Living in the Light

Preached at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church

On March 6, 2005

By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, Ph.D.

Texts:

Ephesians 5: 8-14

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 such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.  Therefore it says, "Sleeper, awake!  Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."

John 9: 1-41

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth.  And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.  We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work.  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."  As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man's eyes with the clay, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Silo'am" (which means Sent).  So he went and washed and came back seeing.  The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar, said, "Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?"  Some said, "It is he"; others said, "No, but he is like him."  He said, "I am the man."  They said to him, "Then how were your eyes opened?"  He answered, "The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, 'Go to Silo'am and wash'; so I went and washed and received my sight."  They said to him, "Where is he?"  He said, "I do not know."  They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.  Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.  The Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight.  And he said to them, "He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see."  Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath."  But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?"  There was a division among them.  So they again said to the blind man, "What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?"  He said, "He is a prophet."  The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight, and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind?  How then does he now see?"  His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes.  Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself."  His parents said this because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if any one should confess him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.  Therefore his parents said, "He is of age, ask him."  So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, "Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner."  He answered, "Whether he is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see."  They said to him, "What did he do to you?  How did he open your eyes?"  He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen.  Why do you want to hear it again?  Do you too want to become his disciples?"  And they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.  We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from."  The man answered, "Why, this is a marvel!  You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.  We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if any one is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him.  Never since the world began has it been heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind.  If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."  They answered him, "You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?"  And they cast him out.  Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, "Do you believe in the Son of man?"  He answered, "And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?"  Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you."

He said, "Lord, I believe"; and he worshiped him.  Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind."  Some of the Pharisees near him heard this, and they said to him, "Are we also blind?"  Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains.

Romans 14: 17

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Sermon Text

Last Monday, my day off, the snow took a long time coming.  In eager anticipation I watched for the first flakes.  "They say we may get ten inches!"  I chortled to Alice, suspecting that would get a rise from her.  "I just don't see why you're so happy about it!" she exclaimed.  "Haven't we had enough snow this winter?"  It so happens that I have tennis elbow right now, so she shoveled the walk, next morning.  Come breakfast, it was her turn to chortle:  "I figured out why you like the snow so much.  When you were a kid, you listened to the radio for the school closings.  A heavy snow meant no school, sledding, and snowball fights.  But where I grew up, in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, the schools never closed, and a heavy snow made it almost impossible to get together with my cousins across town.  There you have it.  We've been programmed." 

There was a lot to what she said.  I do so love winter.  It quiets my allergies, and activates such joyous memories:  My dad, belly flopping on our vintage American Flier sled, I running alongside, then leaping on his back as we plunged together down Monkey Hill; mom, sitting in our lawn chair with the aluminum frame, I skating behind her and pushing, as together we toured the bumpy frozen reaches of Red Clay Creek; and my splitting stout oak logs with ax, sledge hammer, and wedge, then stoking our kitchen hearth with the produce of that righteous labor. Yes, a snowstorm is just a snowstorm.  Whether you anticipate the prospect of ten more inches with glee or gloom depends a lot upon what you bring to the snow.

It's the same with living in the light of Jesus, which is the topic of my sermon this morning.  I started out talking about joy, because living in the light of Jesus is very much about finding peace and joy in him.  I'll come back to this point later, but for now please notice that our passage from Ephesians, talks about living in the light of Jesus in terms of right behavior, not in terms of peace or joy.  The fruit of light, says the author, is everything that is good and right and true.  In other words, living in the light of Jesus gets explained here in terms of moral uprightness, and also honesty.  A person living in the light of Jesus wants the truth to be known, yes, even if that be the truth about himself.  A person living in the light of Jesus is not put off by illumination, no matter where it falls.  By contrast, persons living in darkness do not like to have their true selves exposed by the light.  M. Scott Peck has called such persons "people of the lie."

People of the lie turn up in the passage we read from John.  The Pharisees demand to know how the blind man got healed, not because they want to know the whole truth, but because they want to nail Jesus.  They want to discredit him in the eyes of the masses by proving that he broke the religious law that forbade doing work on the Sabbath.

At one level this story is about who is in the light and who isn't.  The blind man who got healed is literally in the light now, as well as spiritually in the light, because he has come to know Jesus.  But the Pharisees, people of the lie, remain in darkness, for they are interested only in half-truths.  They don't want to hear anything good about Jesus at all.  They approach the inquiry with their minds already made up.  The cured man does what the Ephesians passage says people of the light should do.  He exposes them.  "Oh, so you want to become his disciples too?" he asks, knowing full well that their answer will betray their true motives.  They cannot contain their anger any longer, and they throw him out of the synagogue.  People of the lie don't take to being exposed.

