“…The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the
light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves;
we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as slaves for Jesus sake.” In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
I think it’s fitting that on the last Sunday after the Epiphany we have an epistle text that once again
uses the image of light to convey the core truth of our faith—which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. As
you know, “epiphany” is a word that means an unveiling, or something being made manifest. The
Epiphany season began with a celebration of Jesus’ first unveiling to the Gentiles, who in this case
were those Persian Magi who visited the baby Jesus.
The symbol of light has been the theme of the season, and now we stand at the brink of Lent, that
season in which we reflect upon our need for a Savior, and fast and pray in preparation for the deep
darkness of Good Friday and then the brilliant light of the risen Christ at Easter. In fact, this year we’
ll be having an Easter Eve service in which that light will be dramatically introduced into the church in
our first celebration of the Resurrection. I don’t think you’ll want to miss it.
In today’s reading from 2 Corinthians, St. Paul speaks of the light, but he also speaks of a kind of
veiling. He begins by saying some kind of curious words. He says, “Even if our gospel is veiled, it is
veiled to those who are perishing.” The way our lectionary is divided up, these words kind of seem
to come at us out of the blue. But it helps for us to place this in context by briefly looking at what
Paul was writing in the paragraphs just before today’s reading.
In chapter three of 2 Corinthians, Paul recounts the recurring dilemma of God’s chosen people, the
Jews. Their tale throughout the Old Testament is often one of two steps forward, three steps back.
Many of the old stories are designed to show the bad results of failing to heed God’s directions, and
then God’s blessing once those directions are understood and obeyed. This, of course, continued
into the New Testament, with Jesus frequently correcting the Jewish leaders’ lack of understanding
of the scriptures and of the Messiah, who He claimed to be.
Paul now carries the torch by tracing this unhappy history of his own people. In Chapter 3 Paul
recalls how Moses’ face was veiled when he descended from his encounter with God on Mt. Sinai.
This way the Israelites couldn’t see the glory of God or the fading of that glory from Moses’ face over
time. Paul then uses that same symbol to highlight the fact that the Jews’ sight continued to be
veiled, because they couldn’t connect the dots between the message of the Torah and the coming
of Christ. In other words, Paul lamented that the Jews didn’t understand that the Law pointed
straight ahead to Jesus.
And in today’s reading Paul takes the analogy one step further. He says that, just like the veiling of
his own people about Jesus, there are many today, both Jews and Gentiles, whose sight also is
veiled. He says that the light of the gospel is veiled “to those who are perishing.” And to these
ominous words he adds that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep
them from seeing the light of the gospel…” This is a pretty potent combination of images.
I really can’t help here but invoke a pretty familiar symbol which I think is hard to excel in expressing
what Paul is stressing to us. It’s a symbol intertwined with our history here at Hope: the lighthouse.
In a landlocked state this might not have quite the same impact as in a place where seafaring is a
way of life. But let’s use our imaginations for a moment.
First, what are lighthouses for? I mean, they look picturesque and quaint there on the beautiful
coast with their nice landscaping and barber pole stripes. But in a storm at night they’re the
difference between life and death. Have you ever been out to sea at night in rough weather? You’
re bobbing up and down, the wind is howling, perhaps lightning is crackling across the sky, and
every so often the boat lurches in such a way that you’re not sure whether you’re going to stay on
top of the water or go plunging into it. You’re trying to find the safety of a harbor, and having
trouble steering the boat. It’s unsafe to stay out at sea, yet close to the shore are rocks and
shallows that could at any moment dash the boat to pieces.
We used to live on the North Coast of California, near Humboldt Bay. This was a notoriously
dangerous area for fishermen and other mariners. In fact local tourist shops sold a book called
Night Crossings, which was an anthology of real-life accounts of close calls, especially during stormy
weather. It’s then that nothing is more welcome to a sharp-eyed mariner than the sight of a
lighthouse. Because a lighthouse gives you the information you need in order to make your way to
the warm and welcoming lights of a safe harbor. The question is, at the height of the storm do you
want your navigator or steersman to have a veil over his eyes? And if you’re the navigator or
steersman, do you want a veil over your eyes? Really, this is what Paul is asking.
I’m certainly not the first to point out the similarities between this scenario and the sometimes chaotic
life we live on this fallen planet. And I have to say, given recent events here and around the world,
the seas seem to be getting a bit stormier.
