We are Children of Light

Below is the text of the short reflection I gave at Hope's Morning Prayer service this morning.

Today’s Gospel reading from John requires a bit of context to understand.  These are the finals days of Jesus’ life.  John’s twelfth chapter begins with Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume and includes Jesus’ pageant-like entrance to Jerusalem all the while foreshadowing the evil that is to come.

It is in this chapter that we first hear mention that Judas is a thief.

It is in this chapter that we learn that the chief priests are plotting to kill Lazarus because his resurrection has led so many to follow Jesus.

And it is in this chapter that Jesus, rather sadly, admits that so few believe who he really is, and as we see elsewhere, even those who do believe, don’t fully understand.

Indeed, Jesus’ words in verse 36, “While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light,” are almost a plea for understanding.

He even repeats himself later in the chapter in verse 46, saying, “I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in darkness.”

Jesus is the light.

But let’s be clear.  Jesus is not some holy flashlight meant to guide us through the darkness.  That might seem helpful, having Jesus as a guide, leading us through the worst parts of life.  But if that’s the Jesus we want, we are thinking too small. 

What Jesus is saying here is that he is the light.  He does not have to guide us through the darkness, because if we are children of the light, there is no darkness.

Look at 1 John 1:5 which states unequivocally, “…. God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.”

There is no darkness.

Jesus isn’t providing a way to survive the darkness.

He’s promising a whole world without darkness.

It’s really almost beyond our understanding.  After all, we’ve never known a world without darkness.  What do we have to compare it to?  What would such a world with Jesus at the center really look like?

Last week, I spoke to you about C.S. Lewis’s book The Magician’s Nephew which gives both the origin story for Narnia and the infamous White Witch.  The Magician’s Nephew is about beginnings.  Today I want to talk to you about the final book in that series, The Last Battle, and endings.

Toward the end of the book, King Tirian, the last king of Narnia, is thrown into a stable which is known to house a terrible demonic creature, a stable from which no one has escaped.

But after Tirian is tossed through the door and into the stable, he is given quite a shock.

There is no stable.

There’s a stable door, but no stable, just a magnificent, beautiful world, filled with lush vegetation and fruit—oh the good kind of fruit, the kind meant to be eaten and not simply there to tempt—fruit so rich that Lewis writes if you had eaten “that fruit, all the nicest things in this world would taste like medicines after it.”

Tirian is not alone in this new world.  He is greeted by old friends Jill and Eustace and the original kings and queen of Narnia, Edmund, Peter and Lucy.

They are all joined, somewhat oddly, by a dozen dwarfs who had been thrown into the stable earlier.

And it is here where things get interesting.

The dwarfs cannot see this beautiful world that Tirian and the others have found themselves in.  They cannot eat the fruit.  When Lucy holds wild violets under one dwarf’s nose to prove to him that they are not in the stable at all, he recoils violently and accuses her of shoving stable droppings in his face.  They are, quite literally, blind, believing themselves to be trapped and boxed inside the dark stable.

They are living in darkness.

And when Aslan appears, the great and magnificent lion, not even he can convince the dwarfs otherwise.  They do not see him.  They do not hear him.  When he growls, they blame it on a wind machine.  When he shakes his mane and makes a wonderful feast appear before them, they fight each other over what they believe are turnips and water from the donkey’s trough.

Not only can they not see him, Aslan explains, they don’t want to.  They’re afraid, afraid of leaving what they know for something they do not.

This is what Jesus offers us, not a weak candle in the darkness, but a world where there is no darkness, a world beyond our imagination.

But in order to get to that world, we have to let go of the darkness, even if it’s the only thing we’ve ever known, even if we have no idea where Jesus is taking us.

That is faith.

Isaiah 9:2 reads, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light ….”

Last week, I reminded you that we are all beloved children of God.

This week, I want you to remember that we are all children of light.

Amen.