Day: December 12, 2018

Sermons

Advent Meditation: Christ, Light of the World, Part 2

This is the second of two Advent meditations on Christ, the Light of the World. The first is posted here.

“In Thy light shall we see light”

Part Two:

In keeping with the Advent theme of this Sunday and week, we continue to ponder “the things written for our learning,” especially the image of Christ as “the light of the world.” The Christian Faith has this character to it. There comes into the world an idea so real and so totally true that it carries with it its own repudiation and rejection and makes that part of the reality of its own fullness and truth. This is what we have been exploring in terms of the remarkable statement by Christ that he is “the light of the world.”

”He came unto his own and his own received him not.” His own is not simply Israel but all of us in the confusions of our sins, in the darkness of our minds, in the vanity of our lives. “And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be closely seen that his deeds have been wrought in God” (John 3.19-21).

”I am the light of the world”, Jesus says, “he who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8.12,13). As Hans Urs Von Balthasar puts it, we do not “think by the light of reason into the darkness of mystery”; rather we think “in the light of the mystery of faith by which we illuminate the darkness of the world”.

The Christian faith takes absolutely seriously the freedom of the will. To take seriously the freedom of the will means to acknowledge the capacity in us all for the refusal of the light. It means a negative definition of ourselves; defining ourselves negatively means defining ourselves against the light of God; in short, to will the darkness – “men loved darkness rather than light”. More strongly put, it means, hating the light both for ourselves and for others. The will to nothingness is the blindness of the soul in the presence of the light. It marks the refusal to be turned to the light, the refusal to be drawn into the light. Such negative definitions of ourselves are a form of denial. It is light refused. Yet Christ is the light refused who uses our refusals to bring us into the light of his presence.

We continue our examination of Jesus as the light of the world by looking at the second passage in which Jesus identifies himself explicitly as “the light of the world”, namely, John 9.5. It accompanies and is part of the story of a healing, the healing of the eyes of the man who was born blind. As with the first story of the woman taken in adultery, so here, too, there is debate and argument.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 12 December

The Simple Givenness of Things

“Love is in the nature of a first gift through which all gifts are given,” the great Medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas notes. His words capture something of the wonder and the mystery of the Christian celebration of Christmas but extend as well to the sense of the awesome mystery of life that belongs to the other great religions and philosophies of the world. One of the passages of Scripture which always catches my imagination is from the Wisdom of Solomon. “When all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her swift course, then thy almighty word leapt down from heaven, from thy royal throne.” It awakens us thoughtfully and prayerfully to the presence of the wisdom of God in the world, an image too that counters so much of the hype and busyness of this time of the year in our frenetic, hectic, and distracted world.

This sense of “the givenness of things”, to borrow a phrase from the American novelist and theologian, Marilynne Robinson, is part of the greater wonder and mystery of Christmas, part of the greater wonder and mystery of the wisdom of the ages. The simple givenness of things in which we find wonder and delight stands in contrast to the idea of life as simply that into which we have been thrown, the thrownness of things, as it were, in which we find only alienation and despair, a sense of nihilism. The simple givenness of things is about life as a gift, about life as light and love. The simple givenness of things is the love through which all other gifts are given.

To appreciate that simple givenness of things requires that we sit and listen, that we pause and reflect, that we take the time to ponder what has been given to us. That means that we too have to give of ourselves to what has been given to us. Such are the possibilities of being opened out to the wisdom of God that illumines and enlightens our world of darkness and despair.

It is my hope and prayer that our Advent Services of Nine Lessons and Carols will have helped you in finding a time to sit and contemplate, to read and quietly ponder the simple givenness of things. It has become my stock phrase, of course, and yet one which I stand by in all seriousness, namely, to wish you all a happy and blessed Christmas ‘reading’ break, emphasis on the reading! It is a break from all of our usual routines and habits that belong to the life of the school, a break from classes and patterns that allow you a freedom, I hope, to read and to think, to ponder the mystery and the wonder of life; in short, the simple givenness of things. One of the gifts, I think, that flow out from the love and wisdom of God.

With every blessing.

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy

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