Without reviewing all that was said in the first post, let me just remind you of the “metaphor of light” used to characterize the presence of Jesus in the world and ”the story” of the man who refused to be caught up in the argumentative conversations about what happened to him or initially to pass any judgment upon the man who benefited him, but affirmed rather the evidence of his passing from a lifetime of darkness to being able to see the light—“though I was blind, now I see.” 

So what am I trying to suggest that all this is saying to us? That we should have an unquestioning faith?  That we should not use our brains in our religion or apply to scripture and theology all of the tools which the study of history, literature, philosophy, and the natural and social sciences can provide us?  Oh, no.  A thousand times, no. My entire vocational life has been about candid confrontation with religious and theological problems.  And there are a host of them—with the nature and interpretation of scripture, with how our human minds can get themselves at all around the concept of God, with how we can understand the unique personhood of Jesus, with what prayer is and what it does, and on and on.  You will never hear from me an argument for backing off from problems.  But for all of that, in all fairness, there is more to be found in religious faith than just a problem. 

One could say that nature is a problem, too.  Come at it from the sciences—from biology, from chemistry, from physics, from ecology—and there are mountains of unsolved problems and unanswered questions.  They deserve to be pursued with skill, intelligence, and tenacity.  But that isn’t the whole story.  Nature is not only a problem, it is a resource for life and a gift to the spirit.  After more than thirty years, I have never tired of the beauty of these mountains, never ceased to be awed by the majesty of the sea, never failed to be equally enthralled by a shimmering summer day, a snowy winter eve, a foggy autumn morning, or a fragrant spring afternoon.  Now one might say I have no right so naively to enjoy nature when nature presents such towering problems.  And I would say, starve your own soul if you wish, but not mine.

There is very little in our world and experience that does not have a dark side, that does not present problems.  Indeed, one might argue that every realm of life is made up of two aspects, problem and privilege—or call them darkness and light.  If I try to monopolize the privilege alone and forget the problems, I become a soft-headed sentimentalist, and our world does not need folks who bury their heads in the sand and hope the problems will go away.  But let’s not forget the danger in the other extreme.  If we become so obsessed with problems, hold them so closely to our eyes that we can see nothing else, we risk becoming dry, unhappy, uncreative, and ineffectual.  I recall a familiar limerick:

                     A centipede was happy quite, 

                         Until a frog in fun,

                     Said, “Pray which leg comes after which?”

                     This raised her mind to such a pitch

                     She lay distracted in the ditch,

                     Considering how to run.

Our world is too needy, the problems too immense, for the best of us to be paralyzed into inaction.  And the light of hope, the joys of beauty and appreciation, are too bright to be overcome by the darkness.

So, can I explain all the mysteries of faith, solve all the problems of scriptural interpretation, feel perfectly comfortable with all the language of the creeds or the hymns or the prayer book, answer all the painful questions about God or prayer or suffering?  No.  I have struggled with those for most of my life and expect to do so for the rest of my life.  But consider how many challenges and uncertainties in human history—about flight, about space travel, about curing disease–have been suddenly stopped not by opposing arguments but by a towering achievement.  And thus is it so, I believe, with particular regard to the “metaphor” and “the story” that have been the center of this conversation.

Because we are confronted by a life—an utterly incredible life that no argument, in advance, could have made plausible.  A man born in poverty, executed as a criminal, distinguished only by love and humility, who shakes the world to its foundation and two thousand years later is the one in whom millions see the “light,” and who is the criterion by which they measure personhood at its best—that would be a wild impossibility.  But the incredibility was conquered by a fact.  It has been done.

Have there also been persons from other religious and faith traditions whose lives have cast a “light” into the darkness of their world? Oh, yes, I have no doubt that this is true, just as I am confident that I have seen the “light” in many persons around me. And yet, for the most part, I remain captive to the tradition that I know best and to the person of Jesus with whose “light” I am most familiar.

So, granted that there is room in all religious faith for our highest intelligence and our deepest wisdom to address the problems, we are led to another side of the truth.  The text we have referenced reminds us that “once you were darkness, but now you are light . . . walk as children of light.”  Intellectual enlightenment is crucially important—if I didn’t believe that, I couldn’t have spent my entire life in education. But it is equally important to move through our grappling with the problems to appropriate action, whether we have solved the problems or not.

And so note that the crucial verb in the quote above is “walk.”  This is not just about “talking the talk,” but about “walking the walk.”  And in the story, Jesus, when confronted with an afflicted man and an argument about cause, shifted gears and took an opportunity to act.  Facing human need, he refused to be sidetracked by a discussion of the problem, but did what was in his power to help.  And the man who was the beneficiary of his healing simply gave witness to the evidence of his experience.

So, whatever your own judgment about its facticity might be, what are we to learn from this “story?” What about you and me?  It is so much easier to argue than it is to act; so much more fun to debate the meaning of “light” than to walk in the light, so much easier to puzzle over the various accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds than to be captivated by the spirit of his life.  And yet, when all the problems and arguments have been set aside, we have enough clarity about Jesus himself to challenge the best that is in us and to motivate us to do what is within our power to address the multitude of human needs around us. 

This is for me one, and perhaps the most important, element of that “sustaining core” with which I began. If we do no more than follow the light we have, it will be enough for us to confirm in our own experience the example of his life and who we are when we walk in its light—enough for us to say, “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”