“Building with Light”

Sermon: “Building with Light”

Rev. Glenn G. Grant

Kirkridge Presbyterian Church

Transcription from December 24th, 2022

Sermon transcription is automatically generated. Please forgive any grammatical errors

Building with light. Has anybody ever tried it?

You know, the first thought is you can't build with light. I mean, it just kind of, doesn't work. It's not solid. You can't put anything on it. And yet at this time of year, we're reminded that that's exactly what we should be doing because we come to this point in the year every year to be reminded of God with us, Emmanuel, and the scriptures tell us that Christ is the light of the world.

And when we think about what that means and we say that we're your followers of Christ, then that means we're supposed to be working to build up the kingdom of God and we're supposed to be using that light to build. Now, I said has anyone tried building with light? Now let me ask a different question. Has anyone tried building without light?

It doesn't work. You're going to hit your thumb if you pick up a hammer or you might do more damage if you're using a saw. You probably will pick up the wrong piece of lumber for the right place or drop the cinder block on something because you tripped over something else.

And it doesn't matter whether you're doing a major construction like that of a building or whether you're trying to build something else. If you are trying to do it in the dark, you're probably not gonna succeed.

And that is a problem for us as Christians because we frequently try to do things on our own in the dark. And we come to Christmas every year and we need this reminder. We need this reminder that the light of the world is with us. All we have to do is allow it to make a difference and to reach out to others around us.

There is a movement in the Presbyterian denomination called More Light Christians. There are movements in other denominations and faiths around the world where they use light in their terminology, but what are they really saying? They're saying that we need to shed more light on things.

We talk about need for transparency. What is transparency other than shedding light on something? We're allowing the light to hit it so that we can see what's there. And our faith needs to be that transparent that when people look at us, they can see that light that is there.

Mother Teresa was once asked how she could continue to work with the poorest of the poor in Calcutta and all of those undesirables if you owe by the caste system that that country was under. And Mother Teresa says, because when I look at each one of them, I see Jesus.

She was seeing the light of Christ in each of them. But as an end result, everybody that knows who Mother Teresa was and what she succeeded in doing sees the light of Christ in her because it is shown strong. Sometimes we like to think of ourselves as being the bright spot in life when in reality all we really need to do is be a mirror. All we really need to do is reflect what's already there and you know, when you're using a mirror, I know I look around and I know there's a bunch of people here that were raised in scouting, and I know that, I don't know if they still teach it. I know when I was going through, we won't say how many years ago, that we had to learn how to signal with that mirror. And by moving the mirror and reflecting light, you could send messages to people.

And that's the kind of thing we need to be doing with our faith, is we need to be reflecting the light of God to others so that they can see what's going on so that they can help build. And in that way, we're building with light. Now we're getting to the point where physicists tell us that we're going to soon be able to build with light.

Even if it's light, we can't see. It's that kind of thing that boggles the mind for most mortals. But you know, as we just heard the angel telling Mary anything is with God is possible. I don't know if I'll ever see it, I just know that there are so many other ways to build with light, and it doesn't mean that we are using the light to build, but we are being guided by the light as we build.

So let us, especially today, tonight, tomorrow, think about how we are building with light in our lives and what kind of an effect that has on the people around us.