I Hear the Voice of Jesus Saying, "Let Your Light Shine"

Scripture: Matthew 5:13-16

Recently I ran across a detailed plan on "How to Become a Public Speaker." Here is what you do: You fill your mouth with a bunch of marbles, and then you begin to speak. After the first day, you take out one marble and go on speaking. On the second day, you take out a second marble and continue speaking. On the third day, you take out a third marble, and so on, until all the marbles are gone. When you have lost all your marbles, you become a public speaker!

You may think I have lost all my marbles, because I want to think with you in this chapter about saintliness, about what it means to be a saint. Who on earth wants to be a saint these days, in this kind of world? The very word conjures up ideas of all sorts of unreal people, people who live in stained glass windows or on pages of Scripture, or people who at least have been dead for many years. Today we use the word saint occasionally to describe a pious person, but the kind we don't want to be, the kind we subtly denounce and quickly disassociate ourselves from by saying rather dramatically, "I'm no saint!"

Remember the man who said, "My wife may not be a saint, but she is an angel. She must be an angel, because she's always up in the air, she's always harping on my faults, and she never has an earthly thing to wear!" Or remember the little boy who was caught by his mother just as he was snatching cookies from the cookie jar. "Oh, Tommy, how could you?" asked his mother. "Only last night you prayed that you wanted to become a saint. Do you remember that?" "Yes," Tommy answered, "I remember, but I wanted it to be only after I was dead!"

We can all relate to Tommy can't we? It's okay to be a saint, but not now, not these days. We want to sow our wild oats first. We don't want to be pious stuffed shirts. That's the way we seem to feel about saintliness. Who in this world, this life, wants to be a saint?

Will Rogers saw it clearly, and he cut right to the heart of it. Commenting on his visit to Rome, he said he found it interesting that "everybody wants to see where Saint Peter was buried, but nobody wants to try to live like him." I guess we could all afford to think about that a bit, couldn't we?

Actually, the word saint is a good word gone wrong. The apostle Paul used it frequently and evidently gave it a completely different meaning. In fact, he didn't use the word saint to refer to pious, sanctimonious, puritanical people at all. If you study his letters in the New Testament closely, you will notice that he writes to the saints in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, and Philippi, and that there was nothing unreal or pietistic about them. They were not dead, either, but very much alive—sometimes a little livelier than Paul wanted them to be.

Paul sometimes even called these people saints and then proceeded to scold them for unsaintly behavior! What are we to make of this? Are we called to be saints? Now? In this world? The answer is YES; the biblical answer is ABSOLUTELY; but, we have to reclaim the word, redefine it, re-understand it.

As the old saying goes, "You can call me anything, if you let me define the terms!" So, let me define the term and describe what I think a true, genuine saint is.

This is not a textbook answer, not a dictionary definition, but an understanding out of my own personal experiences with people who were saints to me in the best sense of the word. It has been my experience that a genuine saint is simply a person who makes goodness attractive, a person who has a radiant, attractive, contagious commitment to God.

We have mixed it all up and turned it all around. A true saint is not one who turns you off spiritually, but just the opposite: one who makes goodness attractive. A real saint is not one who is so pietistic or prudish or sanctimonious that you can't stand it, but rather one who makes goodness so attractive and so appealing that when you are with him or her, you find yourself challenged and feeling, I wish I could be more like that. Jesus is calling us to be this kind of saint in the text for this chapter: "Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Now, let me list some saintly qualities I have seen in other people whom I have found to be special, radiant, attractive, appealing, challenging, and winsome.

First, a Saint Is One Who Makes It Easy for Others to Believe in God

We have heard the saying many times, but it still rings true: The surest evidence of God is a committed Christian. The best argument for the faith is a person who really lives it, as the poet Edgar A. Guest observed when he wrote, "When I see a deed of kindness, / I am eager to be kind" (from "Sermons We See," Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest [Chicago: Reilly and Lee], 1934).

A real saint makes goodness attractive. He makes it easy for others to believe in God.

Let me tell you about Dr. Van Bogard Dunn. With a name like that, you would have to be a saint or a fighter; he was a little bit of both. Bogard Dunn influenced my life greatly first as a pastor and later as the dean of the seminary I attended. He was so committed that when I was in his presence I found it easier to believe. He made goodness and faith challenging, exciting, and special.

