Sermon Title: Shining with the Light of Christ [Sermon]
Sermon Text: Philippians 2:1–4, 14–18
Sermon Summary: The masses can be massively wrong, following the devil toward ruin. God calls us individually to repentance under His law, redeems us in Christ, and sends us to shine as lights in a crooked generation.
Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson
Liturgical Date: Pentecost 18, Proper 21 A
Calendar Date: 2026-09-27
Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County

The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI:

TRANSCRIPT

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we heard from St. Paul these words: “Be children of God, without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.” And we are going to be talking about shining with the light of Christ in our sermon today.

So I’m sure many of you have heard the legend of the lemmings, right? What’s the legend of the lemmings? Up in places like Norway and Sweden, there are these little animals. They’re maybe like a hamster or a gerbil or something like this, very similar, a little creature. And the legend of the lemmings is that, once a year, they all go and jump off a cliff into the sea.

That’s not exactly right, although that is a legend. We’ll talk about how that became famous. But it’s based on something that does happen. So pretty often these lemmings will have these big, huge mass migrations, where just huge numbers of them will just pick up and all together start running across the landscape to some other place. And as they run across that landscape, they can do things which seem to be rather ridiculous, run straight headlong into a river or a stream or something of this nature. And that’s the basis of the legend of the lemmings running off of a cliff.

But how did that idea become so popular? Of course, it was Disney. Back in the fifties, Disney produced a movie in which they showed, in real life, a bunch of lemmings running off of a cliff. And so that’s the source for why maybe your parents said, “Would you just run off a cliff like a lemming?” Meaning, are you just gonna follow the masses and the crowds and just do whatever they do because they’re doing it?

But interestingly enough, knowing that background to the story helps us to see really what’s behind the masses of people in their confusion. So how did Disney get those lemmings to run off a cliff? They hired a lemming wrangler. And the lemming wrangler’s job was to feed those lemmings, raise those lemmings. I imagine that those lemmings really thought the lemming wrangler was a great guy, right? Whenever he showed up, they got fed, and he had to make them reproduce until he had this nice big, large mass of lemmings. And then one day, this individual who you think is so great and taking care of all your needs and whatever, drives you out to what seems like a really nice environment, right? You had been maybe housed in a barn somewhere in Norway, but now he took you out to this beautiful field, and he starts shooing you in the direction he wants you to go. You think this is the right way to go because my lemming wrangler is telling me where to go. And all of a sudden you start running with your fellow lemmings straight off a cliff.

This was before those times, the times now where you see the things like “no animals were harmed in the making of this video.” That didn’t exist in the 1950s. It’s a great illustration, I think, for what happens to the masses of people around us. Because even as people collectively come to various moral positions which are contrary to the word of God, which will ultimately lead them to running off the cliff, the way that people come to various spiritual ideas which have an even worse consequence, running off the cliff to perdition—well, there’s someone behind that, the devil himself.

And when God snatches us out of that by means of our calling, our election, our sanctification, so that we come to trust in His Word and trust in His grace and mercy, He’s snatching us away from this great mass of people and from the one who seeks to do us in. Praise be to God for that. That’s really at the heart of our message today. ‘Cause as we shine like lights, this is a call to live as Christians, to believe as Christians, and that’s always going to look different than the mass of people around us. And praise be to God for this.

We’re gonna talk about this in our three points. First of all, we are going to talk about the point that the mass can be massively wrong. Second of all, we’re going to talk about that repentance is a matter of understanding that we as individuals stand under God’s law. So we as individuals stand under God’s law and we’ll be judged individually. Then finally, praise be to God, the Lord redeems us individually so that in turn, while we shine collectively as lights with our fellow Christians, yet this will be distinct and different than the rest of the world.

The Mass Can Be Massively Wrong

There’s another story from the 1950s that I’d like to tell you that helps you to see how the mass can be massively wrong. Most people, when they try to understand what’s good, what is right, or what is true, normally what they will do is they will look around at the people around them, and as long as their customs and practices and beliefs look within range of similarity of the people around them, they think that they’re at least right, or in the range of being right. And that’s the instinct that most people have, but that’s an instinct that can lead to really mass delusion. And there are documented examples of mass delusion.

I think it was 1954, there was something called the Seattle Windshield Mass Delusion. What was the Seattle Windshield Mass Delusion? Basically, one night a police officer was walking around Seattle, and Seattle is a place where there’s a lot of houses close together—most people don’t have garages—and so the cars were sitting out in the driveways, and the lights are shining down and made it easier to see the surface of the windshields. And he noticed something. In so many of the windshields on the beat that he was walking, so many of these windshields had divots and pockmarks in them. It seemed like every other windshield had a divot or a pockmark in it. He went and he reported that to the newspaper. The newspaper picked up that story. They published it. What did everybody do as soon as they opened the newspaper? They went out and inspected their own windshields. Guess what they found? Divots. Pockmarks.

“Something’s gotta be causing this,” people thought. And there were all kinds of theories. Some people theorized that gangs of young ruffians were going around with BB guns to put pockmarks in people’s windshields. And so people would stay up late trying to catch these young ne’er-do-wells, and cops began being on the lookout for these bands of boys causing all these problems. Other people thought that it was because there was nuclear fallout coming down and landing on the windshields and causing these pockmarks, so people began to panic that maybe there’s nuclear fallout falling on Seattle. And so people started going around with Geiger counters.

