Sermon on 1 John 1:5-2:2

I have sensitive eyes.  Don’t you think so?  Haven’t you all experienced how amazing it is to stare into my sensitive eyes?  No, that is not what I mean when I say I have sensitive eyes.  Mary Ann has never sat there dreamily gazing into my eyes, never looked at me like a schoolgirl with a crush.  “Oh, aren’t his eyes just the dreamiest?”

No, what I mean is my eyes are sensitive to light.  Are yours?  I know if you’ve been in a dark movie theater that you find yourself squinting as you come out into the daylight.  Your dilated pupils are screaming to close up.  The light almost hurts.  We all do that.  But do you wear your polarized lens clip-ons in the car when driving at dusk or in the rain?  Well, I do.  It feels way more comfortable.  I’m also constantly moving my car visors around to get the maximum protection, ‘cause, hey, my eyes are sensitive.

If you think that is extreme, there was a time when my eyes were even more sensitive to light than that.  I don’t know how it started but I just noticed that I almost couldn’t keep my eye open in even the dimmest light.  I’m sitting with the family watching TV and I put a pillow on my head to shield my eyes from the overhead light.  But a pillow requires a balancing act, so I get a towel and kind of wrap that around my head.  I look like a swami ready to mesmerize you with my insights. It was ridiculous.

5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him.

God is light!  There is no darkness in Him at all.  If you’re looking at God, you’re not going to get any relief from an eclipse or a sunspot or a shadow that will limit His brilliance.  He never does anything wrong, never says anything untrue, is never unloving.  He is unremitting holiness from which you can’t escape.

Or can you?  Can your light-sensitive eyes be shielded from the sun of God’s character?  John mentions one attempt at that.

6, If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.

Here I am sitting in the TV room with a towel on my head.  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with me.”  “Um, dad, you have a towel on your head.  Why are you pretending that you’re okay?”  “Oh, well, you know, I’m just like you guys.  My eyes are perfectly fine.  Don’t you want to borrow my towel?”  “No, no dad, we don’t want to borrow your towel.  Confess!  Something’s wrong.  Go to the doctor and quit saying you’re okay.”

We pretend, don’t we?  Yeah, I’m good with God.  Don’t ask me if I’m doing my daily devotions, don’t check on whether I’m loving my neighbor, don’t examine me to see if I’m treating my kids with respect, please don’t look over my shoulder to see if I’m working as unto the Lord at my job, or keeping myself sexually pure.  Trust me.  Me and God, we’re doing fine.

Well, I didn’t pretend my eye was fine.  So I go to the ophthalmologist.  Isn’t that kind of hard to say?  Ophthalmologist.  The eye doctor.  I didn’t wear the towel.  If I had I might have gotten seen sooner.  “Oh,” he says, as he gazes into my sensitive eyes, “You’ve got something in there.  Let me take it out.”  “Sssure, okay, doc.  Yeah.  Uh, how are you going to do that?”  “Oh, well, I’ve got this twenty-inch probe that I’m going to stick in your eye and just yank it out.”

You know, not pretending about your sin isn’t easy.  “Doc, maybe it would be better if we just left it in.”  “No, no it wouldn’t.  We need to extract it.”  So he does.  I’m no hypocrite about how bad my eye is feeling and he is capable of doing something about my eye.  He is very gracious and puts some drops in my eye that deadens it.  He reaches in and of course, I can see this because my eye has to be open for him to reach in there.  And despite the fact that it doesn’t hurt at all,  I still faint after he does it.  Hey, I told you, my eyes are sensitive.  But then, wonderfully, I am able to walk in the light.

7 If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

But there is another way to try to dampen the effect of God’s light in my life.  What if I sit in the TV room with my family and a towel on my head and my kid says, “Dad, you’ve got a towel on your head.  Something’s wrong.”  “No, son, you don’t understand.  This kind of pain in the light is normal.  I know, my eye is watering, it’s pretty red, I look like a swami with this towel on my head, but you know I have sensitive eyes.  There’s nothing wrong here.  No big deal.  Get off my case!”

8 If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Sounds crazy but we do this.  “Listen, divorcing my wife is best for me and her.  We’re just living a lie pretending to be a happy couple.”  “Spending time with God shouldn’t be a check-the-box kind of thing, and besides, I know the Bible pretty well and don’t need to keep rehashing the same thing over and over again.”  “You don’t understand, my neighbor is a Muslim and does strange things in his home and is probably a terrorist, for all we know, biding his time ready to catch us by surprise.”  “I couldn’t help myself; you know, it was like this force inside me took over and moved me against my will.”  “Hey, kids are resilient, and they can get over just about anything.”  We can justify just about anything.  It doesn’t matter how dark it is, when God’s light exposes it, we can claim no harm, no foul.  Don’t be so sensitive!

