Hide it under a bushel? No!

I’m gonna let it shine. . .

The words of the Sunday school tune haunt me sixty years later. The light we receive from knowing Jesus is a gift to share. It demands public exposure. Yet we see how often public exposure dredges up ego and the mixed motives of attracting attention.  Christians who make headlines are not always “the light of the world.” So I have spent years with the bushel basket my symbol, instead of the light (Matt 5:15).

This week the Disciples group is reading about the gifts we have to share with each other and with those on our periphery.  It calls to mind my life-long struggle with the light and the bushel basket. The light is what gives expression to gifts. I actually prefer the metaphor of “light” to “gifts,” because gifts seem so self-conscious.  Despite the notion of gifts as something provided, our society sees gifts as something possessed, something that makes us special. If I am a “gifted” musician, that enhances me, not the source of the gift. Whereas light is something that shines through us, the source being Jesus.  As the Gospel of John said of John the Baptist, “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light” (1:8).

So Light is the expression of a gift not my own. I have the option to stifle its expression.  Light under a bushel. What should I do with this light, if I am not hiding it? How can I share the light without sharing self-consciousness, the part that craves attention and celebrity?  How can light shine through me, so that others see Christ, not my mixed motives? What’s a disciple to do?

The famous “love chapter” (I Corinthians 13) declares this caveat. Expression of gifts without love is useless. The gifts are ephemeral, fading with time, but love never ends, says Paul. The words that speak to me are “we know in part,” because they suggest all our best words are stumbling in the dark. This partial knowledge often prevents me from speaking, because I don’t like speaking half the truth. I feel I will forever correct the record, walking back my assertions, repenting for hasty judgments.

Such limitations never stopped Paul from voicing his opinions.  Some of them he had to walk back. Some letters he wrote are all about qualifying teaching that his hearers might have marred in translation or were treated as law, rather than wisdom. There are risks in leadership that make teaching and prophecy messy enterprises.  The messiness unsettles me. I reach for that bushel to keep the light in check.

For some reason this hyper-sensitivity never prevented me from teaching.  I have come to terms with the provisional art of teacher-speak, the readiness to re-think and qualify what I say. I take student challenges to my words as a compliment, because they have given me the honor of taking my statements seriously. When students challenge me, I feel I have done my job. They are thinking it all through, not dumbly recording it in their notebooks.

Shouldn’t this confidence apply to my whole life? Shouldn’t I look forward to others contradicting me, realizing they have given me a complete hearing and put my words to the test? Am I willing to face that discord without the protection of an honorific, the title “Professor” or “Dr.”? Am I willing to be exposed as “knowing in part” or worse, speaking without love?  When the light hits the prism, what comes through is a spectrum, not the pure white Truth. In this spectrum is our vulnerability, our off-white expressions.

For example, I bought a whimsical bumper sticker at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. that says, “Will Write for Food.” I thought this would humorously express to the world my devotion to writing. Then on Thursday I parked my car in the same lot as patrons of the Food Pantry. Isn’t this bumper sticker insensitive to those who truly struggle for food? I wondered.  Doesn’t this express a certain smugness that I am, in fact, well-fed? I am not truly writing to put food on my table.

So my clever bumper sticker delivered partial understanding, not the unassailable truth. Yet regardless of the risk I should venture opinions, grab the initiative, and  lead, even when I don’t feel confident. The writer of “James” points out that a person who does not act on his faith is like someone viewing their reflection, stepping away from the mirror, and forgetting what was there. I get that.  There’s a hollowness to ideas that are not enacted.  As powerful as words are, they weaken with disuse or inertia.  As James puts it “Faith without works is dead.”

In another place Paul says, “Do not quench the Spirit” (I Thess 5:19). It is an unqualified warning, but I believe it means something like, “Let your Light shine before men.”  Only it comes as a warning that the Spirit and the Light can be weakened by our holding it back. Gifts and Light that go unexpressed may lose their vibrance.  They are like the man who forgot what he saw in the mirror. Ultimately our gifts are not potent for our own use, but for others. And the Light does not build up under the bushel, but dies if it does not shine.

Let it shine. . . Let it shine. . .  Let it shine . . . .