God as light (homily)

Wynn Wagner is now an archbishop. He serves as the Regionary Bishop of the Southern Province USA, of the North American Old Catholic Church.

John 12:32

God is light. And for a long time, I thought that the Gospel was trying to tell me that light is good, while dark is bad. I'm supposed to strive to be good because that is what the light is. But I was wrong.

It is like my interpretation of the passage that says "Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me...." But God doesn't create "least" people. The label of "least" gets stuck on someone inside my head. "Least" is me judging someone for any number of reasons, and God wasn't the one doing the judging. The "whatever you do" passage is the Bible's way of telling me to get over myself... to quit judging... to help those I am least likely to consider a life form (much less an equal).

God is light, but we cannot avoid dark. In fact, if there was no dark, we would not have a concept of light. The native Eskimo language has 15 or more words that mean snow. Swahili doesn't have any words for snow. For our heads to work, we have to use comparisons. If you don't know there are 15 kinds of snow, your head won't consider such a thing.

But dark is not "less than" light. Don't forget that God doesn't work like that. God doesn't say that light is better. That isn't reality. It is judgment, and we are not supposed to be judging things.

There's the light on a pathway that keeps us from tripping. It is convenient but not necessary to have that kind of light. Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles and Helen Keller never needed to rely on light. Without light, we would not have food to eat. Without light, we could not be in awe of a mountain or stream. Light brings far-away things closer-- as the flicker of a distant star travels through nothing-ness to brighten our night. Light can travel a million light years, but it cannot penetrate a thin piece of plastic.

The light in the reading is not a visible light. What light means, in this case, is our connection to God. Light is energy, not matter. Our relationships to one another and to God are full of energy, not matter. Of course, we don't have a lock on this idea. If you read about chakras, you don't get very far without learning about the spectrum of colors in light. Today's earth-based religions talk about surrounding something with white light for protection.

In the Liberal Catholic Church, we talk about the "7 Rays" of God. We always burn 6 candles to remind us of 6 of the 7 rays. I'll let you figure out where and what the 7th ray is.

Light is connection. It is energy. At night we see how we are connected by a faint twinkle to the farthest points of the universe. During the day, we have a stronger light that blots out everything else.

Note this: mystical light is not a thing... it is a process. And it is always there, like the lights of distant stars are still there even if the daylight makes them impossible to see. So when the boss gets pushy... or religious leaders throw out oppression... or politicians sling hate... the ripple you feel is them standing in the way of you seeing the mystical light. I've told people "Get out of my light," and they instinctively back off… or think I'm bananas, which is okay because the effect is the same. But even when somebody blocks the light, we know we are still connected. The word we use to describe this unseen connection is "faith."

And the gospel challenges us all. We are called to be the mystical light of the world. We are not called to hold a flashlight to make a pathway bright or to tell people when they are on or off what we see as the pathway. We are to be the light itself. We are not told to stand in judgment of what others do or don't do… we are told to be the connection for others. You are the light of the world… and the word we use to describe this job is "hope."

As Christ was our light, the solitary hermit stands holding a lantern... peaceful... connected. The hermit doesn't light a pathway. The hermit stands in gratitude, connected in the glow of a mystical light. And the word we use to describe this energy is "love."