The Social Network: Shine Brighter

Here is the last sermon in my series on community. This was preached 5/12/2013.
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The Social Network. What does your social network look like? To whom are you connected? Think for just a moment. How many people in this room do you know by first and last name? How many people in this church do you where they live? How many have you visited at home? How many people have you prayed with? Not just said – “I’ll pray for you” then gone on your way – but taken time to sit and pray with them. How many people here do you know you can count on in a crisis? Is there someone in the church who you can talk to about things with which you struggle? Is there someone who you know will call you out, in a loving and constructive way, when you’ve done something stupid? How many people in this room have you laughed with? Cried with? With how many people in this church have you shared your faith story? From how many have you heard their story?

I hope you can think of at least a few people who fit into each of those categories. That’s what a social network is supposed to look like.

I want to share an image with you. Have any of you ever used Friend Wheel on Facebook? It will show all of your friends and then show what connections you and that friend have in common.  Here is my Friend wheel. The dots around the circle represent the people I am friends with on Facebook. The lines between them connect those who are friends with one another. Just to give you a better idea of how it works, here’s another slide. In this one I highlighted one friend to show the mutual connections we have. This shows my connections to Misty, so these are all of the mutual friends we have. 

So these 240-something dots represent all of my Facebook friends, but If I were going to make a “friend wheel” of people like I mentioned earlier. Those with whom I am close. Those who will call me out when I do something dumb. The ones I can really talk to. That wheel would look more like this.  And I may have overestimated a relationship or two. The sad part of this wheel is not the small number of people on it, but the infrequency with which I meet and talk with those people, save one.

This is the connection I described earlier. This is the connection we need to have. This is the social network we need to build. A small network of people who will support us; who will pray for and with us; who will help us through our struggles. A group of people with whom we grow closer to Christ as we grow closer to one another.  

Our scripture this morning gives us some instruction about why we need one another. Jesus tells us to be salt and to be light. There is something distinctive about salt and light. By nature, salt and light are communal. Or at least they should be. I want to look at what being salt teaches us about our need for community and then what light teaches us.

Salt is an interesting substance. It has been in use since about 6000 BC. At one time, salt was even used as a currency because of its value. Our word salary was derived from the word salt. I don’t know how much truth there is to this, but if a slave was traded for salt, and performed poorly, we get the saying – “He’s not worth his salt.” In Jesus’ time and place, salt was a necessity. Salt was used to season food, but salt was also used as a preservative. 1^st Century Judea did not have refrigerators, but with salt, you could cure meat to make it last longer. Salt was used in some purification rituals. Salt was sprinkled on all offerings and sacrifices in the Jewish Temple.

Salt was essential in Jesus’ world and in that of his audience. They understood the importance of salt when he told them – “You are the salt of the earth.” The thing about salt, though, is that it is not useful to itself. It only has value in that it is applied to other things. It seasons food. It preserves meats. It is used to purify. Salt enhances the things around it.

In other words, if we are salt, we are no good by ourselves. Salt is not for itself. We are not to be kept to ourselves. To be salt, we must exist for others. To season and enhance all of those around us. If we keep to ourselves, we lose our saltiness – we lose our value. To lose our saltiness means that we become useless to those around us. We become so consumed with ourselves that we lose the connections around us. We no longer enhance or season our world.

I want to take a little break here to interject something. All of this talk about community and our faith being dependent upon being with and around other people does not mean that we should never spend time alone with God. Quite the opposite. We need time alone with God. Jesus tells us we should spend time in private prayer. In fact, when Jesus prays he almost always goes off alone to pray. Solitude is a good thing. For introverts like me, it allows us to recharge.

Maybe we can think about it in terms of salt. We spend time with other believers to get seasoned. That time we spend together enhances our time with God.

We spend time alone with God to become saltier. We pray and study so we can become more helpful to others. We spend time with God so that we can be salt for others. We spend time with others to get salted.

