Seeing by the Light of Christ

-->
John 1:6-18
January 5, 2014

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

            I have two weird obsessions. I realize that most of us have some strange obsessions. With it being the New Year and all, I decided that I should confess some of mine.

            My first obsession is with pens. I love pens. I love all sorts of pens. I think that my obsession with pens has to do with the fact that I’m a cartoonist (something most of you don’t know) and a writer (most of you know). As a result, I have special pens for everything. I have a pen that I use for balancing my checkbook—one that won’t bleed through the other side of the register. I have a special pen on my desk that I write with that was handmade by a member who moved away, Rick Steadham. I have a special Cross gel pen that I carry in my jacket pocket that clicks open from the middle, not the bottom or top end. I have a space pen that I carry in my pocket in the summers. And I have a very special fountain pen that I write my deepest thoughts down with. This is a really special pen that I bought after publishing my first book. It’s one that I’ve outlined all my other books with.

            I also have an obsession with flashlights. I have them all over our house. I have a small LED one that I carry with me when I take the garbage out at night or get the paper in the morning. We kind of live in the country, and there are some critters around. This light lets them know I’m coming. I also have a small Maglite that I use when my dog is with me so that I can see where she’s gone. This is especially necessary in the winter because she’s a little white dog who blends in with the snow. There’s also a large Maglite that I carry outside at times, especially when the farmer has put manure down in the cornfield next to our house. Unfortunately, our dog loves to sniff and eat manure. This Maglite shines brightly for a half a mile. It helps me find her in the field so that I can grab her out of the manure.

            I own two other special flashlights. One is an ultraviolet light, and it helps me find where our dog has peed (apparently half my flashlights are dog-oriented). In the winter she doesn’t like to pee outside, so occasionally she’ll pee in a hidden spot. I need this flashlight to find what I normally couldn’t see under normal light. I also have a very special flashlight that’s attached to a nightscope. I mentioned before that we have a lot of critters in the field and woods next to our house, and this helps me to find them. It especially helps me to see coyotes when they are wandering around outside. I don’t see them very often, but they are there, and the nightscope light, which you can’t see with your naked eye, lights up the nighttime woods and fields.

            When I think of Christ being the light, I think about my flashlights, but not just my regular flashlights. I think about my ultraviolet and nightscope flashlights. They help me to see and recognize things that are already there, but that I can’t see on my own.

            Our passage says that Jesus is the light of the world, and that John testified to him being the light. It says, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” Christ helps us to see what we would otherwise miss out of ignorance, indifference, or insolence.

            For me, learning to look by the light of Christ began in seminary, and continued in graduate school. When I first went to seminary, I didn’t really look at the world by Christ’s light. Even though I had joined a church and declared myself to be a Christian, I really looked at the world through the light of the culture I grew up in. I grew up on the Mainline of Philadelphia and in Sewickley, both very wealthy areas that looked at the world by the light of massive wealth. As a result, the light I looked at the world by a very Republican light.

            I don’t mean that as a criticism of Republicans. I mean it as an indication that neither the Republican nor Democratic lights are Christ’s lights. My light was very much a conservative, Republican light. I voted for Ronald Reagan twice, and for George H.W. Bush. I followed a Republican mantra.

            I also was a serious Ayn Rand disciple. You may not know who she is, but if you have paid attention to politics in the last election you would know that she was the guru for much of the Tea Party, and the guiding light for vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s economic ideas. Ayn Rand is dead now, but in the 1940s she wrote The Fountainhead, a book about self-sufficient ideals, and in the 1950s she wrote her most famous novel, Atlas Shrugged, a massive novel about the pursuit of a pure capitalistic society free of socialism’s decay. Both books became my bibles—almost like an Old Testament and a New Testament. They were the lights by which I looked at the world through, advocating a rugged self-sufficiency, a la The Fountainhead, and an uncompromising, unsentimental, purely free-market Capitalism, a la Atlas Shrugged. My capitalism had little room for compassion and concern for those who couldn’t survive in a survival-of-the-fittest world.

            Then I went to seminary. And I struggled there because having to read the Bible, and especially the gospels, forced me to rethink everything I had thought. It forced me to look at the world by Christ’s compassionate light, not Ayn Rand’s socially darwinistic light. And Christ’s light is a VERY different light. Christ’s light is a light of love, compassion, and self-sacrifice for the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, and the misfit—all people who don’t fit well in Rand’s world.

