Christmas Lights In The New Year

Across many years and miles, John Miller, a good and wise friend who teaches philosophy in Florida, has been gently challenging me to think straighter and more inclusively about religious beliefs. John takes not only my own religion, but all the world's religions very seriously, and so it did not surprise me how he closed his Christmas letter this year, with a beautiful paragraph on the Fourth Gospel's reference to the Light "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Included in the paragraph was a gentle reminder that this light is not unknown in the East, along with a quotation from Hinduism's Upanisads: "And the light that shines above the heavenly vault, the support of all creation, the support of the universe, in the supreme and highest realms, is none other than the light that dwells in the human body."

This time of the year, one of my favorite Old Testament passages is always from Isaiah: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; on those who lived in a land as dark as death a light has dawned." (9:2) On one level, the "light" in this passage is a newly born king who will deliver Israel from the Assyrians; on another, it is the hope for the deliverance itself. The distinction is important. It opens out on the continuing reinterpretation of what God's promise of liberation must mean in the context of seemingly endless delays in its fulfillment, all the way to the present day. For Judaism, the "who" of the light gradually gave way to the "what" of the hope. Everywhere, the darkness of the land on which human beings live is a darkness unto death, and yet, light still shines. This darkness cannot overcome the light of hope that dwells in even the most savaged human bodies.

St. Matthew's light was indeed a light also known in the East. As was so for Isaiah, for Matthew, too, its meaning unfolds on two levels. On the first and literal level, the light is the star that guided astrologers from the east all the way to Jerusalem, and then to the house in Bethlehem where the baby Jesus lay waiting to receive their homage. On the second and much richer level, the light represents a trust in God that does depends not upon particular Messianic expectations of a particular oppressed people, but rather upon both the fear of God and an openness to God's grace that dwells in Gentile hearts at all times and everywhere. This same, two-level unfolding is evident in St. Luke's image of the glory that "shone round" all the shepherds in the fields the night of the angel's visit to them. The image expressed both an opening of the vault of heaven to an angelic chorus of light, and a brightly burning faith conquering fear from within.

Whether Christmas messages about light derive from Isaiah, or Matthew, or Luke, or from any number of other scriptural passages in many other books of the Bible, at least one thing can be said with certainty about all of them. They speak as much about quiet transformations of the human heart within us as they do about spectacular reconfigurations of natural and historical processes beyond us. It is the former that kept the Jewish people going when the longer and longer anticipated Messiah did not appear, and that keeps Christians and Muslims going when the kingdoms of this world conform less and less to the long promised dawning of the kingdom of heaven.

At first glance, the light about which St. John wrote may seem to have little if anything to do with whatever light it is that "dwells in the human body." In the Fourth Gospel, "the true light which gives light to everyone" is none other than the Word of God, who was with God and one in being with God from the beginning, and whose life alone is humankind's light. That light shining in the darkness is the eternal Logos, from beyond all worlds. Further on in the Prologue to this Gospel, however, we come face to face all over again with that second level of meaning that permeates all of the Scriptures' many witnesses to the light. There does remain the light of the eternal Logos, shining out-there, beyond us. But there is also the light of the eternal Logos shining in the flesh it has become, in order that we in our altogether human bodies might become altogether more like God.

The Upanisads had it right. With the very light of God having become the light of our very bodies, there can be no doubt about the capacity of finite humanity to bear the very essence of God to the world. Glory to God in the highest, and in our lowliness as well.