I Am the Light of the World

The scripture referred to is John 8:12 and chapter 9.

Longtime worshippers at both of my churches will remember the following event. I was scheduled to preach at our Easter Sunrise service. I set my clock radio to go off extremely early. What I didn't anticipate was a power outage taking place in the wee hours of the night. So what woke me was an awareness of a bright light shining on my eyelids. My first thought as I slowly came to consciousness was, "It's light outside." My next thought was, "IT'S LIGHT OUTSIDE!" To hold a sunrise service you have to start before sunrise. I woke my wife and we dressed quickly but when we arrived the service was ending and the Lutheran pastor was finishing the service, having had not only to preside over the Eucharist but to preach a sermon he thought I would be there to handle. I have used a battery-powered clock as a back up ever since.

It's a good thing, too, because when I started working nights again a few years ago, I made our bedroom very dark so I could sleep during the day. Anyone working nights will tell you it's very difficult to sleep for more than 4 or 5 hours during the day. Our bodies are conditioned to be awake while it's light. We are not nocturnal animals and one of the reasons given for the epidemic of sleep problems we have in the modern world is the invention of the electric light. In the old days, when the sun set, the limited light afforded by oil lamps meant that most people, especially in rural areas, went to bed earlier. They woke with the sun and lived most of their life in it.

We take light for granted. But it enables us to use our keenest sense, our eyesight, to its fullest advantage. Hearing can tell you a lot but you usually want to confirm the source of an unfamiliar sound with your eyes. If you feel a pain you usually look at the area to see if you can spot the cause. If it's in a place you can't see, you have a spouse or good friend tell you if they see anything. You seek out the source of a powerful smell, either good or bad,  and experiments show you can influence how people taste things by changing the color of a food.

So important is sight that we use it as a metaphor for understanding. When you grasp some abstract truth, you say "I see!" though the process takes place behind your eyes, not in front of them. In fact, the Hebrew word for "prophet" is "seer." So when Jesus says, "I am the light of the world," he is saying that he is what enables us to understand, specifically when it comes to spiritual things. C. S. Lewis once said, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun is risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." That is the sense in which Jesus is the light of the world.    

My wife and kids know I'm very bad at visualizing things. Describing something unfamiliar to me will not always help me get a sense of it. I do well with the abstract but when it comes to the concrete, I need a picture or a very good diagram. Perhaps that's why I did well in geometry but trigonometry threw me completely. I couldn't see the relationships described in trig the way I literally could in geometry.

To many of the folks Jesus was addressing, his talk of spiritual things might as well have higher math. That's why he used parables, familiar objects and people in stories to illustrate God's justice and mercy, the nature of the kingdom and the problem of our sins. He even used his healings as parables. The chapter after Jesus declares himself the light of the world, he heals a man born blind. In the ensuing discussion with his opponents we get this exchange: "Jesus said, 'For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see with become blind.' Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, 'What? Are we blind, too?' Jesus said, 'If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.'"

How can the sighted be blind? A bizarre but revealing experiment involved having people watch a video of people passing a basketball among themselves. The people who volunteered for the experiment were supposed to count how many times the basketball was passed. During the video, a person in a gorilla suit walked into the middle of the game, beat his chest and sauntered back off screen. The viewers were so intent on counting passes that most of them did not remember seeing the gorilla. Many in fact did not believe that there was a gorilla on the video until they rewatched it. The same experiment was repeated with oncologists counting cancer cells. The gorilla was invisible to them as well. The point is that we see what we expect to see.

Jesus was the invisible gorilla in the Pharisee's way of seeing things. He did not fit into their conception of what a faithful follower of God should be. He didn't fit the popular conception of what the Messiah should be either. Looking for something or someone else, they were blind to what Jesus was really showing them.

When Jesus heals the blind man it was--you guessed it--the Sabbath. And the Pharisees were so fixated on the idea that all work was forbidden on the Sabbath, that the fact that healing was good and from God was completely overlooked. I'm not sure they even asked themselves if God really put a higher value on the Sabbath rules than on the healing of a man born blind. And we see this concern for rules above people occur over and over in religious history. A few years ago, a girl with a gluten intolerance is denied communion because a bishop says the wafers must be made with wheat. I guess I missed the part when Jesus said, "This is my body and here's the approved recipe." Before I was ordained, we had a woman coming to St. Francis who was gluten-intolerant. But our retired bishop had no problem consecrating some gluten-free crackers from the health food store so she could celebrate the Eucharist with her parish.

