Sermon: "What Kind of Lamp?"

4th in the "Trusting God in Transition" series.
Delivered April 20, 2008 (Dedication Sunday) by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 4

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Well, it's an exciting moment to be gathered here to dedicate this building to God's service and to worship together in it.

Let's pray. God, as we go in to this time of worship the part where we get in to your word, that you will help us to continue to have worshipful hearts and obedient hearts, hearts open to you, and to what you want to say. Help us to believe and then to respond. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, it's always on a morning like this when you are going to a worship service that is so different than normal; you know that some things are going to go wrong. And so at the last service what went wrong was that the pastor who was preaching at that service forgot his Bible. Now, I won't mention who that was. It's sort of embarrassing, but I brought it this time. I've got my Bible here. It's an exciting moment. It wasn't easy getting here. There have been a lot of tough decisions that have led to this point. There were a lot of moments when those who were leading the church didn't really know what they were hearing and had to seek God to have confidence. There has been a lot of hard work in getting this building prepared, both in constructing it and then getting it ready for use. There has been a lot of sacrifice on the part of a lot of people. It's another step in our history; a history that has been filled with major steps of trying to respond to God and to obey God.

This congregation has quite a heritage. We are building on a foundation that God has laid upon this place for many years. And we built this building for our use. You can tell it's for our use because when you look around you can tell you know we fill it up reasonably well and we did the last service, but it's for more than us. When we built this place we self-consciously realized that we were building this for people who aren't here yet; people that we don't yet know, people that are on the heart of God, that our in our neighborhoods or in our workplaces and maybe they are not even on our radar yet, but God's eye is upon them. Maybe some of those people are really on our hearts already. Some of them are in our families. Some of them are our friends or people we work with. And some of those people's names are actually written on the floor of this place underneath this carpet. We gathered here and wrote down the names of people that were on our heart, praying to God that the day would come that they would hear the gospel, that they would understand it and respond to it and maybe join us in worship. And now we are here.

And now that this building is built some people might say this place, this building, is now a beacon of light for Towson. They imagine this building is a little bit like one of those searchlights that when I was a kid they use to put them in front of car dealerships or state fairs. They were probably leftover from WWII or something; these gigantic searchlights and they would run them across the skies. You would see them from across town and I can remembering getting in our car, our family and we would drive through the town and try to zoom in on the place where the lights were and then we would realize it was a car dealership and they had a sale. And some people see this worship center as a beacon like that. It is shining out. It's declaring, "See what God has done. See what God is doing." But if they viewed this building a beacon like that they would be wrong, because this building is not the light. It's a great building. We don't even know all the wonderful things we will be able to do here and it's a gift from God. But it will never be a light to this community. It can't be. It's only a building. We are the light. You are the light and Jesus is the one who said that, not me.

And so let's now go in to the gospel of Matthew right now and take a look when Jesus said these very words that we are the light of the world. It comes in the Book of Matthew; it's in the Sermon on the Mount. Chapter 5 and we will begin at Verse 14.

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven."

Jesus says that we are the light and he looks out at his disciples and he says, he compares them, and compares us to being a lamp and you don't light a lamp to hide it, to put it under some kind of cover so you can't see the light. You put it up on a stand so that it can give light to the entire area around it. So God is not lighting up the church in order to hide them, in order to hide the light. Instead, he wants the church to be a lamp that spreads the light out in the area that surrounds us. So we are the lamps that God intends to use, the lamps that God intends to put on a lamp stand and not to hide. And when Jesus mentioned that they were a lamp he wasn't talking about a big searchlight sort of thing, because they didn't even have lights like that then. He was talking about an oil lamp like that; maybe a modern equivalent is something like this, this Coleman lantern. It's a little fluorescent lantern and you plug it in and it charges up and if the power goes off, it turns on. You can use it when you are out camping and it gives off a fair amount of light. You are not going to light up a whole building like this very well, but you can use it very well out camping and many people have one like this. It's ordinary. It's not super bright. It's not super expensive, but it's solid and functional and practical.

And Jesus says to his disciples, that we the followers of Jesus, those who believe in him are God's lamps for the whole world. Now that's an outrageous statement. We are God's lamps; light for the entire world. Now since it was Jesus talking we have to believe that he honestly understood how bad the world was that we are called to serve; how dark the world is that we are called to be light within. So when Jesus looked out at these people, a small group of sweaty, dusty disciples, tax collectors and fisherman and surrounding these disciples was a larger crowd of people just like them, ordinary people, totally unremarkable people. He looks at them and says, "You are the light of the world." He was thinking about the real world. There is a darkness in that world that ultimately is deadly. There is a darkness that breaks up lives and breaks up families; a darkness that exists because our relationship with God is broken. And because that relationship isn't what it should be, that brokenness spills over in to relationships we have with others. It's a world filled with arguments and accusations and violence and greed and war and guilt and sorrow and regret and Jesus sees all of that need, all of that brokenness and he says to his disciples, "You are the light of the world." We are the light of the world. Ordinary folks, we are the lamp that he wants to put on a lamp stand. What makes us special?

This lamp that I decided to use today, this is a special lamp. It doesn't look like it. It looks ordinary, but this lamp will always have a place in our family and I never plan to get rid of it. In 1994, Jonathan was around 12 years old and Jonathan wanted a camping lantern. He found this in a catalog and he said, "Dad, we've got to have this lantern." And he told me all about the wonderful things about it. It's got two lights. You can put it one or two lights. You plug it in and it self-recharges and in addition, it's an emergency lamp. If the power goes off, it will turn on automatically. Now, this was a lot more lamp than I wanted to get Jonathan at 12-years old, you know? I wanted to get him a flashlight essentially; something cheap. I don't know. But he made his case and so ultimately we got this.

