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Come now. Bring Your light as we open up Your word and as

we tune our ears and our hearts to hear You, Lord God.

We pray this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

 

 

It’s the perennial question. It is one that has captured the thoughts of men and women and children across the ages.

 

What lies out there beyond my sight, outside of my reach?

 

It’s the question that has inspired explorers and scientists and thinkers from the beginning of human history.

 

As many of you know, before we moved here our family lived in Colorado Springs for nine years. And I am a person whose home is in the mountains. My home was in the mountains before I ever even knew what they were, before I’d ever even been in them. There was a sense when I first saw the mountains of a homecoming, and when we lived there feeling as though there’s no place on earth for me like the mountains. And I’ve continued to feel that even after being here for ten years in slightly less “altitudiness” country.

 

So, ever since we moved here, I’ve longed for opportunities to see those mountains again. And every once in a while as I’m sitting in my office working at my computer or sitting at my desk, I’ll look out my window to the west and see if I can’t get a glimpse of those mountain ranges way far away.

 

In fact, it was as I was doing that one time that I got to thinking, “Well now what would be involved in giving me that sort of view from here?” So I decided to send an e-mail to my brother who is a high school math teacher. Now, to put this in context it would be helpful for you to know that my brother who is a high school math teacher is the one who walked with me to junior high school trying to get me to memorize pi to fifty digits with him just for fun!

 

So, here is my e-mail:

 

Here’s a wacky question for you, Bill. If I wanted to be able to see the top of Pike’s Peak from here, how high of a tower would I need to build? The elevation at our house is 700 feet above sea level, and Pike’s Peak, as you probably remember, is 14,110 feet. Don’t worry. I’m not gathering 2x4’s yet. Just curious.

 

Here is his reply. It took him probably about four minutes to do this and three of those were probably spent doing a video game or something:

 

Loved your Pike’s Peak question. Wouldn’t such a tower be awesome! West Lafayette is 969.96 miles from Pike’s Peak following the curvature of the earth. Sorry for the bad news: required height would be [Do you have a thought of how high of a tower we would need to build in order to do that? I couldn’t believe this.] 626,283 feet or 118.6142 miles. He went on to say, If you lived on Jupiter and Pike’s Peak was that distance away, the tower could be much shorter if you could see it at all through the blinding surface storms or if you could breathe. You might contemplate a line-of-sight tunnel instead. Thanks for the imaginative question. I’ll use it on my students next week.

 

Which he did!

 

But all is not lost for me even if I sit here 969.96 miles away from those beloved mountains because there have been some who have been gracious to bring the mountains to me.

 

One time, not long after we moved here probably within just a few years of our arrival, the Suttons headed off to Colorado for a family trip. And when they came back, they brought me this. [Holds up jar] You know what this is? This is air from the top of the Rocky Mountains. I haven’t opened it yet. I’m waiting for an emergency.

 

And then a couple of years ago, the youth group started heading out to Colorado in the summertime. And one time as the youth group was driving out, I got an unexpected phone call. I answered the phone and there on the other end of the phone was a joyful voice: “We can see the mountains!” And I got to share in the joy of others seeing what I had longed to see.

 

And then just a couple of summers ago, my son, Sean, was one of those who were privileged to be able to go with the senior-highers out to Colorado and when we picked him up exhausted and ragged around the edges at the end of his adventure out there, he had a huge grin on his face and he said, “Dad, I have something for you.” He walked over to the van and out from under the seats in the van, he pulled out this [Holds up big rock] from right off the top of the mountains—from off of the top of Pike’s Peak, actually, which is now 14,109 feet tall.

 

The same question that has consumed the sciences has driven the reflection of philosophers and theologians through the ages: What lies out there—beyond my sight, out of my reach? Is there a God? And if so, what is He like?

 

I believe that the world’s religions are largely a matter of humanity building towers in our back yard in an effort to see into the unseen and to catch a glimpse of that distant ultimate reality that some call Allah and some call Brahma and some call God. It is the perennial posture of the human heart: building towers to scale the heavens reaching for the invisible God.

