I

’ve been a pastor now for over twenty years. Church of the Pilgrims is my third call. When I was first ordained, I served a congregation on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Before coming here, I was pastor of an inner city church in Wilmington, Delaware for almost nine years. What each of these churches shared in common with Pilgrims is that they were small congregations in big buildings struggling from time to time to make ends meet financially. Like Pilgrims they were each vital congregations in many ways– creative in worship, inclusive in their community, committed to social justice, open to new ideas. But things never came easily. Most days I feel incredibly lucky and even blessed to be pastor of this congregation, just as I did the two previous churches I served, but from time to time, as in any work, there are setbacks and days of discouragement, and you do wonder if you are really making any difference. So I know what Paul means when he speaks of “losing heart.”

       I remember when I was a pastor in Wilmington, we were having a particularly tight year financially, when out of the blue a Presbyterian Church just down the street received a $4 million bequest. It came from the estate of a wealthy Episcopalian who divided his multi-million dollar estate between three churches– the one he attended in the suburbs, an inner-city Episcopal Church that he had long supported, and the Presbyterian Church where his long-time housekeeper attended. Man, I thought, just once can’t I be pastor of a church where that happens! Wouldn’t it be great to fix the building up, endow the budget, expand out mission in creative ways without always having to worry about every last dollar! I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that this is not likely to happen, but every once in a while I do fantasize about it.

       Yet truthfully, that’s not what really discourages me most days. On the grand scale of things, the building and the budget are pretty trivial concerns. The greater discouragement is simply the state of the world. The Christian faith as I have come to understand it has a certain world view, a stance, a perspective on how we are to live our lives before God. Within the circle of the progressive wing of the Presbyterian Church, we are in pretty good company. But in the larger world it often feels like an increasingly marginal view. The debates about inclusiveness in church and society seem to be getting even more mean spirited. The most recent elections moved the country in a somewhat more progressive direction, but monied interests still control most politics in this town. Yes, the tide seems to be turning against the war in Iraq, but not war generally. I’m sure twenty years from now we’ll be looking for another small country to invade to help us get over our “Iraq Syndrome.”

Meanwhile, he most intractable problems in the world– Iraq, the Middle East, Darfur– don’t seem to be making any progress at all, and some days it feels as if fewer and fewer people actually care. 

S o I can understand why the Corinthians– really the first generation of Christians, living as a small minority in a diverse multi-cultural city where few people could have even comprehended what it meant to be a Christian– would have been tempted to lose heart. They must have stuck out like a sore thumb. Just a few verses later Paul talks about being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. Whatever trials we might face from time to time pale by comparison to what they were up against. However often we feel like a minority in our culture, imagine practicing your faith as a Christian in Iraq, or Sudan, or Pakistan, or China. No one is killed or put in jail for being a Christian in the United States, but that is not true in many other parts of the world.

       Yet, Paul writes, “since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.” That is, we carry out the mission and ministry of the church not on our own accord, not by our initiative, not because of any virtue in ourselves, but because God in God’s mercy has called us to this ministry. God has put this ministry before us, and God is empowering us to carry out this ministry on God’s behalf. Once again, Eugene Peterson does a wonderful job capturing Paul’s thoughts in contemporary language:

       Since God has so generously let us in on what God is doing, we’re not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times. We refuse to wear masks and play games. We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes. And we don’t twist God’s Word to suit ourselves. Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God. If our Message is obscure to anyone, it’s not because we’re holding back in any way. No, it’s because these other people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention. All they have eyes for is the fashionable god of darkness. They think this other god can give them what they want, and that they won’t have to bother believing a Truth they can’t see. They’re stone-blind to the dayspring brightness of the Message that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we’ll ever get.

       This God who calls us, Paul concludes, is the same God who created us:

       For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Or in Peterson’s translation,

       It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful.

S o we know what it’s like to be overwhelmed by the darkness. We also know, Paul reminds us, the source of light that enables us to carry on our ministry. The light we know in Jesus Christ is the same light that God called in to being at the very dawn of time. However dim at times that light may seem to be, as the prophet Isaiah put it, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. So Jesus said to his disciples,

       “You are the light of the world.

       A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 

       No one after lighting a lamp

       puts it under the bushel basket,

       but on the lampstand,

       and it gives light to all in the house.

       I don’t for one minute believe that the church is the only source of God’s light in the world. Sometimes, indeed, the church is part of the darkness. But the image helps us immensely to understand the role that Jesus intended for his followers. Light in the ancient world was not a floodlight, but a flicker. An oil lamp, lit inside a dark home, shining through the windows of a dozen homes on a hillside, provided just enough light that shepherds and travelers could find their way home. So the church is intended to be a place that helps people find their way to God. It doesn’t coerce, it beckons. It doesn’t cancel out the darkness, it illumines it. It doesn’t force the traveler to come home, it merely shows the way. Moreover, we are not the source of the light, we simply refract it.

       That is why, Paul insists, you can’t proclaim the gospel in ways that are inconsistent with that source of light. To draw people to the light in ways that are deceitful, manipulative, or disingenuous is to betray the very gospel we proclaim. All we can do is place the light on the lampstand as best we can, and leave the rest up to God. Just like the Corinthians two thousand years ago, we live in a world where the darkness is always very beguiling. People are always chasing after other gods. But we do not lose hear because God in God’s mercy has called us to be servants of the light. That is all we are, nothing more, and nothing less.

       That’s why I am so pleased that we are celebrating the Lord’s Supper each week during Lent. This is what evangelism looks like for servants of the light. At the table there are gifts of God. They are forced on no one, but all are invited. They are not our gifts. We are not the host. It is not our table. All we can do is come to the table where we have found food that feeds the deepest human needs we can name, and invite others to do the same. This is what Paul meant when he said “We do not proclaims ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” Or as Jesus put it to his disciples, “So let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and give glory to God in heaven.”                                                ✞

© 2007 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel