Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
February 6, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So we’re the light of the world, are we? We just heard Jesus say that we are, but when I read that line I was frankly a bit confused. You may recall that in the passage we had from Matthew just a couple of weeks ago about Jesus calling the first disciples Matthew presents Jesus as the great light shining on those who sit in darkness. I thought that meant that he is the light of the world, and I said so in the sermon I preached on that text. Now we have Jesus saying that we’re the light of the world. So I found myself struggling with how to understand both Jesus and us as lights to the world. Frankly, I found myself struggling with how I could be a light to the world at all. I mean, I’m just a guy not that different from any other guy. I don’t feel like much of a light to the world. Most of the time I feel pretty dull, and perhaps you do too. We’re all just folks, right? How can we be a light of the world?

Well, as I struggled with those questions I came up with a metaphor that I think helps to explain how both Jesus and we can be lights to the world. I don’t know about you, but most of the time I sure don’t feel like there’s any light that originates with me. I’m very much a part of the world, and most of the time the world seems awfully dark to me. I turn to God and to Jesus Christ for light in my life and for light in the world. The image of Jesus Christ as the light of the world really works for me. He shines the light of God into my life and into as much of the world as is willing to open its eyes to that light.

What I realized was that we are all quite familiar with a source of light that in itself is perfectly dull, is totally dark. We’re all familiar with the moon. I am always surprised on those rare clear nights when there is a full moon how much light the moon shines on the earth. When I walk my dog on those nights I don’t need to take a flashlight. On those nights the moonlight even casts shadows it’s so bright. Yet we know that the moon itself creates no light whatsoever. We talk about the dark side of the moon, that side of the moon that is always turned away from the sun. We’ve seen pictures of it from space. It’s shining not one photon of light. We see the phases of the moon. Once a month it’s full, shining all that beautiful soft light. But once a month it’s totally dark, not shining any light at all. In between it waxes and wanes, sometimes being nearly full, sometimes shining only a tiny crescent of light.

The moon shines, but it doesn’t shine its own light. It shines only the reflected light of the sun. The sun is far, far brighter than the moon. At its brightest the moon shines only a tiny fraction of the sun’s light. Yet when the moon is shining its brightest it gives enough light to see by. It does lighten the darkness. Not as much as the sun of course, but enough for us to notice. And I thought: Jesus and we may both be lights of the world, but we are at best moons to Jesus’ sun. If we shine in the world we aren’t shining our own light. We are reflecting his light. We will never shine as brightly as he does. Far from it. But when we are shining our brightest we shine enough for the world to see by. We shine enough for the world to notice. We’re only moons, but the moon does make a difference.

There’s one difference between the moon and us when it comes to shining reflected light. The moon has no say in how much of the sun’s light it reflects. It moves according to the laws of gravity, the laws of special relativity—or is it general relativity? I’ve never understood the difference. In any event, the moon moves mechanically, orbiting around the earth impelled by forces it cannot control. We, however, do have at least some control over how much of Christ’s light we reflect in the world. Like the moon we are sometimes dark, reflecting no Jesus light at all. At other times we are crescent moons, reflecting a little Jesus light, but not much. Yet God call us to be full moons. To reflect as much Jesus light as we can. To be the brightest beacons of reflected light in the world’s darkness that we can be. How brightly we shine is determined to some extent by the circumstances of our lives. Illness, for example, may make it hard for us to be fully reflective. But we also often have a great deal of control over how much Jesus light we reflect. Over how faithfully we walk his walk and talk his talk in the world. We control the degree of our commitment to be reflectors of the Jesus light. We control how committed we are to peace, how committed we are to justice, how committed we are to lives of honesty, decency, compassion, and care. It’s in doing those things and living in that way that we reflect the light of Christ.

So here’s the question for us. How full a moon are we going to be? How much Jesus light are we going to reflect into the dark places of the world? Maybe being full moons is beyond us, but maybe it isn’t. God always calls us to do more than we think we can, more than we want to, more than we’re comfortable with. The light is not ours, it is Christ’s; but we can reflect it. And here’s another thing. One moon brightens the earth only a little even when it’s full. But what if every Christian became a full moon? That would be something like a billion moons. What if every person became a full moon? Because, you see, you don’t have to a Christian to reflect the light of Christ. Everyone who works for peace and justice does that. So there could be over six billion moons shining on the earth.. Can you imagine how much light six billion full moons would produce? It might even be as much as the sun. Or even more. And isn’t that a dream worth working for? Amen.