2020 has been a particularly dark, dreary and fearful time for many in our city and our nation—from the endless bushfires that quite literally darkened the skies, to a virus that has captured the imagination (and fear) of many. Like it or not, this coronavirus will impact life for the foreseeable future.
In our recent sermon series in the book of Acts we have been exploring the beginnings of a movement that changed world history: the church. The dynamics of the early church and its exploding influence on the first-century world have caused us to reflect on our own engagement with the twenty-first-century world.
Take the famous story of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9.1–19). In that story there are obvious themes of light penetrating the dark.
Saul sees a light flash from heaven (Acts 9.3) that flaws him, and he hears the voice of the once dead Jesus. But what is most surprising is that rather than condemn him, Jesus commissions him for service. He says of Saul:
This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel (Acts 9.15).
Having seen the light himself, Saul is then required to reflect it to a dark and fearful world.
I remember as a kid being shocked when I learnt that the moon doesn’t have any light in it. There is nothing shiny in it. It’s just a clump of dust and rock (pardon my lack of scientific knowledge). This shocked me because sometimes on a cloudless night, as I stood on my bed and peered out of my window at the night sky, the moon was so bright it would light up the night sky.
Saul is called and commissioned by Jesus to be like the moon. This new way of being for Saul taps into a great theme of the Bible. The prophet Isaiah spoke of one to come who would be a light to the nations (Isaiah 49.6). Jesus came and said, ‘I am the light of the world’ (John 8.12), and now he says to Saul—go and shine as a light to the gentiles.
Saul’s post-conversion life is a life lived for others; a life that reflects the light of Jesus into a dark, dark world. I’ve not met another Christian with a story like Saul’s, but I’m reminded that all of us share a similar story. For all who call on the name of Jesus have seen the light, and we are all called to shine brightly as a city on a hill—to be a new movement with a new way of being.
It seems to me that right now there are some really obvious ways we can reflect that same light that led Saul into a dark, dark world.
At a personal level, we can shine a less panicked, less fearful way of being. When we draw upon the endless spiritual stockpiles that we have in Jesus, perhaps it would cause us to be less panicked, less fearful and more concerned with the interests of others.
This would enable us to reflect a community that doesn’t exist for its own interests but for the interests of others. The church would be less concerned with stockpiling toilet paper and more concerned with caring for the most vulnerable people in our city: the sick and the elderly. What effect might this way of being have on our city? It may just look like a light shining into a dark room.
It’s also worth noting that this way of being is not new for Christians.
The early church faced a far greater threat in the early fourth century. The world had already been engulfed by a devastating war and famine when a plague broke out around the region of Caesarea. People did what people continue to do—they were gripped by fear, panic and self-interest, and so many fled the city and went into the countryside. There was one group that offered a different way of being: the church. Eusebius, a historian and bishop of the church wrote:
All day long some of them [the Christians] tended to the dying and to their burial, countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered together from all parts of the city a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all.
Eusebius, The Church History, trans. Paul L. Meier (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007), 293.
If you’ve ever been to a baptism service at St Paul’s, or another church, you may have noticed this theme of light and dark. Baptism is all about commissioning someone to this new way of being. So, fittingly, we end the baptism with this commissioning:
God has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.