Anyone here grow up in a small town? Then you know that one of the blessings of living in a small community is that everyone knows the secrets of everyone else.  And one of the curses of living in a small community is that everyone knows the secrets of everyone else.  Everyone keeps an eye out FOR one another… and everyone also keeps an eye ON one another. Familiarity breeds both contentment and contempt.

Even if you didn’t grow up in a small town, Information Technology, known as IT, has, in some ways, shrunk our whole planet to a small town culture.  Internet and instant messaging, 24-hour international news feeds, and text messages from anywhere to anywhere, have managed to create a real (even if scary) “global village.”

Everybody knows everybody else's business. And we seem to think that we have a right to know everybody else's business. Look at the swarm of speculation that flew about when the young Australian actor Heath Ledger was found dead. The media formed a feeding frenzy around every aspect of Ledger's life and family, making his tragic death the lead story on every newscast.  Eventually the news stories focused on how many news stories were being done about Ledger.  Any veil of privacy was immediately torn down as we demanded we had the "right" to know everything about the young man's life and death.

Small towns manage to function and thrive because its residents know the law of the land: "If you tell my secrets, I'll tell your secrets." And there is also another law of the land: even though I know your secrets, there is such a thing as realizing "it’s none of my business."

What the “global small town” seems to have abandoned is the sense that darkness and light are part of the human condition. Wherever you find a human being, you find a potential "child of light," but you also find a "child of darkness."  To be human is to have secrets. We all have secrets.  Things kept in the dark.  We once were darkness!  And it is no fun to be in the dark.  What child likes being in a dark room?  (Moira story).  Spiritually speaking, being in the darkness is worse.  But the Lord has given us light!  And now we are to live as children of light!

Our Ephesians text is not calling on Christians to be tabloid tattletales or some sort of pure-hearted paparazzi. Calling out shortcomings, catching others in sinful situations and exposing them – is definitely NOT the business of the “children of light.”

Our business, the business of those who have been graced by the "light," is to "find out what pleases the Lord.” And we don't have to wonder what that means: "what pleases the Lord." For Ephesians makes IT simple and straight-forward: “what pleases the Lord” is "all goodness, righteousness, and truth.” (v.10). Lives of goodness, (genuine moral excellence) righteousness, (in God’s eyes) and truth (constancy): that is what it means to live as children of the light.

It is highly likely that these Ephesian Christians were being accused of dark deeds in secretive societies. Especially suspicious behaviour was the Christian habit of "loving one another"--a mandate that the pagan culture around them read as an invitation to sexual license!

Our text does not suggest that Christians take their own turn at name calling--tallying the sins of their Gentile neighbours. Instead, it counsels Christians to so fully inhabit their new identity as "children of light" that they reflect only goodness, righteousness, and truth! In that way, our lives will reflect the very characteristics of God. Ephesians suggests that by our living a "light" life, the dark deeds of others would come to light without our ever having to name them, their shadowed essence standing in dark contrast to the light!

Our mission is not to name or blame the darkness. Our mandate is to live and love the light! Darkness is not banished by judging it or naming it darkness.  Darkness is banished when the light "outs" it and out-measures it, when the light shines its way into every corner and cubbyhole of life!

First-century Christians found themselves accused of immorality by their uncomprehending pagan neighbours. 21st century Christians increasingly find ourselves the target of slanderous scrutiny by an army of "new atheists" and an uncomprehending post-Christian, postmodern culture. The new best-selling book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons (2007) gives in chilling detail how this emerging culture looks at Christians and the church. The biggest accusation by aggressive UnChristians is that Christians are mean, judgmental, boring and ugly people. In other words, the world sees us as failing on all counts to live in goodness, righteousness, and truth!

I repeat: it is NOT our job to counter-attack "unChristians," to trot out lists of bad behaviour found among those who don't follow Jesus. Instead it is our mission to so live the qualities of a transformed life that we cannot be missed!  It is our mandate to shine our light so brightly that all will see good works and glory God!  We become “spiritual electrical engineers.”  Our job is to hook up the others around us in darkness with the light they so desperately need!

Let me leave you with a way of thinking about how Christians are to function in the world.  Do you have "IT?" No, I don't mean Information Technology “IT.”  But yes, I do mean the "IT" that brought the house down at Madison Square Garden at the close of the 2008 Westminster Kennel Club Best in Show ceremony. For the first time ever, a beagle won. In fact, the last time a beagle even made it to the final round was in 1939. You could almost see Snoopy doing his celebration dance! When asked what made this fifteen inch, three-year-old beagle so special, the response was the same: "He just has it." The judge, Dr. Donald J. Jones, said of Uno, "He's the most perfect beagle I've ever seen... Look at his face, you melt right down."

Hollywood crowns a new "It" actor every year--the "It" girl or the "It" guy--someone who projects that mysterious "star" quality on-screen and off.  Why do the words and actions of one political candidate stand out and strike us as different?  Because that candidate has "It."

Our Ephesians text this morning makes the case that being a disciple of Jesus means that we have access to the ultimate "It" factor! The spirit of Christ, the divine essence of goodness, righteousness, and truth, has been gifted to us through the grace of God! We have experienced the saving presence of Christ!  We are "in the Lord." We can have that undeniable, unmistakable "It" factor in our lives--the "It" of goodness, the "It" of righteousness, the "It" of truth.  Why?  Because IT has been given to us!  The light of Christ has shined on us and transformed us!

If we have been transformed, then we should project that mysterious "It" to others! The power of Christ is what makes us "children of light," is what brings "It" to life.  If the Christian identity has become linked with mean-spiritedness, with ugly attitudes, with judgmental tirades, then we have failed to bring the light into the world.   Have we lost "It"?  Do you have "It"?   Would you like "It"?  You know how we get it, don’t you?  Through Christ.  Through the Word.

In the words of someone who has "It," and who lived it during the darkest days of apartheid of South Africa, here is Desmond Tutu expressing the essence of "It: "Goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than fear, light is stronger than darkness and life stronger than death.”  Have we lost "It"?  Do you have "It"?  Would you like "It"?

I see it in the faces of the men and women standing in the cold at 7:00 am, waiting for a church to open to go to an AA meeting, deciding daily to live another day of hopeful sobriety.

I see it in the eyes of the young parents of a handicapped child, determined to live with hope and possibility instead of despair.

I see it when ninety-year olds put on their Sunday best and, as they have done every Sunday for nine decades, go to church, walk to church in all kinds of weather, to be part of God's faithful people to be reminded and to bear witness to the fact that the world is different now because of Jesus.

I see it when the test comes back positive and a brave man or woman makes a difficult decision about treatment and then bravely decides to live every minute of life, every day, as a child of light, sharing His light and exposing the darkness.

I see it in your lives when you live the way God wants you to live because you have found strength in Christ, in his love for you, in the fact that He has forgiven you for your past, and that your whole life belongs to Him.

I see it when others walk through these doors because your light shined into their lives.

I see it when at the funeral we say, “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die,” and a grieving spouse faces a new and completely unexpected future… with one hope.  One sure hope.  The truth that Christ has brought us to life, has raised us from the dead, and one day will raise our bodies from the dead too, and shine upon us in his perfect unending light forever!  That is the hope we need!  Do YOU have IT?   Amen.

-Sermon outline and some material adapted from Leonard Sweet’s sermon of the same title.