If you are going to work in the darkness you need light. There is only so much you can do by feeling your way. You need light and lots of it.
Last Wednesday night as my wife and I left Montgomery Hills Church, I noticed some poor soul in the driveway of the house next door. He had the hood of his van open and was trying to perform some sort of mechanical fix, in the dark and in all that cold, using only a single flashlight. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have found him out there the next morning frozen in place, because one little flashlight powered by a couple of D-cells in sub-freezing weather is not going to serve you well. If you are going to mess about in the darkness, you need light, and plenty of it.
It gets deeper. Not only do we need light; sometimes we don’t even use the light we get. Light is available, but we ignore it. That same fellow was only six or eight yards from a pretty decent streetlamp. Only six or eight yards, and he would have had more light. But he struggled along with just one little light, even though another was very near at hand.
It gets even worse than that, this thing of trying to mess around in the darkness. There are times in which the light you get, even though you get plenty of it and you use it – there are times in which that light reveals things you don’t want to know. There are times when you are sorry you see what you see. I was watching a History Channel program on underground cities; it focused on the tunnels and passageways that underlie many places. The narrator had a good strong lamp, and of course the television cameraman following him had ample lighting. But as they turned a corner in a Roman catacomb, there in front of them was a hideous pile of human bones. Not a pretty sight! The narrator quickly turned off his lamp and then pushed aside the camera, saying, “I don’t think we want to see this, do we?” Plenty of light, but who wants to see images of death and decay? Sometimes light reveals things we do not want to see.
So then the issue about light becomes: not only do we need light; and not only do we not always use the light we get; but also even when we do get light and use it, we don’t want to see what it shows. And that leaves us with nothing but darkness. The darkness we choose. Make sure you understand that the darkness we choose is far more profound than the darkness that is imposed on us. The darkness we take on ourselves envelopes us and imprisons us far more than the darkness others put on us.
Let me open up the metaphor. How do you make decisions? What does it take to make good choices? If I am faced with a decision about my life, from where do I seek guidance? Do I just do what feels good at the moment? Some do. Just feed the tummy, that’s all. Or do I do what everybody around me seems to be doing? That too is very popular. We wouldn’t dream of having an original idea; it might take our breath away! So we just plod along, following the herd. When I think about how to live my life, I think about the light and darkness and remember that to make any decision I have to have some light. I have to have insight. To live as a person that is not just tossed about by every stormy wind that blows, I must have a plan for making decisions about my life. I must have light and not just darkness. So how do I get it?
Jesus has a pithy saying about this. It involves light and darkness and eyes, healthy eyes. Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” He’s talking about spiritual sight impairment. He’s talking about the need to see and discern. It sounds like that darkness that we take on ourselves, that darkness that we choose and that is most profound, when He says. “If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
I need light in order to make decisions. I need to use well the light I have and to look for more. I need to make sure I pay attention to what that light shows me. And above all, I need to be healthy. I need to be whole. I need that healthy eye in order to see the whole truth. Where, again, do I get all this?
I
Most of us in the church have learned to see the Bible as a primary source of light. We have learned that in this book there is so much truth and so much insight that we could spend many hours probing at it. For us this book is no ordinary book; it is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. We in the church have said consistently that if you want to understand how to live, know the Bible. If you want to know what is profoundly true, consult the Bible. It is light.
That is the posture of this church. Here there is profound respect for the insights of Scripture. Here we invest seriously in Bible study. But it’s Bible study, examination, questioning, probing. It’s not indoctrination; it’s not mindless Bible-thumping. We believe that if you probe at this book long enough and ask it hard enough questions, it will yield up its treasures. When the Puritans got off the Mayflower to establish Plymouth Colony and create what they thought could become a perfect society, their pastor John Robinson cautioned them that they did not yet know all there was to be known. Robinson urged his people not to shut their minds down, because, he said, “I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.” The Bible is our light, and it is our more light. So we study in order to know how to live.
