Remembering the Past...
        Planning the Future

    Park Christian Church
                                                                    (Disciples of Christ)

December 14, 2008

Scripture:         John 1:6-8, 19-28

Sermon:           “Pilot Lights”

            The true was coming into the world.  That’s how the Gospel of John puts it.  The true light is coming.  It will enlighten everyone.  The true light is coming into the world.

            Turn with me to the opening of John’s Gospel.  In the very first chapter we’ll read verses 6 through 9 and then 19 through 28.  That’s on page 124 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.

            The true light was coming.

            It ought to make us wonder, then, if there was some other light shining somewhere.  Perhaps light that was not true.  It was the true light that was coming.  And, perhaps, folks were looking at various lights around them and wondering, too, if they were seeing the true light.

            Take John the Baptist, for example.  He was light.  Baptizing.  Calling folks to repentance.  Changing lives.  Connecting them with God.  Was he the One they had been waiting for?  Was he the light shining into the darkness?

            This is the Word of the Lord…

            There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

            This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”  He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”  And they asked him, “What then?  Are you Elijah?”  He said, “I am not.”  “Are you the prophet?”  He answered, “No.”  Then they said to him, “Who are you?  Let us have an answer for those who sent us.  What do you say about yourself?”  He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,

‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’”

as the prophet Isaiah said.

            Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.  They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”  John answered them, “I baptize with water.  Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”  This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            Let’s start this morning with sea turtles.  Graceful creatures.  Large, graceful creatures.  Sea turtles.  Perhaps the most elegant and beautiful of all the things swimming in God’s oceans.

            Julie is fascinated with sea turtles.  There is something majestic and peaceful about them.  They turn my wife ga-ga.  And I admit to loving them as well.

            Several years ago we were down on the beach in North Carolina.  Walking for a few miles together.  We kept noticing along the upper reaches of the sands these areas that were roped off.  Just little places a couple of feet wide.  They were roped off with wooden stakes in the ground and yellow tape like you’d see at a crime scene.  Curious places there along the edges of the beach.

            We stopped to read one of the signs posted above one of these little crime scenes.  And it was a notice to stay clear away from it.  Don’t you dare walk over this place.  It’s where a turtle from the sea has come ashore to deposit her precious cargo of little sea turtle eggs.  And some sea turtle lovers had come to safeguard it from passersby like ourselves.

            We passed these things up and down the beach.  Each one was several hundred yards from the other.  And we mused about how we’d like to see it when those little eggs hatch out the precious little turtles as they make their way back into the waters below.  We’d seen this on TV, you know.  They’re just tiny little things, so vulnerable.  And they use their little flippers to push the sand past them in this incredible struggle of strength and endurance to make it into the waters where they will spend their lives—unless, of course, they get pregnant some day and return to the shore to make one of these nests.

            It turns out, however, that little sea turtles don’t have a great chance at making that far in life.  They are incredibly tasty treats for bigger fish and such.  Only about one in every 10,000 little hatchlings survive all of this.  Each nest has about 200 eggs in it.  So, you can see how all of these nests are very important.

            We came across a group of people gathered around one of these nests on the edge of the beach.  Some of them had set up lawn chairs.  And they were all digging a trench in the sand.  The trench went from the nest all the way down to where the sand was wet and hard.  We had to know what this was all about.

            “What are y’all doing?”

            “We’re making a straight path for the little turtles to find their way to the ocean.  This nest is about to hatch.  Any hour now, we think.”  That’s what this nice older man told us.

            But, I was curious.  Seems like God would have worked all of this out already without any of our help.  I mean thousands of years of living as sea turtles sure seems like they’d be able to do it on their own.  It didn’t make any sense to me.

            “Can’t they make it on their own?”  I was disturbed.