Jesus also says we are to be light. You are the light of the world. Light, just like salt, is meant to be shared. Scripture, again and again, refers to Jesus as light. Just a few verses before our the scripture read this morning Jesus quotes a passage from Isaiah in reference to himself. When he says that “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” The Gospel of John talks about the light of Jesus breaking into the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome the light.

Now Jesus says we are to be light. We are to reflect the light of Jesus for those around us. Jesus goes on to say that when someone lights a candle, they put it on a stand so that it will give light to everyone in the house.

This got me thinking about a couple of different images. The first is the power that light has over darkness. Have any of you ever been spelunking, or as we used to call it, cave crawling? As a kid, my dad used to take us to Collier Cave. Or Coffee Cave – which ever you want to call it – to go cave crawling. We would all put on some old clothes, get our Atlanta Braves replica batting helmets, and grab a flashlight to go crawl around in the mud 30 feet underground. I loved it!

One thing I learned in that cave is that you don’t understand dark until you are underground without a light. We would get to a certain spot in the cave, deep enough that no outside light came in, and turn off our flashlights. It was dark. It was a darkness that you could feel. We were in a room that was probably 100 feet in diameter with 20 foot ceilings but with the flashlights off it felt like the walls were right next to me.

Standing there in that blackness, my dad struck a match. One simple little match. And suddenly the room was huge again. That overwhelming darkness was no match for that tiny little light. Which shows us the power that light has over darkness. It brings to life that passage from John – the darkness cannot overcome the light.

But the room was still dark. Then someone turned on a flashlight and we could see a little more. Then another flash light. Then another and another. Until finally we lit the entire room. It wasn’t bright, but it was lit. We could see the room, we could see each other.

Not only did I learn the power light has over darkness, I also learned that a light can shine through the darkness, but as we let our light shine together the light becomes brighter. The darkness recedes more and more until when we add enough light shining together, it doesn’t matter how dark it is, we’re illuminated.

It makes me think of the Christmas Eve candlelight service. We start ina dark room with a single candle burning. And that single light is all you can see. But that light gets passed from person to person until everyone in the room is letting their light shine. And together those candles light up the sanctuary. You can see everything.

That’s what being light teaches us about community. Your light may shine, but together we shine brighter. Together the light of Jesus is even more powerful. It lights our way and it is a light for the world.

And back to the cave for a moment. Another reason we come together is so that our light can be a help to those who are struggling to shine. I remember being in the cave a group of 6 or 8 of us and my flashlight died. If I’d been alone, I’d be done for. But there were 5 – 7 more flashlights there to help me get out of that darkness.

I want to put a practical spin on this series. I’ve talked a lot about community and about having a group of people to pray with and study with.

I’ve talked several times over the last few weeks about a quote from John Wesley about Christianity being a social religion. That wasn’t simply something he preached. It was something he lived and practiced. The Methodist movement started when Wesley was at Oxford University and he and his brother and a few more friends started what we would call a small group. They prayed and studied together. And they visited prisons and fed the hungry together. This led Wesley to start the Methodist movement as a movement of community. There were Methodist societies throughout England. Each society was broken down into bands which were then divided into class meetings. These class meetings were groups of 6-8 people who would pray together, check up on one another, care for one another.

Earlier this week, one of my professors posted a story on his blog about his daughter. This story gave a perfect example of what small groups are about. His 2 ½ year-old daughter came to him one morning with her baby doll and said it was the baby Jesus. After breakfast, he told her it was time to go to school. She told him that she was Mary and he was Joseph. “Ok, Mary, it’s time to go.” When they got to her daycare, he asked if she wanted to leave the baby in the car. She told him, No. Maybe I can share Jesus with my friends, and when they’re done they can give him back to me.” 

That is exactly what social religion is about. That is what a small group is about. It is a group where you share Jesus with others and they share Jesus with you. And together you grow more and more like Jesus.