LIVING AS EASTER PEOPLE – LUMINARIES

Matthew 5:13-16

Acts 17:22-32

Here’s a riddle for you:  How are runway lights, Christmas Luminaries, Front porch lights and Christ’s Easter People alike?  

The soldier sits in a window seat watching the runway lights grow closer and closer.  After they have docked at their gate, she grabs her duffle bag from the overhead bin and waits anxiously to disembark.  As she enters the main terminal, she is swept up into the arms of her husband.  Then falling to her knees, she gathers her children to her.  She is home.

The walk to the front door is lined with luminaries.  Swaddled in a nest of blankets in a car seat carrier, the newborn is carried along between her mother and father.  Before the young family can even get to the front door of the house, it swings open, and Grandma and Grandpa greet the baby and her parents on the front steps with arms open wide.  The new granddaughter is home.

In the quiet of a summer night, a runaway stands at the end of a long gravel drive.  At the end of the drive, a light beckons from the front porch.  Unseen at this distant, a worried and hopeful father stands in a darkened room, watching the drive.  The runaway is not even halfway up the drive when the father runs from the house to meet him.  The father lifts his son off his feet in a bear hug that melts into tears.  The runaway is home.

Joe and his friend from work, Mike, have lunch together every Thursday whenever possible.  Over the years they’ve talk about life, kids, vacations and sports.  Mike from time to time shares about an answered prayer or about an insight he gained from Bible study or the adult Sunday School class he and his wife attend together.  From time to time, when Joe was going through a rough patch, Mike would listen and then offer to pray for him.  Joe responded with,“Thanks, but no thanks.  That religious stuff might work for you, but it’s not for me.”  Likewise, Joe has declined Mike’s invitation to attend church with him and his family.

Lately, Joe has been feeling restless and unsettled.  He describes it to Mike that it’s “like wearing my shirt backwards.”  Something just isn’t right, but he can’t put his finger on it.  He wonders if his life and his marriage might fall apart.  This time when Mike offers to pray for him, Joe accepts.  Over the weeks, Mike shares more about the difference Christ has made in his life, and Joe becomes curious, curious enough to say “yes” when Mike invites him and his wife to church the following Sunday. 

It's uncomfortable at first, and worship iss unfamiliar and a little confusing, but the people are welcoming and friendly, and Mike and his wife help them get through the service.  Joe doen’t understand why, but he knows he's home.

Sometimes, people don’t understand what they know in their souls until someone puts it into words for them, until someone gives them a name for the yearning they feel.

The name is grace.   God’s love in action through the Holy Spirit is sent out to every human being who ever was, ever is and ever will be.  God through this incredible act of unconditional love begins inviting every person from the time they come into being into a relationship with God.  Before we even know who God is, before we love God, God sends this laser beam of God’s love light into the life of each and everyone of us.

Paul knew that was what was going on in Athens.  As he walked through the city, he noted how systematic the logic-loving Greeks were in their religion.  Just to be sure they didn’t leave any deity out of their pantheon, they included a shrine to an unknown God.  I think that in their response to God’s grace, they got off on the wrong track and tried to find their own answers.  Maybe in their systematic theology, they felt like something was missing, maybe like their tunics were on backwards, and the unknown God was their solution to the yearning of their souls.

Times change, but human beings don’t.  Oh, we might have more information and technology at our use, and we may feel we are far more advanced and far more civilized than those ancient Greek.  Truth is, we do the same things.  Sometimes, people, in trying to respond to God’s grace, set up shrines to idols of their own making:  power, material wealth, status, work, family, and addictive substances and behavior patterns.

So Paul shows up on the scene, lit up like a beacon with the light Christ has filled him with, and gives them words to understand what their souls know.  God, the true God, the Creator of the universe, the one who loves us beyond our understanding, who offered up God’s Son for the forgiveness of our sins and our redemption, does not reside in man-made shrines represented by fancy, carved idols. 

God, through Christ, desires to take up residence in the hearts of human beings.  God desires to dwell in relationship with us all.  God’s grace goes out everyday into this dark and broken world to wounded and restless hearts, inviting them back to where they belong – back home with God.

And as Easter people, we have been chosen to help them find their way home.  We, for the world are the light of Christ.  Like a city shining brightly on a hill drawing the soul-weary traveler out of the night and into hope and wholeness.

How are runway lights, Christmas Luminaries, front porch lights and Christ’s Easter People alike?  We all have the capacity of guiding people home.

So, let our lights shine.