LENT IV-A
Propers: I Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41.
The Rev’d Dr. Paul B. Clayton, Jr.
The play on light and darkness as religious symbols fascinates humanity. You will find it in virtually every human religion and ethical system. To be “in the dark” is simply a way of saying that one does not know where he or she is going or thinking; it is to be ignorant of the way to satisfaction, liberty, fulfillment.
In that marvelous trilogy THE LORD OF THE RINGS, a quite fanciful story of the struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, in his explorations and journeys way under the earth, down in the dark caverns, the heroic Hobbit traveler Bilbo Baggins encounters one of the slimiest creatures in literary fiction, one known as Gollum. I can’t remember what Gollum had originally been, but his life and his choices had changed him into a different creature.
He had in his possession a magic ring which he had stumbled upon down there in the caves under the earth, a ring cast into the depths of the earth, a ring which turns out in the book to be the key to the Dark Lord’s power. You see, we are already in the darkness business. The Dark Lord is the villain of the piece, and quite a villain he is -sort of a Jungian archtypical symbol of all that is evil and wrong with the cosmos. Anyway, Gollum’s entire being has become centered on the possession of this ring which he has found, to which he constantly refers as his “precious.” The ring has become everything to him. He must have it in order to continue to exist. He is down there deep under the earth, all alone, in the eternal darkness where the sun is never seen, perfectly content to remain there so long as he has his precious, his ring. We cannot tell what Gollum was originally, because his being has been so twisted in on itself, on himself, on his self-centered need to possess for himself this magic ring, which he believes gives him power. He needs no eyes to see light, for there is no light in those depths of self-centeredness and self-pity.
Eventually Bilbo gets hold of the ring and carries it to the surface to use in the struggle with the Dark Lord. Gollum then comes up into the light of day in his desperate attempt to recover the ring from Bilbo, and interesting changes begin to occur in him as the story winds its way. Right now it is enough for me to point out the way the theme of light and darkness continues to illustrate for people the contrast between God’s way and our human self-centered way of approaching life. Fundamentally the same theme of a Dark Lord struggling with light reappears in the 1970s and 1980s movies science-fiction buffs know as the Star Wars Trilogy.
There are several healings recorded in the Gospel tradition like the one in John we have just read for the Gospel of Lent IV. Jesus is recorded as having restored someone’s sight, to have given them back the gift of seeing, to bring them into the light so that they can see clearly. These reports nearly always appear in the Gospel record immediately following some debate with someone representing the old covenant, someone who does not want to understand Jesus’ teaching or his identity. This is the case for this morning’s Gospel: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.’ So they took up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.” I suppose you could say that his opponents had rejected his teaching and the claims he was making about himself: “Before Abraham was, I AM,” taking for himself the divine Name, the divine title, for the Old Testament Name for God is Yahweh: “I AM WHO I AM.”
Then in the narrative, Jesus immediately gives sight, light to this man born blind. He can see. He acts in faith. Like Naaman the leper in Elisha’s day, he follows Jesus’ instructions to go and wash, and his person is made whole. The authorities rejected the healing because it had been done on the sabbath. Obviously to them, one who did labor on the sabbath could not be sent from God. Thus they could dismiss Jesus and his claims. The Gospel tradition, of course, responded that Jesus is indeed the Son of Man, the divine one sent from the Father to recreate humanity and human history and human time, the one the old calendar could no more hold than old wine skins can hold new wine as it ferments, that the Son of Man bursts the limitations of the sabbath in rising from the dead on the eighth day, shattering the old time, the old ways, the old limitations, the old death, the old darkness.
Jesus gives light; he gives sight to the blind. This is the Gospel writers’ way of saying that he gives understanding to the spiritually blind. He is the way, the truth, and the life because his way enables us to see, to perceive, to leave the darkness of self-centeredness to become God-centered, Christ-centered, neighbor-centered. Thus the man born blind now sees, and confesses the truth: “Lord, I believe, and he worshipped him.” This is contrasted to the continuing, persistent unbelief of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
The author of the Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that we who have been baptized into the life in Christ are called to walk in light. Being children of light has certain responsibilities, or, rather, certain liberties. Children of the light, he writes, walk in love as Christ loved us. With the self-same love with which Christ Jesus loved us, to give himself for us on the cross, so must we, with that same self-spending love, love our neighbor and the one who wrongs us -without condition. None of that “if you love me first, then I’ll love you.” None of that. Because our God loves us unconditionally in Christ, so must we love our neighbor without condition.
It is interesting that Ephesians points out that the children of darkness walk in certain ways also. Nor does the epistle hold back any words in describing the ways of the children of darkness. Covetousness, wanting for myself, greed, self-centeredness twist us in on ourselves like Gollum. And we are transformed into blind, slithering creatures, unrecognizable as the human beings God created us to be. For the author of this epistle sexual sins are simply one version of this self-centeredness. It’s not that sex is bad. God made it good, but we human beings pervert our sexual natures and use our sexuality to satisfy our own ids, our own appetites, and we do it in such ways that don’t really satisfy even our twisted ids, let alone our highter humanity. Ephesians reminds us that the children of light find genuine fulfilment for their sexuality in marriage, in commitment, in self-spending love, not taking for the self, which is simply another form of covetousness and selfishness. This kind of fallen person, this kind of Gollum, if you will, represents those who persist in preferring life in the caves, in the dark. So we read in Ephesians, “Once you were darkness, but now are light in the Lord, walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is a shame even to speak of the things that they do in secret; but when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible . . . . Therefore it is said, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’”
These are words of sound advice. Which way do you want to travel? In the caves, in the slime, in the darkness with Gollum, or walk in the light of Christ, in company with the Son of Man? As always, every day, every night, every action, every thought, it’s our choice.
