Church Light<title> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../../sermon.css"> <style fprolloverstyle>A:hover {color: #FF0000} </style> <style type="text/css"> p { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify; } cite { font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller; } </style> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../2002/sermon.css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" vlink="#0000FF"> <table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 > <tr VALIGN=BASELINE BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#000080"> <b> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  Church Light </span> </font> </b> <font color="#FFFFFF"><br>A Sermon based on </font> <a target="_blank" href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NIV&passage=Luke+3:7-18"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Luke 3:7-18</span></font></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN="2" width="640">  <p>Five years ago this week, I lost one of my dearest friends, Ed Crow. Ed was the pastor of the church in which I grew up in Brownfield. He suffered a massive stroke and was not expected to live. I dropped everything and made my way to Presbyterian Hospital and stood by his bed with his wife. After we visited and I left, about three hours later, Ed died. Now, I'm felt that palpable void we always feel when someone irreplaceable leaves our lives, and you know life will never be the same. Not that Ed was perfect. But, he was what he was to me, when I was a very young child, my pastor.</p> <p>Even in my more recent adult years, Ed was one of those people that was the light for me when I was stumbling in the darkness. When I moved to Dallas in 1993, there really were only three or four people in this city I knew by name. Ed was one of them.</p> <p>He had come to Dallas in the late 1970s, after the death of his first marriage, and started a sermon publishing business. Before that, was my pastor when I was growing up in Brownfield. Ed had baptized me. Twice. Once when I was eight, then again when I was about twelve years of age. Looking back, I believe my eight-year-old baptism probably took as much as any baptism "takes." But, I guess I just wasn't sure I had gotten it right. I wanted to be sure I had gotten it right. So, I went down the aisle and filled out the card again and got baptized again. In my childhood way, I wanted to know that "it took." That's not unusual. Some of you have had the same experience. It's not unusual at all for many of us who have grown up in faith traditions where, too often, too much emphasis is placed on us "getting it right" instead of just simply trusting the One who is right.</p> <p>Anyway, in a rather serendipitous turn of events, I found myself back in Ed's life thirteen years ago. Nearly every Monday night for a whole year I would go over to Ed's house and he and his wife, Gene, would take me into their home for dinner and we would talk. They listened as I shared my life story and the questions and the fears that I was facing at that time. I listened as they shared their personal pilgrimage with the mercies of God.</p> <p>Those Monday nights literally became a lighthouse in the darkness for me. I looked forward to them every week. Oddly, no matter how dark the week might be, those Monday nights shined like the sun. Oddly, the man who had been my pastor at the initiation of my faith walk once again became my pastor as he helped me find my way back to mercy and hope again when I wasn't sure, yet again, that I had gotten it right, as a full-grown adult.</p> <p>Maybe that's why John the Baptist sent his disciples back to Jesus on another occasion that we didn't read about in scripture this morning. John was the one who had come, saying he had come to prepare the way for Jesus. But, when John was in prison, about to lose his life, he began to wonder if he'd gotten it right. Do you remember? John the Baptist sent his own disciples back to Jesus, just to double-check and make sure. <strong>"'Ask him,'"</strong> John said, <strong>"'Are you the one who has come, or are we to expect someone else?'"</strong> <cite>(Matthew 11:3, NIV)</cite></p> <p>Odd question, don't you think, for a man like John the Baptist? John was the guy who was there at the initiation of Jesus' faith walk. He was the one who baptized Jesus, the first time. He introduced Jesus to the crowds as the Son of God. Now, he is coming back to a point of questioning again if Jesus is the Messiah, the one he can really trust for sure. John, like a lot of us, wondered if he had gotten it right. In this morning's text, in this particular situation, Jesus sounds very sure of himself. In fact, kind of cocky. He calls the crowd "you brood of vipers." I've never done that! I've felt like it, but never did it!</p> <p>John traveled light through this world. As you might guess, someone who traveled in the wilderness in those days didn't carry much in his backpack. He really didn't have much room in his life for things that didn't matter. Neither did he believe that this new community of humanity that Jesus was creating should have much room in its backpack for unnecessary accouterments.</p> <p>Speaking of unnecessary accouterments, have you got all your shopping done? I haven't even started yet. We've got eight days, don't we? What's the rush? I would love to know what it is about men that hate shopping and what it is about women that love it so much. I mean, I've heard all the studies, but it still doesn't make sense to me. What is it about men that puts off shopping until the very last minute until they either have to go shopping or face the dissolution of their marriage? A few years ago, no lie, two days or so before Christmas, I went to NorthPark to finally do my Christmas shopping and I ran into Curtis Anderson and his three children. They had a tall stack of boxes for Mom. I didn't even know what was in the boxes and I offered him $300, sight unseen, for whatever it was. He didn't take it.