a city that lights up the world
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Our current series is entitled A City That Lights Up The World. We'll be in the text of Matthew 5-7 and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. We are hoping to allow that text to shape our vision for what life in Jesus’ community should look like as we seek to become a distinctive and redemptive ‘city on a hill’ here, just north of Boston.
A CITY THAT LIGHTS UP THE WORLD INTRO
Life was really dark for the thousands of Jews who lived in the cities of Galilee in 30AD.
First, there were the Romans. In the name of almighty Caesar and by the sharp edge of the sword, the empire dominated everything through sheer power, establishing its political legacy on the backs of many, including Galilean peasants. Whether is was the burning of villages, the enslaving of entire towns, the hiking of taxes or the horror of mass crucifixions, Rome had a vision for its own glory, and God’s people suffered terribly in the darkness of its shadow.
Second, there were the Pharisees. These religious leaders were supposed to serve God’s people by instructing them in the beauty of the Law. Instead, they deepened the darkness by burdening the people with legalisms, twisting God’s law for their personal benefit, seeking personal glory and carving a comfortable niche for themselves within the life of the empire, all at the expense of the people’s souls.
And so every day was a dark one for the Galileans. Poverty threatened, diseases went untreated and Roman occupation grated. Where the empire didn’t darken things, the religious elites did, making God feel even more distant than ever.
Like a Galilean hillside on a cloudy midnight, light was nowhere to be found.
But then, like a flash, a man called Jesus burst onto the scene. An uneducated, nobody, carpenter’s son from peasant-filled Nazareth, Jesus took the Galilean world by storm. He healed the sick, cast out devils, calmed storms and fed the people. Hope was kindled.
But Jesus was more than a wonder worker. He was a preacher whose ideas were wonderfully different from anything the people had ever heard before. He spoke with authority, casting a vision of a counter-cultural way of living life, distinct in every way from the norms of the empire. And in his Sermon on the Mount, he invited people to live as a part of that distinctive and redemptive community, to become a city on a hill that would light up the world.
2000 years later, Jesus’ offer still stands.
For the next few months, we at Seven Mile Road are going to listen to Jesus preach. The vision that he cast for those Galilean peasants in his hillside sermon needs to be heard again. We don’t live in the Roman Empire or under the religious authority of the Pharisees, but the darkness of empire and religion continue to threaten. What would it look like if we threw off the darkness and embraced Jesus’ call to become a city that lights up the world?
Let’s find out.
