It’s a lovely day today of mostly sunshine. The jet stream has gone looping off somewhere else and we’re sitting under the high pressure. The bare trees and still muddy Trail have a kind of understated beauty. There’s no wind pestering you for your attention, just some gently moving air.
Light of the people
Sunday’s lectionary is about the people who walked in darkness seeing a great light. We Christians say this light is Jesus.
If we want to get a handle on how significant this is, we might have to think about what darkness was like 2-3000 years ago. I live in northwestern Europe, and I can go out on the street at night, and it’s not really dark. I’ve been out on the Trail long before dawn, and it’s not totally dark – the streetlights of distant settlements reflect off the clouds, or fill the haze with a faint light. Planning for Easter Dawn one year, I looked up a sunrise website. Apparently, there are official gradations of darkness. With the sun 0-6° below the horizon, that’s civil twilight. 6-12° below is nautical twilight, and 12-18° below is astronomical twilight. With the sun below that, it’s really night. At the latitude of the eastern Mediterranean, the sun goes under more steeply than it does at my latitude.
Maybe it helps to try and imagine a place that’s really dark for you: for me that might be the landing at the top of the stairs at night, when all the lights are off in the house. Then imagine that deep darkness everywhere around you, everywhere you could possibly go. Years ago, the darkness could have been full of dangers, rocks and slips and trips, wild animals and robbers. Maybe there was a flickering light from a fire nearby, maybe not.
A light has shined on the people who live in darkness. Light is often a metaphor for knowledge. That can be ‘how to’ knowledge. Carry a light to light up the path so you know the way to go – wear a head torch when you walk the back way to the chippy. Let the light of Jesus guide you about how to live – that is to say, his words, his actions and his ‘style’. Knowledge can also be insight – Jesus opens a window onto the nature of God.
Just bear in mind that what you see may not be what you were expecting. Paul writes, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,…” – (verse 18a) – God who dies, vulnerable God, suffering in solidarity with the human race.
O God, shine a light for us.
Shine a light soon.
Show us how to live in peace with one another,
and with our planet.
Shine a light soon,
and do not delay.