While in seminary, I accompanied Dr. Dunn on some recruiting trips. We would visit colleges and tell them about our school. He would speak as the dean, and I would speak as a student. On one occasion, we visited a college in Birmingham, Alabama. When we arrived we were exhausted, having been on the road for three or four days. We had driven all night with no sleep. We talked with students and faculty members all day and into the night, our schedule so full that we had no time to eat. About 9:30 that night we finished up and headed for the hotel, hungry, physically tired, mentally and emotionally wrung out. To make matters worse, it was raining. All I had on my mind was food and sleep as we walked through the drizzle, down the sidewalk toward the hotel in downtown Birmingham.

As we walked along, I suddenly realized that I was alone. Dr. Dunn had disappeared. I turned around and saw him about fifteen yards back, kneeling on the sidewalk, talking to a little boy who was leaning against a light pole. The little boy, who looked to be about eight or nine years old, was crying. I had been so tired that I had walked right past the little guy, but Dr. Bogard Dunn had seen him and heard his crying, and he had stopped to find out what the trouble was.

The boy said, "My father sent me to the corner grocery to get some things. I have the list, but I lost the money. I'm afraid to go home because I know he will beat me." Dr. Dunn took the boy by the hand, and together the three of us walked to the corner store, where Dr. Dunn paid for the little boy's groceries. The boy took the sack of groceries and ran hurriedly down the street. Then suddenly he stopped, came back, and said to Dr. Dunn, "Mister, I don't know who you are, but I sure do wish you were my daddy."

After that, I forgot about being tired and hungry. I walked around Birmingham for two hours in the rain, trying to find somebody, anybody, I could help!

A true saint is not one who is nauseatingly pious, but rather a saint is one who inspires us and challenges us and brings out the very best in us. A real saint is radiant, making goodness attractive and making it easier for others to believe in God.

How powerfully we see this in Jesus—the power of his influence. Think of the lives he touched: because of him, the weak and vacillating Simon Peter became a rock; Mary Magdalene became, instead of a woman of the streets, a woman of faith; the self-seeking James was transformed into a self-giver who gave everything, even his life. It wasn't just what Jesus did; it was what others did because of him. It was the touch of his influence. What about you? How about your influence? Do you make it easy for others to believe or do you make it hard? Paul Gilbert wrote "You are writing a Gospel, a chapter each day," in terms of our words and our actions. Gilbert goes on to point out that others are paying attention to us accordingly and are taking note of whether we are acting in faith ("Your Own Version," Daily Guideposts, October 13, 1990).

That's the first thing: A true saint is one who makes it easy for others to believe in God.

Second, a Saint Is One Who Believes the Best Things in the Worst Times

A saint remains faithful under pressure, is spiritually tenacious, keeps on believing when it is difficult.

Harry Emerson Fosdick underscored the importance of this special quality when he told a story that came out of the Armenian atrocities of the 1940s.

A young woman and her brother were chased into an alley by a Turkish soldier. Trapped, the sister watched as the soldier brutally murdered her brother. Horrified, scared, and heartbroken, she was able to scramble over the wall and escape for the moment. A few days later however, she was captured by the Turks, and since she was a nurse, she was forced to work in a military hospital.

One day, into her ward and under her care was brought the same Turkish soldier who had killed her brother. He was very ill. They recognized each other immediately. Fosdick writes that the slightest inattention to his care would have quickly brought on the soldier's death.

The young nurse told later of the bitter struggle that took place within her. One part of her cried, "Vengeance, he killed your brother; get even, this is your chance; it would be so easy, no one would ever know." But the voice of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, teachings she had believed and practiced for many years, welled up in her soul: Love; forgive; be merciful! The voice of Jesus won the day, and she conscientiously nursed the soldier back to health. Later, the soldier, unable to restrain his curiosity, asked the young nurse, "Why? You recognized me, I know. Why didn't you let me die?" She answered, "I am a follower of him who said 'Love your enemies and do them good.'" The soldier was silent for a long time and then replied, "I never knew that there was such a religion. If that is your religion, tell me more about it, for I want it." (Harry Emerson Fosdick, Twelve Tests of Character [New York: Richard R. Smith, 1931], pages 166-67.)

A saint is one whose faith is radiant and appealing, one who keeps on believing even when it is difficult, one who believes the best things in the worst times.

Third, a Saint Is One Who Does Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways

What God really needs is not so much extraordinary people who do extraordinary things, but ordinary people like you and me who do ordinary things in extraordinary ways.

I was thinking recently of Pop Sandlin, who influenced my life greatly. He touched the lives of many young people. He was a youth counselor at my home church in Memphis. He couldn't have preached a sermon for anything, couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, couldn't teach a class, couldn't lead a public prayer, and couldn't teach a Sunday-school lesson. He was shy but he was genuine, and you knew it immediately. He loved God and the church, and he really cared for young people.

