“Let the Light Shine Out”
Original sermon given January 8, 2023, written and delivered by Pastor Gregg Ramirez at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church
Watch the sermon live.
“Let the Light Shine Out”
Ephesians 3:1-12
Ephesians 3:1-12
Back in the 1990’s Christian author Philip Yancey used to live in this area of the city and he tells a story he heard from a friend who worked with the down-and-out in the community. One day a prostitute came to his friend’s rescue mission in wretched straits. She was homeless, sick, and unable to buy food for her young daughter. Through sobs and tears she told the community worker that she was renting out her daughter to men of ill intent. Doing this, she made more money renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She said she had to do it to support her own drug habit. Yancey’s friend said he could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. He had no idea of what to say to the woman, but finally asked her if she had ever thought of going to church for help. The man said he would never forget her response. A look of pure, naïve shock crossed her face. “Church!” she cried, “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”
Isn’t it striking in this story that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from Him? The worse she felt about herself, the less likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost this gift? Evidently, the down-and-out who flocked to Jesus when He lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among His followers – like that woman desperately trying to find a way out – a light at the end of the tunnel. What has happened?
Today, we begin the season of Epiphany. Epiphany is from a Greek word that pictures light shining out and pushing back the darkness. It’s about Jesus, the Light, first coming to the Jewish nation. Through Scripture lessons in the coming weeks, we find Him fulfilling the words of the hymn – light and life to all He brings. The readings focus on His words and deeds – His signs and wonders – His healing miracles – all manifesting His light moving out to all the world. It was a light for all the people of the earth to dispel the darkness of pain, sorrow, and hopelessness like that experienced by the prostitute and the 30 million people suffering from depression in our land and so many more silently despairing because they don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. Therefore, the Light of Christ’s loving Presence that we enjoy here, that warms our hearts in this place, the light that is Jesus, has to get out.
But there can be a real problem here. We who regularly come here often don’t recognize it, but our building has walls – and it’s not just these imposing walls on the inside, but it also has walls that can be imposing on the outside. Our walls divide “us inside” from “those outside.” The walls have doors – there and there. To us the walls aren’t there as a barrier. Anyone can come in. In fact, we want them to come in! The walls simply hold up the roof and keep the rain and the snow off us, that’s all.
But from the outside, walls can be a very real barrier. People looking at our church wonder – can they come in? Are they welcome? Will they fit in? What if they were inside and find they are still outsiders? Do we realize how walls can so easily get in the way? It’s what Jesus had to deal with incessantly through His ministry. Though God had commissioned His people to be a light to the nations, the very architecture of the temple expressed exclusion. Non-Jews could enter only the outer courts, and the general rule was “no oddballs allowed.” But rung by rung, Jesus dismantled the ladder of hierarchy that had marked the approach to God. He invited defectives, sinners, aliens, Gentiles, non-Jews, that’s most of us here, who were called Gentile dogs, the unclean! – to God’s banquet table. Had not Isaiah prophesied of a great banquet to which all peoples would be invited? In this way Jesus replaced the “No oddballs allowed” to the new rule of grace: We’re all oddballs. We’ve all got our quirks, but God loves us anyway” – and St. Mark records that they “began looking for a way to kill Him.”
Through the work of our Lord, God’s light of grace began to shine out. After Pentecost, the church, composed of basically Jewish Christians, needed time to adjust to the change where all were welcome. It would take a rooftop vision for Peter, and the Apostle Paul – initially one of the most resistant to change – a Pharisee of Pharisees who thanked God daily that he was not a Gentile, slave, or woman ended up writing these revolutionary words:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Jesus’ death, Paul said, broke down the temple barriers, dismantling the dividing walls of hostility that had separated categories of people. Grace found a way. That’s what St. Paul emphasizes in today’s lesson from Ephesians as he describes the mystery now revealed – that Gentiles – the outsiders of Paul’s days are heirs together with Jews of God’s promises of redemption – sins paid by Christ on the cross as our substitute, being made members of God’s family, and the inheritance of eternal life in God’s Kingdom. There is no division. The doors are open, Jesus opens the door, and no one can shut it.
