We Walk in the Light

“You’re not doing the letters of John, are you?” There might be a few rolled eyes or raised brows about this choice, partly because there are some difficult issues here in the epistles of John. But also, because for many, they are relatively unknown. Sure, there are some famous quotes from these letters: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God” (I John 3:1); “Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (I John 4:8); “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18). There’s good stuff there. and maybe we could build a series just around our favorite verses from these letters. We could call it “John’s greatest hits” or something. These epistles are certainly worth our attention. So, while we aren’t looking at these “greatest hits” verses, the texts the lectionary assigns are certainly appropriate for us this Eastertide.

So, this is Low Sunday. Most of us think that means sparse attendance. Or the choir’s Sunday off. Or maybe just time to catch the congregation’s breath after the excesses of the Easter celebration. And in an odd kind of way, that’s not too far off. Not that any Sunday where we are able to worship God is a “low” experience, but there is a traditional sense that, in comparison to the high holy day of Easter, we are now back where we live, still basking in the glow, still living the promise, but reentering the march of days and the living of life. That is why we now have to ask how we shall live. Easter came; Resurrection happened; so what? It’s like that old evangelist who supposedly said, “I don’t care how high you jumped on the night you got saved, I want to know how straight you walked when you came back down.”

I John asks us how straight we will walk in the light of Easter. He has to work up to it, of course. You can’t just leap into the meat of the argument right away. He … time out. He who? John; we call him John because that is the name assigned to these letters. But who was this John? Well, the truth is, we don’t know. Some think it was the John listed in the gospels as one of the original twelve. Others think it was another John. Some lump all the works that bear the name of John onto one person – the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the Revelation to John the Evangelist. But that seems unlikely. Others talk about a community of Christians that may have been started by the apostle John who kept the stories and interpretations that they were told and wrote them down as a community and named them after their founder. We don’t know. And maybe this isn’t a part of the sermon preached on this day or in this series. Maybe we just take the shorthand John and run with it. It seems as good as any. The writer, this writer, this John. He, they, maybe even she, we don’t know. It doesn’t matter here. What matters is whether we are going to listen to the words and learn to walk. How shall we live now that Easter has come? Now that life has changed and Resurrection is real, how do we reflect that new reality as we walk about in this life every day of our existence?

As I was saying before I distracted myself with authorship questions, John takes a moment to get to the point. A classic preacher technique! But it also ties in with the beginning of the Gospel and indeed the whole biblical text: in the beginning. But here it isn’t a reflection on what was, but on what is now revealed. The promise is now open to all; the life is accessible; the gift is within reach because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And the new reality in which we now live is one surrounded by joy. That’s what the writer declares to us in these opening verses.

This new reality carries possibilities and responsibilities. The possibilities include fellowship—two-tiered fellowship at that. We have fellowship with Christ and then we have fellowship with one another. What a great bonus; rather, what an amazing design. We tend to want to focus on the individual. We imagine that faith is a personal thing, an internal thing, a me and Jesus thing. But the Bible consistently reminds us that it is a community thing. We are in this together. We support one another and encourage one another and disciple one another all along the way. We are not alone in our journey of faith. We have fellowship with one another —if we walk in the light.

Seems straightforward, doesn’t it? Just walk. In the light. Simple and straightforward, right? We wish. It is true that the Johannine literature loves the light/dark binary metaphor. It appears in many places and therefore is our biblical precedent for using it. But it is problematic at best. The whole idea that light equals good and dark equals bad leads to a prioritizing of lighter-skinned people over darker-skinned people. And if your response to that statement is to roll your eyes and say we know better than that, you haven’t been paying attention to how such images have been and continue to be used in our divided world. So, given that this has been a stumbling block to followers and still has repercussions in the present day, how should we respond? Simply appeal to our “better angels”? Ignore it and hope it goes away? Change the metaphor for something less contentious? Use it as a teaching point to make sure we don’t make those sometimes-subconscious associations? You know your context and what would be the most appropriate. But we can’t simply gloss it over and say no one would do that with this text, because some have, and some do.