I’m so glad, though, that I went to the doctor, that I confessed my sensitivity and recognized that the light was revealing a problem in my life.  Yes, I fainted when the ophthalmologist removed that metallic splinter from my eye.  Saying I have sinned is scary and uncomfortable, but it always ends in something wonderful.

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

John mentions one more way we try to hide from God’s light.  Sometimes we don’t pretend everything is fine, or even try to justify our sin.  Sometimes we are convinced we’re sinless.  I don’t sit in the room with a towel on my head.  I just squint and tear up but don’t think anything is wrong.  This is me.  Don’t bother me with talk of your ophthalmologist.

10 If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Do ophthalmologists even exist.  No one needs an eye doctor.  There’s no such thing as eye disease or disorder.  All sensitivity to the light is an illusion.  I’ve evolved beyond that.  If I’m sitting in the ophthalmologist’s office and he’s looking at the splinter in my eye, I deny there’s a splinter and make the ophthalmologist a liar.

Why did Jesus come?  Why did God send His Son into the world?  John tells us.

2:1 My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one. 2 He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.

The light has shined on the whole world, and everyone has darkness in them.  Everyone has splinters in their eyes.  And Jesus’ sacrifice of himself makes him the ophthalmologist who can heal and forgive my sins.  I can be a hypocrite and pretend my eye is fine, or rationalize my sensitivity, or deny it altogether.  Or, I can take the towel off my head and walk in the light, admitting I have a problem, confessing it to God and maybe even you, and find healing from the divine ophthalmologist.

I bring my sensitive eyes to God.  I let His Word expose the problems in me.  I listen to the sermon on Sunday, not to critique the pastor but to shine a light on the splinters in my eye.  I read God’s Word in my daily devotions, not to check a box, but to let God’s light shine on my life and cleanse me.  I listen when my family questions whether I am doing right and stay open to being corrected.  I admit to God when I am being “carried away” by sinful thinking, not because He doesn’t already know it, but because I need to own up to it and find in Him the ophthalmologist who can cure my ailment.  I rejoice in my light sensitive eyes.

The light is actually my friend.  NO, the light is my savior.  It is not there to destroy me.  It is there to heal me.  My eyes being sensitive to it is a good thing.  It is revealing destructive stuff in me that needs to be cleaned out.  It is showing splinters that need to be removed.  Thank you, God, for the sensitivity.  I don’t like getting the splinters removed but I’m sure glad when they are.  And I’m not the only one with splinters.  All of you have them.  We’re all sinners.  I don’t have to be ashamed that I have them, and neither do you.  I just need to deal with them by going to the divine ophthalmologist every time one is revealed.

Can a nation have sensitive eyes?

I recently read a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32^nd president of the United States, that focused on his leadership during World War II.  And I have been shocked by the behavior of our nation toward Japanese Americans and African Americans during that time.  When we forced Japanese Americans into prison camps and refused to let African Americans serve in our armed forces in any way other than as cooks or cleaners, that was a sin.  But at the time people didn’t see it that way, at least, not many people.  They justified it.  Japanese Americans will surely be more loyal to Japan than to the United States.  Black people are not worthy or capable of serving as fighters or planners or leaders in war.

Have we recognized the national splinter in our eye?  Minorities in our country might argue that there is still a splinter in there.  When we see attacks on Asian people, that shows there’s a splinter.  When we get angry that minorities would suggest there’s more work to be done, that shows a splinter.  Walking in the light means we’re open to correction.  We don’t immediately put a towel over our head.

Christ has given us freedom to walk in the light.  Because He has fully paid for our sin and satisfied God’s righteous demand by his death on the cross, we are free to acknowledge the splinters in our eyes.

Isn’t that what we’re doing when we take the Lord’s Supper?  We are rehearsing Christ’s death for us, a death that was necessitated because he was paying for our sins.  When we take the elements, which you’ll find in the seat back in front of you, we are acknowledging our own darkness and need for forgiveness and cleansing.  We take the bread, and as we eat we remember that Jesus’ sacrificed body is food that sustains our life.  We take the wine, and as we drink we remember that Jesus’ blood was surprising cure for our guilt and shame.

Oh, Lord Jesus, we are so grateful that you took our darkness upon yourself and suffered the penalty for our sin in our place.  We are forgiven and given eternal life because of you.  Your sacrifice has given us the freedom to walk freely in your light, with eyes sensitive to what your light reveals in us that needs to be cleansed.  Keep our eyes sensitive, Lord Jesus, and make us more and more like you in every part of our lives.  Amen.