The Light of the World

This sermon was first given at our Sunday morning service on 9th February 2020. The Gospel reading for that morning was Matthew 5:13-20.

More years ago than I care to remember I was in a school production of Godspell. I played Father Abraham as a tiny four-foot-nothing 12-year-old with a Charlton Heston-style American accent. In my head, my voice was deep, mid-west and drawling, but – as my voice really hadn’t broken by then, I probably actually squeaked most of my way through my speech and my song! 

It’s very funny how I can still remember all the lyrics and my lines – words I learnt over 25 years’ ago – but if you were to ask me to remember any of the things I was supposed to be learning and storing in my long-term memory at school, I would draw a complete blank! But the words to a musical I was in in 1991? Yup, I’ve still got them down-pat. Word-for-word.

Don’t worry though – I won’t subject you to a solo of ‘Learn your Lessons Well’ just now…

The reason, though, that I’ve been thinking about that production is there’s another song in Godspell called ‘Light of the World’ that’s been in my head all week after reading this morning’s gospel. The whole musical is based on St Matthew’s gospel, and that song is specifically based on this morning’s passage.

It’s been my ear-worm – “you are the light of the world, you are the light of the world, but if that light’s under a bushel, it’s lost something kind of crucial; you gotta live right to be the light of the world”.

At another time in the church season, perhaps in a different year, we might instead be reading St John’s gospel. In John, we have the more famous thinking about the light of the world. For John, the light of the world is Christ. But this isn’t another time in the season, and it’s not a different year, and today we’re reading from Matthew’s gospel instead. And in Matthew’s gospel, Christ specifically addresses his followers and tells them that they are the light of the world.

St John and St Matthew were writing their gospels for different reasons. John wanted to espouse a theology – to tell the world something about the nature of Christ – that he was there in the beginning, the Word of God, and the light of the world, begotten way back in the book of Genesis at the beginning of time before the sun or the stars. John is absolutely correct, of course, but that is not the interpretation for our time.

Our time today is the time for Matthew’s reading. Matthew isn’t bothered about giving us a theology. He may have his eyes focussed on Heaven and the infinite, but his feet are firmly on the ground, in the here and now. Instead of the theory, Matthew wants to tell us about practice. Instead of telling us something high and mighty about a theology of God, Matthew wants to tell us something down to earth about Christ’s disciples. He wants to tell us something about us; about you.

You are the light of the world.

I think that’s a really important message for us today. For Matthew, Christ is not the light of the world, you are.

You are the light of the world.

And that is really important for our time; because the world today needs light.

The world today is dark. We live in a world where those with enough money and power can pay for constant and subtle propaganda to drip-feed into everyone's daily Facebook, Twitter and news-feeds, enough to sway votes and elections around the world, a world where the ability to win is prized more highly than morality or honour, so much so that it enables winners to be acquitted by their parties of things that even a child could see they were clearly guilty of, a world where politicians with proven unrepentant racist and lying behaviour can be hailed as heroes by the public, so long as they deliver what the public voted for, and a world where governments will endanger the public by covering up international health crises and castigate and blame whistle-blowers for trying to warn others of that very danger.

It is a world deeply, deeply in need of light. 

It is a world in need of you.

Does that sound too much responsibility? Does it sound more than you are able to give? Is Christ asking too much of us? Who are we to change this dark world?

Who are we? We are light. 

As we hear said to ordinary people so many times in the gospels, do not fear! Christ is not asking anything of us - he is telling us something about ourselves. You do not need to try to be the light of the world, Christ says you are the light of the world. And light, no matter how dimly it glows, always changes darkness.

You are the light of the world, Christ says, so don't hide it. You need do nothing but not pretend.

As the Godspell song continues, "let your light so shine before men, let your light so shine; so that they might see some kindness again. We all need help to feel fine."

The world needs your light. It needs your kindness. It does not take light as bright as a thousand suns to show a bit of kindness. A dim glow can change the world.

Light, even light hidden under a basket, breaks through. It finds gaps and seeps around edges. It penetrates blinds and curtains, and difuses into even the darkest of corners. And light is what you are. All you need to do is shine, however brightly you can, just shine. Shine at church, shine at home. Shine when working and when resting.  Shine in whatever circumstance in which you find yourself. Shine, as a light in the world, to the glory of God the Father, and let your light so shine.

Amen.