Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

1 John 1:5-10

I’d like you to hold out your hand and find your shadow. We have lots of light sources so you might have to look for it, maybe move your hand around. Then, raise your other hand when you have found your shadow. By a show of hands, we can agree, we all block the light.

We all block the light, the light of the sun, s. u. n. Our body’s block sunlight any and every time we are in it. Turn sideways and we might block less but it is our nature to block it.  I think that in a similar way, we block Christ’s light every time we are in it. It is not just that we block Christ’s light when we fail to love others or when we act selfishly. It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. We all block the light, all the time. That just about sums up our Scripture passage for today.

1 John 1:5-10.

5 This is the message we have heard from God and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

I want to try restating a couple of those verses and mix them up with our metaphor of blocking the light and see if I can come up with something intelligible. “If we say that we do not cast a shadow, we only deceive ourselves. If we acknowledge our shadow, God, will make accommodations for the ways we block his light and he will clean us up so we reflect more of him than we block.”

It is important to acknowledge our shadow. Thinking highly of ourselves and being insensitive to others are often at the core of who we are and frankly, we make better doors than windows. This is not to say that we are doomed to be bad people. It may just be that we are oafish or stubborn, unaware people. I love the story that Dr. Lewis Smedes, an ethics professor, tells about himself. He and his wife had gone to a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in an intimate theater. It so happened that the at the very same time the play began, there were exactly two minutes left to play in the deciding game of the semifinals in the NBA championship playoffs. Lew’s team, the Los Angeles Lakers was playing the Portland Trailblazers and the score was tied as the curtain went up.  Knowing that possibility could happen, he had smuggled a walkman into the theater, put on the earphones and listened to the play by play call of the Lakers’ broadcaster while he watched the first scene of the tragedy of Julius Caesar unfold. He might have gotten away with it if his wife hadn’t glanced at him. He thought she wanted to know the score. He intended to whisper it to her but the crowd was screaming in his earphones. To make himself heard over all that racket he yelled, Eighteen seconds to go. Lakers are down by a point! Fifteen rows ahead of him, startled patrons turned around. Mark Antony missed a cue. For days, he felt like a fatally flawed person. He was ashamed for being an inferior human being but eventually he was just embarrassed for being, as he called himself, a nincompoop.

If the light had been on in that theater, Lew Smedes would have blocked it. We cast shadows but we do not have to live in shadow. Evidently, John was writing to Christians who were satisfied to live in shadow. They lived with their habits and attitudes, actions that blocked the love of Christ but just kept going to church assuming that they and God were golden. They didn’t need to change a thing. To them, John wrote, ⁶If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie. We lie to who? I’d say first and foremost to ourselves. Thankfully, we don’t have to settle for that. We don’t have to live as if brokenness is our only reality and therefore walk in darkness.  We can allow his light to shine on those trouble areas. We can walk in the light. In fact, John goes on to say that the key to having fellowship with each other, the connection and community that we talk about so much in church, the only way that is truly possible is when we, together, walk in the light.

We can see in the light. We see each other and ourselves. We see each other’s brokenness. What usually happens in your settings when people know someone has anger issues or may be difficult or for some reason isn’t trusted by the rest of the group? If we simply raise defensives against each other’s issues, or we say to ourselves that we are fine, they are the one with the issues, what would our text tell us, we are deceiving only ourselves and real fellowship can’t exist. Once we stop deceiving ourselves and recognize that, each in our own ways, we block the light, our text says, the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. In another place the Bible says, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. God can and will address the shadow in us.

Look at verse nine. ⁹If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. For many years I read that as a mathematical equation, we confess our sins, he forgives us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I confess, I am forgiven ….then I sin again, I confess, I am forgiven, then I sin again, repeat until dead.  Can anyone else relate to that experience? Let me ask you a question. How long does it take to confess and be forgiven? Is it instantaneous, a minute, five minutes? I always thought so. Just long enough to name my sin and say the words, Lord please forgive me. But, that equation leaves me open and vulnerable to doing the same thing over and over again. And, that kind of thinking tends to keep us focused on our few sins that are obvious to us. Obvious sins are the kind we don’t want anyone to know about. Sins that are vices as defined by different groups differently. In some parts of Christianity those sins have been things like smoking and dancing. We could name quite a few vices available to us today that we would not appreciate a show of hands for.

The problem, at least for me, is that by focusing on those obvious issues, the ones I am well aware of and feel guilty about, I think I may be missing ways I block the light that I don’t notice, but which are obvious to others. These are things that are not so easily confessed and eliminated. These are behaviors of mine, maybe developed over decades based on opinions I have or positions I hold or even fears and doubts I hide. For instance, it wouldn’t be so simple to confess a habit of responding sarcastically to any disrespect of my authority. I’m not sure that I recognize the need to confess that all their lives, I have always turned dinner conversations into a teaching moment for my two daughters, to the point that they may be tempted to roll their eyes when I start to say something serious. I can tell you this, I really don’t want to keep doing that. The practice of confess, forgive, repeat, is a curse, a chain I want to break, not relive.

Does John offer us any hope in this text? Thankfully, yes. The mathematical equation of verse nine is preceded by verses 6 and 7, while we are walking in darkness, and if we walk in the light. Walking takes time. There is a part of the forgiving and cleansing work of God that is a process of change rather than an instantaneous rinsing off.

