by CCW | 4 December 2018 23:00
This is the first of two Advent meditations on Christ, the Light of the World. The second is posted here[1].
Part One:
Advent is about the coming of God as light to a dark and despairing world. The imagery of light is an important and classical feature of the religions of the world and so too for Christianity. Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” He doesn’t just say it once either but twice. It is, I think, an extraordinary statement. What can it possibly mean?
To be sure, Jesus is identified as light by others, too, by prophet and priest, by poet and evangelist. “In him was life and the life was the light of men”… “That was the true light, which lighteth every one that cometh into the world”. And as aged Simeon proclaims, echoing Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus is “a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel”.
But when Jesus identifies himself as “the light of the world,” it is something more and something different: It would seem to be something which he wants us to know. It suggests something which he wants us to know about himself and about the world, and, indeed, about ourselves.
There are things which Jesus wants us to know. The Gospels are at pains to bring those things to our attention. But what Jesus wants us to know does not mean collecting a bouquet of holy facts and figures. It is not about compiling bits and pieces of pious information nor about lining up a series of propositional hoops through which to jump “merrily on high”. Instead, what Jesus wants us to know are the things which belong to our being with him. Such things are relational rather than informational, dynamic rather than static, humbling rather than presumptuous. And they are inexhaustible. They are the things which we must be constantly learning, constantly engaged with, constantly “being renewed in the transformation of our minds”.
They are the things which are identified and known so as to be proclaimed and celebrated. They are matters of witness. These are connected. If Christian life is about our witness to Christ, then it is also about our being with him. Both our being with him and our witness to him turn on the substantial matter of who he is and what he means for us and for our world. They turn upon the powerful image of Christ as light.
A framework of thoughtfulness – of prayerfulness – belongs primarily to what Jesus wants us to know. Within such a framework we can ponder all the riches of his grace and bring into the light of Christ all that belongs to our contemporary world and to our contemporary lives. “In Thy light shall we see light,” as the Psalmist puts it (Ps. 36.9), but in that light, too, we find our life. The light is a life-light. We find our story – our life – in the light of God’s story – his life – written out for us to read in Jesus Christ. What Jesus wants us to know means our being with him in the light of his grace.
This being with Christ in the culture and world in which we find ourselves belongs to our Christian witness to him. Our Christian witness cannot merely pit the Gospel against the world nor can it simply pitch the Gospel to the world. It must be to God in the world and so it must be to Christ and to our being with Christ. More importantly, it must be to Christ and with Christ in the deepening of our understanding of what he wants us to know. The deepening of our understanding of Christ necessarily embraces the things of the world. They, too, have to be brought into the light of his understanding.
Yet, why begin with Christ, it may be asked. Is that not already something contentious and arbitrary? Might it not be better to engage the contemporary culture – the context of people’s lives – simply from within its midst and argue a path to God illumined, perhaps, though not necessarily, by Christ as one model, path or way? Or for that matter, by some other guru of enlightenment? Or might it not be better to speak of God and argue a way from him, perhaps through Christ, though not necessarily, into the midst of the world of contemporary experience? Perhaps. But surely there is good reason to begin with him in whom the things of God and the world are said to meet. Surely there is good reason, even a better reason, to begin with Christ simply because of such statements as “I am the light of the world”, statements that catch and entrance us. They compel our attention by the power of the thought in the image.
With respect to ‘pluralism’, to say that Christ is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” is not to counter all other religions simply; rather it carries the obligation from within a Christian understanding to find what is surely true in all other religions and to bring them to the fullness of understanding and truth which for Christians is found in Christ Jesus. His uniqueness is not a cudgel but a staff to lead and guide, to engage and confirm, to teach and explicate, not to dominate and destroy.
Quite simply, Christ is in the midst. The Gospels present Jesus as standing in the midst of the world deeply engaged with the whole of our humanity. He engages the world with God. He is the engagement. Christ is in the midst. In his presence “all hearts are open, all desires known,” and he is the one “from whom no secrets are hid.” Why? Because he who comes into our midst is in the bosom of the Father. He who reveals God illumines as well as our hearts and our world. In every way, “in Thy light shall we see light”. If we are the “body of Christ”, then we, too, have to be in the midst of the world, bringing the clarifying light of Christ to that world in all of its confusions. The light of Christ clarifies, corrects, illumines, and redeems.