Paul says there is a lighthouse, and that lighthouse is the gospel of Christ. The Good News. The
unexpected flash of light illuminating the fact that Jesus Christ came to this earth to show us how to
live, died in order to take our sins upon himself, and rose from the dead to declare victory over sin
and death.
Yet many in our time have been blinded by the god of this world. Their vision is veiled. What the
scriptures proclaim as the truth is being met with increasing skepticism and simple unbelief. The
god of this world, which is Paul’s clear reference to Satan the deceiver, delights in obscuring the
truth.
I’d like to suggest that there are several ways that he does this. One way is to make sure we don’t
see the danger. We can anesthetize ourselves with whatever activity or preoccupation we engage
in. And we forget all about our mortality, or our sin, or our need for help. “Hey, don’t bother me with
news about a storm. I’m down here below decks swilling a brewski, playing “Halo 3” with my buds.”
The problem is, simply ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away. Jesus used the Parable of the
Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22 to drive this point home. In it, those who were invited to the
banquet refused to come. They went about their business and ignored the invitation. In Jesus’ own
story things didn’t work out very well for them.
Another way the deceiver likes to blind the minds of unbelievers is to foment a feeling of
hopelessness, at least in a sense. To lead people to conclude that we’re all on our own, and there
is no supernatural help to be had. “It’s no use; there is no lighthouse. I’m sorry about you and that
you had to believe those old wives’ tales.”
In Europe there are now public transit buses on which someone went out of their way to advertise
with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” And you know,
there’s something kind of enticing in that, isn’t there? You know, eat, drink and be merry, for
tomorrow we die. Why sweat the big stuff? But I soon find that, if I’m going to accept that there’s no
God, there’s a whole string of logical deductions that follow. And they’re deductions that have
played out over and over in officially atheistic cultures and systems. If there’s no God, then all those
expectations He supposedly had for us no longer hold. There are no universal truths, no universally
acceptable or unacceptable behaviors. And whose version of truth ultimately wins? Is it not the
ones with the most power? Would you like to entrust your and your family’s future to them? That’s
just one of many dominoes in line to fall when we deny God.
This wasn’t lost on David 3000 years ago, who wrote in Psalm 14: “The fool has said in his heart,
‘There is no God.’ All are corrupt and commit abominable acts; there is none who does any good.”
No, corporate atheism has never had a good outcome anywhere in the world, as far as I’m
aware. Because the storm rages on, and what good is it when we respond simply by
proclaiming there’s no lighthouse? Personally, I’m gratefully convinced that there is help from a God
who loves us so much that He sent His own flesh to die in our stead. I pray that you’re convinced as
well.
Finally, I believe that the god of this world will do anything to diminish the value and importance of
that very sacrifice. We’ve talked before about how we in this increasingly pluralistic society are
hesitant to acknowledge Jesus as “the” way to God, just as Jesus himself said. He said, “I am the
way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” We’re so saturated
with the conventional wisdom enveloping us in Western culture that we become dismissive, flippant,
or even hostile toward the idea that Jesus came in order to offer salvation to the entire world—that
there really is one way to salvation for all people. Our Baptismal liturgy says, “There is one
hope in God’s call to us; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,” and Jesus
and the New Testament writers clearly say that there’s only one lighthouse.
We may think it unfair that there’s only one. We may insist on choosing our own lighthouse,
perhaps not realizing that the light we’re looking at is just another boat bobbing on the water, lost at
sea. It may be the light of a beautiful boat. The boat may have very good people on board. It may
have a valuable fragment of truth. But according to Jesus and the scriptures, it isn’t the lighthouse
that will lead us to eternal safety. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ does that.
And I’d like to conclude by repeating something else we’ve said before. Having ourselves been
shown the way to the light makes us in absolutely no way more clever or better than anyone else.
This isn’t about having a “better religion” or superior insight.
In fact this isn’t about us at all! Listen to Paul’s words: “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we
proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who
said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
May we never forget that the light shines out of the darkness when we make ourselves slaves, and
that on this earth the light of God’s glory emanates from our Savior, Jesus Christ. And may we with
renewed urgency ask the Holy Spirit to remove Satan’s blinders, and then point the way to that light,
for only in its beam do we find safe harbor. Amen.
light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves;
we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as slaves for Jesus sake.” In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
I think it’s fitting that on the last Sunday after the Epiphany we have an epistle text that once again
uses the image of light to convey the core truth of our faith—which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. As
you know, “epiphany” is a word that means an unveiling, or something being made manifest. The
Epiphany season began with a celebration of Jesus’ first unveiling to the Gentiles, who in this case
were those Persian Magi who visited the baby Jesus.
