This is the
judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness
rather than light. [John 3:19]
Light and
darkness is a very grand theme, but this morning let’s keep it close to our
humbler experience. Life has acquainted
us with both light and darkness, and still does. We have also learned, in mindfulness along
the way, that light and darkness are very closely related. John’s Gospel tends to depict them rather as
opposites. But you can’t have the
shadows without the light. Our lives are
stories of both light and darkness, shadows and hiding places.
It is also
our experience that the glare of sunlight, the full light of a summer day, can
be blinding as much as revealing. We all
sometimes prefer the solace of darkness, some shadows and coolness, some
differentiation of the light. Perhaps I
can insert here a commercial on behalf of serious introverts -- as my
son-in-law once put it, in a world of chattering, of loudly motivated extroverts
and activists, the introvert’s happiest place may be alone in a darkened
room.
So we ponder
what Jesus was seeking to convey when he said, the light has come into the world, and
people loved darkness rather than light.
He explains… because their deeds were evil. But
we need the shadows. One of our media culture’s
gross distortions happens when the full glare of publicity is turned on someone
with something to hide, something private or profoundly embarrassing. This rarely if ever discloses the truth. The truth assumes not only that you get a
sight of someone naked and humiliated before the world, but also that this is
being seen and told with understanding and compassion. The light distorts as much as the darkness
conceals. Any experienced photographer
knows what too much light does to the image and to perception.
If we have deeds that are evil, as Jesus put it,
unredeemed aspects of our egos, or things in our past, or addictions, nothing
whatever is gained by turning the glare of interrogation on them. Wanting
answers, is one favourite public cliché and illusion. Rather, in a contemplative life, God’s Spirit
is able to bring into the light of understanding and compassion what was
formerly hidden, or kept in gloom, or in some back room. I think this is a slow process, and gentle in
the main. The movement is always towards
the light, and on the way there are many shadows and spectres and times of
waiting.
O God our Light,
to thee we bow,
Within all shadows standest thou…
Or Paul Simon’s words from 40 years ago: Hullo
darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again… I am unsure what Paul Simon meant, and I
suspect he wasn’t sure either. But Jesus
saw how many people prefer the darkness.
And he delivers us from fear of the darkness in life. St Benedict instructs his followers to prefer nothing whatever to Christ. That is the choice by which we learn to make
friends with both light and darkness. It
is the way by which we learn Christian maturity, how to discern subtlety in the
truth, to distinguish truth from cant and dogmatism. It is the way by which we learn how
compassion and kindness are indispensable, how you cannot divide people into labelled
categories, and how we heap up guilt if we do not protect the weak. It teaches us to understand brokenness, and
to love forgiveness.
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