"Power to Light the Way" - John 1:1-18 - January 4, 2004

Two cars were waiting at a stoplight. The light turned green, but the man didn't notice it. A woman in the car behind him is watching traffic pass around them. The woman begins pounding on her steering wheel and yelling at the man to move. The man doesn't move. The woman is going ballistic inside her car, ranting and raving at the man, pounding on her steering wheel and dash. The light turns yellow. The woman begins to blow the car horn, flips him off, and scream curses at the man. The man, hearing the commotion, looks up, sees the yellow light and accelerates through the intersection just as the light turns red The woman is beside herself, screaming in frustration as she misses her chance to get through the intersection. As she is still in mid-rant she hears a tap on her window and looks up into the barrel of a gun held by a very serious looking policeman. The policeman tells her to shut off her car while keeping both hands in sight. She complies, speechless at what is happening. After she shuts off the engine, the policeman orders her to exit her car with her hands up. She gets out of the car and he orders her to turn and place her hands on her car She turns, places her hands on the car roof and quickly is cuffed and hustled into the patrol car. She is too bewildered by the chain of events to ask any questions and is driven to the police station where she is fingerprinted, photographed, searched, booked and placed in a cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approaches the cell and opens the door for her. She is escorted back to the booking desk where the original officer is waiting with her personal effects. He hands her the bag containing her things, and says, "I'm really sorry for this mistake. But you see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping that guy off, and cussing a blue streak at the car in front of you, and then I noticed the "Choose Life" license plate holder, the "What Would Jesus Do" and "Follow Me to Sunday School" bumper stickers, and the chrome plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, so naturally I assumed you had stolen the car."

The woman was advocating Christianity but not living as a "Child of God." In our gospel lesson, John describes Jesus as the "light of men and women." Jesus was the "true light," one who enlightens us and gives us power to become children of God. To live as children of God is to be those who live in the light. This woman was living in darkness rather than the light.

Some may think they are living in the light but they are really living in darkness when they find fault with others rather than recognize their own shortcomings. We do that by illuminating the faults in others, focusing our light on them away from ourselves. We are also living in darkness when we keep the spotlight on ourselves. When we let our egos get the best of us and strive to be greater than others we are not living in the light Jesus intended.

We are empowered by God but we sometimes abuse that power by misusing our light. For example; when you are driving at night and an oncoming car fails to dim his/her lights and you turn your brights on to get even you are abusing your light. Its one thing to warn someone but its quite another to let them have it.

To be the children of light means to let our light shine with "grace and truth." To live in grace is to live thankfully and acknowledge that God is the source of our being. To live in truth is to be honest and genuine rather than live with deceit and falsehood.

Last summer one of the nation’s power grids failed in the Northeast. Most of New York suffered a blackout. Unfortunately a power company in Northeast Ohio had failed to take action for some problem power lines. People were stunned that a human error hundreds of miles away could cause such a huge "blackout."

The same can be said for the failure of us to use the light God has given us. The power God gives us can reach hundreds of miles away and influence people we don’t even know. The failure to let our light shine is to be living in darkness. In Matthew 5:14-15, Jesus said we are the "light of the world and we should let our light shine before men (and women)."

In 1991 Robyn Stevens of Hancock, Maine, pondered over what she should give her father, Arthur Stevens, for Christmas. Her grandmother always talked about the usefulness of flashlights. So, she bought a three-celled, waterproof flashlight from Sears. Her father was delighted and said, "How did you know what I needed?"

The following January, Arthur was twenty-five miles out to sea in the Gulf of Maine. He was on the tugboat Harkness along with his two crew members. They were on their way home from a construction job. Halfway home the crew found themselves in a nightmare. A severe storm was approaching. The temperature dropped drastically and the sky got very dark. The winds were at twenty-five knots and the windchill factor was minus sixty degrees. A little after 6PM Captain Musetti checked the stern of the boat, only to discover they were taking on water. The tug was pitching violently and the decks were sheer ice. He radioed the Coast Guard station in Southwest Harbor and said, "We’re going down."

The Harkness was sinking just off Matinicus Island where a handful of families lived during the winter. Vance Bunker heard the radio conversations between the Harkness and Coast Guard and knew that the three men didn’t stand a chance if they weren’t rescued soon. He and two other lobstermen left their families and set out to sea in the Jan Ellen, a thirty-six foot lobster boat. The sky was so cloudy and their windshield was so iced-up, they couldn’t see a thing. All they could do was forge ahead in the darkness. At 7:01PM Bunker heard what would be the last radio transmission from the Harkness. "The water is up to our chests in the wheelhouse," Captain Musetti reported. "We’re going into the water."

Bunker and his crew heard nothing after that except the roar of the wind and the creaking of their boat as it crashed through the waves. The possibility that three sailors had drowned brought a sickening feeling to Bunker’s stomach. Shortly thereafter, one of the other men on the Jan Ellen saw a thin beam of light, pointing straight up. "Look, over there. Follow that light!" Bunker turned the boat in the direction of the light and there they found three, nearly half-dead men with arms hooked together. Their clothes were frozen to a ladder that had come loose from the Harkness as she went down.

Arthur was closest to death and had lost his ability to hold on. But the freezing cold had done the men an odd turn. Frozen to the back of one of the men’s gloves was a three-celled, waterproof flash-light. It was aiming straight up in the darkness. It had become a beacon for those who had enough faith to follow it. (from Chicken Soup for the Soul, Christmas Treasury, Beacon of Faith)

Dr. Keith Wagner, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Sidney, Ohio