West End Umc Video Podcast Audio Podcast

Today is the fifth Sunday for our summer sermon series, “Rise and Shine,” examining a number of passages that offer light as an image of God’s presence and grace. Today’s reading is the familiar “You are the light of the world” section from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. The question for us is how we shine the loving light of Christ in the world. In context, Jesus is speaking to common folks, people who aren’t leaders, and it is astonishing that those are the people Jesus is challenging to be the light of the world. No person is ungifted, unqualified to be the light. In Greek, the “you” in “You are the light of the world” is plural, implying that we can do much together as a unified community of faith. As a fireworks display is made up of a variety of colors and displays, as a community of different people we can be the light together.