He made terrific hamburgers. Every Sunday night he was at the church cooking hamburgers and driving kids to and from the church. Pop Sandlin gave me a poem that I used in the first sermon I ever preached, and I have kept it in my files over the years. It's called "The Man with the Consecrated Car."

He couldn't speak before a crowd;
He couldn't teach a class,
But when he came to Sunday School
He brought the folks 'en masse'.
He couldn't sing to save his life;
In public couldn't pray;
But always his 'jalopy' was
Just crammed on each Lord's Day.
And though he couldn't sing, nor teach,
Nor even lead in prayer,
He listened well; he had a smile,
And he was always there—
With all the others whom he brought
Who lived near and far—
And God's work was greatly prospered
For he had a consecrated car.

I am convinced that the church is paralyzed not so much by the lack of people to do great things, but by the unwillingness of people to do the little things. What we need more than anything are some Pop Sandlins. We need people to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways.

Finally, a Saint Is One Who Loves Even the Unlovable

This was one of the crowning qualities of Jesus' life—to see and reach out and touch that person nobody else cared about or noticed.

Some years ago, I received a letter from a woman in East Texas who was a shut-in. She was writing to say that our televised church services were rays of sunshine in her rather dismal existence. She described what it is like to be a shut-in. I felt so sorry for her. It must be hard to be shut in, but it is even worse to be "shut out." Love means acceptance, inclusion, and belonging, and there is nothing more saintly than loving in this way—loving the outcast, loving the unlovable. Nothing is more Christlike than that.

In his book The Miracle of Love (Fleming H. Revell Company, 1971, page 82), Charles Allen tells the story about a little girl showing a man her dolls. She had lots of dolls of all shapes and sizes. "Tell me," said the man, "which one is your favorite doll?" The little girl hesitated for a moment and said, "You promise you won't laugh if I show you my favorite?" The man promised. The girl ran out of the room. In a moment she returned, and in her hands she held an old, dirty, tattered, dilapidated doll. Some of its hair had come off, its nose was broken, and its cheeks were scratched. An arm and a leg were missing. "Why do you like this doll best?" asked the man. The little girl replied, "I love her most because I'm afraid if I didn't love her, no one else would."

Who in the world wants to be a saint today? If it means being one who makes it easy for others to believe in God, if it means believing the best things in the worst times, if it means doing ordinary things in extraordinary ways, if it means loving even the unlovable, then that's my wish and hope and prayer for all of us—to hear the voice of Jesus flooding into our hearts and minds, saying, "Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

I Hear the Voice of Abraham Saying, "Let There Be No Strife Between You and Me"

Scripture: Genesis 13:8-13

It happened in March of 1991. I was speaking at our church board meeting when someone handed me a note indicating that President George H. W. Bush would address the nation and the world at 8:00 P.M. on all the major television networks. So we quickly concluded our business session and went into an area of the church with a large-screen TV to hear the president speak.

He gave the news we had been waiting, hoping, and praying for over the last several weeks and months: THE WAR IS OVER! Combat action would be suspended at midnight that evening. Peace negotiations and the shut-down of the war effort were to begin immediately. In homes across the globe, in shopping malls, in sports arenas, on military bases, in churches, and out in the streets, in all nations, people stopped and listened and cheered.

Some cheered loudly and exuberantly, thrilled that the war was behind us. Others cheered quietly, more cautiously, hoping and praying that there would be no foul-up, or miscalculation or antagonistic reaction that would start up the hostilities again.

As I drove home from church that night I felt a sense of relief and my mind darted back over the last few days to numerous poignant pictures connected with this war in the Persian Gulf, powerful images that somehow had locked themselves dramatically into my head and heart. For example:

• the picture of President Bush soberly announcing the start of the ground war;

• the image of people coming daily to the altar of our church to pray for peace;

• the picture of a family in Detroit, Michigan, who had two sons fighting in the war but on opposite sides, one an American Marine, the other an Iraqi foot soldier;

• the image of yellow ribbons everywhere—on trees and doors and gates and lapels. I even saw a homeless man pushing a grocery shopping cart, which held all of his earthly possessions, and on the front of it was a big yellow ribbon;

• and who could ever forget the picture of thousands of Iraqi soldiers waving white flags and leaflets, eager for the chance to surrender, starved for food and water, some even surrendering to an Italian cameraman and others surrendering to reporters from major news organizations;