Let Your Light Shine

Today I was with the good people of Southwick Community Episcopal Church, the newest parish in our diocese. Recently they said goodbye to their founding pastor. My work is to now help them to navigate through a time of transition and ultimately to call their second rector. On this Second Sunday after Pentecost, I compared their challenges to that of the first-century Christians in Corinth. My sermon manuscript can be found below. 

I’d like to take you with me this morning on a trip halfway around the world to the city of Corinth, in modern-day Greece. We’ll travel back in time, to the latter part of the first-century. There we would find a congregation that was facing some serious challenges. St. Paul – before he was a saint and was just an itinerant preacher—had come to evangelize Corinth roughly seventeen years or so after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

We may think in our mind’s eye of Paul on a whirlwind tour, the first-century equivalent of a Billy Graham crusade. But a more accurate analogy is of a guy like Taylor Albright; a church planter. Someone who starts talking with people on the streets, and ultimately convinces them to start a church. In fact, in many important ways, I don’t think Corinth is all that different from Southwick, except that the winters are a lot milder around the Mediterranean Sea. Paul most likely stayed in Corinth for about eighteen months, preaching and teaching and calling forth and equipping leaders and planting seeds of hope. And then he moved on to other places, like Connecticut. (I mean Ephesus and Galatia.) 

As you know they didn’t have any church buildings yet in the first-century. They figured it out as they went and they met in each other’s homes. Probably there were no more than 150 or so Christians in Corinth when Paul wrote his first letter, two or three years after he had moved on. 

Reflect on that for a moment. I’ll wait. I’m told you all expect long sermons here but today I’ll use some my time for you just to take this in. Imagine those first-century Corinthian Christians as not so different from all of you. Of course they lived in a different time and place and they spoke a different language. But what they were facing as a still relatively young congregation whose founding pastor had moved on was not so different than what you all are facing right now. I hope that in reflecting on that you take some comfort in remembering that you are not the first Christians to be in transition. Recall that Paul reminded those Corinthians again and again that it wasn’t about him or Apollos or anyone else, but about the risen Lord. And I suspect that Taylor preached the same thing while he was here because now, as then, it’s all about Jesus Christ who is the Church’s one foundation. St. Paul preached Christ crucified, always. And so do we.

Paul had spent a year and a half building a congregation. Yet less than three years after his departure there were some who were forming factions that were tearing at the very fabric of that Christian community. Would it surprise you to learn what it was the Corinthian Christians were fighting about? Human sexuality, morality, legal disputes, worship, authority questions, and theology. It seems in other words that there was no “golden age” of Church history. Within the first five years of the existence of the Corinthian Church (and only about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus) the Church was fighting about issues we still haven’t fully resolved two thousand years later.

Maybe there is a clue in there for us: namely that the goal isn’t for a congregation to become a conflict-free zone, nor a place where everybody agrees. Rather, we are called to deal with conflict in healthy rather than destructive ways. To build up, rather than tear down. And always, always, always to love one another. As our Presiding Bishop likes to put it, if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.

I’ll get to today’s reading from Paul’s second letter to this community. But before I do that, I want to remind you of an image we take for granted that comes from his first letter to these same Corinthian Christians: we are the Body of Christ. Paul invites those Christians to inventory their spiritual gifts and to see the abundance with which they have been blessed. Implicit in that reminder is that they have enough; God has given them all that they need. He then invites them to imagine what it might take for them to use those gifts for building up the Church. And then in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of that first letter, he reminds them to identify and then use those many and varied gifts given by the Holy Spirit, for the sake of the health of the Body. We say it all the time but Paul noticed it first; that although we are many members, we are one body. He reminds them to use their gifts toward the end of faith, hope, and love—but especially love.

Paul is able to discern the Holy Spirit at work in that congregation even in the midst of difficult challenges. He’s able to see those folks as living members of a living Body and then he calls on them to live like they believe that too. This now brings me to today’s reading, from the fourth chapter of his second letter. He reminds them that it’s not about them. He reminds us that it’s not about us. He reminds them and us that we’ve been entrusted to proclaim the good news about Jesus.

