A few friends and I have been slowly making our way through Martyn Lloyd-Jones' book "Studies in the Sermon on the Mount". Without a doubt one of the best books I have read in a long time and I highly recommend it. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has a unique ability to dive deep into the text and provide profound exposition in a manner that is refreshingly relevant and conversational. We have come today to the chapter "The Light of the World" and as I sit and reflect I realize that this was just what I needed to read as I enter into the Advent Season.
"You are the light of the world". I have heard this phrase so many times in my life that it has become just another cliche. But MLJ urges the reader to consider the profundity of what Jesus said with this statement. The "you" that Jesus was referring to here were simple working-class commoners. They had no specific talents or knowledge or skills that would set them apart from anybody, and they certainly did not have the positions of power that all people of all ages have felt essential to bringing true and positive change to a culture.
We live in an age in which knowledge is held in the highest regard. Since the Enlightenment when the Greek classics and systems of thought were rediscovered and expounded upon, and particularly in the last two centuries, knowledge and in particular science has dramatically changed our world. Many feel that it is the advancement of knowledge and its effects that will ultimately transform our society into some sort of utopian ideal. And yet we have in no way seen that happening. Certainly in some ways the advancement of knowledge has provided great improvements in health, standards of living, etc.; but are we any better at loving each other? Is peace any more prevalent than it was 2000 years ago or even 50 years ago? While individuals are certainly connected electronically in a way that most of us never would have imagined... the argument could be made that our society as a whole is less connected to deep and lasting relationships than ever before.
As MLJ points out, Jesus certainly was aware of the "amazing flowering of the mind" that had occurred with the likes of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle only several-hundred years before he stood on this hillside facing a group of fishermen, farmers, and tax collectors and declared them to be, "the light of the world".
A mere passerby might have easily dismissed Jesus as a lunatic upon hearing this. Indeed the thought routinely pops back into my own mind! If these men were anything like me, they were selfish, cowardly, insecure beings who spent much of their time and energy just trying to stay afloat in life, much less bringing light to a world stuck in the darkness of sin! I imagine that the disciples themselves certainly were pessimistic regarding this outlandish claim about them. In fact they may have even forgotten, over time, that Jesus had declared them "light". But as Jesus lived and walked among them his very presence did the impossible act of bringing light and healing and joy into their OWN hidden areas of darkness in their OWN hearts. And history shows us that these ordinary men truly did become great lights that have brought about great transformations in the HEARTS of people throughout history (an area that knowledge and technology has still not been able to penetrate).
How did these first disciples remain faithful followers to the end...even to the point of becoming martyrs? How difficult is it for
US to remain faithful even with thousands of years of evidence of the truth of Christ's claims to rely on! The only explanation for the complete transformation of the early disciples was that the power of living and walking with the Light of the World was so completely transformative that they were irreversibly and indefinitely changed at the very core of their being.
Though mankind had lived in darkness for eons before the coming of Christ they did not know it. "The people which sat in darkness saw a great light". It was when the true light of the world came to dwell among us that we realized just how mired we as humans were in darkness. As we begin this advent season may we invite God... the Light of the World... to again walk with us in all of the hidden and unkempt areas in our lives. May we see with more clarity the areas of our lives that still are awash in blackness, and as we proactively spend time basking in the beautiful Light of Christ this advent season may we further be transformed into beings who more accurately reflect that light into the world around us.