I’ve recently started a personal experiment that is helping me see the light and understand how and when I cast a shadow and block the light of Christ rather than reflecting it. I didn’t set out to do an experiment. What I did was create a brief survey about how I come across to people I work with most closely at RBCPC. I did this to coincide with my three year anniversary and the congregation voting to install me permanently. After three years, I wanted those people I work with most to help me see things about myself that aren’t obvious to me.

Three years ago, no one knew me here. There were no preconceived notions about me, no baggage, no history. If you could start fresh, would you change anything about yourself? Starting fresh is a good idea in theory but, as the old saying goes, wherever we go, there we are. Our only baggage is what we bring ourselves. The people who work with me every day, pastors, staff, elders, members, have had a chance to see me trying my best and my natural state when I am just reacting without thinking.

So, I asked some of those people to give me honest, thoughtful feedback. If you sent out a survey to get feedback about yourself what do you think they would say? As it turns out, I don’t even have to read the survey results to get the most significant feedback. No one had to write a thing. Here’s what happened. I set up the questions as an online, anonymous survey. I wanted people to be able to give me honest comments without having to worry that their name was on the page. But, even with the survey being anonymous there was some concern that I might be able to guess who said what. Some people wanted to insure that their comments were non-identifiable.

Well, that gave me the most important, honest feedback I could have received. The actual responses in the surveys will give me the details and specifics but I already know what three years of working with me has taught people in this church. I block the light. You may not realize how important this is to me. I think of myself as the person most open to honesty and transparency. I assume that anyone can talk to me about anything knowing that I don’t get defensive. I assumed that almost anyone would be delighted to sit down give me their feedback face to face. I was just making it more convenient for them by putting it on line. And here, before I even get any feedback, I discover that how I see myself is not the same way that others see me. Ouch.

Ok, to be honest, I’ve heard nicknames like “battleaxe” and “The Pastor-nator.” But, I thought those were terms of endearment.  Whatever those surveys tell me, it won’t be stuff that I can confess and be forgiven for and then move on. I am sure that if I confess something to people in that survey, they will forgive me, but they will also expect me to change. And I want to change, because, if I don’t, I will continue to walk in darkness, unseeing and unaware. And in darkness I don’t have the kind of fellowship that I want to have with people I care about.

This is the message we have heard from God and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

I am working on confessing all of this new data about myself because I know it doesn’t feel good when God’s light is blocked by someone. I used to be the national sales director for one of the largest music companies in the country. I once got introduced to a singer/actor who was famous years ago but even today, if I told you his name, I think every person in the room would have at least heard of, some of you women probably had major crushes on him. The president of the company introduced us and said, Mr. Famous person, this is Neal Nybo our national sales director. This is how he shook my hand – eyes looking somewhere else, he didn’t hear my name. I said I admired him, he glanced at me then looked off somewhere else as if to see if there were someone important that he could meet. But, he wouldn’t let go of my hand. I would have been happy to get away from him, but he kept pumping my hand up and down, never once seeing me. It was the single most unpleasant experience I had in my ten years in that industry and twenty five years later, it is still a bad memory. I won’t tell you his name because, for all I know, he may be the most loving Christian there is and even so, just for that one moment, for some reason, he blocked the light.

But, meeting famous people isn’t always bad. Years before I worked in the Christian Music industry, in my teens, I listened to Christian music. One of my favorite artists was a guy named Barry McGuire. He was pretty famous in the 70s. I was nineteen, working in a mall store and Barry McGuire walked in. I couldn’t believe it. I would never have had the courage to go up and speak to him but he came up to me and asked me for help. I helped him and then I said, Barry, I really enjoy your music. I love your albums. He said thanks. Then his wife, Mari, walked up and he turned towards her, I assumed to leave. But, instead, he brought her over to me and said to her, honey, this is Neal. He is a big fan and he loves my albums. She said hello and thanked me for supporting them. As they left, he said, God bless you Neal. This teenager told that story to everyone I knew because Barry McGuire was the real deal. He lived the life. He didn’t just talk about it. More than thirty years later it still feels good. So, when I decided to tell this story, I found Barry’s website and emailed him this story. You know, he wrote back the next day thanking me and praising God. Still let God’s light shine through him and it feels good.

Can you say you are walking in the light without casting any shadows? Or could you admit that, like me, maybe you have a bigger shadow than you realize and that you sometimes block God’s light even as you are trying to shine? Maybe you are like me and have concentrated on the obvious sins, the shadows that are easy for you to see, confessing them and being forgiven but have not paid attention to areas that are less obvious, like your motives, attitudes, assumptions, expectations, hopes, and disappointments. Is it time that you start looking for the shadows others see?

 Regardless of what people or troubles or opportunities await you this week, you have the chance to block less light. The looks or comments from others may surprise you when they see more of God and less of you. It isn’t necessary to cast such a big shadow. It may be a relief to realize that not everything is resting on your shoulders, that its not all up to you. Maybe just living my life before my daughters is enough lesson without me having to come up with one at dinner. Try blocking less light.

Bruce begins a fall series next week on the gospel of John. John called Jesus the light of the world. People could get close to Jesus and realize that he never blocked the light. He is both our example of what to do and our way to do it. I am going to be intentional about using this series to work on reducing my shadow this fall. Maybe you should too, and together, we just may block less light.