March 22, 2020
Sermon preached at Immanuel Baptist Church, Minot, North Dakota to support NECU.
Thank you for inviting me to Minot, North Dakota! While I have been to Bismarck many years ago with Rev. Don Shoemaker in fact during a blinding white-out snow storm when Don asked me to look to my right to see the highway painted lines so that he can stay in the lane and drive 50 miles per hour. When we suddenly came up to a semi-trailer, I thought I would die in North Dakota!
Being in Minot is the farthest north I have been where you are very close to the Canadian border and closer to the Northern Lights. Today, I wondered how much sunlight you have here in comparison to San Francisco where I now live. Today’s sunrise was at 7:42AM and your sunset will be at 8:01PM which means that you have a total of 12 hours, 19 minutes and 7 seconds of sunlight. In San Francisco, we have 12 hours, 14 minutes and 50 seconds which means that you have 4 minutes and 57 seconds more sunlight than people living in San Francisco!
You are children of light! You have almost 5 more minutes in the light!
If you were to ask my wife where I would sit in a restaurant, she knows that it would be the table near the window with sunlight. Sometimes when our daughter is taking us out on a special occasion, she would inquire if the restaurant is brightly lighted or dark. She knows that I want a light-filled room!
Education Lights the Way
Light has a way to liberate us from that that keeps us behind or in the dark. When my mother immigrated to America in 1947, she spoke no English, knew nothing about America except what my father may have told her when he was running a laundry in Boston. My mother always said to me that she was not happy being married off to my father when she wanted to stay in school. She didn’t want to be kept in the dark. She was only 16.
Since my parents only spoke Chinese at home, I first learned Chinese before starting kindergarten in Boston. Even though I was born in Boston, we didn’t have anyone who taught us English except from our Sunday school teachers at First Baptist, Boston and the cartoons on the TV. Imagine learning English from Porky Pig or Donald Duck! I still can’t understand what they are saying!
Slowly but surely, I learned English in school and received a liberal arts education at college—becoming the first person in my family to receive a college diploma. Education liberated me from the confines of my immigrant Chinese world. It liberated me from my ability to only communicate with my parents to communicating with you today. Education liberated me from the parochialism of Boston to embracing the whole world as loved by God himself.
What role does education have for you? What may you have become if you didn’t have education or what more you would have become if you had more opportunities for education?
Children of Light
In this Pauline letter of Ephesians 5:8-14, the author calls followers of Christ as beloved children. The holy ones in Ephesus are challenged to renounce their former existence and take on a new identity rooted in Christ. Whereas in the former life of disobedience and debauchery, the new life as children of light is obedience and faith.
Before Christ, they were then dead through trespasses and sins, following the course of the world. But today, they are now reconciled to God in one body through the cross. Since they will be constantly facing temptations from the larger secular culture of darkness, the children of light are called to live in a community of believers to remain faithful.
The point is as children of light, this is our identity. It is who we are. Ephesians 2:11-12 highlights the identity marker more concretely: “So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the circumcision,’…were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
When our identity is darkness, it’s a reflection of hopelessness, death, and despair. It symbolizes hardened hearts, futile minds, far from the truth and complete alienation from God. It represents the hostility that undermines unity in the body of Christ.
The writer in verse 11 says, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” This call to make the invisible visible—to expose—is in essence the true mark of “children of light.” They are to make public the life of faith and thus overcome the works of darkness that characterize unbelievers who operate in secrecy and shame. They are to embody the true light of the world that overcomes darkness—Jesus, the living Christ.
Following and imitating the true light who is Jesus Christ, we are to live and walk in the light. As children of light, we must rise from the dead and, as in baptism, clothe oneself with Christ. Christ becomes the light who transforms darkness: “Christ will shine on you.” As once children of darkness, the light of Christ shining on us, exposing us, making the invisible visible, we who were darkness actually become like Christ.
The identity of children of light is pleasing to God, exposing unrighteousness, and producing fruit that overcomes former barriers and distinctions and eliminates the invisible walls erected in our community.
Now, our lives—illuminated by Christ—become living testimonies of the power of God in the world.
Take Action
The Ephesians writer calls us to take action. When we are children of light, there is no neutral position. He calls us to expose the darkness. He calls us to wake up. He calls us to rise up from the dead.
We are a part of a great tradition in Christian faith and in the lives of people who have challenged and exposed the works of darkness. We have put down slavery and segregation. There are people who are exposing current forms of slavery and human trafficking. Yet this is only one in a long list of social ills that warrant our attention.