Now I return to the bookmark I inserted earlier, where I said that living in the light of Jesus is very much about peace and joy.  The pitiful thing about the Pharisees in the story is that they could be rejoicing with the cured man and his family.  A miracle has happened.  A man blind from birth has received his sight!  Who wouldn't be dancing with joy at such astounding good news?  Why, people of the lie, of course.  That's sad, because they are left in their own self-imposed darkness.  They miss the joy of knowing Jesus, the marvelous healer who announced that God's kingdom is already breaking forth:  Don't you see it?  It's right before your eyes!  Oh, happy day! 

When Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome about living in the light of Jesus, he didn't speak just in terms of doing the right things, although that was part of his message in that letter.  He spoke also about peace and joy.  Here's what he wrote in Romans 14:17:  "The kingdom of God is . . .righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."  The righteousness part, of course, was about doing the right things, obeying God's laws.  But Paul also recognized--because of his own conversion experience, I think--that the kingdom of God, which Jesus constantly preached about, is also about peace and joy. 

You know, there are plenty of Christians who need to remind themselves that living in the light of Jesus isn't just about keeping their noses clean; it's also about peace and joy, gifts of the same spirit that was in Jesus.  We Presbyterians, for instance, are often criticized for our stern, ostensibly joyless spirituality.  Sometimes it seems we get completely absorbed in the righteousness part of living in the light, and miss the peace and joy part. 

Even more sadly, some Christians get so obsessed about doing the right things and identifying who is in the light and who is not, that they become like the Pharisees in John's story.  They start inquiries, but they stop listening to the feedback.  Wanting above all else to be right, they become content with half-truths, because they don't really want light to shine on them.  They just want to justify their own positions.  Have you met some Christians like that?  Pretty sad specimens of people who are supposed to be living in the light of Jesus, right?  They are angry, full of unexposed resentment, which makes being around them anything but a peaceful and joyful experience!

Well, enough about sad people of the lie.  Let's finish where we began:  talking about joy.  Joy--way down to the bottom of your soul joy--is a natural by-product of knowing God; not just knowing about God, but knowing God.  That's what happened to Paul the Pharisee on the road to Damascus.  He went from knowing much about God to knowing God. 

Paul speaks in one of his letters about being caught up in heaven.  He's describing ecstasy, joy to the nth degree.  There are so many young people out on these streets that want ecstasy, and take drugs to get it, but end up destroying their minds and bodies instead.  Deep joy--right down to the bottom of your soul joy--comes from knowing God, being in touch with your Creator. 

Another way of talking about this is to speak of a mystical experience.  My younger son asked me about this the other day.  He said, "Dad, I've been reading in your sermons about a mystical experience you had once.  Could you explain what that was like?"  "  Yes," I said," as you know, it happened while I was in Vietnam.  I was scared to death.  It's hard to endure constant fear.  I was reading a book that my fundamentalist cousin had sent me, about inviting Jesus into your heart.  The author of this book said that Jesus is alive, and that if you ask him to come into your heart, he will.  Of course, I'd heard Christianity put that way before, but I'd never been moved to try it.  I wasn't ready, I guess.  I was pretty much self-sufficient.  My religion was a philosophy to live by, and I remained in charge.  Well, in Vietnam, with bullets whizzing by, philosophy wasn't enough.  I needed someone to hold onto.  So, I did what the book suggested.  I invited Jesus into my heart.  And almost immediately I had a mystical experience of the presence of Jesus.  I felt peacefulness and joy so deep that I was walking around, as Paul wrote, "caught up in heaven."  For about two weeks this ecstasy lasted, enough for a lifetime."

I believe that the purpose of the church is to help people know God and experience that peace and joy by getting to know Jesus, who is alive.  Jesus said, "Knock and it will be opened unto you; seek, and you will find."  I know that to be true. 

How can you come to know God?  Well, you ask Jesus to come into your heart.  It's like inviting a guest into your home.  You extend the invitation, and then you wait for him to come, and you trust that he will.  It couldn't be easier.  The Olivet Singers said it in their Gospel song the other evening:  "All you do is ask him, ask him, ask him; and I know, yes I know, that he'll see you through." 

Think this is corny?  So did I, for many years.  Then, when I was scared to death, I took it seriously enough to ask him.  As Paul, the once blinded man said, "something like scales fell from my eyes."  Ever since, someone else has been in charge of my life.  Hallelujah!  Could happen to you too.  Do you want peace and joy?  Ask him!