Properties of
Light
A Sermon Shared at
the Suttons Bay Congregational Church
October 20, 2019
Scripture: Matthew
5:14-16
When I was a boy, my grandfather and I
often watched a show called “big time wrestling” together on his tiny plastic black-and-white
television set. To help retrieve the weak signal that floated elusively around
our neighborhood, he had wrapped balls of aluminum foil around the ends of the rabbit-ear
antennas—but, alas, this had absolutely no perceptible effect. My grandfather
was an enthusiastic and committed viewer of the program: although he was a
devout church-goer who sang the old hymns in the shower, he resorted to
somewhat saltier forms of expression when the static grew so loud that you
could no longer hear the announcer or when it looked like some villainous
wrestler might get away with a dirty move.
The stark symbolism of these battles made
an early impression on me: the good guys were very good and wore the light-colored
shorts and masks; the bad guys were very bad and wore the dark-colored shorts
and masks. A decade or two would pass before I came to three realizations:
first, clothing is an unreliable indicator of moral integrity; second, these
men were not actually fighting; and, third, the snow on the screen was the
result of dreadful reception and not because the match was taking place during
a blizzard.
You have no doubt noticed that our faith
makes a lot of use of those same two symbols of darkness and light. The Bible
strongly and consistently associates darkness with evil, or at least with the
absence of God. And it strongly and consistently associates light with God’s
presence, guidance, and grace.
This imagery recurs throughout the Old
Testament—right from the start. The book of Genesis tells us that in the
beginning “darkness was over the face of the deep.” In Exodus, the Lord tells
Moses to stretch out his hand so that darkness will fall over the land of
Egypt—a “darkness to be felt,” he adds ominously. Adjectives multiply, with the
book of Isaiah saying that the lost will be “thrust into thick darkness” and the book of Proverbs declaring that “[t]he way
of the wicked is like deep darkness.”
The book of Psalms uses a common metaphor when it says that those of us without
understanding will “walk about in darkness.”
We find identical imagery throughout the
New Testament. The Gospel of John tells us that people were evil and “loved the
darkness.” In three of the gospels, the sky becomes suddenly and mysteriously
dark during the crucifixion of Jesus. The First Epistle of John tells us that
in God there is “no darkness at all.” Colossians says that Jesus delivered us from
“the domain of darkness” and First Peter says we have been “called out of
darkness.”
On the other hand, the Hebrew Bible repeatedly
employs the image of light as a metaphor for goodness. The book of Genesis
tells us that the first words God spoke were “let there be light.” The
twenty-seventh psalm begins with the famous invocation “The Lord is my light
and my salvation.” Isaiah is rich with such language, including the prophetic
statement: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” The
book of Daniel declares that “those who are wise shall shine like the
brightness of the sky above.”
The New Testament uses the same
imagery—indeed, we might even say that it turns the lights up a bit. Such
symbolism abounds. To give you some idea of how densely the New Testaments
packs its references to light, just take the Gospel of John alone.
In that gospel, Jesus says (more than
once) that he is “the light of the world”—hold on to that point, I’ll return to
it. He warns his disciples that the light “will be among them” for only a
little longer, and he tells them: “While you have the light, believe in the
light.” John begins his gospel by saying of Jesus: “In him was life, and the
life was the light of men.” And he reassuringly adds words often translated this
way: the “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
We find the same sort of language throughout
the New Testament. Paul’s writings contain numerous examples. A familiar one
comes in his letter to the Romans, when Paul urges us to “put aside the deeds
of darkness and put on the armor of light”—the “armor of light”: a gloriously
mixed metaphor.
This imagery has crept out of the Bible
and into our everyday religious language, our traditions, and our literature.
We refer to Jesus as “the Lord of Light” and Satan as the “Prince of Darkness.”
We put lights up at Christmas and light candles at Christmas Eve services. If
we plunge into John Milton’s epic poem Paradise
Lost, we discover that he describes the pit into which God cast Lucifer and
the other fallen angels as having “no light, but rather darkness visible.” It
was a concept that Milton—blind and impoverished when he wrote those
words—could fully understand.
Now, here’s the thing. All of this imagery
could leave us with a simple message etched in our mind: darkness bad, light
good. But, of course, things are more complicated than that. This morning, I
want to suggest to you that—if we pay attention to those complications—we might
learn something not just about darkness and light …. but about God, about ourselves,
and about what God asks of us.
Let’s start here. One risk in thinking in
these simple “darkness bad, light good” terms is that we may come to view all
existence as ruled by two conflicting, opposed, and equal forces. There is a religion that holds such a belief—but it isn’t
ours. Manichaeism, which flourished between the third and seventh centuries,
endorsed a dualistic model along precisely these lines. Indeed, religious
historians tell us that Manichaeism actually gave us the phrase “Prince of Darkness.”