Staying neutral contributes to the problem. Choosing innocence over awareness allows injustices to continue. Being only concerned about what may be happening in our own backyards fences leaves out the troubles and sufferings our neighbors are experiencing around the world.
If you want to be the children of light, staying neutral is not an option. You and I need to take action to bring more light into a darkened world. We know we can’t do this alone but when we are working together, it is only then that we would have the chance to make something happen.
As the song says, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing; that’s how it is God’s love, once you’ve experienced it: you spread God’s love to everyone, you want to pass it on.”
The light of Christ gives us the spark that keeps our witnessing fire going and because of God’s love that we experienced, we want to pass it on.
NECU
When I retired from full-time paid ministry about 5 years ago, I thought I would have all the time in the world. God was telling me that there’s no such thing as retirement in the Bible. I was introduced to American Baptist missions in Northeast India almost 200 years ago that I knew very little about. When I had the opportunity to visit about 5 years ago, I soon discovered that while American Baptist missionaries may have proclaimed the Gospel Good News of Jesus Christ in Northeast India, American Baptist missions in this part of the world is not yet finished.
God was giving me an encore ministry. After one curtain came down, another curtain call was raised up and soon I was witnessing the need of establishing a new Christian liberal arts university in the American higher education model in Nagaland, NE India. Only about three weeks ago, I returned from my sixth trip to India, called to consult and advise those leading the plan to start the university. On these trips, I have also brought along with me 10 other American Baptists to see for themselves what God through the Baptists in NE India is doing in this Christian university.
Since education has become the light that has liberated me from my limitations, God is tasking me as long as I still have breath to pass this light on. If I am the first in my family to receive a college education, I want more and more young people to also have a college education too.
American Baptist missionaries started as many as 9 Bible colleges to train and prepare pastors, evangelists, missionaries, Sunday school teachers, church planters and other workers in the church. But after all these many years, if a young person wishes to become an engineer, a medical doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a scientist, a computer programmer, an architect, and the list can go on and on, there isn’t a university he or she can attend.
It’s amazingly inspiring to see the Christian discipleship and faithfulness of the people in Northeast India. The missionaries have undoubtedly done a fine job. But if you were to look at the quality of life, health care, the roads and highways, the utilities like electricity and clean water, communication and many other infrastructure issues, Northeast India is still a third-world country. I believe the reason for this is that young people don’t have the opportunities to become all the professions, vocations, careers, and experts on all aspects of maintaining a sustainable society.
The just established Northeast Christian University is one bold and ambitious strategy to begin rectifying this great need in this part of the world. I hope that you will learn more about what you can do so that together, we can make a difference in the lives of young people who in turn will make a life transforming difference in the world in which they live. Education is a way to light up the lives of these students.
Aglow
Ephesians 5:8 says, “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.” We all have used our torch on our mobile phones to shine a light when the restaurant is so dark that we couldn’t read the menu. We all have lit a candle when the power is out and that little flame alights the entire room and we are no longer afraid. We all have tilted the reading light so that we could read the daily paper or the last page of a fascinating novel chapter.
But verse 8 is not about us using a light to cast out darkness. This verse is about us—you and me who were once darkness because of our sins and trespasses but in the grace and mercy of our Lord who exposes our shame by his light, we are now light.
We are aglow with Christ’s light. The awesome fact is that in our union with the living Christ we are aglow with Christ’s light. This light carries the spiritual energy that can empower us in our struggle with the forces of evil.
As lights in Christ, you and I are called to expose the darkness of global terrorism, drug abuse, poverty, economic inequalities, and global warming.
As lights in Christ, you and I are called to expose the darkness of illiteracy, lack of education, lack of opportunities for career development that leaves people to fall further and further behind.
As lights of Christ, you and I are called to expose the darkness of prejudice, discrimination, racial hate and xenophobia preventing us to truly becoming the beloved community that God intends.
For me as one light who has been saved by my Lord Jesus Christ from my sins, I know no other way to live the rest of my life but to expose the darkness that I have seen with my own eyes in Northeast India that continues to prevent young people to becoming the men and women that God has created them to be and become.
It’s my hope and prayer that you too, Christ’s lights in Minot, North Dakota will not just shine light but be the light to expose all the darkness in the world. Therefore, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!”
Amen.
Let us pray.