"The True Light"

18-Dec-2011

“The True Light”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world” (John).

John 1:6-9

Candlelighting Service, December 18, 2011

Assumptions

I might be the world’s worst when it comes to assumptions. I told my wife Linda that what I wanted for Christmas was a good set of kitchen knives. The idea came to me at Thanksgiving when I had this bright idea of putting the whole turkey on the table like you always see in magazines. Every other year I carved it in the kitchen with the electric knife. My assumption that carving it on the table would be easy required a good knife.

So I asked for a set of kitchen knives. Now I enjoy shopping about as much as I enjoy walking on hot coals. I assumed Linda would shop for knives the same way I shop for her gifts. Her list says, “sweater.” I walk into her favorite store, find a pretty sweater in her color and size, and make sure I keep the gift receipt. Shopping – done.

The assumption that she would pick out knives like I pick out a sweater is apparently incorrect. My dear wife has spent hours in stores and online comparing brands, colors, durability, prices, and more. She’s invested half of December trying to get the perfect set of knives because of my assumption that she would shop like a man.

One of the joys of having your kids grow up into their twenties and thirties is learning their perceptions of family life growing up. I’m learning from my children that I made a lot of assumptions that weren’t necessarily true. If you want an interesting family conversation at Christmas, ask around the table: “What assumptions do I tend to make without realizing it?”

The meaning of Candlelighting

I also realize I make too many assumptions as a pastor. Take this annual tradition of the Candlelighting service. This is the 72^nd year of this tradition, and my 18^th, meaning that I’ve presided over one-fourth of Corinth’s Candlelighting services. For about the first decade I was probably too worried about messing up a great tradition to ask what assumptions I was making.

I tend to assume everyone gets why we do this. This is certainly a feel-good service. There’s almost no corporate church experience that can compare for warm fuzzies to having a darkened sanctuary gradually fill with light as beautifully dressed angels spread candlelight to the background of Silent Night on the strings. You’ll leave here feeling quite Christmasy.

But if you assume that’s why we have this service, you’re as guilty as I am about assumptions. Every year – perhaps since the beginning, I don’t know, but certainly since before my time – the congregation reads in unison “The Meaning of Candlelighting” – “Christ is the true Light of the world. He shines into our darkness with a light that cannot be put out. All who believe in him have eternal life. As we light our candles, we once more joyfully receive our Savior and promise to light the world with his love.”

Satisfying and credible

That paragraph in our bulletin is based on John 1:6-9, which I noticed this year wasn’t even in our Scripture readings. We skip from verse 5 to 14. We can’t read it all.

John the Gospel writer tells us that God sent John the Baptist to testify to the light God sent into the world. Then he adds, “He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world” (John 1:8-9).

I listened to a great sermon this week by Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He said that religion, in order to endure, must be both “existentially satisfying” and “intellectually credible.” To put it more simply, religion must both feel good and be true.

Christianity feels good most of the time. We’re about forgiveness and love and hope. At no time does the Christian faith feel better than at Christmas, and it’s hard to find a better feel-good service than one like this. When the Christian faith works, when it has positive effects in our lives, that’s part of what makes it endure.

But Keller also spoke of the placebo effect in religion. When researchers test new drugs, some patients get the drug and others get a placebo that looks and feels like the real thing, but has no actual effect on the body. And some patients actually feel better just by thinking they are getting treatment. That’s the placebo effect.

People can come to a service like this and go away with a placebo effect because of its feel good result. It would be a tragic assumption on their part, and on mine, if we believe that lighting candles is why we’re here.

The Christian faith is not just about feeling good. It’s true. What makes our faith intellectually credible? Consider this fact – of all the well-known religious or political leaders in human history only one who claimed to be God is not in retrospect considered to be a nut case. Many people in human history claimed deity, but they were worshipped as God only by a small minority of followers, discredited by time and investigation. They were false lights.

More than two thousand years after his birth, Jesus Christ of Nazareth is widely acknowledged to be a pivotal, if not the pivotal, figure of human history, even by those who don’t worship him. He was anything but a nut case. That man of humility and wisdom accepted worship as God and died for that claim. Those who followed him insisted he was and is God in human flesh.

One of those was a man named John who called him “the true light.” I should never assume you know what that means or what to do about it. Worship him as God. Trust him to overcome the darkness in your life. Believe him for the gift of eternal life. Follow him as your Master. Commit yourself to learn and serve as part of his visible body, the church. Light the world with his love. If you need help with any of this, let me know.

The next song the choir sings will remind us how pervasive light is in the stories and traditions of Christmas – “candlelight, angel light, firelight and star-glow….” I count more than 50 times tonight you will read or hear the word “light.” Please don’t make the assumption that Candlelighting is about candles. It’s about the true light that gives light to everyone. He has come into the world. Amen.