Lent is one of the primary seasons of the Christian calendar. But this year that phrase "primary season" has a different meaning. Lent may be a primary season of prayer and fasting, repentance and introspection in a theological context. But in 2008 this is "primary season," which means something very different in a political context.
No matter how apolitical you may be, it has been impossible to avoid the 2008 "primary season." The pious pronouncements of the endless parade of political pundits can become like fingernails on a blackboard. But the close numbers within both parties have made the 2008 "primary season" more like an old-fashioned horse race, and we can't wait for the next "There's off!"
The great thing about a close race is that suddenly everyone is important. When else do Iowans get to be trendsetters? Who cares about Arizona, besides Arizonians, except in a close primary year? How else could Alabama, Kansas, and Washington find common ground but on a primary vote counting day? Suddenly our sprawling country takes on the face of a small town. Everyone is important. Everyone has a say. Anyone could tip the scales.
Anyone here grow up in a small town? You know that the blessing of living in a small community is that everyone knows the secrets of everyone else. Anyone who grew up in a small town knows that the curse of living in a small community is that everyone knows the secrets of everyone else. Everyone keeps an eye out FOR one another. Everyone also keeps an eye ON one another. Familiarity breeds both contentment and contempt.
The same way our political primary season has seemed to shrink the contours of our country to one "small town," so Information Technology, known as IT, have shrunk our whole planet to a small town culture. Internet and instant messaging, twenty-four hour international news feeds, text messages from anywhere to anywhere, have managed to create a real (if uncomfortable) "global village."
Thomas Friedman is right: the world is flat. Everybody knows everybody else's business. And we seem to think that we have a RIGHT to know everybody else's business. Look at the swarm of speculation that flew about when the young Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead. The media formed a feeding frenzy around every aspect of Ledger's life and family, making his tragic death the lead story on every newscast. Eventually the news stories focused on how many news stories were being done about Ledger. Any veil of privacy was immediately torn down as we demanded we had the "right" to know everything about the young man's life and death.
True small towns--not unlike the Cold War era---operate under the MAD law of "mutually assured destruction." Small towns manage to function and thrive because its residents know the law of the land--"if you tell my secrets, I'll tell your secrets." And there is also another law of the land: even though I know your secrets, there is such a thing as "none of my business."
What the global small town seems to have abandoned is the sense that darkness and light are part of the essential human condition. Wherever you find a human being, you find a potential "child of light," but you also find a "child of darkness."
To be human is to have secrets. We all have secrets.
The Ephesian author in today's epistle text is not trying to "out" all the deep, dark secrets that make up scar tissue on our souls. Christians are not called to be tabloid tattletales or some sort of pure-hearted paparazzi. Calling out shortcomings, catching others in sinful situations -- definitely NOT the business of the "children of light."
Our business, the business of those who have been graced by the "light," is to "find out what is pleasing to the Lord." And we don't have to wonder what that means: "pleasing to the Lord." For Ephesians makes "what is pleasing" simple and straight-forward: "what is pleasing to the Lord" is "all that is good, and right, and true" (v.10).
"Good, and right, and true." Lives of goodness, righteousness, and truth: that is what it means to live as children of the light.
It is highly likely that these Ephesian Christians were being accused of dark deeds in secretive societies. Especially suspect was the Christian penchant for "loving one another"--a mandate that the pagan culture around them read as an invitation to sexual license and general licentiousness.
In their defense the Ephesians epistle does not suggest that Christians take their own turn at name calling--blatantly bean-counting the sins of their Gentile neighbors. Instead the Ephesians epistle counsels Christians to so fully inhabit their new identity as "children of light" that they reflect only goodness, righteousness, and truth. In that way our lives will reflect the very relationships of God. Ephesians suggests that by our living a "light" life, the dark deeds of others would come to light without our ever having to name them, their shadowed essence standing in dark contrast to the light.
Our mission is not to name or blame the darkness. Our mandate is to live and love the light. Darkness is not banished by judging it or naming it darkness. Darkness is banished when the light "outs" it and out-measures it, when the light finds its way into every corner and cubbyhole of life.
First-century Christians found themselves accused of immorality by their uncomprehending pagan neighbors. Twenty-first century Christians increasingly find ourselves the target of slanderous scrutiny by an army of "new atheists" and an uncomprehending post-Christian, postmodern culture. The new best-selling book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
(2007) gives in chilling detail how this emerging culture looks at Christians and the church. The biggest bone of contention publically gnawed by aggressive UnChristians is the accusation that we are mean, judgmental, boring and ugly people. In other words, the world sees us as failing on all counts to live according to the "good, the right, and the true."
I repeat: it is NOT our job to counter-attack "unChristians," to trot out lists of bad behavior found among those who don't follow Jesus. Instead it is our mission to so embody the qualities of a transformed life that we cannot be missed. It is our mandate to shine our light so that all will see good works and glory God.
Let me leave you with a way of thinking about how Christians are to function in the world.
Do you have "IT?" No, I don't mean IT inventions and innovations. In some circles, "IT" stands
for Information Technology, and in some circles, it is thought that IT will save us. IT won't.