 

In the absence of other information, it makes sense that we have wrestled to imagine what God is like and have come up with ideas. Some have come to think of God as a force—as an impersonal power—that is part of and one with all that is. Others conceive of God as a person but as an unknowable being beyond scrutiny or definition.

 

What is God like?

 

Of course, the reason there are so many different views of what God is like is because God is invisible and He is inaudible. We can’t see Him and we can’t hear Him, so we’re left to wonder and to imagine.

 

But Christianity is different from every world religion.

 

Christianity isn’t trying to erect platforms in order to catch sight of the far-distant mountains in order that we might imagine what they are like or pine to be at home in them—to be in the embrace of the mountains. Christianity is a breath of mountain air. It is a loving voice. It is a part of the mountains themselves coming to us.

 

This Jesus whose birth we celebrate: some are tempted to see him as one like the rest of us, one who came from here not one who came from elsewhere. But Jesus doesn’t let us keep him in that category of just one more of us. There’s no way. There is no way that we can read his words carefully and take his words seriously and still see him as just one of us.

 

Some call him one of the great prophets, a wise teacher, an insightful spiritual leader. But Jesus insists that he is more.

 

Now think about this. Buddha came and he said, “I offer you the way of light.”

In the Dhammapada, the collection of his sayings, he says this:

 

But the wise man, following the way,
Crosses over, beyond the reach of death.

He leaves the dark way
For the way of light.
He leaves his home, seeking
Happiness on the hard road.

Free from desire,
Free from possessions,
Free from the dark places of the heart.

Free from attachment and appetite,
Following the seven lights of awakening,
And rejoicing greatly in his freedom.

 

Mohammed came and said, “I give you the book of light.” In the Koran there is a place where Mohammed says that in his vision Allah says to him this speaking in the majestic plural of himself as God:

 

We have not sent you as a watcher over them; on you is only to deliver (the message);
And it is not for any mortal that Allah should speak to them, they could not bear to hear.
And thus did We reveal to you an inspired book by Our command. You did not know what the Book was, nor (what) the faith (was), but We made it a light, guiding thereby whom We please of Our servants; and most surely you show the way to the right path.

Einstein came along and said, “I can provide a scientific explanation of light.” And in a ground-breaking paper that he wrote in 1905 he wrote:

 

Light "consists of a finite number of energy quanta that are localized in points in space, move without dividing, and can be absorbed or generated only as a whole."

 

Buddha says, “I can show you the way of light.” Mohammed says, “I can give you the book of light.” Einstein says, “I can offer you an explanation of light.” Jesus, and Jesus alone, comes to us and says, “I am the light.”

 

John chapter 12 verses 44-46 say this:

 

Jesus cried out: “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.”

 

I am the light.

 

These are the final public words of Jesus’ ministry spoken in Jerusalem just days before he died.

 

And he calls them out; he cries them out; he shouts them. He wants no one to miss them. They sum up in these brief words the essence of his teaching about who he is and why he’s come.

 

Jesus says again that he was sent: that the initiative for his ministry was not his own, that this is a divine conspiracy on behalf of humanity that he is a part of. And Jesus says that he represents the heavenly Father: he is in the capacity of an agent serving on the Father’s behalf.

 

Now this is language that would have been commonplace in Jesus’ day and it described a particular sort of relationship of someone in a position of power sending a servant or hiring the service of someone or sending a son who would go and represent that person with wealth or authority in arranging a marriage or making a business deal or in carrying out some other kind of business transaction.

 

And this was such a common thing that the expression of “the one who sent me” was a technical term that referred to the one that was served in this capacity. So it was a common Jewish maxim to say “the one sent is as he who sent him” meaning this person who has come as another person’s representative has that same person’s authority and power. It’s like when you’re dealing with this person, you’re doing business with that other person.

