Luke 8:16-18, 11:33-36
“No one after lighting a lamp hides it under a jar or puts it under a bed; rather one puts it on a lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light” (Luke 8:16).
Today’s scripture is about light, obviously.
Less obviously, it’s also about fruit.
At least the way Luke tells it. In Luke 8, this parable comes right on the heels of another one: the parable of the sower. That’s the one where the seed is the word of God, getting scattered on all sorts of soil. The seed that falls on good soil is like those who “hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with endurance” (Luke 8:15). That fruit, to quote Paul, looks like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). When the word of God takes root in us, that’s what grows.
For example: we’ve got all this staff turnover happening right now. Our “Minister of Discipleship and Connection” is planting a new campus – we haven’t refilled that position. Our “Executive Pastor” has gone on to consult with other churches. Our “Church Administrator” – a saint-like man who’s been in that position for thirty years – is hoping to retire soon. On top of all that, I follow a guy who was here for twenty-five years; his retirement still feels fresh. That is a lot of change! And here I am in the middle of it, effected by it and responsible for it and feeling…. strangely peaceful and patient. Working very actively to figure this out but still: peaceful and patient. I feel this peace and patience because of mentors who scattered the word of God around me, and some of it took root, and low and behold it bore fruit. That’s what Jesus is talking about! That’s the parable of the sower – it’s for real!
And then, without hardly taking a breath, Jesus switches metaphors. He moves from fruit to light as though it’s same-same. So we need to ask: what’s the common denominator? Why would Jesus keep talking like it’s part of the same story saying: “No one after lighting a lamp hides it under a jar or puts it under a bed…”
To understand fruit and light we need to talk about dark. In this modern world we don’t really know what it’s like to be in the dark. We have street lamps on every corner and light switches on every wall and flashlights on our phones. What would it be like to really need light?
I’ll tell you what it’d be like. It’d be like caving.
Back in my college days I had a lot of outdoorsy friends. My main outdoorsy thing was backpacking, but I hung out with people who with different skillsets: kayaking and climbing and caving. One weekend the caving friends had an extra seat in their car. “You should go caving with us!” they said. Had I ever been caving before? No. Did I have any idea what this invitation might involve? No. I asked a total of zero clarifying questions and jumped right in… because that’s what you do when you’re 20.
They told me to pack long pants that I wouldn’t mind getting dirty (which wasn’t a problem, because that pretty much described what I wore every day). I was also told to bring a head lamp with extra batteries and a hip pack that I could tie around my ankle. Curious. But did I ask why? No! Because I was 20.
We got up early Saturday morning and drove a little further than I expected. We pulled into a gravel parking lot that looked like it was probably someone else’s land. We hopped a fence that they assured me was okay to hop and arrived at a hole in the ground. They handed me a helmet and told me to crawl on in.
If my mother had been anywhere nearby she would have had so many questions.
Not me! I was 20! I crawled down in that creepy looking hidey-hole like it was nothing.
I wouldn’t crawl back out for another twelve hours.
I assumed we were going on, I don’t know, a three hour tour of the cave. How much is there to see? If you’re an avid caver (like my friends) there’s apparently a lot to see. Very quickly I wished I had asked questions like, “How far are we going?” and “What is the hip back for?” If I had, I would have learned that I’d be dragging that hip pack behind me for two full miles of belly-crawling.
But frankly, it wasn’t the belly-crawling that got to me. I kind of like doing tough things because then I can say I did tough things afterward. What got to me was the dark.
The dark of a cave is a complete dark. When there’s no light shining from anywhere, your eyes never adjust. It’s as dark as if someone replaced your field of vision with a black sheet of construction paper; darker than the back of your eyelids! In that kind of dark, nothing exists beyond the reach of your tiny headlamp.
At hour one this was kind of cool.
By hour four it was making me panicky.
Round about hour six we arrived at our destination – a large “cathedral room” that was full of stalactites and stalagmites. I tried to appreciate it. My friends certainly did – they were off and exploring. But all I could do was sit there in my little pool of headlamp light, eating my snack and thinking, I just want to see the sun. I knew we had another six hours’ of crawling to get back out. It felt like I’d never see daylight again. This is my life now.
On the way back, I did my best to keep my bad attitude to myself. I didn’t want to ruin things for my friends. And – it was encouraging that we were making progress back toward the entrance of the cave. At some point we stopped for a snack break, huddled around in a circle. One of my caving friends had an idea. “Hey, let’s all turn off our lamps to see how dark it really is!”
“NO!” I yelled. I couldn’t hold my true feelings in. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to turn out their lights.
The last thing I wanted was for someone to take their headlamp… and put it under their helmet.
I was desperate for light. The darkness was oppressive, overpowering, depressing – and our little lights were the only thing keeping it at bay. Why would we turn them off?
This is the real-life desperation for light that we might not fully appreciate today. Oh, but we can appreciate the metaphorical desperation for light, can’t we? We go through phases of life that are too dark for too long. We’d go back and ask some clarifying questions if we could, it that could keep us out of this – but we can’t now, we’re here now, and it’s gone on for so long it feels like the dark will never end.
In those darkest of times, we are desperate for light.
Which is to say: we are desperate for fruit, because fruit is meant to shine.
Let’s use the example I shared at the beginning. The word of God is bearing in me the fruit of peace and patience in the midst of change. Man, that is like a light shining for me right now. I am an over-planner by nature. I want to know what I’m doing this afternoon, tomorrow, next week, next month… It’s pretty amazing to go through a season of change like this and also have complete trust that the next steps will reveal themselves as we need them. For me to have this peace and patience right now is like a light shining bright in my heart. Sometimes, I literally just stop and smile at how amazing it is.
I’m not the only one who has a hard time with change. Change is hard. Change can be a very, very dark time for a lot of reasons. Life gets dark when we get the bad diagnosis, when the relationship ends, when we lose the job, when we relocate, when the loved one dies… How many people do you think are in the dark of “change” right now? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?
That’s a lot of dark.
So what if I took my fruit – the fact that my life with Christ has miraculously transformed my ability to navigate change – and put it under my helmet here?
What if I never said anything about it?
What if I just kept it to myself?
That’d be ridiculous. It’d also be normal. It’s so easy to feel shy about talking about what God has done for us. Our faith feels personal, so we keep it personal. It’s so easy to feel self-conscious, like, “Well, they don’t believe in God, so this won’t make sense…” I’m telling you: that light shines and it doesn’t matter if they believe in it or not. You can tell someone what God has done for you without saying, “You have to believe this too, exactly like I believe it.” No – all you’re doing is taking your fruit out and letting it shine.
Because that’s what fruit does.
When Jesus gives this same teaching about light in Luke 11, he adds this bit:
“Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but if it is unhealthy, your body is full of darkness. Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. But if your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.”
The first-century understanding of the human eye was that it worked by shining light out into the world, illuminating things so they can be seen. Jesus is using that understanding to communicate with his audience: what is within you will shine out. It’s meant to shine out.
So let it. The next time you feel shy or unsure or lazy about telling someone else how God is bearing fruit in you, remember: they may be in the darkest of places. They might be desperate for a little light to shine, wherever it comes from.
Let your fruit shine.
Prone to Wander 
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