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TanningMonday, March 22, 2010
John 8:12-16 The Pharisees objected, "All we have is your word on this. We need more than this to go on."
Jesus replied, "You're right that you only have my word. But you can depend on it being true. I know where I've come from and where I am going. You don't know where I'm from or where I'm going. You decide according to what you can see and touch, by appearances. I don't make judgments like that. But even if I did, my judgment would be true because I wouldn't make it out of the narrowness of my experience but in the largeness of the One who sent me, the Father."
I want to know more about the light. The light brought by Jesus floods every corner of my life. "Search me and know me, see if there is any offensive way in me ..." (Psalm 139). When I ask him what he sees, he might say, "I see an overweight, spoiled kid that doesn't need to be any of those things." He would see my lazy approach to spiritual and physical discipline, my immature response to criticism, my failure to move away from comfort zones unless I'm thrown bodily out of them. So the light embarrasses any pseudo-self-congratulation I might be indulging. But there is much more to this light, as Jesus catches me when I stumble. "You don't have to do this, David. When I show you the way, when I blaze the trail, you can follow." I can renew my discipline any day, every day. I can remember more quickly to give the criticism to God, ask him to purify it and give it back to me. I can get up and get out of the warm shelter I've erected in the storm. The storm is over, anyway, for a time. Sun's shining. Every bright light casts a shadow when I stand in front of it. I do well to ask for God's vision into that shadow. It's behind me, in the spot hardest for me to see. It's darker than I'm used to. With very little effort I can pretend it's not even there. But that's a very bad idea. Lord, protect my blind side. Give me more, not less, of your light and the words that go along with it. I rejoice in your discipline and your direction. There is nothing like it in this world. |
As good philosophers the Pharisees might have asked Jesus what he meant by light, what he meant by darkness. Instead they disputed his right to speak at all. What authority upheld his words? Again they failed to allow their experience of Jesus in that moment to affect their foregone theo-logical conclusions.