 

But Jesus is more than a mere representative. He’s more than a mere agent. In Jesus’ case it’s not “the one sent is as he who sent him.” In Jesus’ case it is “the one sent is He who sent him.” To see Jesus, according to Jesus, is to see God. And to believe in Jesus is to believe in God. So Jesus not only represents the heavenly Father serving Him, but he also re-presents—he reveals the heavenly Father: showing God, presenting God to this world.

 

And that’s where this theme of light in the darkness is introduced. He says, “He has come as light in the darkness so that no one who believes in me (he says) should stay in darkness.”

 

To live in darkness from a biblical perspective and in the teachings of Jesus always meant two primary things.

 

First, to live without light means that we don’t have a clue as to the reality that’s around us. We are lacking vital information to be able to live our lives. We become immobilized because of our ignorance and our need for more information. We can’t step forward safely and with confidence. So we retreat into a life that is built around the self—the self at the center, all of life serving the self.

 

And then that leads to the other part of living in darkness from the biblical perspective and that is that when we live in darkness we realize that we’re not the only ones who can’t see. All the people around me can’t see what I’m doin’, so living in darkness becomes license to begin to live in whatever way I want to—to begin to cater to whatever hungers and desires there are that arise within me. And so it’s a life of caving into sin and rebelling against God. So being ignorant of God, of being absorbed with the self, and then ultimately of rebelling against God.

 

When I was out shopping with Molly in anticipation of Christmas, I came across something that I thought embodied as well as anything I’ve seen in a long time the essence of what it means to live in darkness. [Holds up T-shirt] Can you see that? “O come, let us adore me.”

 

So Jesus says that he comes into this world of ignorance about God and rebellion against God:

 

I have come into the world as a light....

 

Now light is one of the Bible’s major symbols and it has two really important connotations. First, light in its obvious sense means that it reveals, it illumines, it provides information about what is true. So Jesus says that he has come to provide for humanity information about this hidden God—this God that we cannot see, this God who is invisible—so that we can know the things that we wouldn’t be able to learn ourselves, that God Himself is wanting to provide us with that information about Himself.

 

No one knows when Jesus was born. As best we can tell from the few clues that are provided in the gospels, it was probably in the springtime. The gospel writers were more absorbed with other things than with birth dates. But it is fitting that Christmas was placed on our calendar just three days after winter solstice when the days are at their shortest and night is at its longest contrasted to the peak of summer when we have here in West Lafayette more than fifteen hours of sunlight in the day. We have just nine hours and seventeen minutes of daylight on Christmas—the same amount of time as on the shortest day of the year. What a fitting analogy for us of our living in darkness and ignorance and rebellion and of Jesus coming and beginning to show, to spread, to strew light about this world so that we might know and understand God. So, he has come at the height of darkness to reveal God.

 

Sometimes we can fall into believing that because God is invisible that, actually, God desires to remain hidden, to remain out of our sight, to somehow be inscrutable. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Jesus’ mission is to come to reveal God. There are words that have been given all along the ages announcing what is true about God and now comes one who fleshes that out so that we could know Him.

 

I was thinking about this this summer when I got a chance to go to Colorado with the senior high youth group and I was playing hide-and-go-seek with Reese Browning, and it got me thinking about the way in which God is hidden and not hidden. This is how Reese and I played hide-and-go-seek. I would go around the room looking like inside of shoes and under books and inside of suitcases and say, “Where’s Reese?” And standing right next to me with a huge grin on his face was Reese leaning over and looking in and saying, “Where’s Reese?” He would follow me around everywhere I went hunting with me for himself, and his greatest joy was that moment when I would finally turn to him and recognize that he was by my side the whole time.

 

God delights not to hide from us, but to be found by us, to be discovered by us, to make Himself known to us. So part of what it means for Jesus to come as light into this world of darkness is that Jesus has come to provide us with the information that we need about what is true about the nature and the heart of God towards us.

 

But there’s something more—something that, I think, we miss today but those who were his hearers in that context of the Jewish community would have heard his expression “I am the light” in a completely different way than we do because they knew immediately that the most common image that was used in all of the Jewish scriptures for God is the image of light and fire.