The
early church leaders did not just question Manichaeism—they declared it a
heresy. I’m not big on calling people heretics, but the critics of Manichaeism
had a point. After all, one of the fundamental tenets of our faith is that we
believe in one God; we are happy
monotheists; and dualistic belief systems see things very differently.
Of course, we understand that God gets a
lot of opposition here on earth. As C. S. Lewis observed, we live in “occupied
territory.” But make no mistake about it, our faith believes in one God and, to quote Luther’s great hymn,
“on earth is not his equal”—or anyplace else, for that matter. I think that, in
this sense, many translations of John’s gospel don’t get the sense of things
exactly right: it’s not just that the darkness has not overcome the light; it’s that in the end the darkness cannot and so will not overcome the light.
There’s another problem with this simplistic
“darkness bad / light good” dichotomy: darkness has a natural place in the very
order of things. God may have brought forth the light and declared it good—but
notice that God did not obliterate the
darkness. To the contrary, God gave the night a proportional role and preserved
it. Indeed, we cannot have days without having nights.
This means that darkness gets its seasons
and we will inescapably spend some part of our life there, like it or not. “There is a time for
everything,” Ecclesiastes tells us, and that includes the dark periods and places
of existence. If something bad happens to us, or to someone we love, or to an
individual or group for whom we care, it makes no sense to say we shouldn’t go
into the darkness—we will and, if we are compassionate human beings, we
probably even should.
Whether we should stay there is, of course, a different question entirely. That’s
where the redeeming forces of hope and grace and salvation come in. Sure, the
Bible candidly recognizes that the valley of the shadows exists and that we
will walk there. But it also promises that we will not walk alone and that,
with God’s help, we will pass through it.
Still, darkness is more than just an
unavoidable lapse in our otherwise well-lit lives. Sometimes darkness has important
lessons for us. A spell in the darkness can help us recalibrate our thoughts,
our behaviors, and our priorities. Being the weak creatures we are, sometimes
we need the darkness in order to appreciate the light and to take a fresh new
pleasure in it. The Prodigal Son had to wallow in the dim and filthy corners of
a pig sty before he could return to his father’s warmly lit home—and to
himself.
We can even have a little fun with this
idea. Before we buy into the “darkness bad / light good” cliché, think of all the
physical places in your life that you do
not want to be bathed in light. Your bedroom at 2:00 AM. A restaurant on
Valentine’s Day. A movie theatre once the film has started. The other night I
was driving down a pitch-black road and accidentally hit the button for the
dome light inside my truck. I immediately started scrambling to restore the
darkness—since I thought it might be a good idea if I could see where I was
going. I needed the darkness inside to
see the light guiding me outside.
So: darkness bad? It’s a useful shorthand
symbol. But there’s more to it than that.
Now, with respect to light, I want to make
a somewhat different point. And I want to get at it by starting with a
foundational question: what is it about light that makes it such a powerful,
compelling, useful symbol of goodness? After all, life has many other good
things in it as well—cheeseburgers, for example. And yet Jesus does not caution
us against putting our cheeseburgers under a basket. What are the properties of
light that give it such awesome theological utility?
Before getting to that question, it may be
worth noting that thousands of years ago something was true about light that is
no longer the case: it was precious and almost entirely outside of the control
of human beings. Today, with the flick of a switch or push of a button we can
light up a house, a backyard, a highway, a football stadium—we can even connect
a lamp to Alexa and call out “Let there be light!” and play god in extreme miniature.
For the vast majority of human history,
however, this did not hold true. We urgently needed the light—to grow crops, to
work by, to find our way, to travel safely, and so on. But it was hard to make
and hard to come by. Whenever the power goes out we get a tiny taste of the
helplessness with which the authors of all these biblical texts lived on an
hour-by-hour day-by-day basis.
So, today, we tend to take the magic of
light for granted. Rather than thinking of it as a wonderful and important
thing we may scarcely think of it at all. Perhaps we can regain some of our appreciation
for light—and why it meant so much to the authors of the Bible—by remembering
how precious it once was and by looking closely at its properties.
A fairly obvious property of light is that
it affects other things. It warms
them. It pulls them out of the shadows. It illuminates them. Numerous biblical
texts make this last point—that light can show the way for us and keep us from
getting lost, or worse.
We’ve all had these sorts of experiences. I
recall a few years ago staying out a bit too late on our boat on Lake Leelanau.
It was an extraordinarily starless night and as we approached the shore I could
barely make out our dock. Fortunately, we had a good strong flashlight on
board, and in short order I could see where we needed to go. That same light
led us down the dock, along the path through our woods, across the road, and
safely up the farmhouse steps. Right in my hand I held a nascent sermon,
complete with rechargeable batteries.
And, of course, light does not just affect
things—it affects people. Like plants, we naturally bend toward the light. In the introduction to
his brilliant translation of the gospels, the poet Stephen Mitchell refers to
this as the “irresistible phototropism of the human soul.” I suspect it
explains why a ragtag collection of hardboiled fishermen would leave their nets
and immediately follow Jesus; they saw the light in him and rushed toward it.
