If You’ve Got it, Flaunt It

       My friend Melinda was suddenly struck blind one night in Africa .  It wasn’t the result of river blindness or dengue fever.  It was caused by drugs – or by mixing the wrong drugs.   At least that’s what she thought.

       Melinda had taken Melatonan to help regulate her sleep after a twelve hour shift in time zones.  But irregular sleep wasn’t her only problem.  If she’d been in Mexico it would have been called Montezuma’s Revenge.  I don’t know what they call it in East Africa .  In any case, she accepted the offer of a Mexican herbal remedy from our own Debbie Lee.   Then she went to bed.

       What Melinda didn’t know was that the generators for our safari tent camp were turned off at ten p.m.   Everyone but Melinda got the memo.   So when she woke up in the dead of night and couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face she rolled over to turn on the light.  Nothing happened.  She couldn’t see.  Click!  Click! Click! Nothing!

       In a growing panic, she stumbled and banged her way to the bathroom at the rear of the tent and threw the switch.  Again, nothing happened.  She groped for the small flashlight she had seen by her bed and pushed the button.  Again, nothing.   The batteries were shot – but she didn’t know that. 

       Her worst fears were realized.  Mixing drugs in such a casual way had turned off the light in her eyes.  Melinda cried out, “I’m blind, I’m blind.”   Bruce, her husband, rolled over and said, “Huummh.”   Carol and I, in the next tent heard a plaintive cry but thought it was the sound of a animal victim of a prowling leopard somewhere in the distance.  It was that unearthly. 

        Imagine her relief when her hands landed on her digital camera.  She switched it on with a last desperate hope – only to be greeted by the soft light of the display. 

       We usually don’t think much about light.  It’s all around us most of the time.  We have light in our homes, our public buildings and on our streets.  We have lights in and from our cars.  Light is hard to escape.  It is actually seen as a source of pollution.  That is why observatories have to move further and further away from the cities in order to penetrate the nighttime sky.

       It wasn’t the same in the First Century.  Most of the lamps used by ordinary people were a lot like this one – a simple wick resting in a reservoir of oil.   Light in the darkness was a rare thing.

       That is why it is so significant that Jesus, in John 8:12 calls Himself the light of the world.  He promises that the people who follow Him will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.  Light causes growth.  Light reveals what is clean and what is dirty. And, in the context of Jesus’ promise, light guides.

       Those key functions of light – growth, revelation and guidance – are also a part of the ministry Jesus attributes to us as His people in Matthew 5:14-17.  After Jesus speaks the beatitudes He tells us, “You are the light of the world.” 

       “Yes, Jesus says, I am the light of the world.  But so are you.”    Just as the rays of the sun are reflected off the moon to light the night, so the character and love of Jesus are to reflect off of us to bring light to people’s paths.  As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, we have be reconciled to God and now we have been made ambassadors to bring about that same wholeness for others.  

       Last June the Moorpark Melodrama presented a farce titled “Xorro the Beebop Bandito.”  Carol and I went to see it, as did some of you, partly because it featured three members of our own Barrymore family, the Ormsbees.  A couple of weeks later a pastor friend of mine talked about having driven by the Melodrama Theater on a Saturday afternoon.  He said, “There was this guy out front dressed as Zorro waving at people.  I thought, ‘What a terrible job.’  But later that evening I went by and there was a long line out front.  So whatever he did had an impact.  He said, “It got me thinking about how scripture says that we are we are to clothe ourselves in Christ – and that we should seek to be as attractive and energetic in bringing Him to the world as this guy was in bringing Zorro.”

       Now he was not suggesting that Christians should put on robes and fake beards – and maybe a halo apparatus up top – and wave at passing cars.  But we are designed to reflect the light of Christ.  

       As E. Stanley Jones writes about our Christian vocation in How to Be a Transformed Person:  “We stand with unveiled face continuously gazing at the face of Christ as the center of our attention and love, and we are gradually and continuously changed into the likeness of Christ, thus proceeding from one degree of glory to another, the Spirit within us being the silent Artist who makes us into His image.  It is a breath-taking conception and so simple!  And yet how profound!

       “First of all,” Jones continues, “it is sound in that it gets you to look beyond yourself to another.  It frees you from self-preoccupation and gets you to look at someone outside yourself.  All the cults that get you to look within to discover Christ within you end in self-preoccupation with your own states of mind and emotion.  As someone has said, ‘If Smith worships the divinity within Smith, he will probably end in worshipping Smith.’  In any case, he is tangled up with Smith.  (The Spirit) gets our gaze fastened at the right place - the face of Christ.  That fulfills the law of losing your life and finding it again.  The attention is important, for whatever gets your attention gets you.  Christ gets your attention, so He gets you.  And what a getting!”

       Jesus says two things about light in Matthew 5.  He tells us first that light inevitably draws attention to itself.  If the light is on, it will be noticed – especially if it is in a place of prominence.  “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” 

       Now Jesus speaks these words on a hillside by the Sea of Galilee .  Most of the towns like Capernum nestle along the shores of the lake.  But over Jesus’ shoulder the people can see the town of Safed perched on a high hill above the lake.  Jesus is not using a chance analogy here.  I suspect that as He talks about the city on a hill, He turns and points up at Safed.   “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” 

       And even if you could hide the light, what would be the point?   “No one lights a light and then places it under a basket but places it where it can give light to the whole house.”  We’ve got it.  We need to flaunt it.  We need to let the light shine before people so they can see our good works – the way we live our lives – and give glory to God.  We don’t glorify ourselves in all this but we do glorify the God who reflects His light off of us to His world.   We show the good works that He enables in us.

       I read recently about another blind woman in Africa – but this time a real one.  This woman discovered the power of the gospel in her life. Overwhelmed with gratitude, she wanted to do something for Jesus and the Kingdom.  But she was blind and seventy years of age; therefore her contributions did not seem to be very significant.  She was uneducated, but she came to the missionary with her French Bible and said, “Would you mind underlining John 3:16 in my Bible in red?”  The missionary was very intrigued to see what she was going to do.  The woman took her Bible and sat in front of a boys’ school in the afternoon.  When school was dismissed, she would call to a boy or two and say to them, “Boys, come here please.  Do you know French?”  Very proudly, they said that they did.  Then she would ask, “Please read to me this passage underscored in red in my Bible.”  They did.  Then she would ask, “Do you know what it means?”  They would say, “No, we don’t know.”  And she would tell them the story of Jesus.  Twenty-four young men became pastors due to the work of this blind woman. They were touched by the light in her which Christ brings.

       Jesus has done something wonderful for us and He calls us to allow Him to work through us to do something wonderful in the lives of others.  That may be over seas in our mission work in Kenya , the Ukraine , Costa Rica , Mexico and the many other places where our money and people go.  It may be as close as the people next door.  

        Jesus says, we have it to give.  Don’t hide it.  Flaunt it.  That’s the only way it will do any good.