Lent Week 4: By Your Light We Become Light #LectioCast

The scripture passages this week bring us into a world of light: of light that shines so that we can see. Or, perhaps, shows us how we have been seeing people without perceiving them rightly in more ways than we are comfortable admitting. Seeing the light and becoming the light means allowing Jesus to reinterpret the world for us. In that world turned upside down we might even find that we’re sitting down to a feast, prepared by the Lord Shepherd, and looking into the eye of our enemy, who eats and drinks with us in the Kingdom of God.

John 9:1-41 “I see you.” Everyone thinks they see, but seeing Jesus rightly only comes with seeing rightly the blind beggar whom folks ignore every day. Be careful: we just might be the Pharisees.

Ephesians 5:8-14 Light and darkness are more than personal piety, they are systems of power and weakness, of empire and subjugation. We shine as we become little Christs.

1 Samuel 16:1-13 God has plans for Israel, plans that the house of Jesse thought were the eighth best of eight options. God has a rebuke for our tendency to make snap judgments rather than learning about a person’s heart. But maybe David’s a flawed hero himself.

Psalm 23 “The table is the most important piece of furniture in the kingdom of God.” And a table set before the face of enemies can only be a place of communion across lines of difference.

Jon Huckins. is a pastor and the Co-Founding Director of The Global Immersion Project; a peacemaking training organization helping individuals and communities move toward conflict equipped to heal rather than to win. Jon with his co-founder Jer Swigart is author of the forthcoming Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World which you can pre-order right now for less than $10 on Amazon. He writes for numerous publications including USAToday, Red Letter Christians, Sojourners, and RELEVANT. Jon also co-leads a Christian intentional community in his neighborhood of Golden Hill in San Diego. Find him at jonhuckins.net, on twitter @jonhuckins and on facebook.com/jon.huckins.1.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, and blogger who lives in San Francisco, CA where he is currently Pastoral Director for the Newbigin House of Studies. His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is hot off the presses. Daniel holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.