Matthew 5:14
“You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven.”
Ephesians 5:9
“For the fruit of the light is all goodness, and righteousness and truth”
We “moderns” may think we know more about light than the “ancients,” but we agree it’s what supports life on earth, and what allows us to see. Einstein had the revelation that the speed of electromagnetic energy was a constant in a vacuum. Thus, a photon does not experience “time” from its origin until it interacts with something. Our photo-receptors are so sensitive that they may be activated by a single photon. The Webb telescope is collecting photons that have been traveling up to 13 billion light-years, and revealing a universe that is incomprehensibly immense, containing trillions of star systems.
In Psalm 8:3 the question is raised: ‘When I look at your heavens, your handiwork, the stars and worlds you have established, what is “Man” that you are mindful of him, Earthlings that you care for them?” In “light” of the gracious gifts to our species, how do we glorify the Creator? Jesus says the sum of the law is to love God, and love Neighbor, so inclusively that “enemies” aren’t off limits, and He modeled what selfless love is and what obedience to God’s will means. In doing so, He makes it abundantly clear that no one can reach the bar He raises, yet all are invited. He inspired a “new creation,” that we call the Church. But the fruit of the visible church has not been “all sweetness and light”. Humans err, institutions err, nations err. Are “we” the Light of the World?
Saul of Tarsus’ experience on the road to Damascus was much more than a “conversion” or “re-commissioning.” It was, as he said, a “revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12). After the blinding Light, he heard that Jesus was alive, and living in the “People of the Way” that he aimed to “persecute” (Acts 9:5). This was shocking news to Saul, but this Good News was already known to the first Christians, and those he found calling Jesus Lord and Messiah throughout his peregrinations. Many had already heard of Jesus’ words to the crowds and to his disciples, who’d been told He would “be with them ALWAYS, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20), and his teaching that “you are the light of the world”, and “I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit” (John 15:5).
John introduces his Good News saying that the “formula” (λόγος) was the origin of our universe, involving the Light, from which Life comes, in the human form of Jesus who was revealed as “God with us” (John 1, and Matt 1:23); the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) that lives on in his followers to the end of the age.
We remember this in Communion as we SHARE in Christ’s body TOGETHER.
“This Little Light of Mine” emphasizes our need to guard and show forth the little light of Christ coming through each of us; but when Jesus says, “YOU are the light of the world” He is talking to a crowd and all who will hear his message. The Light shines brighter through a community. Isaiah 60:1 says, “Arise for your light is come” which Paul echoes in Eph 5:14 as “Sleeper, awake and rise from the dead, and the Light of Christ will illuminate you”.
So, everyday: “rise and shine” for Y’ALL are Christ’s Light of the World.
Author of Light, Author of Life: Let your love light help us to see others as you would have us see them, and be it dimmer or brighter, focused or scattered, let that light be seen by others to reflect and reveal the love of God, the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit that it would bear much fruit. Amen.
-Mark Currie