Christ Church

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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“My words shall not pass away.”

Here are words “written for our learning” but only through our sitting and listening. Here are words “written for our learning” about hope and comfort in times of darkness, danger, and despair. Here are words audible and written, yes, but also words made visible. “He hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of his love, and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort,” as the Exhortation so rarely heard so wonderfully puts it (BCP, pp. 88-89). Words written for our learning.

The Exhortation speaks to the character of this Sunday which is sometimes known as Bible Sunday because of the Collect composed by Cranmer. It calls attention to the reason and purpose of the Scriptures. The Sacraments, too, belong to that understanding of the purposes of God for our humanity. If you read the Proper Preface used for Passiontide, for Passion Sunday right through to Maundy Thursday (BCP, p. 80), you will find that the Exhortation draws directly upon it. We give thanks “for the redemption of the world by the death and passion of our Saviour Christ, both God and Man; who did humble himself, even to the death upon the Cross, for us sinners, who lay in darkness and the shadow of death; that he might make us the children of God, and exalt us to everlasting life.” The Exhortation adds only one word, miserable, “miserable sinners.” Sinners in misery because sin is misery.

Yet here is our comfort: “the patience and comfort of thy holy Word,” and the “great and endless comfort” of “the holy mysteries,” the Sacraments which “he hath instituted and ordained as pledges of his love, and for a continual remembrance of his death, to our great and endless comfort.” Word and Sacrament conveying hope and comfort.

The two Exhortations appended to the Communion service underscore an important reformation ideal. Both Cranmer and Calvin sought to increase the frequency of Communion and especially the reception of the Sacrament over and against the practice of Mass in the late Medieval world largely as a spectator event: seeing the host elevated, even through a squint (literally a hole in the wall!), but receiving the Sacrament very infrequently. The insight of the reformers was essentially a Scriptural insight into the purpose of the Sacraments as revealed in the witness of the Scriptures: “Take eat … Drink ye all, of this … in remembrance of me.”  Such is “the memorial which he hath commanded,” (BCP, p. 83). It is about taking seriously the things which have been written. It is about words “hear[d], read, mark[ed], learn[ed], and inwardly digest[ed]” as Cranmer so famously and memorably puts it. Such words are the clarion call and challenge to the recovery of deep reading over and against the superficiality of our digital compulsions, the ephemerality of flickering images.

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

“In Thy light shall we see light”
(Psalm 36.9)

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.

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