And then January 17, 1995 came. It was 5:46 in the morning and the great Kobe earthquake happened. Twenty seconds of experiencing something like a train hitting your house. In those 20 seconds everything falls over, all the lights go out. In those 20 seconds you wonder whether you are going to live through the experience. And just a few seconds later Jonathan comes walking in with the lamp. Yeah! It was the most amazing "I told you so" moment. And for the next few hours of darkness this was our only light. This is what helped us to see where the danger was, where the broken glass was on the floor. This is the very light that helped us find the things like my glasses and things that allowed us to make it through that morning. What makes this so special? Is it because it is so bright? Is it because it's a searchlight? No. It's because it was charged and ready and it was right where we lived. If this wouldn't have been charged and ready it would have been just part of the debris that morning. But since it was charged and ready and it was right where we lived it then became indispensable that morning for us. We, each one of us, have been called to be one of those indispensable lights. Not because we are that bright and not because we are searchlights, not because we have something overtly special about us; we are called to be the light because God wants us to be ready, charged and ready and available where we live, work and play.

And so God wants us to be indispensable for the darkness in somebody else's life. Ready, prepared to shine right where they live, work and play. Now this light includes what we say. It includes the truth that we have heard about Jesus and the things we have experienced in our relationship with him, but that's not the primary thing that Jesus focuses in on in this passage. I want to go to Verse 16. In Verse 16, Jesus says this:

"In the same way, let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."

Good deeds. Character. That's the heart of the light we bring in to the situation where we live. It's a big deal. Because character is not something that you can memorize or rehearse. It's not something you can plan. You know we can plan a single event to impress people. We can plan something that makes us look good for a moment. But that's not what Jesus is talking about here. He is talking about people living with us, working with us. He is talking about the stuff of everyday life. And as we hear what Jesus is saying, as we believe it, as we obey what we hear, day-by-day we become living lights that God can use right where we live. Now that happens all kinds of different ways. Now sometimes it is because God gives us a specific calling and kind of prepares us for something. I think of a good friend that I have, Ben Abell over at Grace Fellowship. Ben got a sense that God was calling him, not just to pastor over at Grace, but to pastor his neighborhood, to be a shepherd of his neighborhood and so he began to pray and then he got a friend together and they walked through the neighborhood and they prayed. And then they eventually started a men's group in their neighborhood and then through that got deeply involved in the lives of people in their community. Light, good deeds, right where they live.

So sometimes it is planned out like that. Sometimes it's a burden that God puts upon us and the path that it takes us, but sometimes it's just being available that makes us light. There was a situation that happened not too long ago that involves some people in our congregation. There was a grad student who was pregnant. Her husband was a grad student and he was away making a presentation and his wife goes in to labor early. Now Dwight Schwartz had said to the family, "If you ever need us give us a call and we will help out." So her husband is gone and the baby is coming early so she gives a call to Dwight, to his cell phone. Now Dwight is in a different state answering his cell phone and by the way it is 4 o'clock in the morning. So then Dwight calls Maria and Maria gets in the car and picks up the woman and takes her to the hospital and is there with the woman for the birth of their child. They were just available. Good deeds. Light.

Sometimes being a light in a situation is what you don't do. I have a friend of mine in Baton Rouge and his name is Ralph Henn. He is originally from the Baltimore area. Ralph is a vice president in a Baton Rouge company and he has all the personality characteristics of a vice president. He is an A-type personality. He is always driving and trying to make things happen. And he's got a moderate amount of patience. And Ralph is in a line at a supermarket and the cashier is clearly incompetent; is just not doing it right and the line is going slow. Things are backing up and he is getting more and more angry and he finally gets up to the front and he makes the decision to put aside his anger and instead he helps her figure out what she is supposed to do to help the line keep going. So he actually has a little training moment with her. Well, the next day Ralph goes to a Young Life meeting where he is a volunteer and as he walks into that meeting, right there is that girl. Ralph came this close to not being a light. But because of that grace and self-control what he chose not to do, that would have been so natural to do, it was a good deed. It was a light.

It's not something that we turn on and off. Being light is made out of stuff of everyday life. We need to always be charged and ready and that his this year's theme verse. Our theme verse comes from Luke, Chapter 12 that says,

"Be dressed and ready for service and keep your lamps burning like servants waiting for their master."

It's a verse that has to do with readiness, being prepared. We need to be prepared. So what kind of lamps are we? Are we charged? Are we ready?

Today we celebrate the fact that God has led us to the place that we have prepared this building and this building is now ready for ministry. We celebrate that today. But at the same time, God has been working in us so that we might be ready in new ways for ministry. I believe we are ready. We are not ready because we have it all together, because we are never going to have it all together; not with the leaders I see, not with the congregation I see, not with the reality that we understand as reformed Christians. We know we will never have it all together. But we are ready because we are seeking God and we are ready because we are seeking an opportunity to be used by God. So being a lamp, brothers and sisters, being a lamp is a high calling. It is an amazing role. You are the light of the world. That is what Jesus has said about you, about me. We are the light of the world. It doesn't require a fancy lamp. It doesn't require that we are the brightest lamp in the bunch. You've just got to be charged and ready. Ready to shine out just in the area immediately around us, where we live, work and play.

So hear it again. This is our charge from Jesus. This is our promise from Jesus. This is our statement about self-identity from Jesus. You are the light of the world.

Let's pray. Gracious God, it's an amazing thing that you've said about us that we are the light of the world. And so now God, we invite you, even as we invite you in to the life of this congregation and to dedicate this building, we invite you to dedicate our lives for your service. For we offer ourselves to you in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2008, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org