What I want to take away from this is that one of the reasons we struggle to square our experience of faith and church with the world around us is that, unlike the disciples who in our reading of John remained with Jesus, the Church is still too often dependent on signs of faith, rather than the bearer of a faith which is in itself a sign. Or, in other words, we still look for the light on the hill, instead of being the light ourselves. The problem is that this means we generally look more to the newspapers for signs that God is out there and is trustworthy, than to the story of Jesus Christ for inspiration and deepening of the faith that exists within us. As a result, a week like this past one, and so many before it, lead us to wonder if there really is a God rather than asking how could God be at work in this, how could God make this wrong? And this is a question that the modern Church, or rather the Church for a good part of its history, has struggled to ask itself, but which is a source of inspiration for faith to become a sign. The life of the early Church is perhaps the best example of this. According to the American sociologist of religion Rodney Stark “Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new types of social relations capable of addressing many pressing urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and poor, Christianity offered charity and hope. To cities filled with newcomers and foreigners, Christianity offered an immediate basis for connections. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and broader sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic conflicts, Christianity has offered a new basis for social solidarity." The way the Church responded to the conflict in the Greco-Roman cities speaks to the sociological signs of the faith that was in them. Christians offered charity and hope