This text is asking about our footprint. What kind of impact do we have on the world around us—the physical and the human? What example do we give of how we are to live in this world? Remember, this isn’t just about you, the individual you, the “you and Jesus” you. This is about the community of faith, the fellowship we have with one another. That idea isn’t simply a bonus for doing good work. Fellowship is at the heart of the faith. It is the sign and signal that we are not left to navigate this discipleship journey all by ourselves. We do it together, in partnership with the whole community of faith. We are part of a body. Yes, we have our individual roles to play, gifts to use, decisions to make, but the more we understand the interwoven nature of human community, the more we get a glimpse of what it means to live in the kingdom of heaven. When we acknowledge that our choices about lifestyle impact people on the other side of the planet, we catch something of what living as one body really means.

This is where the joy is to be found. John, invoking the editorial we, says, “We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete” (v.4). “We”? “Our”? There is communality in the idea of discipleship, of walking in the example of Christ. We live and work in an arena of mutual support, of shared wisdom and communal hope. And we are put back together when we fall apart by the loving arms of a community of faith. Walk, says John, walk in such a way that those around you are enlightened. Walk, says John, walk in such a way that the world is left a better place – cleaner, sustainable, abundant. Walk, says John, because we are people of the Resurrection who know that death is not the final word but a promise of life.

Sermon Illustrations

(Note: Please confirm all appropriate copyright and licensing information, and provide necessary attribution before using these images in your worship setting.)

1. Mycorrhizal fungi networks are hidden underground, but, when uncovered, reveal a deep truth about interconnectedness in forests.

An ecologist named Suzanne Simard discovered something incredible in her years of research about how trees are in relationship with one another. When I first read about this, I wasn’t so sure—“What, trees can have relationships? Trees can be in community with one another? How could that be?” Well, Suzanne Simard’s research really turned my understanding of trees and forests on its head! She writes about the interconnection between trees, facilitated through an underground network of mycorrhizal fungi that grow on their roots. These fungi allow trees to share resources with one another and care for the more vulnerable ones. For example, in a drought, young trees might receive water molecules from older, more robust trees that have enough to share with the younger, more vulnerable ones. This creates strength and security for the whole arboreal community. Because they can share resources, they create a community of mutual flourishing. Suzanne Simard’s book, Finding the Mother Tree, and a novel loosely based on her work, The Overstory by Richard Powers, tell this story in more detail. When dirt is moved aside and root systems are uncovered and revealed, we gain an understanding of the profound interdependence of those organisms. Perhaps this also reveals a deep truth about living in community with humans and all Creation. What would we see if we were to remove the barriers that obscure our connection and reveal instead our interconnected social systems—our family ties, our friends, our congregations, and on a larger scale, our society? What markers would we see there indicating that we belong to one another, that our joy is dependent on your joy, my flourishing on your flourishing? And how can we see and feel this connection to the natural world? What would need to be revealed for us to take that interconnectedness and our kin-dom with Creation seriously?

Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/root-tree-root-tree-nature-276636/ (no license or attribution needed). https://pixabay.com/service/license-summary/.

References:

• Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021).
• Richard Powers, The Overstory (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018).

Guest writer Rev. Kristina Sinks, Evanston, IL (ancestral homelands of the Potawatomi, Odawa [Ottawa], and Ojibwe Tribes), is a provisional deacon in the California-Nevada Annual Conference. She is also a part of the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement.

2. Earthrise reveals the interconnectedness and fragility of our planet.

You’ve all seen this image, right? (if not using images in worship, describe it, or print it on a bulletin.) In December 1968, astronaut Bill Anders captured this photo, and it was the first high-quality color image of the Earth from space. It was soon dubbed “Earthrise.” The cratered moon’s surface is in view, and the sun has illuminated about half of the Earth. The swirling clouds create a marbled effect above the blue of the ocean and the fraction of the African continent visible in the picture. Earthrise is such a poignant image for the themes of “What is revealed?” and “We walk in the light.” Think about it: the sun’s rays travel billions of miles to illuminate the Earth, and the astronauts on Apollo 8 had to travel thousands of miles to capture this incredible image. But even from that distant perspective, the revelation they received was only piecemeal. Not everything was revealed at once; not all could be seen. Half of the Earth isn’t even visible in this picture! But there is something to the newness of perspective, of angle, of distance, that changes how we see something. In this case, this image changes how we see our only home, the only place we know of that can support all life, all human and creaturely history, all joy and sorrow and life and death that we know of. All of it on this small marble floating through space, so fragile and so interdependent. Poet Archibald MacLeish (amazingly, without having seen the image yet) wrote this about what he imagined the experience of seeing Earth from space to be like: “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers [siblings] on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold.” (Repeat for emphasis or put this quote on a screen.) Can you remember when you first saw this image? What did it feel like to see our Earth, our home revealed in this new way? What would it look like to live in the sunlight and knowledge of what is revealed in an image like this one?

