Now, I know that in this
congregation we have quite a few scientists, engineers, physicians, etc., and
people whose gifts lie in different areas. But, I’m pretty sure that everyone
here knows the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Now, I don’t mean that you can necessarily recite it, but you know
it. The first law of thermodynamics
states that work is heat and heat is work.
Knowing the first law of thermodynamics really just amounts to knowing
that when you run your car engine, it gets hot.
Now, that’s not really its function (its function is to spin the gears
and thus wheels and move your car forward), but a side-effect (a pleasant one during
those chilly morning commutes we’ve been enjoying recently) is that doing that work
creates heat. You know the first law of
thermodynamics if you know that when you exercise, you’ll start to warm
up. Doing the work of contracting and
extending your muscles to move around creates heat. A room full of children running around won’t
just be noisy, it’ll warm up. And when
things get hot enough, they start to give off light. Think of sparks on a bandsaw. Or, think of those light bulbs, which are
designed to give off light and, incidentally give off heat. The work there is the electrons in the metal
of the filament moving backwards and forwards, changing direction over a
hundred times a second. These tiny
particles buzzing around do enough work to heat those coils and produce enough
light to light up this Church.
God is at
work in each one of us. And work is
heat, and if we let ourselves get hot enough, we’ll light up the world. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus
proclaims. “Let your light shine before
others… so they may give glory to God.”
To understand this, we really need to see it in its context. This is the second in a series of readings we
have from the Sermon on the Mount, the great teaching Jesus gives after he’s
begun his healing ministry. We heard the
beginning of it last week, when we heard the beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” We’re going to
keep hearing parts of this great teaching of Jesus’ until Lent begins, when we’ll
switch to the Lenten readings.
But before
we get ahead of ourselves to what’s coming next, we need to refresh ourselves
and remember what the gathered people would have heard just before this. Nine times in the beatitudes, Jesus declares
happy the impoverished, the outsiders, the nobodies. He declares happy those who live lives that
seem foolish if freely chosen, because they will be vindicated,
vindicated by God. Take the second one,
for instance: Happy are those who mourn, for God will comfort them. There are so many types of mourning in the
world. Obviously there’s grief at a loved one’s death, but there’s also
mourning that God’s reign is not yet fully realized on earth. We might mourn sin
as much as we mourn that death and illness and strife pull apart our families,
threaten to extinguish the light we walk by and plunge us into darkness. God will comfort, Jesus promises. God will make right. God is at work in each of us. Powerfully at work, working to make us into
the saints He made us to be. And work
makes heat and heat makes light. We are
the light of the world, because God is at work in us.
That’s the
pattern of the spiritual life, that God’s blessing, God’s grace always precedes
any call to respond. The most basic
Christian commandment flows from God’s action in our lives: “be what you are.” Be saints!
Be the locus of God’s activity, be windows through which light enters
the world. Light doesn’t exist to draw
attention to itself, it exists to help us see what’s around us. Salt is not
salt for itself, but for food. Salt, the
purifying preservative, purifies not itself, but what it’s immersed in. Be salt of the earth, you pure of heart who
shall see God, and purify the world.
Each of the
sacraments contains this dynamic. God
abundantly blesses us through his gracious action, so that we might set the
world ablaze with His light. Be
baptized, receive your candle lit from the Easter candle, and shine that into
every darkness of the world. Receive
Christ’s own body and blood in this Eucharist, become what you receive, and
take that out to be Christ for your neighbor, encountering him again in the
poor served. Receive the great gift of
God’s mercy in reconciliation, be forgiven, and go out to forgive those who
wrong you, that they might see mercy in your light and give glory to God. This
is true in marriage and in ordination too, those beautiful sacraments in which
people are blessed to show different facets of God’s love, to be sanctified in
the process, and let the world see that.
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