I performed my first baptism before I was ordained. I was in the process and regularly visiting a former patient of mine and his wife, sharing my sermons with them. She was dying of cancer and he was severely disabled. I knew without her as his caretaker, he would not last long. She was Roman Catholic but hadn't taken communion since they married because he was divorced and she was his second wife. Since I was a lay Eucharistic minister, I asked if they would want me to bring them communion. She then revealed that her husband had never been baptized. I asked him if he wanted to and he said "Yes." So I contacted the Suffragan Bishop and told him that I was the closest thing they had to a pastor and that I knew that any Christian could baptize someone who was dying and wanted baptism. But that applies to situations where the person will perish in minutes. Seeing as her death was imminent and his would likely follow on its heels, I asked if it was OK if I did the baptism months rather than minutes before his death. The bishop gave consent. So I performed the rite and afterward, gave both of them communion. She looked at her husband of many decades and said, "Now I'll see you in heaven." She died weeks later and he followed within months as I had anticipated. And I have no doubt she was right.

In both cases, the bishops involved saw that people mattered more than the letter of the rules. They did so because Jesus lighted the way. Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." For Jesus, to let a person suffer because healing them was a technical violation of the law was a perversion of the spirit of the law. It is akin to letting someone die in the ER waiting room because they are unable to fill out the paperwork.

I've heard people in jobs that consisted primarily of dealing with the public say that their jobs would be perfect if it weren't for all the people. One thing Jesus cast light on was the importance of people. They are created in God's image and they are the reason he came and died. The way some folks in the church talk you would think the institution and its survival was more important than the people in it. C. S. Lewis points out that from a purely worldly perspective that looks as if it were true. Companies, institutions, governments and civilizations can last for hundreds or even thousands of years. But from a Christian standpoint, things are reversed. Human beings live forever, outlasting not only all human creations but this earth. Lewis reminds us that we live among immortals, beings who in eternity will either devolve into hellish horrors or become beings of light so glorious we would be tempted to worship them.

Because of that, we need to make the image of God in us visible in all we think, say and do. We also need to look for it in others, though it may be obscured by sin and the adaptations we all make to the ways of the world.

And as Jesus makes clear, before we look for the splinter in our neighbor's eyes we must make sure we aren't harboring a log or 2 in our own. We don't want the invisible gorilla in our life to be our own faults. Jesus' rule of thumb is to be more acutely aware of our own failings and more forgiving of others, the opposite of what we naturally do.

It's important to note, confess and ask God for help with our sins. it's important to being these sins into the light because they can reduce our ability be seen as his followers. I needn't cite any examples of  that. We've had numerous situations of Christians compromising the gospel with outrageously unChristian behavior lately.
   
Remember that in the same way Jesus declared himself to be the light of the world, he said, in Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world." We are is to reflect Christ's light. We mustn't do anything to dim or obscure that light.

In John 8:12, Jesus says, "The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." We don't generally stare at lights but use them to illumine other things, such as our path. And I daresay the "light of life" refers to Jesus' life. We look at how he reacted to situations, what he did when faced with the suffering of others, injustice and the abuse of power, and use it to show us the way to act in similar circumstances. We see him not only say "turn the other cheek" but actually do so when mistreated by the temple guards and Roman soldiers. We see him not only say "forgive your brother" but do so, letting Peter say he loves Jesus 3 times, mirroring his previous 3 denials. We see him not only say "love your enemies" but do so, asking God to forgive his executioners.

Light not only reveals our path but gives us direction. Before the invention of the compass, people navigated using the sun and stars, as the magi did searching for the infant Jesus. Especially important in navigating the northern hemisphere was Polaris, the North star. Jesus is the light that we follow as we travel through this life.

Besides that, light really does give life. Sunlight photochemically produces Vitamin D3 in our skin. Deficiency of this vitamin is associated with poor bone health and increased risk of multiple sclerosis, certain cancers, flu, tuberculosis and death. Most mammals need light to live. Most plants as well.

Light does something else. It helps us see beauty. It makes the sea and the sky turn colors. It spotlights flowers and reveals the intricate work of spider webs. It shows us the majesty of mountains. And the night sky would be nothing without the panoply of stars and planets. Small wonder painters and photographers go on and on about light. Light reveals the glory of creation.

We are creatures of the light, both physically and spiritually. We need Jesus as the light our life to help us find our way through the darkness of this world, to expose its dangers, and to lead us to the source of light and health and beauty. Isaiah 9:2 says, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…" And we know his name.