And then – notice this – he goes back to the very beginning. Back to the creation story in Genesis. Back to the story of God who says “let there be light.” And there is light. There is darkness and there is light; one day. There is that light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it and will not overcome it. He says that light shines in us. In you and in me. However imperfectly, he says we are lights in the world and we are called to let our little lights shine. And to not lose heart. To shine in first-century Corinth and to shine in twenty-first century Southwick.

We do not proclaim ourselves: we proclaim Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “let light shine out of darkness” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.

Praise God. Alleluia. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine! And then that little word, “but.” Have you ever noticed what happens in your brain when you hear that word? I find sometimes I forget everything that’s come before and focus only on what comes after. Someone says, “you look, great, but…have you put on a few pounds?” “I loved that sermon, but…”

Sometimes it’s a rhetorical device and people really do mean to say the harder thing, but they figure they’ll begin with something sweeter to make the medicine go down. But I don’t think that’s always true. And I don’t think we are meant to ignore what comes before the “but” here. It really is that same light that was there at the dawn of creation, the light that has shone in the darkness through some tough days that is in us. Jesus’ light shines in us.

But. We are formed of the clay of the earth and as such, we are like clay jars. We are like earthenware pottery which might glow if there is a light in there but it’s not always so obvious. It’s not like a lightbulb. You and I are not like lightbulbs. Sometimes it’s challenging to see the light. Nevertheless, we need to remember that it’s there: in us, and in our neighbor. Even in our enemies. Even in the people who drive us nuts. We carry this light in earthenware pots, Paul says. So, then, hear these amazing words once more, words that I find to be good news even after two thousand years, words that lift me up when I am feeling most worn down in life and most discouraged about the Church.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed. We are always carrying in the body – in our own bodies and in this collective Body, the Church – we are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.

So that. There are another couple of little words, like but, only better. We do this work – we accept this work of being followers of Jesus, we accept the challenges and the pain, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. So that the light might shine through us, however imperfectly.

I was ordained thirty years ago. I’ve been at this a while now. I’ve served as an ecumenical campus minister, as an associate in a big church in Connecticut and then, when I came to this diocese twenty years ago, it was to serve as the fifth rector at St. Francis in Holden. I stayed for fifteen years. During my time there the parish celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. Many of the founding members were still alive when I got there. I tell you this because I have some experience in a relatively new congregation; St. Francis started as a mission in the 1950s – not the 1850s. I’m hopeful about your second rector, and someday even your fifth rector.

Five years ago I joined Bishop Fisher’s staff. In a nutshell that’s my ordained experience: campus ministry, parish ministry, diocesan ministry. Thirty years. And so now I want to say something to you born out of those three decades of experience and particularly the past five as I’ve crisscrossed this diocese: Southwick Community Episcopal Church, your best days as a congregation are not behind you; they are ahead of you. I love Taylor Albright and we’ve been friends for a long time and we served together on the Bishop Search Committee that brought Doug Fisher to our diocese and over the years we’ve had a beer or two together.

Taylor served you well. But like Paul in Corinth, we all knew eventually that Taylor would leave. And the million dollar question is: who are you now? Or more accurately, who is God calling you to become now? What I love about my job as a canon is that I get to see the Holy Spirit at work in the midst of transitions like this one and I find when I’m doing this work I feel very close to the work of the first-century Church which also had to figure out the next thing, after Jesus was gone and after Paul was gone. Being second-generation disciples is hard but vital work and you are now engaged in that.

What can you do? Pray. Pray hard. Pray like you believe God is listening. Pray like you believe the Holy Spirit is guiding you and breathing new life into you. Pray like you believe you are the Body of Christ and that you are called to let the light of God shine through your body formed from clay so that the light might shine in the darkness. Pray like you know, and believe, so that the good news about Jesus will be shared in the neighborhood. Keep on working at faith, and hope, and love. Especially love. Love God, and love your neighbor, because if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.

The rest will fall into place.