            This process continued for me when I was in graduate school working on my Ph.D. Those studies forced me to take a step even deeper. Seminary helped me look at life through the lens of the gospels and the prophets. Grad school helped me to begin asking the question, “How is Christ calling me to think? What is Christ calling me to pay attention to? What is Christ calling me to do?” These are active questions. They forced me to look at every situation and ask, “God, how are you calling me to respond?”

            Both seminary and grad school both pushed me to begin looking at life by Christ’s light, and to intentionally ask what Christ wants. And that light led me to change the way I thought and acted.

            I recognized that Christ’s light in the gospels and in prayer call on us to focus on the poor, not the rich. That’s a tough light for those of us committed to a robust Capitalism. In fact the message of the whole Bible, from the law through the prophets, the gospels, and the epistles is one of sacrificial compassion for the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast. Think about what the Bible says. It tells us that it’s easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Why? Because too much wealth makes us insensitive to the plight of the poor. Jesus says that where our treasure is, there our heart is, too. If our treasure is in treasure, then our heart will be in treasure. But if our treasure is in God, then our heart will be in God. These kinds of teachings are all throughout the gospels.
           
            The light of Christ also calls on to focus our attention on the outcast, not the incast (if that’s even a word). Virtually Jesus’ entire ministry was reaching out to the rejected and sinners. Read the gospels for yourself and see who Jesus focuses on. He is with the lame, the sick, those with leprosy, and with hemorrhages. These are people who are shunned because of their infirmities, which the people believed were evidence of their sin, or of their parents’ sin. Jesus ate and spent time with those considered to be deep sinners such as prostitutes, slaves, centurions, Syro-Phonecians, Canaanites, and so many others cast out of Jewish society.
           
            A great example of his willingness to care for the outcast comes in the story of Jesus with the woman by the well. It is midday, and he comes to a well where a woman is drawing water. He asks her to give him a drink. Do you know how many taboos he broke in that one moment? First, she was a Samaritan woman, meaning that she was part of a religion that was partly Jewish, but also partly an amalgamation of other religions. True Jews considered them to be the utmost of sinners. Second, she was at the well at midday, meaning that she was shunned by her own society. Women drew water in the morning and evening when it was cooler. She had to draw water at another time, meaning that she was possibly a prostitute. Also, she had been married six times and was living with a man who was not her husband. Again, sin, sin, sin. Jesus asked her to give him water. Men did not talk openly to women. That was taboo. The fact that he would have taken the cup of water from her defiled hands would have made him unclean for a week. Jesus broke many taboos to reach out this outcast, but he looked at life by a different light.

            Jesus also managed to cross the divide between conservatives and liberals, a divide that is so fixed in our modern, American culture. Most don’t think about the biblical groups as being conservative or liberal, but just as today there were people of both persuasions, the different parties Jesus dealt with were liberal and conservative. The Sadducees were the conservatives. They believed in the old ways of the Temple and in sacrifice for expiation for sins. They believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible and the law. The Pharisees were the liberals. They were liberal with the Law, interpreting it in ways that allowed for a belief in resurrection (the Sadducees did not believe in the afterlife), allowed an easing of restrictions against divorce, and allowed for worship of God in synagogues, which were the contemporary worship of those days. Jesus had a special talent because he united both the conservatives and the liberals in one mission: to get rid of him.

            Basically, Jesus was against “isms”—legalism, Jewishism, exclusivism, conservatism, liberalism, in-betweenism, and all other isms. He believed in looking at life by God’s light, not by the light of a fixed ideology.

            In our culture right now we have a hard time seeing by Christ’s light because we tend to follow political or cultural ideologies, not Christ. I’m about to irritate a number of you (if I haven’t already), and maybe even all of you. I’m doing it because I think part of my role is to push you as I’ve been pushed. As someone once said about the role of preachers, we are to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I’m supposed to get you to wonder whether you are looking at life by Christ’s light or another.

            The problem is that half of our culture follows a capitalistic form of Christianity that wasn’t what Jesus advocated. A great example recently comes in the criticisms of the new pope, Pope Francis. There are a significant number of media types who have been critical of Pope Francis, saying that he is a socialist or a Marxist. As you can tell what I’ve said so far, it’s obvious to me that these people have little willingness to look at the world by Christ’s light. I like this new pope, but I’m not wowed by what he is saying because he is just saying and doing what the Bible says to say and do. I think he is saying and doing what a pope should say and do. Still he is a GREAT example of looking by Christ’s light, but he stands out simply because not all popes or people in religious authority choose the full brightness of Christ’s light in the same way he has.