Think about that first fall day when the
sunlight makes the leaves glow orange and red and yellow. Think about that
first winter day when the sunlight dances across the crystalline snow. Think about
that first spring day when the sunlight teases the crocuses out of the ground.
Think about that first summer day when the sunlight flashes over the waves on
the water. “It’s beautiful outside; I’m going to go sit in my closet,” said no
one, ever. We are hardwired to move toward the light. As Mitchell says: like
plants, we are phototropic.
But light has other instructive properties
as well. It can be dispersed—meaning
that it can be broken down into its constituent colors. We see this when we put
light through a prism or when the sunlight gives us a rainbow after a storm. In
other words, it is through a diversity of colors working together that light is
achieved. There’s a powerful lesson embedded in there, although we human being
seem to have a lot of trouble getting it.
But the properties of light have still
more to tell us. Light can be diffused—meaning
that it can be spread out and scattered—and it can be diffracted—meaning that it can be bent. Unleashed and directed,
light finds its way into the darkest and most remote corners. In the example of
his life, Jesus shows us exactly how that works—and how it changes everything.
As some of you know, my wife Lisa is an
avid photographer. A few years ago, she was watching an excellent instructional
video by Joel Sartori, who has had a long and storied career taking pictures
for National Geographic. At one
point, he said something like this: “Everyone takes photographs of sunsets.
Next time, turn around and look behind you and see where the light from that
sunset has gone. Often, it is a
better and more interesting shot.”
Throughout the gospels, Jesus tells us the
same thing: “Turn around. Look at the neglected places. Watch how the light can
go there, too. See how it makes things beautiful.”
Light has an additional property as well: it
can be reflected. Light can make
contact with something and return to its source. Light comes back.
Jesus understood this, a basic principle
of the physics of divine light. If we send ours out into the world, we will get
the benefits of it as well. As we give, so shall we receive. The brighter, the
better, for the other, for us.
We need to pause and notice here that our
understanding of the source of the
light has shifted. In much of our religious language, the light comes from
outside—from God, from Jesus, from the Holy Spirit ... like the headlights on
my pickup. But Jesus plainly declares that the light comes from within us as well. As I noted earlier,
in the Gospel of John Jesus declares “I
am the light of the world.” But in our scripture reading for today, he also
says “You are the light of the
world.” This makes perfect sense coming from the one who said: “The Kingdom of
God is within you.”
Permit me a brief detour on that phrase. The
biblical scholar C. H. Roberts points out that the words usually translated as
“within you” here literally mean “in your hands” or “within your power.”
Theologian Charles Dodd explained the implications of that meaning: “That is,
the Kingdom of God is not something for which you have to wait anxiously … but
is an available possibility here and now, for those who are willing to receive
it as a little child.”
This idea gets at such a universal truth
that devout followers of other faiths have embraced it. Mahatma Gandhi wrote:
“My experience tells me that the Kingdom of God is within us, and that we can
realize it not by saying ‘Lord, Lord,’ but by doing His will and His work. If
we wait for the Kingdom to come from outside, we shall be sadly mistaken.”
Think about it. You are the light of the world. The Kingdom of God is within you. That is what Jesus says to us, in as clear, unmistakable,
and well-lit a way as he knows how. What good news. And what a daunting
responsibility.
Because this, then, is what Jesus asks of us: What will you do? Where will
you shine your light? How will you spread it, disperse it, bend it, diffuse it,
refract it, direct it, share it? Who is the person, now sitting in darkness,
who will lean into your light if you offer it? When will you toss away your
bowl and give your internal dimmer switch a good, hard twist to the right?
In 2010, a mine in northern Chile
collapsed, trapping thirty-three men inside. It took sixty-nine days to rescue
them. During that period, helpers were able to send food down to the miners and
the miners were able to send videos up to the surface so they could communicate
with their families. Perhaps some of you recall watching this drama unfold on
television.
Once supply lines were established, the
miners asked for something else, too. Most of them were deeply religious men, so
they requested Bibles, crucifixes, rosaries, small statutes of the Virgin
Mary—whatever could be provided. The rescuers found a way to get these things
to the miners, who built a shrine in the blackened space where they were
huddled. There, 2,300 feet underground, three miles from the entrance, in the
very heart of utmost darkness, the light went on … and those miners assembled a
remote outpost of the Kingdom of God.
There are no limits to where the light
can go. There are no limits to where we can send it. There are no limits to
where we can bring it. There are no limits to the places, the lives, the
circumstances that the light can reach.
And this is so because, through God,
all things are possible. Even the most impossible things imaginable. Even that
the Kingdom of God would be within us. Even
that we would be the light of the
world.
Praise God that it is so.
Amen.
