Jesus: The clear sun of righteousness

Our modern culture is spoiled by light. So spoiled that we are surprised by the stars in the sky when we are away from the glare of the city at night.  It takes an effort to get to where we can see the Milky Way.  The trouble that our constant use of electricity and that the convenience of 24 hours of illumination causes is caught up in the term "light pollution."

Pollution in all the other ways we describe it's impact is more dark than light.  Oil spills in the Gulf, coal ash ponds pushed into flooded waterways, smog, sewage pipes broken and over-flowing are all images of a kind of darkness.

So there must be more to make the term light pollution make sense.  It must have something to do with clarity, something to do with the binary contrast between the two.  Light pollution keeps us from seeing the stars by diluting the darkness between them.

When we look out at night and the precision and clarity we should expect is undone by our invention, bit by bit we settle for what is available, smile at and wish on the stars we can see and eventually forget how much we are missing . . . until.

My camping this past summer found such gifts on more than one night: Ponca State Park in Nebraska, Trail Creek Campground in Idaho and Arches National Park in Utah.  But as I returned through Austin and Houston, Texas I also was reminded that our southeastern humidity does some hazing over, too.  Even without human intervention the sky is not usually as clear for us.

Still we know the difference between clear and stained, between clean and muddy, between light and dark.  We crave the clarity as much as the light itself but we also crave light to see the difference, to know the precision, to show us the contrast.

That's what the Gospel of John tells us early on about the Word made flesh.  "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." (John 1:5 NRSV)  With Jesus what was distant and alluring was now proximate and definitive.

When the students at the Episcopal Center @ UGA sang hymn #490, "I want to walk as a child of the light," it was missing the smooth lyrical flow and was instead syncopatingly punctuated and profoundly so at that one beat after the chorus phrase "the Lamb is the light of the city of God!" Slap!

When our pianist graduated we lost the rhythm that made the moment work but at least during her years there was this sharp, clear demarcation in our lives.  We want to walk in the light! Pow!  We want to follow Jesus! Smack!  I've never felt a hymn so profoundly and now have missed it so much.

The more sublime way we sing this hymn and we will Sunday, assumes we will walk in the light, rest in the light, bath in it.  But there is more to that light that meets us in the contrast and shock as it compares to a world darkened and foggy.  Those UGA singers craved clarity.  Sometimes we should, too.

I want to walk as a child of the light

I want to follow Jesus

God sent the stars to give light to the world

The star of my life is Jesus

In Him there is no darkness at all

The night and the day are both alike

The Lamb is the light of the city of God *

Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus

I want to see the brightness of God

I want to look at Jesus

Clear sun of righteousness, shine on my path

And show me the way to the Father

In Him there is no darkness at all

The night and the day are both alike

The Lamb is the light of the city of God *

Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus