Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 5:13-16
“I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am.” On Wednesday, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah introduced his explanation of his impeachment trial vote with these words about his faith. He went on to say that he takes an oath made before God to be “enormously consequential.”
I did not imagine I would ever quote Mitt Romney from the pulpit. He and I disagree on many significant issues, and our respective faith traditions lead us to divergent conclusions about how God calls us to live. I quote him because I am grateful for this choice he made this week: a choice to do what he believed was right in the face of tremendous pressure to ignore his own evaluation of truth. His choice offered me a flicker of light to guide me out of my despair about the state of our democracy.
I have a deep appreciation for people of faith who reach different conclusions than I do about a wide range of political and public policy issues. Today I speak from my own perspective, honoring the diversity of perspectives in our congregation, hoping my reflections will prompt your own.
On the night before the Senate impeachment trial was to begin, I couldn’t sleep. I knew the first vote would be about whether to hear witnesses; pundits were predicting the motion would be defeated along strict party lines. How, I thought, could there be a trial without witnesses? What would that mean for our nation’s basic trust in our institutions?
I got up in the middle of the night and googled the four senators who I understood might cast an independent vote. I filled out email contact forms on their websites, imploring them to vote to hear witnesses. “Please be courageous,” I wrote, “our confidence in our democracy is at stake.” I had to put in my Massachusetts address, so I knew my emails would not carry much weight. I sent them anyway–if only to assuage my own sense of powerlessness.
The next day, after hours of seemingly futile argument, all motions to call witnesses were tabled. Alas, my earnest middle-of-the-night pleas had not convinced anyone.
Over the next days, I watched the trial between bird watching and bike riding. At times, I was inspired by eloquent arguments, only to despair that the only people listening were the ones already convinced. I heard opposing sides, and was shocked by how the same events could be portrayed in such contradictory ways. There was no shared understanding of truth.
I came home last weekend and dove back into church life; it was a relief to have other important things to focus on. On Tuesday night, I rushed home in time to watch the State of the Union address–on the principle that I needed to hear it first-hand instead of relying on commentators.
I was horrified–by statements that seemed to be purposeful lies, by overt attacks on previous presidents and people in the room, by policies I feel are destructive and unjust. Even more, I was horrified by the intensity of the partisan divide–who stood and who sat, who shook hands and who refused, who chanted and who booed. The walls of antagonism that have been built over the last decade seemed monolithic. It felt as though I was witnessing the beginning of the disintegration of our democracy. That was Tuesday.
Wednesday was the final day of the impeachment trial. I was prepared for yet another emotional hit, another day of partisanship triumphing over truth.
It was, but not completely. I learned that Mitt Romney is now the only senator to vote to convict a President of the same party in the history of our nation–a reminder that the struggle between partisanship and principle is not a new one. He wasn’t the only senator to make a courageous vote; Doug Jones from Alabama is now in danger of losing his next election.
Both senators took risky stands, and both did so knowing their votes wouldn’t change the outcome of the trial. Their choice to do it anyway helped me see light coming through a tiny crack in that monolithic wall I was envisioning. They reminded me that, in the midst of our human brokenness, there is the potential to choose courage. They reminded me that there is more at stake in the decisions we make than immediate victory.
I don’t see these senators as heroes or saviors; they were simply doing what they promised to do. I am grateful for their choices because they point me to the one who is my savior–Jesus. When everyone around him can see only the monolithic reality of Roman occupation, Jesus sees a deeper reality: the realm of God’s love breaking in. He dares to believe that God’s love is more powerful than the military and political might of Rome. He dares to believe that compassion is stronger than hatred and fear.
Jesus challenges his disciples–and challenges us–to see the realm of God’s love breaking in, to become part of it, to live it into fulfillment. He challengeds them–and us–to see the light coming through the cracks in the seemingly monolithic walls of division and despair. Then he tells them–us–that we are that light and that the world needs us to shine.
What does that mean? I’m just back from Florida, where I soaked in the light of the sun, watched beautiful sunsets and took photographs. My vacation musings lead me to identity three components of this call to let our light shine: we are called to absorb light, to reflect light, and to refract light.
We may be the light of the world, but we don’t create that light. It is a gift from God–God who is beyond us, within us, and among us. In order to let our light shine, we must take time to receive the gift–to absorb the light of God’s love. As a community, we gather on Sunday mornings–and some Sunday evenings and throughout the week–to absorb God’s light: seeking illumination from scripture, singing our hearts open, allowing hope to be kindled in our prayers, loving each other into wholeness. In these urgent and sometimes frantic times, we need to slow down enough to absorb God’s light.
This light we absorb is not just for us; we are called to reflect it into the world, so others may see it, absorb it, and discover it within themselves. We reflect God’s light when we act in love–when we reach out to someone who has been excluded, when we offer food and shelter and hope to vulnerable immigrants, when we refuse to demonize even those who demonize us. We reflect God’s love when we share our resources to help koalas in Australia, when we visit a friend who is grieving.
Absorb, reflect–and there’s one more. When the sun’s rays come into the earth’s atmosphere, they are refracted–bent–by what they encounter. They are bent by droplets of water in the air–revealing a rainbow we otherwise could not see. They are bent by clouds and atmospheric dust, yielding the glorious colors of sunset. They are bent by the miraculously complex lenses of our eyes, so we can create images in our brains, and by camera lenses that enable us to capture glimpses of the beauty of creation.
We, as Christ’s church, are called to be refractors of God’s light–to be the water droplets that reveal a rainbow of hope, the camera lens that captures a glimpse of deeper truth so it can be shared. We are not called to be rose-colored glasses, putting a happy tint on reality so we can pretend everything is fine. Instead, we are called to shine light into places of pain and injustice–illuminating realities we might rather not see. And, we are called to refract that light through a lens of faith–revealing signs of hope hidden beneath layers of despair.
Yesterday, I brought my lawnmower with its dull blade, my audio speaker that won’t recharge, and my jacket with a broken zipper to First Parish for the Repair Cafe, sponsored by Transition Framingham and the Rotary Club. I stood in their fellowship hall, sipping tea, chatting with Edwards Church members and Open Spirit folks, watching volunteers fix my broken stuff.
Ah, I thought, this is what I mean by refracting light. Transition Framingham folks are committed to raising awareness about the urgent crisis of global climate change–shining the light of truth on a terrifying reality. They don’t stop there; they refuse to leave us in despair. They refract the light, bending it so we can see new possibilities for joyous living with a lower carbon footprint. Instead of bemoaning our culture’s wastefulness, they illuminate the path toward a transformed culture–where we leave our isolated homes full of stuff and come together to help each other. Light refracted through the lens of community, revealing joy.
When 23 members of Edwards Church and Ministerio El Toque del Maestro attended Greater Framingham Church’s MLK breakfast a few weeks ago, they were refracting light. Acknowledging how much work we need to do to dismantle racism and build a multi-cultural society, they shared a meal together, translated for each other, laughed at awkward efforts to talk in a second or third language. They refracted light through a lens of good will, revealing a glimpse of what our world could be like.
You, Jesus says, are the light of the world–not by yourself but in community, not through your own power but as a gift from God. May we absorb the gift of God’s light. May we reflect that light through our acts of compassion and caring. May we refract light through the lens of truth and faith, revealing God’s love breaking in to our world. Amen.