Sermon afterthoughts: The Deceptiveness of Light

What came into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

--John 1: 3-5 (NRSV) 

"Very well then, we must corrupt it. No doubt you often practice transforming into an angel of light as a parade ground exercise, now is the time to do it in the face of the Enemy."

-Screwtape to Wormwood, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

My sermon on John 1 today got hijacked along the way by the sentences above quoted from verses 3-5. Mostly this was because, as noted early in the sermon itself, I found myself wondering a lot about the particular ritual that closes so many Christmas Eve services involving the congregation holding up lighted candles in a darkened sanctuary. As written there, in cold hard computer-screen text, it doesn't look very impressive, does it? In practice, people tend to be transfixed. If other pastors are like me, they might worry that nothing else from the service will stay with anyone in the congregation once that's all over.

I couldn't let the sermon pass without noting how that light/dark dichotomy gets misused to treat, say, darkness of skin (or any other darkness) as tantamount to darkness of spirit or absence of light. There's a long history of that, behind justifying slavery and a whole lot of other civil rights abuses. What I didn't have time to get to, on the other hand, is the observation that the opposite can also be true; lightness of skin (or any other kind of lightness) as automatically good or perfect or right or holy. And goodness knows, that's just not true.

The quote lifted above from The Screwtape Letters riffs on Paul's admonition to the Corinthians about false teachers and deceivers. Goodness knows there's enough of that among us in the church, frankly pointing supposed followers of Christ towards all manner of falsehood and wrong theology and frankly evil-doing. We're only four days away from the anniversary of one of the most egregious and grotesque examples of such falseness in the 'Christian nationalism' that drove many participants in the attack on the Capitol.

'Christian nationalism' is particularly pernicious at the moment, but it is hardly the only false light luring people away from genuine faith, is it? The prosperity gospel has been eroding the church for decades. The strictures of "biblical manhood" and "biblical womanhood" have been breaking lives and hearts for at least as long if not longer. (Mandatory plug for Kristin Kobes du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne and Beth Allison Barr's The Making of Biblical Womanhood on those subjects.) The false lights, and the fake angels of light pushing people towards those false lights, are thick on the ground these days, and some of them are mistaken for real followers of Christ way too easily.

Light, indeed, can be deceiving, even without such false prophets and wrongdoers posing as angels of light. To bring in my favorite bit of Christmas-season public theology, A Charlie Brown Christmas, where do the brightest lights appear in that little parable? I think one might have to point to CB and Linus's journey to the Christmas tree lot, the one with all the big shiny aluminum Christmas trees. Remember the big spotlights that led the two to the spot? 

Or one might think of the brightly lit stage with all the kids dancing in lieu of rehearsing for the Christmas play:

This one stands out most in contrast to that same stage when Linus finally steps up with Luke 2 in answer to Charlie Brown's desperation:

John's seemingly simple dichotomy masks the much more demanding task of discernment that we face: which light is the true light? Seeking the "true light" as John calls it in verse 9 requires sorting out a lot of fake or artificial light. John doesn't really address that so much, outside of course of spending his entire gospel trying to portray that Light.

Maybe the difference is that the "true light" is the one that actually does shine in the darkness, that isn't unplugged or turned off so easily. The "true light" is the one that the darkness did not, could not, cannot extinguish.When other false lights have shorted out or burned away, the true light still shines. 

One of my former seminary professors, when the occasion arose, frequently (OK, almost always) pronounced a benediction that included something along the lines of this: "and may light, love's own crucified, risen, incarnate light guide each and everyone of us out of every darkness and all the way home." What does a "crucified, risen, incarnate Light" look like? Maybe more to the point: what does a "crucified, risen, incarnate Light" not look like? Perhaps in the end this is the thing that points us towards the true light and away from all the parade-ground devils practicing their transformation-tricks on gullible souls.