What Jesus wants us to know, then, is wonderfully captured in the image of Christ as“the light of the world”. It is a powerful and suggestive image of identity; an image of revelation and illumination; an image of witness and purpose; an image of prayer and praise; an image of life and delight. Our task then is to ponder the passages in which he proclaims himself as “the light of the world.”
Jesus identifies himself as “the light of the world” twice in John’s Gospel; once in Chapter Eight, verse twelve, and again in Chapter Nine, verse five. On each occasion the context is instructive. On each occasion, Jesus is at pains to make something known to us in the face of our reluctance and unbelief, in the face of our ignorance and inability to understand, and, more strongly, in the face of the rejection and repudiation of what he wants us to know. But he makes this part of the teaching, part of what he wants us to know. There is an engagement. There is an argument by which we are drawn into the light, either to accept it or to reject it. But both the acceptance and the rejection are known in the light. The Gospels want to bring us to understanding through the forms of our not-understanding. Tonight we consider the first of these passages, John 8.12.
The first identification of Jesus as the light of the world follows immediately upon the famous or infamous scene of the woman taken in adultery. The story is fundamental and paradigmatic for the pastoral ministry in dealing with all of the various forms of immorality. The doctrine of the forgiveness of sins exercises a priority, it seems to me, over the forms of moral correctness that so beset us and bedevil us in our world and day. The point is that we have to begin with forgiveness and let it shape our lives to and for God and with one another for that is what it means to live from an ethical principle.
The story of the woman taken in adultery is a scene of moral judgment, to be sure. Yet, it is immediately followed by what is a metaphysical statement, essentially a statement of identity. Jesus spoke to them saying “I am the light of the world” (vs. 12). This reveals his twofold identity as Son of God and Son of Man. (We have not to deal here with the questions about the placing of this story in John’s Gospel and whether or not it belongs to John’s Gospel at all – suffice to say that it is a part of the canonical Scriptures which we have received and in the place where we find it.)
This statement of identity which follows upon this scene of moral judgment embroils Jesus in a debate and argument about judgment. The debate about judgment all turns upon the matter of his identity with the Father. Jesus speaks of judgment in terms of his relationship with his Father: “I judge no-one: Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and He who sent me”.
This judgment is contrasted with the judgment of the Pharisees which Jesus says is “according to the flesh”. When Jesus says “I judge no-one”, he speaks of the purpose of the image, “I am the light of the world”, which is to reveal and illumine. To enlighten is to bring things into the light, into the light of our identity with him. Light that exposes is simply judgment. Here the light enlightens. On the other hand, the resistance and refusal of this enlightening light exposes the character of our deeds and suggests a negative identity: we are sons of the Father of Lies rather than sons of God who is truth, the sons of light.
Thus, the whole chapter is enveloped in a cloud of intense animosity between Jesus and the Pharisees who are conspiring to arrest and kill him. The background to this animosity further draws out the connection between action and identity.
For instance, John 5. 1-18 tells the story of the Sabbath healing by Jesus of the man who had been ill for thirty-eight years and the reaction of the Jews upon their awareness of what Jesus had done. Something of who he is, is perceived in what he has done, but he is rejected.
”The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “my Father is working still and I am working”. This is why the Jews sought all the more to kill him because he not only broke the Sabbath” – a moral law – “but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God” – a metaphysical identity (John 5.16-18).
In the whole of Chapter Eight, Jesus is talking about his identity with the Father in the context of its repudiation:
But they did not understand that he spoke to them of the Father. So Jesus said, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me(John 8.27,28).
Against further accusations which arise out of confusions about identity, the chapter climaxes in Jesus’ statement of identity that“Before Abraham was, I am” (vs. 58) and ends with the attempt to stone him. “They picked up stones to throw at him” (vs. 59). The women taken in adultery was to be stoned for what she had supposedly done; they sought to stone Jesus for who he is. And yet this, too, is our illumination for “in thy light shall we see light,” even if it is light shed upon our darkness.
Fr. David Curry
Advent Meditation # 1
Comm. of Clement of Alexandria
December 4th, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/12/04/advent-meditation-christ-light-of-the-world-part-1/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.