</p> <p>John the Baptist had a very short shopping list. Instead of just giving into the crowds that tend to follow others wherever they go, he challenged them. In essence, asking, "Why would you want a baptism from me, when you have no interest in what this baptism means, the one I've come to represent?" The crowds responded, "Well, what should we do?" And John gave them a very simple list: "If you have two coats, give one away. If you have more food than you need, give some to someone else. Tax collectors, don't collect more than the law allows. Soldiers, don't take advantage of your power to abuse people. Be satisfied with your wages." That's it. Be generous. Be fair. Be cautious with power. Be satisfied.</p> <p>So, how's the shopping going on that list? How many coats are in your closet? If you're like me, you're probably afraid to count. How are you using whatever power you have over people today? At work, or home, and your social life. If someone were to ask you today, "Are you satisfied with what you have," would you say "Yes"? And does your life bear witness to your answer?</p> <p>This is the message, ordained of God, through John, meant to lay the groundwork for his Son, who was coming after John. A baptism in the name of Jesus that does not lead to a life of generosity, of fairness, of humility, of justice, and of soul satisfaction, is a baptism that didn't take. John's baptism, in this particular case, is a call to repentance. It's taken me so long, and I'm not there yet, to understand that "getting it right" doesn't mean getting our act together so God will find us acceptable. Yet, I am amazed at the number of people I deal with every week who have been in church all of their lives, who cannot believe God has forgiven them for sins they committed 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago. It's hard to believe, isn't it, that grace is that good?</p> <p>Getting it right doesn't mean having all the answers to all of our faith questions before we answer the question that faith really asks of us: will be accept God's mercy, or just stumble over it? I had to get baptized twice as a young man because I wasn't sure I'd said the right words when the preacher asked us to come down the aisle. You might be surprised, or not, to know that, on the way home from my second baptism, I still remember vividly having doubts about my salvation again because I didn't understand that it wasn't about my "getting it right," it was about trusting, and that's all.</p> <p>It's taken me a long time to realize that I never will get it right. I was a lot like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation. He spent so many hours stapling the lights to his house that, when it finally came to the time to turn them on, it drew so much power down that all the other houses in the neighborhood dimmed. There are a couple of houses like that on our block! At first, when he made the final connection, nothing happened. You remember? He'd done all this work, and he made the final connection and nothing happened. No lights came on. He didn't know that his wife, in order to make room for some other appliance in the house, had disconnected a cord in the utility room. All of his lights were disconnected from the power that would have made them come on.</p> <p>I had spent so much, and still spend so much of my time trying to make sure that I have everything laid out just right, but then I go to plug things in, and they don't work. The lights don't come on, because I still don't understand that light within me has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with receiving the power that not only enlightens my soul but empowers my walk to be generous, to be fair, to be just and humble.</p> <p>Life is truly a batteries-not-included kind of existence. At birth, we're given so much. We stumble in moral and spiritual darkness until God turns on the light. Jesus, the true Light that gives light to every man, has come into the world. Light means moral awakening. Light means conscience. Light means the capacity to see a God with our hearts that we can't see with our eyes. Without light, we stumble. Jesus came in mercy to give us God's light. So, how's the stumbling and the walking going these days?</p> <p>Of all things it is, sin is the moral plagiarism of failing to give God credit as the source for all that we are. As John confessed it himself, he was not the light but came to bear witness of that light. We can only bear witness to a light that has become the source for our own life, beyond ourselves, as individuals and as a church.</p> <p>Repentance, the repentance to which John was calling us, is about turning from social injustice and becoming givers of life and light and power to the world around us. The light to see the difference between right and wrong, and then act on it. The light to see the sparkle in the eyes of those we love and the strength to hold them close, at great expense to ourselves sometimes.</p> <p>From the first breath we draw, when the doctor slaps our naked bottoms, until the last breath we draw, every single one is a gift from God. We can either accept the mercy of God, like the air we breathe, and we can either accept his gracious acceptance of us, even though we can't get it right, or we can stumble over our feeble attempts to get it right all of our lives, only to come to the end of 60, 70, or 80 years and wonder if we'll ever get it right.