I Am the Light of the World
Jesus is the light of the world. He calls us to cast out darkness and live in his light.
At first glance, this is a really simple passage. Often in the past, when I have offered a reflection on verses for the Lenten Devotional Book, I have needed to spend a fair amount of time thinking about the selection I was assigned—wondering what that year’s particular profit was “really” saying, or what was the take-away message for people wanting to know God’s wishes for us. This year there seemed to be nothing to question. It seemed pretty straight forward. Light is good. Darkness is bad. I can handle that, I thought.
In this letter to the Ephesians, Paul picks up on the message in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is very specific about how not to live—what habits or actions to avoid lest dire consequences befall those who break His commandments, e.g. “Cut off the hand that causes you to perform a sinful act.” But while verses 3 to 5 in this Ephesian chapter do provide a pretty extensive shopping list of habits/life-styles Christians should not practice, Paul focuses not on punishment, but on the positive: the joy of living as Jesus wants us to. And verses 1 and 2 say “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us.” i.e. let the light of Christ shine through you in all you do.
Paul reminds the Ephesians that because the light of Christ has come, they have been radically transformed. The letter goes on to say that people who are not living in the light of Christ are living in darkness. They do not have an inheritance from God, but instead an expectation of God’s wrath. “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light,” Paul commands.
This is where the passage loses its simplicity for me. Paul goes on to say, “Do not be associated with them,” (the people living in darkness.) But he also says, “You have a responsibility to find out what is pleasing to God and to usher in the shining of his light upon those living in darkness, so they too can be transformed.”
How can we do both?
Pauline Buck