            “Well, used to be that these little guys would follow the light of the moon reflecting off of the water down there.  That’s how they’d find where they were going.  But you see all of this stuff back behind me?  Houses.  The boardwalk.  Stores.  Hotels.  Cars.  It’s an awful lot of light that confuses them.  They end up going the wrong way.  And if we don’t make sure that more of them make it to the water, this species is going to disappear we think.”

            Did you hear that?  The little turtles have been confused by the wrong lights!  They’ve been following after light that wasn’t true.  And now they’re in a real mess.

            The Gospel of John said that the true light was coming into the world.  I wonder if folks were in some sort of trouble for getting confused for everything else that looked light it might have been light.

            It reminds me of something I heard a man say one time.  Well, he said it and somebody else heard it.  I just read it.  But, you get the point.  He said:  “There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God.  We have genuflected before the god of science only to find…”

            Now, you know what genuflecting is, right?  That’s when you bend yourself at the knees in order to demonstrate that you are worshiping something.  When I’d go to church with my Catholic friends they’d stop at the end of the pew and get down on one knee for a second or two.  Sometimes they’d make the sign of the cross.  But, that’s what this guy was talking about.

            He said:  “We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate.”  And he went on like this.  “We have worshiped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short-lived.  We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that”—now listen to this part he said about the god of money—“in a world of possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity.  These transitory gods are not able to save or bring happiness to the human heart.  Only God is able.”

            Hmmm.  It’s just like all of those lights of civilization making the true light of those sea turtles hard to find.  Isn’t it?  It’s hard to see the true light at times.

            Do you know what happened to the man who said these things?  Somebody didn’t like it very much at all.  Lot of folks didn’t like it.  And somebody shot him one April morning right there on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel down in Memphis, Tennessee.  Shot him.  And he died with a dream that he’d never see with his own eyes.

            Now, the story goes something like that for ‘ole John the Baptist, too.  Not everybody went out to Bethany on the other side of the Jordan river to be baptized.  Not everybody thought their sins could be washed away in the water.  Not everybody appreciated what he was doing out there in the wilderness.  And one of those Herods chopped off his head, put it on a platter, and used it for a party favor.

            That’s what can happen.  In big ways and in small ways, folks can snuff out what looks like light.

            But, before any of that happened, John was shining out there in the backwoods.  Shining like a light.  And not everybody was pleased with it, but an awful lot of folks were.  So much so that people back in the big city were taking notice.  “What’s going on out there?  Some kind of trouble?  Somebody else claiming to be the Messiah?  Is this John gonna stir things up for us again?  Make the Romans send armies to crush us?  Who is this man?  What’s going on?

            And so they sent some fellows out there to see what it was all about.  Priests.  Levites.  You know how it is.  They sent out some guys who were team players, but they weren’t all that powerful themselves.  They were looking to see what the commotion was all about.

            “Are you the One?  Who are you?”

            Now, John told us this much already.  So, when we read the story, we already know.  He himself, John that is, was not the light.  But he came to testify to the light.  The true light was coming into the world.  But, we already know that it wasn’t John.

            And he didn’t deny it.  “I’m not the Messiah.  And I’m not Elijah.  I’m not the prophet.  What I am is the voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”

            Now, doesn’t it strike you at this point that he’s just a little like those people out on the beach trying to make straight the way?

            Anyhow, he went on to say, “There’s one coming after me.  And me?  Shoot, fellas.  I’m not worthy to take the sandals off his dirty feet.  That’s what I’m saying.  The true light is coming into the world.  It’s not about me at all.”

            It’s not about me.

            Now, that’s a pretty good model for us.  It’s not about me.  It’s about the true light.  It’s about Jesus.  Seems to me that all of these other confusing lights we’re chasing after want us to believe that it’s really about us.  Holding out promises of happiness and longer life and pleasure.  And the true light says something about a life willing to suffer.  A life willing to be lost for a greater good.  A life that understands pleasure in the smile of a neighbor.

            It’s kind of like the model of those people out on the beach.  They’re just pointing the way to the true light, you know.  Are you?

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)