</p> <p>John the Baptist's ministry had been so focused on judgment, and on demanding that people get it right. Jesus, oddly enough, didn't come to correct John's message; he came to finish it. Confession and repentance were the heart of John's sermon. Jesus just gave John's sermon an invitation to walk in the light that leads to acts of light that bear out repentance.</p> <p>When I was in college, we went to Indiana on a mission trip to preach in some churches up there. I don't know why, but those people would let us come up there and preach revivals and they would suffer through our first attempts at preaching and singing and all of that. I remember one lady who stumbled into a worship service in which I was preaching one night. She never had been in the church in her entire life but she stumbled into the worship service that particular night. At the end of the service, she walked down the aisle and confessed Christ as her Lord.</p> <p>The story later was that she had left home after she and her husband had a terrible fight. The marriage was in shreds. She didn't know what to do. She was just driving down the street, not knowing where she was going, and she saw the light coming out of the church and was attracted to it. The light pulled her in. And, in the light, she found her way.</p> <p>So, my question for us is, is our light shining like that in this community? In this world? What does that mean for you and for me? Individually and as a church. Some of us need to give a second coat away. Some of us in this room probably ought to be fairer in our business practices. Some of us need to change the way we treat other people, the way we use our power. For some, perhaps all of us, it means a willingness to stop doing our religion, if you will, by proxy. You see, it's not good enough to say that Cliff Temple is involved in community ministries or missions. The question I would have for each and every one of us is. In what way are we individually involved in being bearers of light in this world?</p> <p>I can tell you what it means for me now to be a bearer of light in this world. Now that we've been to Latvia and seen the orphans, and I've held them in my arms and I've seen them cry when we leave, my life has been changed. And, Nancy's as well. We will never again be able to think of ministry without the word "orphans" in it some way or another. There are 140,000,000 orphans in this world. You can hold one of them, if you will.</p> <p>I even have a dream beyond that. I was thinking about these children this morning. The three-to-five-year-olds who have given $257.83 to World Missions. Three, four and five-year-old children. Two hundred fifty-seven dollars and eighty-three cents! Did you know that for $40,000 we could go to Africa and build a community center in a village that's been decimated by AIDS, where the children are dying of malaria because there are no adults to take them to get vaccines? For $40,000, the cost of a medium-size luxury automobile, we could build a community center in a village in Africa and fund it for three whole years and become the light of the world to that community and save thousands of lives. Why don't we do that? Wouldn't that be wonderful?</p> <p>Speaking of community centers, some of you have been asking about our own community center. You know that eighteen months ago, Mrs. Sadler gave a million dollars for us to build a community center across the street. The money has been in the bank for eighteen months. I have been stunned at how difficult it has been to get the city's permission to build a community center across the street. Did you know that it is becoming politically unpopular today to support service centers that take care of poor people? The reason we have not yet gotten permission is not because there is not a need. Not because we don't have the resources. It is because it is not politically popular or economically profitable, as some of our community leaders see it, to give us permission to build a community center that would be a lighthouse for thousands of working poor people. We may either get the blessing to do it or the kiss of death this very week, in case you want something to pray about.</p> <p>For all of us, the repentance that John the Baptist was speaking about means seeking justice. Looking for the truly right thing to do in our circles of influence, and then doing it. Being light in the world, so that when people drive by this house of worship, it lights their way instead of giving them something to stumble over. I'm convinced that one of the reasons our churches look dark to the world is because too often our shopping list is too much like the world's, instead of having on it simple things like fairness, justice, humility.</p> <p>I didn't want to ruin your Christmas this morning. I know it's time to celebrate and talk about the birth of Jesus. But, what I wanted to tell you this morning is that one of the things Christmas is really about is repentance.</p> <p>I was telling Nancy just this week, as we were driving around looking at Christmas lights, that I'm not in a Christmas mood. I don't know why. I've had a lot of things on my plate. She did what I hate when she always does it. She told me the truth! She said, "Maybe it's because you haven't done anything Christmas-like." Thanks, Nancy!</p> <p>The truth is, she's right. I've been worried about shopping, and lights, and food. And, there are cold people who need a coat and hungry people who need food and social injustice to be corrected. Power that must be spoken to by truth. You want to do something Christmassy? Do those things. See what that feels like.</p> <p>That's called church light.</p> <hr width="100%" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Glen Schmucker, Pastor </td> <td> <div align=right>  December 17, 2006 </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN=2> Copyright © 2006, Glen Schmucker </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>