Reflections on Light and Darkness, Talking and Walking

There was a saying so prominent some years ago that one got tired of hearing it: I think it may actually have come from a TV ad for Mountain Dew:  “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”  At its worst, it was a kind of “GenerationX” statement of boredom and disdain—“that’s old stuff, don’t want to do that, can’t you show us something new?”  But at its best, it was an affirmation of shared experience—“I know what you mean; you don’t have to prove it to me, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve got the evidence to prove it.”  It is the latter, more uplifting sense of that piece of jargon that I want to reference in what follows. Now permit me to “park” that observation for a moment, with the promise to return to it.

My personal spiritual/religious journey from my childhood roots to the beginnings of my ninth decade has been a long and thoughtful one. As I have reviewed from time to time what I have written and spoken over these past decades, I realize that, while I may be less confident about some things than I once was, I find myself thinking often about what lies at the “sustaining core” of that journey.  These particular reflections on that “sustaining core” were motivated by—and largely “filtered” from—the discovery and reading of a couple of presentations from several decades ago.  They both drew primarily on material from the Fourth Gospel, not actually my favorite of the four gospels, largely because of its longer distance from the actual life and teachings of Jesus and because it is perhaps the most theologically reflective—the good news and the bad news, depending upon your own perspective. Still, my predilections aside, what follows centers on an illuminating metaphor and a provocative story from that gospel.

In the prologue to the gospel, the writer chooses the metaphor of light to announce the coming of Jesus: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”   Indeed, throughout this gospel, Jesus is spoken of in terms of light.  That’s not a bad word for us to hear.  It’s easy enough to be obsessed by the darkness.  There is plenty in today’s newspaper to make the case that this is a gloomy time.  Well, this gospel takes the darkness for granted. 

What kind of world do you think this is, the writer would say to us.  No point in fooling yourself with sentimental optimism.  The wonder of history is not that the world is dark—it always has been. The evil in the world is beastly, the plight of the world desperate, human depravity and incompetence profound—of course there is darkness.  But taking the world’s night for granted, he emphasized with astonishment and gratitude the “light,” coming down across the centuries, that all the world’s darkness has not been able to quench.   And in spite of the darkness, that light can be seen in the person of Jesus and, as I believe, in persons all around us.

And yet one has to say that light is not always welcome. There is a stern aspect to light.  It is beautiful, yes; but it is also a judge, sometimes falling in silent condemnation on the things that it shows up.  But we would never know anything is crooked if we had never seen anything straight and we would never know anything is evil if we had never seen anything good. And so it turns out that even the judgment of light is, after all, a gift.

And that brings us from the “metaphor” to the “story” as it is told in the ninth chapter of the Fourth Gospel. The familiar story, which does not appear in the other gospels, begins with Jesus’ disciples trying to draw him into a discussion about suffering that theologians and philosophers call “theodicy.”  What is the cause of suffering—in this case, a man born blind? If the cause was sin, as popular theology of the day would have had it, was it his parents’ sin or did he man sin prenatally—that is, before he was born?  The story then has Jesus turn the discussion from the argument about cause and effect to an opportunity to do something and has him proceed to give the man his sight. 

And the rest of the story is a series of vignettes in which everyone—from the disciples, to the man’s neighbors, to the infighting factions of the Pharisees, to the man’s parents—are embroiled in arguments about the methods Jesus used, about whether it was proper to do it on the Sabbath, about whether Jesus could possibly be worthy to do such a thing, to questioning whether it really happened or was a hoax.  The arguments reached such a peak that the man who was healed was excommunicated by his own people! 

Now pause a second, if you need to, and do what you will with the historicity of the miracle recounted here—embrace it, question it, reject it—that’s your call, but please stay with me in the “story,” because if you let yourself be caught up in it, you may find yourself wanting to get in these people’s faces, and say, “Hello!  I believe we are missing something here.  A man who has never seen before, can see.  He has been in darkness and now he can see the light.  This is cause for celebration and congratulation, and all you people can see is a problem?  What’s wrong with this picture?”

And in the midst of it all, the man himself, who is incapable of understanding the intricacies of this theological brouhaha and initially uninterested in passing judgment on his benefactor, says, in effect, “Hey, I don’t know about all this stuff.  I can’t explain it or justify it or testify to the credentials of the man who did it.  All I know is that I have lived in darkness my whole life and now my eyes are filled with light; I was blind, and now I can see.  If you want to analyze that to death, be my guest.  But don’t ask me to deny what has happened to me.  Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”

And here is the confluence of the themes of light and judgment, and the affirmation of the evidentiary value of personal experience.  Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”  And, while at the end of the story this man comes to affirm Jesus’ claim, at this point he says, “I can give you no scientific, theological, or rational proof of that claim, but this much I know, though I was blind, now I see.”

So what am I trying to suggest that all this is saying to us?  In a second post, I will try to answer that question.