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earthrise_-_Apollo_8_%2839292646471%29.png . Attribution: by Justin Cowart on Creative Commons.

Reference:

• Joe Moran, “Earthrise: the story behind our planet’s most famous photo,” The Guardian, December 22, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/22/behold-blue-plant-photograph-earthrise.

Guest writer Rev. Kristina Sinks, Evanston, IL (ancestral homelands of the Potawatomi, Odawa [Ottawa], and Ojibwe Tribes), is a provisional deacon in the California-Nevada Annual Conference. She also is on the Worship Team of the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement.

3. Climate science reveals a prophetic truth about our actions and calls us to live differently.

Through the writings attributed to them, biblical prophets like Isaiah, Micah, and Amos revealed catastrophic circumstances that would turn the Israelites’ lives upside down if they didn’t heed the prophets’ warnings. Are there similar prophetic voices speaking to us today, warning about the already existing and worsening threats of a changing climate? I think so. Over the last fifty years, meteorologists have revealed patterns of global temperature changes; biodiversity research has indicated the beginning of the Sixth Great Extinction; and photographic surveys of glaciers have documented the incredible pace of the melting of great ice sheets that store much of the world’s fresh water. The work of climate scientists in these last decades has given us information about the stakes and harm of our continued dependence on fossil fuels. What if we consider this information to be the great, catastrophic prophecy of our time? Think of the contemporary documents and texts we might compare to the works attributed to the Hebrew prophets.

• The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which every few years proclaim that our circumstances are increasingly dire. (North America fact sheet here.)
• Works like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson from back in the 1970s raised concerns over our use of pesticides.
• Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth warned about the impact of climate change years ago. (See the recent CBS Mornings interview on this on YouTube.)

The information that the prophets (the ancient ones and the contemporary ones!) reveal is meant to move us to change something about how we’re living. Perhaps we need to take this time as a congregation to see how we’ve contributed to the climate crisis and what changes we could make to reduce its impact. Maybe we need committed prayer partners who can help us form an understanding of how God is calling us to respond to these prophetic warnings. Perhaps our discipleship groups or Christian education classes could spend time developing disciples who care deeply about protecting and preserving God’s Creation for future generations. Perhaps our Bible studies and our sermons must continue to share the hard truths of what lies ahead in the climate crisis. Perhaps our trustees or administrative board could commission a task force to see how we could reduce our energy usage or invest in renewable energy.

Sources of images/graphs: Temperature change graph, change in wildlife population sizes (scroll down), glacier photographic surveys.

References:

• National Centers for Environmental Information, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/land_ocean/all/9/1850-2023?trend=true&trend_base=10&begtrendyear=1850&endtrendyear=2023.
• “A Warning Sign: Where Biodiversity Loss Is Happening Around the World,” World Wildlife Magazine (Summer 2021, https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2021/articles/a-warning-sign-where-biodiversity-loss-is-happening-around-the-world.
• Living Planet Report, 2022, World Wildlife Fund, https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/.
• Living Planet Report, 2020, World Wildlife Fund, https://files.worldwildlife.org/wwfcmsprod/files/Publication/file/279c656a32_ENGLISH_FULL.pdf?_ga=2.83967385.1213756320.1698197690-2033335494.1697422229.
• “Climate Change 2022,” IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/.
• “Fact Sheet: North America—Climate Change Impacts and Risks,” IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/outreach/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FactSheet_NorthAmerica.pdf.
• “Rachel Carson: Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification Poster,” ACS Publications, https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/rachel-carson-silent-spring/rachel-carson-poster.html.
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
• Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2006).
• Fifteen years after "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary, Al Gore speaks about climate change.

Guest writer Rev. Kristina Sinks, Evanston, IL (ancestral homelands of the Potawatomi, Odawa [Ottawa], and Ojibwe Tribes), is a provisional deacon in the California-Nevada Annual Conference. She is also part of the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement.