I am: The Light of the World
John 8:12-20
12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ 13 Then the Pharisees said to him, ‘You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.’ 14 Jesus answered, ‘Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I judge no one. 16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgement is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 17 In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. 18 I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf.’ 19 Then they said to him, ‘Where is your Father?’ Jesus answered, ‘You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.’ 20 He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.
I’m sure most of us are very familiar with the concept of Jesus as the Light of the world. One of my favourite verses in the bible is John 1:5 -
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
For me knowing that the darkness can never overcome the light of Jesus enables me to remain hopeful for our world when we as a human race seem to be bent on destruction. But as I started to think what this passage means for me as an individual, I found The Message translation of John 8:12 helpful -
Jesus once again addressed them: “I am the world’s Light. No one who follows me stumbles around in the darkness. I provide plenty of light to live in.”
I recognised that I often feel that I’m stumbling around in the darkness and when I remember that Jesus says to his followers ‘You are the light of the world’ in Matthew 5, this all seems pretty challenging. I try to follow Jesus and if Jesus provides plenty of light to live in, I find myself asking ‘how can I do better at living in the light?’ For me, if I’m honest with myself, stumbling in the darkness often starts when I try to keep things from God.
I know in my head that keeping things from God is futile because he is ‘all seeing’ but it doesn’t stop me trying. Perhaps the hard thing for us as humans to accept is that God sees us and knows us and still loves us unconditionally. This feels countercultural when as a society so much time is spent proving we are good enough. And to add to this, God is prepared to offer grace and forgiveness because we turn to Him without having to earn it.
I know there are also times when the darkness seems to be not of our own making. A recent Church of England reflection for Lent suggests that ‘Darkness is often where God’s mighty work is done’. While one can often see that with hindsight, I can’t help feel that if I’d been in the midst of a dark time, my phone might not have survived. I am sure God is with us in dark times, we have hope because ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ and as Henri Nouwen says, ‘A little light can dispel a lot of darkness.’
Going back to the passage, in verse 14 Jesus says ‘I know who I am and where I came from’ and that’s why He can say that He is the Light of the World with certainty. It follows that if we want walk in the light, we have to know who we are and where we come from. So we are back to accepting that we are loved, accepted and forgiven by God -
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16
I think we can only appreciate fully that we are unconditionally loved by God by allowing Him to illuminate every part of our life, only then can we hope to not walk in the darkness and to provide light to the world. I love the Leonard Cohen line, ‘There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in’ So, my challenge to each of us today, is which cracks will we let the Light of the World shine through so that ‘we will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’
Di Riley