Let me underscore that point – that our study of the Bible is about life and not about trivia. We go to the Scriptures for life-giving information and do not spend our time on peripheral things. A friend of mine likes to tell about visiting a church where he was given the opportunity of dropping in on some of the classes one Sunday morning, just to observe. He went in one classroom where the teacher was dishing out buckets of information about the ancient Hittites. If you stayed in that classroom you would learn what language the Hittites spoke, what gods they worshipped, what their customs and habits were – all you ever wanted to know about the Hittites but were afraid to ask. Well, says my friend, after about ten minutes of Hittite trivia he was ready to move on to sample something else. He went into the next room down the hall. There he saw people eagerly discussing marriage: what Jesus said about marriage, what Paul’s attitude was toward marriage, what married couples did in the early church. Both groups were doing Bible study, but only one of them was in the business of seeking out light by which to live. The other was just shoveling out academic trivia.
I think you will find that in this church we have put the Hittites to sleep; we want to know how the Bible instructs us in living. And if you still prefer to run off to the obscure and incomprehensible parts of the Bible, all I can do is to quote for you the immortal of Mark Twain, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
To make good decisions I need light. I need strong light. The Bible is a primary source of light because men and women in all ages and in all walks of life have found in its pages serious guidance for daily life. It is light. And if it is light, let it lead.
II
But now, however, there is a problem. The problem is that I may not be able to figure out just how the light I get from the Bible helps me. I may not be able to discern what it all means. Some of it is cryptic, and some of it seems contradictory. Some of the Bible seems to address people from ages ago and not us. So how do I make sense of it? How do I get help in understanding all it says?
The Christian faith offers us a deeply interpersonal and wonderfully radiant possibility: that we can best see the light when other lights surround us. One little light is not enough. But nearby, just yards away, is lots more light. It’s called the church. It’s called Christian community. It’s part of that healthy eye that lets us see more than we would otherwise.
Read the Bible on your own, and it is a fascinating academic exercise, but you can miss its implications. Read it in the company of committed and caring colleagues, and something else happens. You find that the light dawns in your soul – not just in your information database, but in your soul. Look at the light with others who care about you, and you will have one of those “aha” moments that suddenly make dark places shine with possibility.
There was a young student who seemed destined for a nice, solid, middle-class career. He had gone to the right schools, he had polished his language and had learned some academic skills. His family background was distinguished, and so everyone expected that he would follow in his father’s professional path and would honor his grandfather’s distinguished precedent. Not only that, he had earned a doctorate at a prestigious university, and had married a gifted and cultured young woman. It was just set in stone that Martin Luther King, Jr., would climb into the pulpit of a comfortable church and begin to preach comfortable things. So when Dexter Avenue Baptist Church called, Martin was ready, and pastor and people thought all would be well for a long time to come.
But one day Mrs. Rosa Parks, whose feet were tired that day, refused to give up her seat on the bus just because a white person wanted it. Her arrest gave birth to a movement, a movement that needed a leader. Pastor Martin Luther King was not looking for another task to do; he was happy and contented in his comfortable church. But his colleagues counseled him, the churchmen of Montgomery urged him to accept leadership of the boycott. Martin saw that in the counsel of others there was a claim on his life. He learned that light comes from those who in sincerity surround you and tell you the truth. It may not be what you want to hear, and it may not lead you to comfort, but in the company of others, we gain more light and learn more truth. That’s called church. That’s what church is about – providing us with those who will shine a light on us, a merciless light, that lays a claim on us.
Do you have friends who are light for you? Do you have somebody in your life who loves you enough to be totally honest with you because they believe you have promise? Over the years I have had many such people. I did not always see at first the truth in what they gave me. But eventually I did see light, and it has made a difference.
I cannot list them all, but today I embrace the memory of Tom Jenkins, who pointed out to me that if I was going to teach teenage boys in Sunday School, I had better show up and do that job consistently. That was light for me, as I had wanted to be sort of, well, relaxed, with that crowd. I embrace the memory of Herbert Gilmore, elegance itself in the pulpit, who forced me to craft my sermons with care and not just to wing it – a shining light. Today I am still astonished by the loving candor of music director Peggy Trimble, who poured light into my soul, telling me I needed to find some warmth deep down inside. I cherish the encouragements of Elwyn Rawlings and Nathaniel Porter, chaplains at Howard University, who led me, a white minister, into an African-American culture I had not known, and who did it by saying, over and over again, “We love ya, man.” Scores and scores of people who made me see what I did not want to see, but had to see, if I were to do ministry. The church is light.
