Episode 1425: We Walk in the Light

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1425 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:07] Zach Windahl: I'm Zach Windhal. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to really live your calling into the world is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast by my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:39] Scott Maderer: There's a lot of language in John where they talk about we and our community, that togetherness is part of the message. And I think a lot of times we need to use different metaphors. We need to think about symbiotic sorts of relationships, things. Welcome and [00:01:00] thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:04] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:33] In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about 1 John 1 1 10 and 2 1 2. I also share how after Easter comes a moment of finding a new reality. And I also share how the metaphors we use can really change the frame by which we see the world. 1 John 1 1 10 and 2 1 2 says, 1 [00:02:00] We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

[00:02:10] This life was revealed and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

[00:02:30] We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

[00:02:53] And the blood of Jesus Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive [00:03:00] ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

[00:03:16] My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. Talk to you about the letters, the epistles, especially those from John can be something that may not always seem like it's a great area of the Bible to talk about.

[00:03:44] Yes, there are a lot of famous quotes and famous verses from John. One John that come through and are used a lot about and taken out of there and they're like the greatest hits or the favorite [00:04:00] verses from the letters. But when we're not looking at just those sort of greatest hits, it doesn't always seem like this is something that would be taken out and used, especially right after Easter.

[00:04:15] So right after Easter, the Sunday after Easter is called a low Sunday. And a lot of times people think that's because it's sparsely attended. A lot of folks show up on Easter, including sometimes people that don't regularly go to church. Oftentimes there's a big ceremony. There's a lot of extra things going on that week of Holy Week.

[00:04:37] And this is the week that everyone recovers. Oftentimes it's the Sunday that the choir has off, or maybe the backup or associate pastor preaches or something else. It is a moment that the congregation can catch their breath after all of the events of the [00:05:00] Easter celebration.

[00:05:02] And that is Part of it, not that any Sunday where we're able to worship God is meant to be a low experience, but there is a traditional sense that the High Holy Day of Easter is a pinnacle event. And now we're turning back and returning to where we live every day. Yeah, we still remember and we're basking in the glow of that event.

[00:05:28] We're still living into the promise that we were given at Easter time, but we're also now entering back into the regular march of days, the ordinary living of life. And now we turn to that question of, but wait, after Easter, how shall we live? Easter came, the resurrection happened, now what? There's a quote from a famous evangelist who supposedly said, I don't care how high you jumped on the night you got saved.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] I want to know how straight you walked when you came back down. In other words, John is in this epistle, in this passage, he's talking a little bit about what we do to walk in the light of Easter. Like a typical pastor, he has to work up to it. He can't just leap into the meat of the argument right away.

[00:06:24] And by the way the John here, we don't really know who this John is. We don't know if this is the John that's listed in the gospels, one of the disciples we think it might be another John. They're not sure. Even if the epistles of John, the Gospel of John and the revelation of John, is that written by one people or two people, or three people.

[00:06:44] It's very unlikely that they're actually all the same person. There's also some hints that maybe there was a community of Christians that had started and been started by the Apostle John, and these were interpretations and things that he told them [00:07:00] or wrote them that the community then wrote down and named after that founder.

[00:07:05] We really don't know. And that idea that we don't even know who the writer is Maybe that doesn't even matter. What matters is, are we going to get a message out of it and listen to the words and learn to walk? Are we going to respond now that Easter has come? Now that the resurrection has happened and life has changed, how do we live out that new reality?

[00:07:34] How do we actually live into the promise that was being made? How do we live into the new reality? that's brought home to us. If you think about it, that new reality brings possibility and responsibility. It includes the possibility of fellowship, not only fellowship with Christ, but also fellowship with each [00:08:00] other.

[00:08:01] We tend to focus on the individual, especially in the Western world. We tend to look at our own personal faith, our own thing in our own relationship with Jesus. And don't get me wrong, that's important, but the Bible continuously reminds us that it's really a community thing too. We're all in this together.

[00:08:21] We're meant to support one another, to encourage one another, to disciple to one another. We're not meant to walk through this alone. That is why, for me, things like ecumenical activities that reach across the boundaries of theology and belief and this church or that church and is this rule or that rule right are so important.

[00:08:45] And it seems straightforward. The message from John is just walk in the light. And John loves that light and dark metaphor, but it's caused problems as well. There's an inherent [00:09:00] bias in that light is good and dark is bad. And yes, that is something that has led to racism in the church and racism in the world.

[00:09:09] And you may be rolling your eyes right now and saying, no, that's not what does it. And I'm not saying that's the only thing that does it. But there is a stumbling block when our language is set up with assumptions like that. And we can't ignore it. We have to recognize that our language, our framing of messages is important.

[00:09:28] It creates subconscious associations. That literally show up. There are scientific studies where they show people light and dark faces and measure biases. And there's an inherent bias against dark skinned people. And by the way, that shows up in lots of different groups. And part of that is because it's inherent in our language as well.

[00:09:55] Instead, this text is asking, about how are we going to [00:10:00] live into the world? What's our footprint going to be? It's not asking about our skin color, our belief system. It's asking about as a community of faith, are we in fellowship with one another? Are we lifting each other up? Are we doing good work together?

[00:10:17] Are we not doing it all by ourselves? Are we not trying to figure it all out and do it all ourselves? But are we leaning on Christ and on each other? to help us be the body of Christ. There's a lot of language in John where they talk about we and our community, that togetherness is part of the message.

[00:10:43] And I think a lot of times we need to use different metaphors. We need to think about symbiotic sorts of relationships, things like how your own body is actually made up, not of one organism, but of. millions of organisms working together. You could do [00:11:00] that. And you can talk about trees and root systems and fungi and how all of those work together.

[00:11:05] There's all sorts of interconnected symbiotic examples that we can use. And in some ways that is what it means by light and dark, not the color, not the brightness, but rather instead that interconnectedness is the light of Christ. Thanks for listening.

[00:11:33] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, go over to facebook. com slash inspired stewardship and like [00:12:00] our Facebook page and market that you'd like to get notifications from us so that we can connect with you on Facebook and make sure that we're serving you to the best of our abilities with time and tips there.

[00:12:16] Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.