A Pure Eye
Luke 11:33 - 36
Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
33 “No one lights a lamp and puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket, but on
the lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light. 34 “Your eye is the lamp
of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when
it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. 35 “So watch out that the light in you is
not darkness. 36 “Therefore if your whole body is full of light, without any dark
part, it will be wholly illuminated, as when the lamp illuminates you with its light.”
In chapter 11 of Luke, starting on verse 33 and going to 36, we have what I would call
a proverb. It’s basically Jesus telling us that we have to ensure that evil does not enter
our souls. This is a theme that goes throughout all the Gospels and, in fact, the entire
Bible. We must be careful that evil inclination, some of us call it the influence of Satan,
does not infect our souls and bodies. If that does happen and we don’t have repentance,
we could end up not in heaven but elsewhere.
A problem is how do you see the good in the world when the news media only likes to
report on the evil of the world. Let me give you an example. I was appointed to a church
in the West End of the city of York in Pennsylvania. In the United Methodist system,
pastors change positions on July 1. On July 2, I came into the church and was
approached by the janitor, who said that some vandalism occurred on the back of the
building. Someone from the community decided to do some spray painting. The janitor
said that he could remove it. What he didn’t tell me is that he called the local news
agency, Channel 8, and let them know that this happened. I thought it was more
important to call the police so they could find out who did it. Be that as it may.
A reporter from Channel 8 showed up with his camera crew, and before the janitor
cleaned off the graffiti, he made sure he got his pictures and videos of it. He then came
to talk to me. Oh, by the way, I’m not going to tell you this person's name, even though
I still remember it 15 years later. He asked me what I thought about the vandalism. I
didn’t answer that question; instead, I said to him, Why don’t we report the good things
the church was doing?. During that same day, the vacation Bible school started. We had
about 60 kids from the city with us that we could teach about Jesus, who probably
would not hear about Jesus outside of being at our vacation Bible school week.
The reporter looked at me and said, “I only broadcast bad news.” So I looked at him
and said, "So you are not going to tell the people of York and Lancaster about the great
things that we are doing to try to help kids in the inner city to learn how to be good
human beings and serve Jesus Christ.” He looked me in the face and said, “I only report
bad things because that’s what people want to hear.” It was apparent to him that he
believed that if he told stories of the good stuff that was happening, he would lose his
viewership.
During the following weeks, I watched some news broadcasts, and it didn’t matter
which media platform I listened to; 99% of it was bad news. Okay, that percentage is
probably a little too high, but go ahead and sit down and watch 30 minutes of the news
broadcasts, and you will find that most of it, if not all of it, are bad things that are
happening in the world. What happened to telling the community of the wonderful
things that are happening?
When all you hear are the bad things that are happening in your community, you start
to believe that there is no good in the community. It is a very depressing thing. Perhaps
because the news media only likes to tell us of the bad things, that may be causing some
of the depression and mental illness that we see in the world today. Perhaps there are
people rejecting the evil of the world by nonconformance thus feeling that they are
separated from the world and thus forming their own world If you think everything
that’s going to happen in your community is going to be bad and may affect you
negatively, then you might develop some mental problems because where’s the hope
and love? In essence that person develops a new world.
How do we change this? Unfortunately, I have no idea or answer as to how to change
the news media to start reporting good things. I don’t even know if a channel or a
platform of only good things being reported would actually work, but I wish somebody
would try. Unfortunately, I don’t have the resources to do anything like that. And as
I’m thinking about this message, I want to turn it around and say let’s not publicize bad
things, but rather we should publicize good things.
A major concern in the last few years with churches is that there’s been so much
infighting over cultural acceptances, which may or may not be biblical, and that’s your
opinion, that the public can not see the goodness of the dedication and love of Jesus
Christ. Our churches should be out there doing things for the good of the community
and letting the community know that we're doing it.
This can also be taken internally, and you can ask yourself, do you have a pure eye? A
pure eye means that you’re looking for good and that you’re also performing good
works. When we see the evil in the world, do we think about how we can reverse this
order, or do we just accept that it’s out there? I know as an individual it would be
difficult to change the world, especially the attitudes of people. What can we do?
There are organizations that do exist that try to do good and fight evil. One of those
organizations is the Fellowship of Christians and Jews. They try as hard as they can to
bring some joy to God’s chosen people, who have lived impoverished all their lives.
Now this is just one example of such an organization, and there are several others.
Perhaps you could help an organization like this by volunteering for them, or if you
can’t do that, at least financially support them. Unfortunately, organizations that are
trying to help people and do good in the world do need money to do it. What’s sad is
that there are people that give money to organizations to perform evil, and I wish we
could figure out a way to stop that.
One thing we can do as individuals and as a church as a whole is to project goodness
out of ourselves so that when non-Christians see us, all they see is the good in us. I
know that’s a tall order for people even inside the church. But I think it’s something we
should strive for. We have to first learn to work together and love each other and only
see the good in each other. We are going to have discussions and conflicts. We need to
figure out how to work with each other so that we are projecting the pure light of
goodness and love and peace that our Lord Jesus Christ would want us to be projecting.
Jesus was placed on the cross for one major reason. I believe that he was a man of peace
and goodness who walked around and preached in a world of evil. From his death and
resurrection rose the pure light of God, and for each of us that have come to know him
and are following his ways, we can see and feel that light of goodness. The one thing
Jesus does not want us to do is to keep it to ourselves but rather he wants us to go out
into the world and tell everyone about the goodness and love and grace that one receives
by following the ways of Christ. This section of Luke chapter 11 talks about how we
can do that. So I urge you to pull out your Bible and read chapters 10, 11, 12 especially
of Luke’s gospel then go back and read the sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel
which starts in chapter 5 and goes on for a couple of chapters and learn how Jesus
wants us to love each other and care for each other and be there for each other.
