Light It Up

Scripture:  John 1:1-18

One of the mainstays of fan conventions are celebrity meet and greets.   For a fee, fans can get a chance to be face to face with the actors who portrayed their favorite characters, get an autographed headshot, or even take a picture with them.   These meet and greets are incredibly popular, and they often sell out.   The more well known the actor the more they can charge.  For example, Mark Hamill, who is most well known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, charged $400 for an autograph at a FanExpo in the United Kingdom this summer.   While that is on the high end, there were still plenty of fans willing to pay it because Luke Skywalker is an iconic, childhood defining character for a whole lot of people. 

Given that people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for the opportunity to spend a few moments with Mark Hamill, a bit from the Jimmy Kimmel show that aired a couple of weeks ago was surprising.   In this segment Mark Hamill stood on his star along the Hollywood walk of fame.  He was dressed in plain clothes, including a T-shirt with his picture and name on it.  Despite that the segment shows not a single person recognizing him.   At one point a person dressed in a Star Wars costume is shown interacting with him but not recognizing who is in front of him.  One the one hand it is kind of surprising.  Given all the people who visit the Hollywood walk of fame it seems at least one person would have recognized one of the stars depicted on it.   However, on the one hand it makes sense, because no one was expecting to see Mark Hamill, and they never thought they would pass by him on the street.   It is a humorous segment, but it also sheds some light on this morning’s scripture. 
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Verse 11 of this morning’s scripture states that Jeus “came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”  This is a point that the gospel of John makes throughout.  The religious leaders, the ones who knew all of the messianic passages from the prophets, the ones who should have recognized the incarnation of God, largely missed it.   Just like fans missed Mark Hamill in the Jimmy Kimmel segment because how they encountered him on the sidewalk was the kind of encounter they were expecting.  

This morning’s scripture proclaims that Jesus is the light of the world and that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”    We celebrate that the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We celebrate that God is with us, but the reality is that many people on this world still miss it.  The light has come, but there are many who still only see darkness.  The light of the world has come, and we get to help people see it. 

Each of the gospel writers sought to tell the story of Jesus to a specific audience with a specific emphasis they wanted to communicate.  For instance, the gospel of Matthew puts more effort than the other gospels on establishing that Jesus is the Jewish messiah who fulfilled prophecies. The gospel of John puts more emphasis than the other gospels on the divine nature of Jesus.   The gospel of John seeks to establish that not only is Jesus the Messiah, not only is Jesus the son of God, but that Jesus is God incarnate.   This is why the gospel of John does not start with a birth narrative like Matthew and Luke.  Instead, it starts with “In the beginning” and it establishes that the word was with God and that the word was God.  The gospel of John makes it clear in this opening section that this Word that is the light of all humanity, and that the word became flesh in the person of Jesus.  

The incarnational nature of Jesus, that Jesus is fully God and fully man is a core belief of Christianity.  Yet it is one that has always courted controversy.   In the first couple hundred years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, there were several people who floated alternate ideas than the incarnation.  The hang up for these people was that if Jesus was truly God, and suffered on the cross, then that means God suffered on the cross.  The idea of a suffering God bothered the people of the ancient world.  While the church fathers eventually got this doctrine hashed out in the Nicaean Creed, the incarnation is still a belief that can trouble people today, and it is still a belief that some can have a hard time accepting. 

To help teach this concept there was a story written by Louis Cassels in 1959 and then featured by Paul Harvey in 1960.   This simple story entitled, the Parable of the Birds, does a great job at explaining why we need the incarnation.   Once upon a time there was a man who was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, and he dealt with others with integrity.  Despite being a man of morals, he was not religious.   For him, there was a major hang up he had.  He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

"I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, “But I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. So, he stayed while his family went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries get heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read the newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound, then another, and then another — sort of a thump or a thud.

When he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window. Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the shed in the backyard.  It would provide warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat and trampled through the deepening snow to the shed He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in.

 He figured food would entice them. So, he hurried back to the house, fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow. He made a trail to the brightly lit wide-open shed. To his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.

He tried catching them. He then tried shooing them into the shed by walking around them waving his arms. But they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted shed. And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To the birds, he reasoned, “I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…that I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how?
Any move he made tended to frighten and confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe warm shed. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear, and understand."

At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind. And he stood listening to the bells proclaiming the birth of a savior he sank to his knees in the snow. "Now I understand," he whispered, "now I see why you had to do it."

Like the birds, all of humanity is shivering in the cold.  Our sin has cut us off from the warmth, light, and love of God that we were created to experience.  Only God is big enough to save us from ourselves.  Yet we are not big enough to understand God, and only another person can lead us to the warmth, light, and love of God.  To be saved from our sin we need both God and human.  We need the Incarnation.  We need Jesus, the light of the world to show us the way.  
I realize that for many of you, perhaps most of you, on this day I might be preaching to the choir.   Verse 12 of this morning’s scripture states, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”  I realize that many of us here are those who have received him and believe in his name.   And yet, there are so many people who are still lost in the darkness.   There are so many people who do not see the light that we see.   Even though the light has come into the world, even though the world was made through him, there are still so many people that do not recognize him.  We cannot compel anyone to believe, but we can help them see the light that is already there.  

We can see a good example of this on most nights.  While it is possible, it takes a lot of cloud cover to hide a full moon.   There are times when the moon shines brightly enough to bring illumination to the darkness of night.   It does not matter how bright the moon looks in the night sky, it is still just a rock in space.   The moon is incapable of generating any light on its own.  The illuminated moon we see at night is only possible because the moon reflects the light of the sun.  Moonlight is reflected sunlight.  In the same way, our lives should reflect the light of the world.  As Christians we should reflect the light of our savior, of God’s only son, into the world.  In the depth of night, the moon acts as the intermediary that continues to reflect light into the dark world.  In the same way, we as Christians should reflect the light of God’s love into the world. 

We cannot save anyone.  It is Jesus who does that.  It is through Jesus that grace and truth come.  The light has already come, so we are not the light, but we can reflect the light.   There are so many people who are lost in darkness, there are so many people who are hurting and alone.  There are so many people who need Jesus.   If we truly want to see transformation in this world, if we honestly want to see souls saved, and disciples made.  Then we must go to the places where there is darkness still, we must go to where there is brokenness, we must go to where there are troubles, and then we reflect the light.   We follow the example of Jesus.  We love the hard to love, we serve others above ourselves, and we have compassion for those who often only experience judgement.   This morning’s scripture boldly proclaims, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”   If we want to see real transformation in this world, in this community, then we prove it by reflecting the light from the Son in the dark corners of our neighborhood.   We light it up, and in doing so our loving actions will show people Jesus.   

People often miss what is right in front of them, because they are not expecting to see it.  Perhaps one of the reasons why so many people have not yet found Jesus is because they are not expecting to find him.  They are so accustomed to the darkness, coldness, and lack of hope that is found in the world that they do not expect the hope of salvation, the warmth of God’s love and the light of Christ.   This morning’s scripture established a fundamental belief, that Jesus is fully God and fully man.   For those who do believe in his name, this morning’s scripture also contains a powerful promise: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  May we believe that is true, and may that belief fill us with an unbreakable hope.  May we take that belief beyond the walls of this building out into this community.   May we reflect the light of Jesus the son, the word of God was with God in the beginning, who through him all things have been made, and who is God- may we reflect his holy light into Rensselaer and light it up.