Abstract
Walking in the light
Our text from 1 John speaks of a startling reality that has burst into the world, summoning our senses to attention. 1 John begins by referring to ‘what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands’ (1 John 1.1). The Gospel is a fleshly truth. A few verses on we are presented with a strikingly vivid representation of the life that responds to this fleshly reality: it can be understood, our author tells us, as a form of walking in ‘the light’ (1 John 1.7). And what is this light in which we walk? This light can only be the light shed forth by the risen Christ. Jesus, as risen, is the light of the world who has overcome the darkness of death. It is hard to read John 1.5 and not think of Jesus, the life of the world, springing forth from the darkness of the tomb in which he had been laid: ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it’ (John 1.5). Is this not the story of Easter captured in one verse?
The Christian life is a walking in the Easter light – in this sermon I want to plumb the depths of this image that 1 John gives us. Let us touch on four different ways of plumbing the depth of this image. To walk in the light means to walk in the risen Jesus’ wake. To walk in the light points us to the space that God opens up for us in Christ Jesus. To walk in the light is to grow and move into the love of God in Christ Jesus. And to walk in the light is to participate in the promise made to Israel that it would be ‘a light to the nations’ (Isaiah 42.6).
First, to walk in the light means to walk after and in the wake of Jesus, ‘the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’ (Hebrews 12.2). What is being said in this clarification? Something like this: we ourselves are not the light (if this was true for John the Baptist how much more true must it be for us!) but rather followers of the light, a light which has a name: Jesus. ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life’ (John 8.12). This distinction between the light that Jesus is and the light shed upon us is crucial. On the one hand, if we don’t keep up the race we will find ourselves in the kind of gloom that might overwhelm us. On the other hand, this light is not ours. The light is not in our possession – this light of truth is not identical with us, in the same way that Jesus is identical with the truth. This is a very important reminder for any Christians tempted to exalt themselves. If, as Paul says, Christians do ‘shine like stars in the world’ (Philippians 2.15) it can only be because we are reflecting the light shed forth by the one who is risen, whose face is ‘like the sun shining with full force’ (Revelations 1.16). Comparing Jesus’ luminous face to a sun is an arresting image. As the sun is the source of life that must be respected lest it scorch us so the risen Jesus is the life of the world, who when he comes close can induce terror in those unprepared for his presence, ‘[w]hen I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead’ (Revelation 1.17). If we walk in the light we walk only in a space made visible and clear by the one who ‘dwells in unapproachable light’ (1 Timothy 1.16). To follow in this light is not to master this light.
Second, to walk in the light is a delightfully spatial image. What we are walking ‘in’ must be understood here as a space in which God has placed us, a space in which we move and dwell in astonished response to God’s faithfulness. The space of the worlds in which we live is filled full with meaning precisely because of ‘the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (Ephesians 1.23). Imagine ‘space’ for a moment and you will most likely conjure up images of expansiveness, freedom, and the loosening of restrictions. Those of us choked by urban living, who yearn for the countryside, are seeking this kind of space. To walk in the light is like this, yet also not like this. For to walk in the light is to walk in a space with boundaries, where there is light on one side and darkness on the other. This is a bounded space which gives us freedom and time to explore its limits, to explore what the light has revealed in its wake. Walking in the light is to be given something almost confounding – a freedom with definition. This space has given boundaries, but in this space we have what is proper to us as creatures of God - time to grow into the sheer expansiveness of the creator’s love for us. But there is something more. It needs also to be said that we will sometimes find ourselves at the very borders of this space created by the light – these are the times when darkness and light seem to be in a contest with one another, when the darkness almost seems to engulf us.
