306 In The Path of Totality

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “In The Path of Totality” originally shared on April 10, 2024. It was the 306^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   The moon obscured the sun this past week, as the world obscures the Son of God.

   God was revealed in the sun, as always, this past week, as God shines in Jesus Christ. Today, we’re going to see how we reflect that Light.

   There was an earthquake in the northeast last week and people were freaking out. And people in Southern California said, “That’s cute.” There was rain in Southern California, maybe be ½-inch or 1-inch, last week and people were freaking out. And people in the northeast were saying, “That’s cute.”

   There was at least a partial eclipse of the sun this week and lots of people everywhere were freaking out.

   We just celebrated something infinitely greater than any of those things on Easter Sunday, but not too many people were freaking out.

   It all depended on where you stood.

   There was a rare solar eclipse this past Monday, and I took some terrible pictures. 😊

   We watched most of it from our driveway, sharing glasses with our neighbors and nearby workers, and sharing a common experience that has been shared among people from ever since there were people.

   Everyone in the lower 48 states could see at least a partial solar eclipse, and some saw a total solar eclipse. What you saw in person depended on where you stood in relationship to the sun.

   We celebrated the Resurrection of Our Lord, Easter Sunday, about a week ago last Sunday.

   Some saw God’s work, but not God’s fullness, and some saw the fully living reality of God in everything that they saw. What they saw depended on where they stood in relationship to the Son, Jesus Christ.

   Those who saw the full solar eclipse last Monday were in what was called the Path of Totality. It was a narrow band. Everyone else was either in the much broader areas with a partial eclipse or, in other parts of the world, saw nothing at all.

   Jesus said, in his Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:13-14,

13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. 14 For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

   Rock-n-Roll has taught us that lesson in that while there’s a Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin), there’s a Highway to Hell (AC/DC). 😊

   The gate to the path of totality of life is narrow and the way is hard. Why is that?

   Because there is a difference between believing that we are put right with God by keeping the religious law, or the moral law, or by any law, and by living in response to having been changed by God as a gift.

   But most people, in effect, are still living as though they were under the Law. It makes more sense to them that they have to earn their way to heaven especially. But they can’t. Grace does not occur naturally in most lives, so it’s hard to imagine how it could exist.

   Most people believe that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. That seems fair. The question they have to ask themselves is whether they are good enough, and most people believe that they are. At least they’re not as bad as those other people.

   Even people who do bad things, especially people who do really bad things, believe that they are doing good.

   They have no need of the cross.

   Nicky Gumbel is an Evangelical Anglican priest. In his “Alpha” course, an introduction to Christianity now taught widely all over the world, including in prisons, he asks participants to look at a wall and to imagine the best people they know at the top, and the worst they can imagine at the bottom.

   He then asks people to pick a spot on the wall where they would place themselves on that scale. Most people chose a spot somewhere near the middle.

   Then he says that the standard for salvation isn’t the wall. It’s the sky.

   Historic Christianity teaches that all people have fallen short but that all can be saved through faith. A gift from God in a living relationship with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, won for all who receive it, as in Romans 3:22b-26,

For there is no distinction, ²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴ they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶ it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

   People needed special glasses and filters, or gizmos, or lenses for the eclipse to look at the sun safely.

   The only mediator we need to see God is Jesus Christ on the cross, whose death restored the living relationship with God for which we were created, revealed to us through the Holy Spirit.

   And one day, all will be revealed.

   Paul writes, in 1Corinthians 13:12,

¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

   How can we respond?

   As the eclipse was happening, a crew from L. A. County was repairing the street next to our home where it had been buckled for years. We brought them viewing glasses and water. And in light of all that is happening in the world, and of the universal need for people to know the name of God that they see at work every day, I thought of the words of John the Baptist, quoting scripture, in preparation for the coming Christ, in John 1:23,

²³ He said,

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,

‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”

as the prophet Isaiah said.

   We are not saviors. We are servants of the Savior.

   We don’t bring God to people. God is already at work in every human heart. Everyone in the world sees God every day, as Paul writes in Romans 1:18-20,

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse;

   We proclaim God. We name the Name.

   But, as in the moment of totality, something obscures the Son of God, as was the sun obscured, and some people’s minds are darkened, as Paul continues in verse 21,

²¹ for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

   The Light of the Son of God is always present, even when we don’t see it.

   Even when something is blocking it, we see the Light that God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

   We are not the Light, we are reflectors of the Light.

   As John writes in 1 John 1:5,

⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

   All we can do is to name the Name, the living reality of God. To prepare the way for Jesus to come and live in every heart, to restore in us the baseline joy for which we were created.

   Our hope rests entirely in Jesus crucified. Jesus is the totality. He is the path that comes to us.

   Jesus is not the most important thing in our lives. Jesus is everything in our lives, now and forever.

   Nothing depends upon where we stand; everything depends on where we stand in relationship to the Son, Jesus Christ.

   He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!