I hope you do have friends who are light to you. Because it’s good to know the Bible, that primary source of light; but it’s better to know it through the eyes of others who see not only that light but who also see into the deep dark places of your soul. Whether you like what they show you or not, if it’s light, let it lead.
III
Bottom line, Jesus is talking about integrity. It’s about honesty. It’s about being able to trust yourself. “If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” I read that, “If you can see and trust the truth, then you will live in integrity.” “If you can get some insight and trust it, then you will light up all over.”
Integrity is living your life according to the truth that you know. Integrity is not making little tucks here and little compromises there to get by. Integrity is having that vital awareness that sees light and wants to share light with others. Integrity is trusting the truth, trusting yourself, and trusting God to guide you. The healthy eye Jesus speaks of is the capacity to respond to the truth as God gives us to see the truth.
This coming month we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. When I was a boy we went several times to the Lincoln birthplace in central Kentucky, there to marvel at the tiny little cabin in which he lived his earliest days, and to hear again the story of young Abe struggling to read by failing candlelight. How did it happen that Abraham Lincoln, born in the most humble of circumstances, found inadequate by his social betters, less than successful in his professional life, taunted as grotesque by his political enemies – how did Abraham Lincoln became a giant in American life? How did a man like this gain the respect of those who had every reason to put him down?
The answer is that Lincoln trusted his own instincts and trusted them as coming from God Himself. This president, who has been called the “theologian of the American experience,” grew to believe that slavery was an abomination in the sight of almighty God. So Lincoln set out on the road to emancipation. Oh, yes, I know that emancipation as it was proclaimed was a political compromise. And yes, I do understand that it was not as sweeping as some proponents had wanted. But this is also clear: Lincoln did what he did, not because it would gain popularity or because he felt partisan pressure to do it. He did it because it was right. He did it because he trusted his own heart. He did it because he had come to see that God willed it. Remember the words of a man about to be inaugurated as president and who had embraced God’s light as his own: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to … achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Every time I try to think about trusting the truth, I think about trusting myself. And every time I think about trusting myself, I think about trusting God. So if I really want a healthy eye, if I truly desire the light, then I must be in a healthy relationship with God. I must love God above all else. If I love God above all else, I will love myself rightly. And loving God and loving myself, my heart will be pure, and the eye of my soul will be healthy. I will have health and wholeness in my God.
Up in Concord, New Hampshire, you can visit a row of nice old homes built along a ridge. That ridge had in it a number of small caves that residents used for cold storage back in the 19th Century. Every back yard had a small stone opening through which you could place your perishables, just barely large enough for a person to enter at a crawl. In that 19th Century, slaves who escaped that brutal system were spirited northward to make their way into Canada via what was known as the Underground Railroad. Concord became a key station on that Underground Railroad. The townspeople along that ridge connected their little storage cavities, so that escaped slaves could go into one such hole and then find their way to the others and ultimately to the exit that led over the border to safety. The television reporter showing all this put his light into one such slave hole and said, “This is too small. It’s so cramped. Wouldn’t the slaves have been afraid to go down there?” The town historian had an answer: “Oh, they did not go alone. There was always a conductor, somebody who went ahead and carried the light, and the others could therefore trust the light.”
Brothers and sisters, that is exactly what we have. In Jesus Christ we have the conductor, carrying the light before us. He has been here ahead of us. He knows what we are going through, for He has been through it Himself. He understands our anxieties. He knows our deepest fears. Of Him it is said that He knows us better than we know ourselves. So trust Him. Trust Jesus. Trust His light. Connect with Him, receive Him as your savior, your guide, your light, your companion.
Trust the light of God’s word, and know that He is that word made flesh. Trust the light shed by sensitive souls to tell you what you must do, for they are not just any old crowd, but they are the Body of Christ. And most of all trust the light of the Spirit of the living God, who dwells in you, who goes before you, who loves you, and who will not mislead you. This is the audacity of our hope. This is the integrity you can depend on. To know Jesus Christ as your heart’s companion and as the captain of your soul, to know His healthy eye.
“If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” And if it’s light, let it lead.