The symbol of light has been the theme of the season, and now we stand at the brink of Lent, that
season in which we reflect upon our need for a Savior, and fast and pray in preparation for the deep
darkness of Good Friday and then the brilliant light of the risen Christ at Easter. In fact, this year we’
ll be having an Easter Eve service in which that light will be dramatically introduced into the church in
our first celebration of the Resurrection. I don’t think you’ll want to miss it.
In today’s reading from 2 Corinthians, St. Paul speaks of the light, but he also speaks of a kind of
veiling. He begins by saying some kind of curious words. He says, “Even if our gospel is veiled, it is
veiled to those who are perishing.” The way our lectionary is divided up, these words kind of seem
to come at us out of the blue. But it helps for us to place this in context by briefly looking at what
Paul was writing in the paragraphs just before today’s reading.
In chapter three of 2 Corinthians, Paul recounts the recurring dilemma of God’s chosen people, the
Jews. Their tale throughout the Old Testament is often one of two steps forward, three steps back.
Many of the old stories are designed to show the bad results of failing to heed God’s directions, and
then God’s blessing once those directions are understood and obeyed. This, of course, continued
into the New Testament, with Jesus frequently correcting the Jewish leaders’ lack of understanding
of the scriptures and of the Messiah, who He claimed to be.
Paul now carries the torch by tracing this unhappy history of his own people. In Chapter 3 Paul
recalls how Moses’ face was veiled when he descended from his encounter with God on Mt. Sinai.
This way the Israelites couldn’t see the glory of God or the fading of that glory from Moses’ face over
time. Paul then uses that same symbol to highlight the fact that the Jews’ sight continued to be
veiled, because they couldn’t connect the dots between the message of the Torah and the coming
of Christ. In other words, Paul lamented that the Jews didn’t understand that the Law pointed
straight ahead to Jesus.
And in today’s reading Paul takes the analogy one step further. He says that, just like the veiling of
his own people about Jesus, there are many today, both Jews and Gentiles, whose sight also is
veiled. He says that the light of the gospel is veiled “to those who are perishing.” And to these
ominous words he adds that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep
them from seeing the light of the gospel…” This is a pretty potent combination of images.
I really can’t help here but invoke a pretty familiar symbol which I think is hard to excel in expressing
what Paul is stressing to us. It’s a symbol intertwined with our history here at Hope: the lighthouse.
In a landlocked state this might not have quite the same impact as in a place where seafaring is a
way of life. But let’s use our imaginations for a moment.
First, what are lighthouses for? I mean, they look picturesque and quaint there on the beautiful
coast with their nice landscaping and barber pole stripes. But in a storm at night they’re the
difference between life and death. Have you ever been out to sea at night in rough weather? You’
re bobbing up and down, the wind is howling, perhaps lightning is crackling across the sky, and
every so often the boat lurches in such a way that you’re not sure whether you’re going to stay on
top of the water or go plunging into it. You’re trying to find the safety of a harbor, and having
trouble steering the boat. It’s unsafe to stay out at sea, yet close to the shore are rocks and
shallows that could at any moment dash the boat to pieces.
We used to live on the North Coast of California, near Humboldt Bay. This was a notoriously
dangerous area for fishermen and other mariners. In fact local tourist shops sold a book called
Night Crossings, which was an anthology of real-life accounts of close calls, especially during stormy
weather. It’s then that nothing is more welcome to a sharp-eyed mariner than the sight of a
lighthouse. Because a lighthouse gives you the information you need in order to make your way to
the warm and welcoming lights of a safe harbor. The question is, at the height of the storm do you
want your navigator or steersman to have a veil over his eyes? And if you’re the navigator or
steersman, do you want a veil over your eyes? Really, this is what Paul is asking.
I’m certainly not the first to point out the similarities between this scenario and the sometimes chaotic
life we live on this fallen planet. And I have to say, given recent events here and around the world,
the seas seem to be getting a bit stormier.