There was a guy on the police force, and I’m guessing he was probably one of the least popular guys on the police force, right? ‘Cause he’s one of those contrarian guys. He didn’t go along with the crowds and the rest of his police officers looking for these ne’er-do-wells. He thought maybe there’s something else going on here. You know that guy. When you say something and everybody agrees on it, it’s, really? Usually not a very popular guy. And so what he decided to do when his beat came up, he wasn’t gonna walk around the driveways. He decided to go check out the new car lots. And guess what? No pock marks on the windshields of the new cars. What everybody had noticed and began thinking was some sort of massive conspiracy was just the normal wear and tear on an average car with probably less advanced glass technology than we have now. It’s as if everybody would’ve gotten panicked over the northern Wisconsin rust epidemic on cars. It just happens, right? It doesn’t mean people are going around putting rust on your cars. It just happens.

It’s one of the most well-documented cases of mass delusion. And there are many examples of mass delusions, many examples of mass psychosis. There have been documented examples of entire countries of young women having a laughing epidemic. There are examples of werewolf panics in medieval Europe.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the masses around us can be and often are massively wrong. Paul saw this. What did he call the masses of people around him? A crooked and twisted generation.

What about Ezekiel? Ezekiel looked around him and found a generation that too was massively wrong. It was the saying that he quoted, a saying that seemed to have been common in his age, that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and their children had their teeth set on edge. Evidently, it seemed like many in his generation were blaming their problems on the generations that had come before. Instead of honoring father and mother, they disregarded and disdained father and mother. Instead of taking personal accountability for the problems of their household and for the problems of their city and their nation, they blamed the ones who had come before them.

That wasn’t the only problem that Ezekiel called out. Ezekiel also called attention to the sexual immorality of the people around him. And in addition to this, Ezekiel also focused in on the idolatry of his generation, of the people who ought to have been God’s people. They were practicing syncretism. Maybe they hadn’t rejected the one true God, but they mixed in with the worship of the one true God, worship and beliefs associated with other false foreign gods. They all point in the same direction, the people said.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Can you think of an age in which generation is set against generation? Can you think of an age marked by mass sexual immorality? Can you think of an age in which people are practicing and believing in syncretism, picking and choosing the religious beliefs as if from a spiritual smorgasbord? Boy, does that not sound familiar.

We as Individuals Stand Under God’s Law

And even as Ezekiel called out people from this mass, this massive delusion of their time, so also God calls us. And this is an individual call. Because if we will turn away from the mass delusions of the masses around us, this means then we as individuals must reckon with our own individual sin.

Again, when a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life. Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live. He shall not die.

Now, on the one hand, there is the call there to repentance to understand that we are not going to be reckoned before God’s judgment seat en masse with the great masses of people, and that as we do so, we will not be reckoned according to the opinions of the masses, but rather according to the law of God. That is the beginning of repentance: to understand that we as individuals are held accountable to the righteous commands and demands of a righteous God. And that call is as pertinent today as it was in the day of Ezekiel.

Yes, to consider ourselves accountable to a righteous God means that we may face rejection from the generation around us. This may mean that people might consider us to be strange and alien in our time and in our place.

The Lord Redeems Us Individually

But brothers and sisters in Christ, even as we understand and acknowledge that we are held accountable to God’s righteous expectations individually, there is a promise as well. That even as we are individually reckoned, yet also by the work of God in Christ Jesus, we are individually redeemed.

Yes, the scriptures say that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. The work of Christ Jesus is universal in nature insofar as His righteousness covers over all sin, but yet not all belief. And the promise of God is this: that we have been redeemed not only collectively, but also individually. You see, the saving work of God consists in our individual calling and election.

Before the foundation of the world, God wrote the names of all His people in His book, in the Book of Life. To those that he called, he also sent the Holy Spirit, who by the message of the gospel has converted the heart to individually trust and believe in God and in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

The Light of Christ Within Us

And by means of the sanctifying work of God, this individual sanctifying work, therefore the light of Christ, his righteousness has come to shine in our hearts. The righteousness of Christ dwells within us. That has a righteousness and a glory that is going to shine with greater and greater brilliance as we are transformed from one degree of glory to the next. And we await with great thanksgiving for that glorious day when no longer the shade of sin that still hangs around us on account of our sinful nature will no longer be, but instead nothing will inhibit the glory of God as it shines from us and out of us, reflecting God’s glory even as it shines upon us.

And yet until that day, the glory of Christ yet still dwells within us. And while it may be muted and shaded by our sinfulness, it yet still shines. And my brothers and sisters in Christ, my encouragement to you this day is to let that light shine. Don’t cover it up. Don’t try to just fit in with the masses. But instead, let it shine in the midst of this crooked generation.

One last story. Back when I had the great blessing of studying abroad, there were many of my fellow classmates who wanted to try to not appear to be American. They thought that if they looked American maybe they might get taken advantage of or picked on or something like this. And so they would sew Canadian flag patches—what would you call it—on their backpacks and that sort of thing, try to pawn themselves off as Canadian. I knew that people would take one look at me and say, “That’s a corn-fed boy from the middle of America.” There was no hiding it, and let me tell you, there wasn’t. You could walk down the streets, and the shop callers would all call out “American, American.” In fact, they usually could pinpoint exactly where you were from. At that time, I lived literally right on the border of Texas, and so they’d say, “Yo, Texan.” I said actually, I’m one mile from Texas, is my legal address. All right? Couldn’t help it. It just shined forth.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, you belong to a nation far more distinctive, far more brilliant than the United States of America—or even, doesn’t Texas consider themselves to be a nation too, something like this?—even more brilliant than Texas. You belong to the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. You belong to a kingdom which has no beginning, which has no end. Do not try to cover that up, but rather instead let the glory of Christ shine in you as you conform yourself not to this age, but to the age to come, that you allow your opinions to be formed not by the masses around you, but rather instead by the holy scriptures. Whether moral or spiritual, let your light shine.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.