God Is Light
On July 13, 1977, a lightning strike at a power station triggered a series of equipment failures that would eventually put most of New York City in darkness. Anger and frustration over what were already difficult times for the city exploded into hours of looting. During the night and into the next day, rioters gutted over 1,600 stores and started over 1,000 fires. By the time the violence ended, 550 police officers had been injured, and 4,500 offenders arrested. The demons of darkness that humankind has feared from ancient times had seemingly roared into life.
In the imagination, darkness looms as the realm of chaos and death, while wherever light rules, there is peace and prosperity.
In Scripture, God is the bright light that leads to and is the goal of creation. This is the theme of Sunday’s Lectionary texts. Psalm 27 begins, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?” Isaiah describes “the people who walked in darkness,” those living in the region of Galilee, oppressed by Assyria after defeat in a 735-732 BC war. Now, he says, their situation has changed, since they “have seen a great light,” probably the birth or coronation of a new king in Judah, whom he hoped would liberate the northern lands.
Hundreds of years later, Matthew sees the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy when Jesus begins his public ministry in towns in Galilee. Jesus is the true light who calls all people to turn to God in this special time during which Jesus brings God’s saving power into world.
It is in the Gospel of John that Jesus refers to himself as “the light of the world.” He is in Jerusalem for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, a celebration that included the lighting of four great Menorahs (lamp stands) in the Temple area. They were said to illuminate all Jerusalem. While his hearers wonder at this light, Jesus says,’ “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8;12). This becomes part of a long dispute with the religious leaders over who Jesus is. The debate ends badly with his opponents taking up stones to throw at him, but Jesus eludes them.
There are other incidents with the same theme surrounding Jesus’ claim to be the light of the world. He forgives the woman taken in adultery – “Go and from now on do not sin any more” – shining into the world the light of God’s forgiveness (John 8:2-11). He gives sight to a man born blind “so that those who do not see might see” (John 9). But this also leaves the possibility that those who do not believe can choose to remain in the darkness.
The thing about darkness, whether literal or figurative, is that we don’t always know when we’re in it. While we sometimes see the darkness in our own lives, our failures and our problems, at other times we need someone else to point it out to us. Seeing the darkness in the world is easier: wars, persecution, disease, prejudice, oppression of “the other,” divisiveness. Yet in all of this, God is Light, shining through Jesus and his Church (even though its light may sometimes be dimmed by its sinfulness), guiding us on the way to a recreated universe. Even now, we look to the New Jerusalem, the city that “had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light . . .” (Rev 21:23-24)
Bishop Emil Wcela