to fight the fight with love instead of military might.

We are taught not to think of Jesus as a political figure, but the events of that week caused the Romans and the Jews to kill him to shut up his message because he was upsetting the political powers and the status quo of their society and our as well. Jesus spoke out because God wants to change the culture to a disposition of caring for the least of these and that can mean a political upheaval. It is a delicate balance.

So I called that number on the Dayton Billboards about Christians and politics. I was afraid they were going to endorse a political party. But they gave a great answer, the text is posted on the billboard where Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world.

I realize that I have a duty as a minister and speaker for the Lord to speak out against injustice like Jesus did. Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow him. That means that our message against the powers that exploit others is going to be unpopular as well.

I believe that God is calling us to boldness. But also compassion. Compassionate boldness. Sometimes I find myself lowered to the level of the bickering that our politics have become. Jesus, I believe, rose above that bickering with a message to everyone to rest in Him because God wants to restore the world. His mindset wasn’t the dualism of our side verses their side, but e pluribus unim, out of many one, all side count.

It causes pain to hear rejection for the message of caring for the least of these. I fear God will judge us for the way we are using the refugees at the border as political fodder and not dealing with their suffering since God has blessed us so well here in the USA.

A colleague of mine posted that he while preaching through the sermon on the Mount he was instructed by his pastoral relations board to quit preaching the social Justice message that I believe got Jesus killed. The problem for us preachers who are trying to be faithful to Christ’s teachings and go against the spirit of the culture is that when we preach Jesus we get accused of being political.

When we preach and lift up Jesus. And Jesus’ teachings, which I try to focus on during my sermons it is going to affect our politics. And the culture lets politics determine Jesus teachings. They got it backwards. It shouldn’t be the other way around.

The focus has to be first on Jesus. Remembering that Jesus’ kingdom is not an human government. But it is the kingdom of God reigning in the hearts of those who follow Jesus’ teachings.

Maybe it was the same crowd that turned on Jesus a week later. Maybe the crowd actually was fickle and rejected him because he refused to overthrow their Roman oppressors.

But then here was see a wonderful thing in the kingdom!

If Jesus’ kingdom had stopped at the borders of Israel, it would not have spread to the earth. At the time, it was a coming kingdom. And it is here now.

Just as there are 4 accounts in the gospels reaching different ethnic/cultural groups, God’s plan was not just for one race of people, in one specific time in history, but a transformation of human culture where we learn to love one another as much as we care for ourselves.

Let the Spirit of God fill your hearts with the power of God’s love for us and our fellow humans.

Still Shining

 

Text: John 9:1-7, Ephesians 5:8-14

Focus: Jesus as the Light

Function: to help people see the responsibility to carry on the light

John 9:¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

Ephesians 5:⁸for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, ⁹for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. ¹⁰Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. ¹¹Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. ¹²For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, ¹³but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
    Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Good morning Painter Creek. When we are doing Kairos, we sing a chorus called Shine, Jesus, Shine. It is fast paced and as all our songs do, it reiterates the theme that we too, like Jesus are the light of the world.

Remember the scriptural symbolism surrounding the concept that God is light. In the highly symbolic account of the 7 days of creation, God creates light and separates it from the darkness on the first day and God creates the sun, our source of light, on the 4th day.

So the light that Jesus is talking about here is spiritual. The Bible does not indicate specifically what it is, but we agree that it indeed symbolic. By looking at our Ephesians passage, we see a direct correlation between the light and goodness. I wonder if when God creates light on that first day if it isn’t a metaphor for God creating good. Or more specifically, God separates light from darkness so God makes a distinction between good and evil.

Some theologians speculate that this light is the glory of the Christ who makes creation possible. It sort of gets shot down by the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co eternal and we see the Word of God, Jesus as an active agent in creation according to John 1.

But the concept that this light emanates from God, or that God creates light from God’s own self shows what our passages of scripture indicate that God is the source of Spiritual light and goodness.

Last week we read 37 verses for out text. This week, we were to have along text as well describing the story of the man who was born blind. But I decided instead to focus on us being the light of the world, the hope for the world.

I find Jesus’s answer to the question “who sinned?” important.

The question reminds me of the book of Job in the Old Testament. Job’s three friends were absolutely convinced that Job must has sinned to have such calamity come upon him when the truth is, sometimes bad things happen to good people.

At the core of the question by the disciples is the concern about the fairness of God. Who sinned? Job tells us that it is not necessarily sin that brings calamity and that we shouldn’t attribute our problems to that all the time.

Apparently they did not get the message.

They seem to have the idea that God is a God of revenge instead of restoration.

So, Jesus tells us that sin is not the problem here with this man. God wants to show to the world that God is in the world restoring the world to health and peace.

The lengthy story in John 9 goes on to show how the Jewish leaders questioned the healed man and his parents to see if a miracle happened.

And although a miracle happens, the scripture tells us that they refused to see what was obvious in front of them. I believe it was because they were to proud to admit they were wrong and change their minds and follow the Christ.

We get a warning to ourselves about priorities when we read why they didn’t want to follow Christ from Luke 16:¹³No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

¹⁴The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. ¹⁵So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God.

The love of money and the fear of the lack of it can lead us away from God.

So Jesus answers the question about is God a God of retribution and who is God paying back with a positive statement about how He is the light of the world. And then he admonishes his disciples to do the same work as him.

When we go to the Ephesians passage, we get an idea of how this symbolism plays out in the world we live in.

I mentioned how light/darkness can possibly be the difference between good and evil. It is almost as if God, on the first day, created a choice for us between light and darkness and between good and evil.

We read this throughout the Old Testament that God has placed before us the choice to follow God and live or to die by disobeying God.

He isn’t, I believe, talking about judgment for failing God but about suffering the consequences if we do not obey.

For example, in Genesis we read that God gave us the earth to manage and to care for because it is God’s creation and therefore it is divine.

And yet, we have not cared for our planet and we are now suffering the effects of global warming. God does not hate us, but God does want us to take God seriously and obey. God wants us to follow the light.

In the Ephesians passage it says talks about how the “fruit of the light” is found in all the is good and right and true.

That leads me back to the idea that the creation of light is the separation of good and evil, light and darkness since walking in the light has a distinct quality about it. It focuses on what is good and right and true.

Truth. It rejects the lie and calls it out by shining its light on what is good and true and right.

I wish I had that ability. I find myself too often cursing the darkness instead of shining the light.

Jesus is the light of the world.

And Jesus is still shining in the world, through us, the Church.

And we are Christ’s body in here on earth. Jesus told us to light our lights and do not keep them hidden. We are called to bless the world with what is right. Sometimes that means like Jesus we have to speak out against injustice. Most often, it is a call to be a blessing.

Shine the light and be a blessing. That is what we can do for Christ.