Paul says there is a lighthouse, and that lighthouse is the gospel of Christ. The Good News. The
unexpected flash of light illuminating the fact that Jesus Christ came to this earth to show us how to
live, died in order to take our sins upon himself, and rose from the dead to declare victory over sin
and death.
Yet many in our time have been blinded by the god of this world. Their vision is veiled. What the
scriptures proclaim as the truth is being met with increasing skepticism and simple unbelief. The
god of this world, which is Paul’s clear reference to Satan the deceiver, delights in obscuring the
truth.
I’d like to suggest that there are several ways that he does this. One way is to make sure we don’t
see the danger. We can anesthetize ourselves with whatever activity or preoccupation we engage
in. And we forget all about our mortality, or our sin, or our need for help. “Hey, don’t bother me with
news about a storm. I’m down here below decks swilling a brewski, playing “Halo 3” with my buds.”
The problem is, simply ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away. Jesus used the Parable of the
Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22 to drive this point home. In it, those who were invited to the
banquet refused to come. They went about their business and ignored the invitation. In Jesus’ own
story things didn’t work out very well for them.
Another way the deceiver likes to blind the minds of unbelievers is to foment a feeling of
hopelessness, at least in a sense. To lead people to conclude that we’re all on our own, and there
is no supernatural help to be had. “It’s no use; there is no lighthouse. I’m sorry about you and that
you had to believe those old wives’ tales.”
In Europe there are now public transit buses on which someone went out of their way to advertise
with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” And you know,
there’s something kind of enticing in that, isn’t there? You know, eat, drink and be merry, for
tomorrow we die. Why sweat the big stuff? But I soon find that, if I’m going to accept that there’s no
God, there’s a whole string of logical deductions that follow. And they’re deductions that have
played out over and over in officially atheistic cultures and systems. If there’s no God, then all those
expectations He supposedly had for us no longer hold. There are no universal truths, no universally
acceptable or unacceptable behaviors. And whose version of truth ultimately wins? Is it not the
ones with the most power? Would you like to entrust your and your family’s future to them? That’s
just one of many dominoes in line to fall when we deny God.
This wasn’t lost on David 3000 years ago, who wrote in Psalm 14: “The fool has said in his heart,
‘There is no God.’ All are corrupt and commit abominable acts; there is none who does any good.”
No, corporate atheism has never had a good outcome anywhere in the world, as far as I’m
aware. Because the storm rages on, and what good is it when we respond simply by
proclaiming there’s no lighthouse? Personally, I’m gratefully convinced that there is help from a God
who loves us so much that He sent His own flesh to die in our stead. I pray that you’re convinced as
well.
Finally, I believe that the god of this world will do anything to diminish the value and importance of
that very sacrifice. We’ve talked before about how we in this increasingly pluralistic society are
hesitant to acknowledge Jesus as “the” way to God, just as Jesus himself said. He said, “I am the
way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” We’re so saturated
with the conventional wisdom enveloping us in Western culture that we become dismissive, flippant,
or even hostile toward the idea that Jesus came in order to offer salvation to the entire world—that
there really is one way to salvation for all people. Our Baptismal liturgy says, “There is one
hope in God’s call to us; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,” and Jesus
and the New Testament writers clearly say that there’s only one lighthouse.
We may think it unfair that there’s only one. We may insist on choosing our own lighthouse,
perhaps not realizing that the light we’re looking at is just another boat bobbing on the water, lost at
sea. It may be the light of a beautiful boat. The boat may have very good people on board. It may
have a valuable fragment of truth. But according to Jesus and the scriptures, it isn’t the lighthouse
that will lead us to eternal safety. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ does that.
And I’d like to conclude by repeating something else we’ve said before. Having ourselves been
shown the way to the light makes us in absolutely no way more clever or better than anyone else.
This isn’t about having a “better religion” or superior insight.
In fact this isn’t about us at all! Listen to Paul’s words: “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we
proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who
said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
May we never forget that the light shines out of the darkness when we make ourselves slaves, and
that on this earth the light of God’s glory emanates from our Savior, Jesus Christ. And may we with
renewed urgency ask the Holy Spirit to remove Satan’s blinders, and then point the way to that light,
for only in its beam do we find safe harbor. Amen.
Sightless at Sea
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
February 22, 2009
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton
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