            The people who criticize the pope are false prophets. They want the world to look by the light of their world, not the light of Christ. If you aren’t sure how to tell a false prophet from a true prophet, let me give you this simple test. A false prophet is one who profits from his or her prophecy. True prophets don’t seek profit. They seek God’s way. Traditionally most prophets were somewhat poor. I’m not sure if there ever was a wealthy prophet, although Amos may have been… I’m not sure. The key is that these people who criticize Pope Francis are people whose prophecy is profit, not God.

            I see this same problem of shining a worldly light in the rise of a new, uniquely American form of the gospel, which is the “Prosperity Gospel.” You’ve heard me talk about it before. It is the gospel promoted by many of the megachurches across the country, and by people like Joel Osteen. Now I don’t want to overstate my case. I do recognize that these pastors and churches really do help people tremendously, and I think Joel Osteen is a good guy with a commitment to helping people. These prosperity gospel pastors do help people lift themselves up. But they also promote a gospel that is heavy on an Old Testament idea that was pretty much jettisoned by Jesus. This is the idea that if we are faithful and good, God will bless us with material things—with bling. And if we are unfaithful and bad, we will be punished or cursed or suffer bad things. That is not Jesus’ gospel. It is not the light Jesus shines. Jesus’ gospel is the gospel of telling the rich young man to sell all he has to follow him, of telling his followers that we will be judged by how we treat the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the naked, the lonely, and the sick.

            I don’t want to make it out like the light of Christ shines against the light of wealth that much of our culture shines on the world. The other half of our culture follows a humanistic light that increasingly puts God at the margins, and seems to be all about personal indulgence. It follows a more liberal agenda that might be more caring to the poor, but that lets everything else go. This is a light that promotes a gospel of promiscuity, self-indulgence, self-aggrandizement, and so much more. This is the gospel of sex and violence that our entertainment culture promotes. It is the gospel of nihilism and indifference that much of our literary culture promotes. It is the gospel of atheism and agnosticism that much of our intellectual culture promotes.

            This is the gospel that promotes sleeping with anyone so that we can find pleasure, but that ignores the true gospel saying that our sexuality should be an expression of love, and that commitment to each other is what brings meaning to sex. It is a culture that thinks that gambling is good if it raises taxes to fund services for the elderly, while failing to recognize that people are losing their homes, families, and lives from gambling. Recently I was connected with a woman in dire financial need because she gambled away $30,000 in one weekend at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. Somehow that’s not the part about the goodness of gambling that gets presented in our culture.

            This false, self-indulgent gospel promotes things like the legalization of pot, which, to me, is the dumbest idea. I understand all the arguments for it, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how its legalization makes life better. Having spent time as a drug and alcohol counselor, I’ve seen how destructive all drugs can be. I do recognize the destructiveness of the one legal drug out there already, which is alcohol. Yet there is a major difference between it and every other drug. There are millions of people who will drink one drink because they like the taste and never, ever get drunk. They don’t want their mind and mood to be drastically altered. To them it’s a taste thing, not a mind/mood-altering thing. The Bible suggests that drinking wine is a gift, but that drunkenness never is (I realize that we also live in a culture that promotes drunkenness). The Bible sees the inability to control one’s drinking to be a problem. So what’s wrong with pot? The problem is that no one smokes it for the enjoyment of taste. No one says, “I want just one puff because it tastes so good, but I don’t want to get high.” The fact is that you smoke it for one reason—to get high. It’s designed to fuzz us out for self-indulgent reasons.

            Now, I’m not going to get all cranky about it or thump my pulpit over things like it that I have no control over. The legalization of pot will be opening a door to all sorts of other problems, and I’ll do what I always do, which is to try to be someone who can help people overcome those problems as they arise. That’s one reason I was trained as a drug and alcohol therapist.

            The point I’m making is that we are called to look at life by Christ’s light, a light that is clicked on when we make seeking what God wants our priority. This isn’t just following an ideal. It is an active asking of God, “how are you calling me to see, think, be, act, and do?” We are called to use this light when making decisions. For example, when it comes to issues like gun control, it’s a prayerful asking, “What kind of glock does God want me to own? How many guns does God want me to possess? What does God even think about guns? When it comes to things like pot it is asking, “How much pot does God want me to smoke?” With gambling, “How much money does to gamble on red 29?” When it comes to money, “How much money does God want me to have, and what does God want me to do with it?” The more  ridiculous questions seem when asking them of God reveals how little of the light of Christ we tend to shine on our lives.

            There is a simple test of the how much of Christ’s light we look by: does the light we follow lead us toward or away from love?

            Amen.