So let the light shine out! In this day when tribalism sparks massacres in Africa and Myanmar, when nations redraw boundaries based on ethnic backgrounds as Russia in Ukraine, when racism in this country mocks our nation’s great ideals, when groups lobbying for their rights bring on increased polarization. I know of no more powerful message. The barrier between us and our unchurched neighbor is no barrier at all. We are both outsiders whom God is able to make insiders. We are both sinners who need a Savior. We’re oddballs but God loves us anyhow. The Savior has made a way for us to be one by His grace. Let there be light!
Let there be light here in this church where we gather around the Word and message and gifts of Jesus Christ, our Light. Our church is to be the place that demonstrates the breaking down of barriers of hatred and suspicion that divide humanity. However, here is the challenge. Given a choice, we surround ourselves with people we most want to live with. Then we become a clique or a club. Anyone can form a club but it takes grace, a shared vision, and hard work to fulfill the role given to us as a Christian church to bring together those of diverse backgrounds. John Wycliffe spelled it out many years ago, “The church is the one institution that exists for those outside of it.”
This is really hard for us. It’s hard to break those habits of being more inward focused rather than outward focused where our light shines out. I’m reading a book, The Outsider Interviews, where the authors traveled to large cities and got the opinion of those outside the church like some of our sons, daughters, baristas, co-workers, and students. Many think the church has an identity problem. If you’re a Christian, it means being angry, violent, wanting to convert everyone, and generally unable to live peacefully with anyone unless they are against abortion, against stem cell research, against immigration, and same-sex marriage. Are they right? That’s a caricature – that’s like saying all white people are racists at heart. Yes, some of us are against those issues because they conflict with the light of God’s truth. However, for them, we are missing the greatest of truths. If only we would give the Bible a fair reading, we would recognize that the most important idea in the Bible is loving others the way you would like to be loved. Then we would stop being judgmental. Are they right on that one? Isn’t that what our Lord Jesus stressed? Love one another. Yes, Jesus came to show mercy, but He never countenanced sin and evil. His first words in Mark and Matthew’s Gospel was “repent!” to turn from sinful lifestyles contrary to God’s Word. Then, if a person turned away from sin, like the woman caught in the act of adultery, He always stood ready to forgive and offer a clean slate. Though He demanded a change of lifestyle, Jesus got the reputation as a lover rather than a condemner of sinners.
By His way of living Jesus did not block the light. Rather, He spread forth the light of God’s grace. It’s what St. Paul in our lesson describes as our role in administering or dispensing the grace of God. To illustrate what this means, years ago, women used old fashioned “atomizers” before the perfection of spray technology. Squeeze a rubber bulb, and droplets come shooting out of the fine holes at the end. A few drops suffice for a whole body; a few pumps change the atmosphere of a room. That’s how grace should work. It doesn’t convert a whole world or society, but it does lighten and brighten the atmosphere. That’s what we are enabled to do as believers.
Indeed, if I could summarize the impressions of those in the outsider interviews, it’s that they see our prevailing image to be changed where the perfume atomizer has been changed to a different apparatus to make us moral exterminators. There’s a roach – pump, spray. There’s a spot of evil – pump, spray. Some Christians have become moral exterminators for the evil-infected society around them.
I share the same concern for our society – do you? And I believe many of us can fall inadvertently into that exterminator trap and become like the Pharisees who invited Jesus for dinner one night, but they did it for the purpose of dishonoring Him. They failed to extend the courtesy of water for His feet, a kiss of greeting, oil for the head for the refreshing of His body after a day out in the heat. But it was then that a sinful woman, a prostitute, brought an alabaster jar of perfume – and weeping, she wet His feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair. Kissed them and poured perfume on them. Of course, the Pharisees were offended – she’s a prostitute and upset when Jesus forgives her. But then He says that little parable of two men owing a money lender. One 500 denarii, the other 50 – who could not repay. But he cancelled the debt of both. Then Jesus asked: Who would love him more? To me this is the heart of the Gospel – our recognition of God’s forgiving our huge debt of sins of thought, word, and deed – and out of pure grace. That’s the perfume of grace we can also extend to others. Observers tell us that we talk about grace, but we live under the law in our demands on ourselves and on other people. So, for you and me it’s learning to understand God’s full forgiveness through Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins. It’s receiving God’s unconditional grace and giving out that unconditional love, forgiveness and grace to other people. It’s the difference in the quality of our lives from darkness to light, and may this church be a staging ground for the release of Christ’s grace and power into people’s lives as we let our light shine out!