Third, there is a beautiful sense of movement implicit in walking in the light. The Christian life is not stationary but a constant state of chasing after signs of the gospel in the world. That Christians have to get used to movement is clear immediately after Jesus’ resurrection, as Matthew recounts the angel at the tomb saying to the women, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him’ (Matthew 28.7). Jesus is going ahead of us – far from being entombed in the past he calls us forward into the length of his promise, into the hope that his future can be the meaning of our present. ‘Why do you look for the risen among the dead? He is not here, but has risen’ (Luke 24.5). So, the Christian life is marked not by repose but by travelling, by being sent in response to the One who is himself sent to us. ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’ (John 20.21). The Christian life is one of journeying because Jesus too is on his way. Note the movement in that verse from our Gospel reading this morning, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’. Our walking is not merely impulsive – we are sent on our way. And the movement of our lives is a participation in the movement of Jesus’ own life, the one who indeed is still on the move. The momentum of the risen Jesus is captured well in the Emmaus story. As the disciples approach Emmaus with the risen Jesus who is still unknown to them he walks ‘ahead as if he were going on’ (Luke 24.28). Jesus is indeed persuaded to stay with them, but that he vanishes from their sight as soon as their eyes are opened to his presence seems to be pointing disciples to look for Jesus on the way.
If we use the imagery of ‘journeying’ we would be well advised to be aware of some potential hazards. Firstly, there is the risk of plunging into cliché-riddled language that confuses the responsive language of walking in the light with the journeying of self-discovery. We will all have been told at some point that life is a ‘journey’. The New Testament is not a stranger to this kind of talk – what it calls the ‘way’. Yet, the New Testament is clear that the Christian life is directed towards a goal larger than the self, a goal in whom we will find the truth of who we are. In the devastating clarity of Jesus’ words in John 14.6, ‘I am the way’. And Paul, never one to waste his time by merely walking in the light, speaks of his life as a race in which he is pressing on ‘towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 3.14). Note what drives Paul’s form of walking in the light - not the voice within, but the voice from without, the voice that is life itself, the voice that vivifies those who hear it: ‘those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself’ (John 5.25-26). The first danger that the vocabulary of ‘walking’ can flirt with is the suggestion of literally endless journeying - this walking has a goal. The second risk presented by the language of ‘walking’ is that such language of sojourning can morph into the kind of pilgrimage that detaches us from the world. Pilgrims are people whose journey has an end, but the language of pilgrimage should not tempt us to imagine that somehow we have warrant to be inattentive to the places which we journey through. The words of that beloved hymn that speak of us as pilgrims ‘through this barren land’ are unhelpful in this matter. So, how should we regard the places we are walking through? Here, I think we can turn again to the language of sending and commissioning that runs through the resurrection stories. ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’ (John 20.21). To be sent may offend our autonomy and it may mean that we will have to get used to not always being in control but the one who is sent is not less off the hook of seeking the good in the particular contexts in which they have been placed. ‘Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare’ (Jeremiah 29.7).
Fourth, and finally, we can say something even more specific about this light in a manner that reinforces that it is not ours to possess. Part of the task in reading this text from 1 John is to recall the specific ways in which Scripture speaks of light. If Jesus is associated with light by the New Testament writers this is because in his fleshly form he represents the promises made to Israel fulfilled. Here is how Isaiah 60 speaks of the light that Israel will be for the nations – that is us –
Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. (Isaiah 60.1-3)
That we can walk in this light is only because Israel’s hope has become real in the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. We are walking in a light that is not ours not just because Jesus is the light and we are not, but also because this light is Israel’s light and we are those who have merely been ‘grafted’ into the olive tree (Romans 11.17). The right response to the good news that the light of Israel has shed its rays upon us is not pride, but ‘awe’ (Romans 11.20).
The one who is the source of life invites us to walk and dwell in his light. God who is light himself is a luminous and indestructible presence, causing us to hope that there will be a day when there will be darkness no more. Now our lives are trained on a light that meets the darkness of the world – a reminder, if it were needed, that there are still many periods of gloom in our lives and not a few dark corners of the world. Walking in the Easter light is to strain forward to that time when darkness will be finally vanquished, when the whole world will have ‘no need for sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God [will be] its light’ (Revelation 22.23). Amen