Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Epiphany + 5 February 5th 2017 Isa 58, Ps 112, 1 Cor 2, Mt 5 13-20
Kids- what lurks under your bed in the dark? What is the best protection from it? (Torch time with kids; hiding it near my heart whilst claiming it shines on everything around me)
Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
That’s an amazing sentence; the goodness of God; the light of Christ – people are meant to see it because of things that you and I do. Or even more daunting, what we do is supposed to affect people so profoundly that they will see the things we do – hear the message we proclaim – and thank God for what they’ve experienced.
But what is it we’re meant to do that will have this extraordinary effect on people? Are they meant to see us heading off to church each week and somehow experience God for themselves just because they see us do that? Probably not – but it might be a start. … Are they meant to come to church with us and see us actually praying and singing – and because of that, will they suddenly have an experience of God that makes them break out in praise? That might be more likely than if they just see us head off to church each week. But I still wonder if it would constitute the sort of life-changing experience which makes people burst out in praise of God. There has to be a more blinding light – an overwhelming, transforming realisation take place – than seeing something inward and spiritual from the outside will make possible.
So what is that light? And how do we give people a chance to experience it. I wrote in my weekly that in this season of Epiphany, the central symbol is light – light shining in the darkness which:-
- drives away fear and replaces it with peace;
- drives away ignorance and replaces it with understanding and tolerance;
- drives away deception and replaces it with truth and fairness;
- drives away despair and replaces it with hope;
- exposes bad motives, revealing their selfishness and injustice , and enabling equity and justice to flourish.
As I said, it’s quite an impressive list – and certainly not a complete list. Only actions and words will enable these sorts of transformations; powerful actions and words which will inspire people to give glory to God. They’ll do that whether or not people recognise that God’s goodness lies behind these transformations. When peace drives away fear, when hope drives away despair, when justice drives away oppression, then kindness drives away isolation and people rejoice; people feel gratitude; people are given their own selves back – their dignity and their worth. And those feelings and re-births give glory to the God who inspires and enables all such blessings.
Why do we know that? How do we know that? … Do you remember last week how we heard words from the end of the book of the prophet Micah which told us of the compassion and faithfulness of God and challenged us to “…do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [our] God”? Today we’ve heard something equally challenging and wonderful from God through another prophet, Isaiah. We’ve heard God call us to an intensely sleeves-rolled-up lifestyle: 58.6“…to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 … to share [our] bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into [our] house; when [we] see the naked, to cover them”.
What really struck me most powerfully when I read this was something I’ve actually taken pretty much for granted for most of my life. It means a great deal to God that this light of kindness and compassion and faithful care shines in our world. It really matters to God that a society treats its less fortunate members with compassion. Maybe it struck me particularly powerfully because I was experiencing the exact opposite at the time. My week in Melbourne saw me reading headlines from one of my least favourite newspapers. These headlines blazed across the front page with foul words about the homeless people being evicted from their camp outside Flinders Street Station. The words were ‘serial pests’ – ‘ferals’ – and ‘thugs’.
Who has the right to describe a whole class of people in this way? What pours out of words like these is darkness – not light. Such words bind these people into the sort of invisibility and de-humanisation from which God wants us to set them free. These homeless people are the very ones Isaiah is telling us need to know the light of compassion, kindness and good faith.
God declares through Isaiah that a community which frees these little ones from the unjust demonization they suffer, and instead shares bread, shelter and clothing with them, 8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am’.
Jesus affirmed the prophets we’ve been studying over the past weeks. They have always faithfully taught us what God is passionate about. And when I think about it, I am deeply grateful that God is passionate about justice, about kindness and about faithfulness. They are the marks of love which make life a joy – they are the marks of love which make the service of Jesus utter freedom; they are the marks of love which are something like an infectious healing – infectious ease.
And we are the ones who have the awesome privilege of being named the carriers of that love. I’ve always thought Jesus is the light of the world, but here he is telling us that it’s we who are that light. We are to be a lamp in the darkness – a lit-up city on a hill – a beacon of peace, hope, justice, trust, love.
So, in short, during the season of Epiphany, our focus is on the way we embody that baby boy – and everything we saw him become – in a world that is desperately in need of all the qualities that his light can offer. I find that a staggering privilege, and a daunting, inspiring trust. Thanks be to God! Amen