In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
This morning, I want to tell you the story of a young boy who was sent home from school one day with a note from his teacher to be given to his mother. The note encouraged the boy’s parents to take him out of school because their young son was simple “unable to learn.” His mother’s heart broke when she read that note, but like a true mother, she gathered her emotions and turned to her young son and said, “My Love, you aren’t unable to learn. I’ll teach you myself” and so she did. The boy grew up and lived a wonderful life.
His name was Thomas. Decades later Thomas died and on the day of his funeral, the people of the United States paid a very special tribute to him by turning off their lights all across the country from the East Coast to the West Coast for one minute because Thomas, who was sent home from school because his teacher believed he was “unable to learn” grew up and invented the light bulb and changed this world forever.
Thomas Edison’s mother believed in her son and encouraged him to believe in himself. That encouragement changed the world. It’s a great story. The teachings of Jesus remind us to look at the heart of every person we come across in life; to look beneath appearances and see the image of God within every human being and to look past the surface and see the person on the inside because every human being has value and worth in the eyes of God. Every human being is made in the image and likeness of God.
He says it like this: “Whoever wants to follow Me must deny themselves and pick up their cross and then follow me.” In other words, the message of this world tells us to chase the material goals of life, to chase the tangible things of life, but Jesus is saying something very different. He is telling us to chase that which helps other people. That is how we “pick up our cross” by helping other people because in the end, that is what matters in the eyes of God. The Words of Jesus Christ all point to the sacredness of human life. They point to the inner person, to the person who He created and placed within them a soul on the day they were conceived. Think about it.
Ours is a world where we divide people between those who are in and those who are out; those on the way up and those on the way down; people who made it and those who never found their way. As followers of the Christian faith, we are called to see people in a different way, to see people as Jesus sees them and meet the person on the inside. It is our calling to see those people to whom society is blind. It is our calling to listen to those people society disregards and it is our calling to speak with those people society ignores and to whom life has been unkind. When we do these things, our Christian faith thrives.
One of my favorite quotes was said by a former President of the United States a number of years ago. One day, Jimmy Carter expressed how he understood his purpose in life to a group of people who gathered to hear him speak. This is what he said: “My faith,” he said, “demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference in the lives of others.
So, whether it is a story from the pages of the Bible or a story from our lives today, God is calling us to make our world a better place. We all know of someone who can use a reminder of what kindness looks like or what compassion feels like or what encouragement sounds like or what love feels like. When we live those virtues, people are bettered. Families and homes are strengthened. Children find balance and darkness disappears because we shined the Light of God into our world.
Something for all of us to think about.
Amen.