Jesus is...the Light of the World

This scripture tells us that Jesus is at the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Booths or Sukkot.  It was the 7-day Jewish holiday celebrated in the Fall that commemorated God’s care of Israel for the 40 years they were in the desert.  It was in those years that the people lived in sukka—temporary shelters or booths. And so each year, they would build these shelters again and stay in them for a week during the festival.  Now, in many ways it’s interesting that they would celebrate much of anything from the 40 years in the wilderness.  Those were not exactly the favorite years.  They were hard and tough with a lot of fussing and whining and wishing they could go back to Egypt.  And yet, every year after they arrived in the Promised Land, they gathered to remember where they had been and celebrate what God had done. 

In some ways I might call it the feast of looking back and giving thanks.  The festival elicited that from people.  But the booths—the tabernacles, made them look back in specific ways to see all that God had done since.  Because it wasn’t just getting them out of Egypt or seeing them through the wilderness, it was all that God had done since too—they could look at the land they had, the crops they raised, the homes they had built, the schools they’d constructed and all they’d become, and they could see God at work. 

The closest parallel I know of is project Chacocente.  When you’re there with the people they tell their stories and they talk about moving out of the dumps and how hard it was to transition to a new way of life.  They had to change how they related to others, how they earned money, how they structured their day, what they ate—almost everything was different. And I can imagine there were many days they felt like they were in the spiritual wilderness.  Some days they wanted to go back to the dumps.  That may seem hard for us to imagine, but for them, it was familiar and much easier than this entirely new life.  But they clung to the hope that what God had offered would be better. They persisted and have come so far.  Each family now owns their 2.6 acres outright with their home. They have a community well. They have electricity. They have the school. And each year something new happens and there’s something else to celebrate. 

If project Chacocente celebrated their own feast of Tabernacles they would invite sharing about what they went through and how hard it was AND how they persisted, how others came alongside to make this dream real—and together they would see all that God had done.

 That’s what the Jews did at sukkot—they remembered and marked time together and they celebrated all God had done among them.  Each night, they would light candles and then sing and dance together.  The candles represented the presence of God that had seen them through the trials and the darkness. 

And it was there, that Jesus taught and there he said, my words are not my own. It was there that Jesus said his words point back to God because God’s message is his message and his words are God’s words.  It was there that Jesus showed grace and pardoned the woman caught in adultery. And it was there, a few days into the festival, that Jesus said he was the light of the world.

In the midst of all the candles, all the lights that reveal how much God was with them over the years, Jesus claimed to be that light--the real light, the light that cannot be extinguished, the light of the world. 

So what does it mean to have that light in our lives?  Well, let’s go back to the story of the Israelites and their years in the desert. After the fact, they celebrated God, but in the midst of it, they struggled.  They struggled to find hope, and purpose and meaning. They knew they were on a journey, they knew that God had promised them something great, but they also knew that where they were was impossibly hard.  They were always on the move, they didn’t have a home.  They had a routine, but not one of living and relaxing and enjoying, but one of searching, wandering and seeking.  The years in the wilderness were unsettled.  They challenged their faith, their hope, and their trust in God’s provision and God’s promise for the future.  Those years are often related to years in darkness. Not because the sun was extinguished or hidden, but because they struggled to find their way, and to see what was in the distant future.

I’d venture that most of us have wandered in the darkness a time or two…literally and figuratively.  Our literal wandering helps us understand our spiritual wandering a bit better.  Imagine the darkness, even of your own home.  What happens in the darkness?  It’s hard to see.  The world becomes black and white and gray.  Often we stumble on an obstacle we didn’t know was there or didn’t remember we had moved.  And in the darkness of a new place, we struggle even more.  We aren’t familiar with where to go or how far it is from point A to point B, and often, we might become fearful, because not only can we not see what is there, we can also readily imagine what isn’t there.  Imagine a young child in a new dark place. They are often fearful, wanting extra lights on, and often calling out for help and protection.  Different sounds, or the reflection off an object catch them off guard and they aren’t fully sure what to make of them. And so we imagine all the awful things it could be.  To minimize a child’s fear, or even our own, we add a little light…maybe a night light, maybe a bathroom light, or a stove light. Or maybe we keep a flashlight with us. Whatever the source, we use light to help us navigate and to help us fear a little more secure. 

In a similar way, most of us have wandered in spiritual darkness.  In the wilderness of life, we struggle to see what’s around us. We don’t know how far it is from point A to point B.  We go slowly and cautiously, not sure of the obstacles and fearful of the dangers.  And to help us navigate and minimize our fears, we add a little light—the light of hope, the light of promise, the light of Christ, that helps us to see a little bit more of what surrounds us, and a little bit further down the path, and it chases away the shadows of fear that might plague us. 

Growing up, I don’t really remember being afraid of the dark—not specifically or in general.  But I do remember fearing at night that there was someone lurking in our dining room.  The layout of our house was that there was a hallway with 3 bedrooms and one bathroom at the back of the house. And at the front end of the hallway was the family room on one side and the dining room on the other.  In essence you could walk from one room to the other or you could go down the hall.  And at night, we turned out the lights, as you might expect.  And any night that I woke up, I would stand at my bedroom door and peer out to see if someone was at the end of the hall in the dining room and then race to the bathroom and close the door.  When I was done, I’d open the door and check again and race back to bed.  Now, there was never anyone lurking, nor had there ever been—it was all in my head.  But for years I ran from my fear.  Now, there are two bits of insanity to that story…the first is I have no idea what running down the hall would have spared me if there actually had been someone in the dining room, but the other thing is there was a light switch right next to my bedroom door…I easily could have flipped the switch and seen more than shadows and reflections and been at peace walking to and from the bathroom.  But instead, I chose to stay in the darkness and be bound by fear. 

As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown out of such fears and become much more pragmatic…if I can’t see in the dark, I turn on a light. It’s amazing how simple it is—at least in concrete terms.  But I haven’t always been so mature with my spiritual life.  I’ve found myself in darkness on more than a few occasions. And much like I did as a child, I look out and imagine all the awful things that might be there.  I run and my heart races and I’m plagued with fears.  I create a false sense of security against my imagined boogeymen.  And what I fail to realize there, just as I did as a child, was how easy it would be to shine the light on my path. I could ask for the light of the world to illuminate my path and take away my fears, but all too often, I’ve stayed bound by my fear and imagination. 

How many of us do that?  We find ourselves in a dark and scary place and instead of doing the most pragmatic thing—asking for light, we run in fear of what could be, not even what is, but what we imagine might be there lurking.  Jesus is the light. He is the one that helps us to see the path, but also the one who takes our fears and gives us greater confidence to take the next step.  When we look back on our journey and remember what we’ve been through, the places of light and hope come from Christ.  He is the light of the world. 

And when we struggle in the darkness, when we wander through the wilderness, we aren’t banished to fear and struggle, we are invited to call on the light of the world to shine on our path and help us see, to give us hope for what lies ahead, and to take away our fears—both real and imagined.