 

The scriptures say, “God is light.” The scriptures say that, “God wraps Himself in light as with a garment.” We’re told that it was light that accompanied the appearance of the angels announcing Jesus’ birth, that light surrounded Paul in his conversion on the road to Damascus, that light fills the jail cell when Peter is released into freedom. Lamps are lit in the tabernacle and the temple and they are kept burning continually every day and every night for years and for years and for years as an expression of the ever-presence of God in that place. And God reveals himself in the Shekhinah glory, this luminous cloud that filled holy spaces. That was what came and settled into the bush next to Moses in the desert. That was what came and filled the tabernacle and then filled the temple when they were erected.

 

Light means the mystery of God Himself present. Jesus tells us that when we meet him it is God whom we meet: When a man believes in me, he doesn’t believe in me only but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me he sees the one who sent me. Jesus here is making a clear claim to divinity. He is saying I am God in your midst.

 

Think about what it means that Jesus has come as light for those living in darkness.

 

In his book Blue Like Jazz which is a recent book about Christianity that would especially be a good one to share with someone who’s turned off to the church or has kind of grown dissatisfied with the Christian faith, in his book Don Miller relays a story that he heard about a Navy SEAL who was involved in a covert rescue operation freeing hostages from a building.

 

“The…team flew in by helicopter, they made their way to the compound and then they stormed into the room where the hostages had been imprisoned for months. The room…was filthy and it was dark. The hostages were curled up in one corner terrified and they gasped when the soldiers entered the room.

 

“The soldiers stood at the door and they called to the prisoners telling them that they were Americans. The SEALS asked the hostages to follow them, but the hostages wouldn’t. They sat there on the floor and they hid their eyes in fear. Their minds had been broken with the stress and the pressure of where they were and they didn’t believe that their rescuers were present.

 

“The SEALS stood there not knowing what to do. The time was quickly going and it was crucial that they complete this rescue and be on their way. They couldn’t possibly carry everybody out. And then one of the Navy SEALS got an idea. He put down his weapon, he took off his helmet, he softened the look on his face and then he slowly walked across the room to the corner where the hostages were. He knelt down onto the ground with them and then he lay down among them. He curled up tightly next to the other hostages getting so close that his body was touching some of theirs. And he put his arms around them and he waited. None of the prison guards would have done that.

 

“He stayed there until some of the hostages started to look at him finally meeting his eyes. And then with a look of love and compassion in his eyes, the Navy SEAL whispered to them that he was there to rescue them. ‘Will you follow me?’ he said. And then he stood slowly to his feet and he waited. Then one of the hostages did the same thing: he stood. And then another until soon all of them were willing to go. And when he walked out of the room, they all followed him out of the darkness and into the light and into freedom.”

 

This is who Jesus is, and this is what Jesus has done.

 

But I think it’s crucial that we recognize that there is an important response that we are called to make. Jesus has come as the light. He has come and offered to bring us into the light. But we need to follow him into the light. We have a choice that it is incumbent upon us to make: to turn from the life lived for self and against God in the darkness and to follow Jesus out into the light and into a life of freedom and wholeness.

 

Jesus cried out: “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me would remain in darkness.”

 

Would you pray with me?

 

Our gracious God, You have come to us. Help us from where we are

huddled in the corner in the darkness not to fear the light when it comes, not

to shy away from it, not to try to hide something about us from the light, but

instead to welcome the light, to rise up to meet it, to embrace the light as it is

shed in upon our lives and to follow that light into life. Help us to recognize you,

Jesus, for who you are—God with us. Help us to believe in you for what you’ve

done: laying down your life for us. And help us to follow you because of who you

are now risen from the dead, Lord of all creation. Let us follow you by faith

into the life that you have for us. We thank you that dawn has come, that the light

shines. Let us step into it and embrace it. It is your greatest joy to send light into

our midst and it is our greatest joy to receive that light and to live it.

We pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.