But yes, I do mean the "IT" that brought the house down at Madison Square
Garden at the close of the 2008 Westminster Kennel Club Best in Show ceremony. For the first time ever, a beagle won. In fact, the last time a beagle even made it to the final round was in 1939. You could almost hear in the heavens another misunderstood beagle, Snoopy, slapping Linus and Lucy and singing for joy, "Ain't nothing like a hound dog."
When asked what made this fifteen inch, three-year-old beagle so special, the response was the same: "He just has it." The judge, Dr. Donald J. Jones, said of Uno, "He's the most perfect beagle I've ever seen... Look at his face, you melt right down."
Hollywood crowns a new "It" actor every year--the "It" girl or the "It" guy--someone who projects that mysterious "star" quality on-screen and off.
Why do the words and actions of one candidate stand out and strike us as different? Because that candidate has "It."
Our Ephesians text this morning makes the case that being a disciple of Jesus means that we have access to the ultimate "It" factor. The spirit of Christ, the divine essence of goodness, righteousness, and truth, has been gifted to us through the grace of God. We have experienced the saving presence of Christ. We are "in the Lord." We can have that undeniable, unmistakable "It" factor in our lives--the "It" of goodness, the "It" of righteousness, the "It" of truth.
If we have been transformed, then we should project that mysterious "It" to others. The mystique of Christ is what makes us "children of light," is what brings "It" to life.
If the Christian identity has become linked with mean-spiritedness, with ugly attitudes, with judgmental tirades, then we have failed to bring the light into the world.
Have we lost "It"?
Do you have "It"?
Would you like "It"?
In the words of someone who has "It," and who lived it during the darkest days of apartheid of South Africa, here is Desmond Tutu expressing the essence of "It:"
Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than fear,
light is stronger than darkness
and life stronger than death.
Have we lost "It"?
Do you have "It"?
Would you like "It"?
Animations, Illustrations, Illuminations, Ruminations, Applications
Although Nassau Presbyterian Church pastor David A. Davis (Princeton, NJ) didn't have "It" in mind when he wrote this (in A Kingdom We Can Taste: Sermons for the Church Year [Eerdmans, 2007], 18), you can you adapt and adopt this to illustrate the "It" factor:
"I see it in the faces of the men and women standing in the cold at 7:00 am, waiting for the church to open to go to an AA meeting, deciding daily to live another day of hopeful sobriety.
I see it in the eyes of the young parents of a handicapped child, determined to live with hope and possibility instead of despair.
I see it when ninety-year olds put on their Sunday best and, as they have done every Sunday for nine decades, go to church, walk to church in all kinds of weather, to be part of God's faithful people to be reminded and to bear witness to the fact that the world is different now.
I see it when the test comes back positive and a brave man or woman makes a difficult decision about treatment and then bravely decides to live every minute of life, every day.
I see it when at the funeral we say, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, yet shall they live" and a grieving spouse who faces a new and completely unexpected future."
Manfred Kets de Vries tells the following story about what CEOs actually do:
"A woman went to a store to buy a parrot. Entering the store and seeing a particularly handsome specimen, she asked the proprietor, 'How much is this one?' 'Two thousand dollars,' he replied. 'That's a lot of money,' said the woman reluctantly. The owner said, 'Ah, but he speaks German, French, Italian, and Spanish and knows everything about the regulations of the common market.' The woman shook her head, 'Too expensive,' she said.
She looked around a bit more and found another bird she liked. 'How much is that one?' she asked. 'Three thousand dollars,' said the proprietor. 'It speaks Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic and is completely prepared for the Twenty-first Century.'
The woman looked up and saw another parrot sitting alone on a perch. 'How much is that one?' she asked. "Five thousand dollars,' the owner responded with a touch of pride. 'My Lord, that's really expensive,' the woman exclaimed. 'What does he do?' The owner said, 'He doesn't do a thing, but all the other parrots call him chairman.'"
Manfred Kets de Vries, The Leadership Mystique (Prentice Hall, 2001), 73-74.
Here's a 90-year-old with "It."
"Mary Fasano's parents pulled her out of the eighth grade so she could work in a cotton mill in Rhode Island. Fifty-five years later, Mary decided to go back to school. She went to high school at night, and at 71 years old, Mary Fasano got her high school diploma.
Then, Mary enrolled in Harvard University's extension program and took one course at a time. Mary commuted twenty miles to Cambridge every week, every semester; every year; for seventeen years!
In June 2003, Mary Fasano graduated from Harvard University at the age of eighty-nine."
Carmen Mariano, "Reach for the Stars," Vital Speeches, LXX (01 October 2004), 762.
Do you have a "ditty bag" to keep you with "It"?
"One of the most memorable talks I ever heard given by a layman was given by Don Gregg some years ago at our Wednesday Morning Men's Breakfast. Don had been a sailor who had worked in the Gulf of Mexico on large oil tankers. The whole theme of his talk was describing his sailor's 'ditty bag.' I'd never heard of such a thing and was fascinated as he described a small bag used by sailors for carrying toilet articles and sewing equipment. He then told the story of his own life. He described how as a youngster he was exposed to godly influences in his home and church. Then, in his college years, he drifted away, failing to grow in his faith. Don talked about his spiritual ditty bag, how he had come back to the Lord and how he needed to keep it filled, daily, with the things of God."
John A. Huffman, Jr., "Essential Qualities for a 21st Century Faith: Nurture," 7 October 2001, St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, California