Hope is powerful. Without hope people wither and die.
One of the most frequent pictures that Scripture uses to describe the dynamic of hope we have in Jesus is light and darkness.
“God”, St John says, “is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”1 He is light. That picture of light is brilliantly simple and yet rich and deep.
It is in the nature of light that it goes out and includes others. Light radiates from a source and moves towards the other, enfolding and embracing it. It does not diminish that which it touches but rather allows it to be seen fully as it is, to become fully itself. It warms and energises.
For this reason light is associated in the Bible with life and with love. To say that God is light is the flip-side of saying he is love: one who looks to the other, and brings them life, enabling them to be more fully themselves and more glorious than they could have been without him.
But we can go further. For God to be light also implies that he is truth and freedom. Light illuminates – that is its essence. It makes known the truth about that which it touches.That in turn brings freedom for to choose freely we must first know the truth. And so we return to love. For what is love but the other, known and freely chosen?
God is light. He is beauty and truth and freedom and above all love.
Pause for a moment. This is an extraordinary claim. At the centre of existence is not the cold indifference of a mechanical universe blindly progressing from darkness to darkness. It is a person whose very being is light.
Moreover, this light is not merely the source of existence but its end. In the beautiful picture of the destiny of all who love Jesus, John describes a city that “has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.”2
But if the centre of existence is light, why does the world experience such darkness?
The possibility of darkness is the necessary implication of the ability to choose the light of freedom and love. God is perfect freedom and perfect love. To be able to choose both freedom and love is to accept the possibility of choosing darkness. Yet just as light, love, freedom and life go together so do darkness, sin, slavery and death. The world exercises the freedom of light to choose darkness and so finds that freedom removed. It rejects God who is freely chosen love and life and finds itself enslaved to sin and death. Such is the condition of humanity. It is fundamentally one without hope for the only hope of the slave is to be freed and yet freedom is the one good the slave cannot himself will or perhaps even imagine.
To be in darkness is to be without hope. To offer light is first to demonstrate that there is another way to live – to understand that darkness is not the final condition of all humanity. That offer awakens the possibility of hope because it demonstrates that we need not live in the darkness of sin and death but can imagine ourselves becoming men and women of light and love.
This is how St John begins his account of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind… The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.”3 As Christ comes into the world he brings with him hope that the darkness of sin, slavery and death will be destroyed in his light.
“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”4 This is the gospel. That within each of us lies a darkness of pain, shame, guilt, frustration and, ultimately, despair. And that in its place Jesus has come to fill us with light and, ultimately, with life.
The challenge each of us face is whether we will receive that hope, to allow the light to remove our darkness and replace our death with his life. To do so is both sudden and slow. It comes like a flood when we open the shutters of our lives to him, when we are baptised and commit ourselves to following him. And yet there are still attic rooms shrouded in gloom which each of us need continually to open to the light – areas of bitterness or long-held grudges, of cherished abuses of our sexuality or prejudice against our brothers and sisters.
To live in the light is a continual choice to reject darkness and embrace Christ.
So where does this leave us as Christ’s Church? With the words we read earlier.
Christ came as light into a world of darkness, the ultimate bearer of hope. And now he sends us in the same way.
When Christ instructs us to be light, therefore, he is setting out our destiny – not merely to show up the failures of the world around us but rather to offer hope that the world need not live in darkness any longer; that slavery can be replaced by freedom, sin by love, despair by joy, the devil by God himself. To put this shortly, the light is Christ; when we become light we demonstrate the desirability of knowing Christ, generating the hope that there might be a different way; when we offer light we are offering the chance for that hope of a better future to be realised.
The light that we bring is not, fundamentally, our own. It is not, in the final analysis, the hope of a society run well, of people who are kind, of men and women treated as equals, of a community of races, nationalities and ethnicities. All of these things are evidence of the presence of light. But the light they demonstrate is not their own; it is a reflection of Jesus.
Our work is to bring people to Christ; it is not merely to demonstrate a better way of living but to introduce them to the One who is himself life.This is how John’s words are fulfilled: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”5 It continues to shine through us.
What does this mean for us as we move into the year ahead?
First, it means we need to know hope. In other words, to resolve to come increasingly to the light of God and allow that light increasingly to fill our lives. In practice, that might mean any of:
- Getting baptised – going all in for Jesus. If you haven’t got baptised, that’s a bit like having those Christmas lights people put up that shine a picture onto the house. The light is there, some might get in through a window at some point, but basically the house is closed to the light. It is outside shining in where it can. If you haven’t put your trust in Jesus and got baptised yet, do.
- Committing to prayer and reading Scripture, or fasting each week. Plan to build up your spiritual life in a named, accountable, achievable way.
- Looking for acts of kindness first to other Christians and then to those outside. You could set yourself the goal of one selfless act of love for someone every week. Then increase it.
Second, we need to show hope. Jesus said:
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others…”6
We can do this as a group, opening our building to community services, looking for ways we can raise money to help good causes, seeking ways to improve our environment and care for creation. You will have better ideas than I do. Let’s share them. We want to be a light shining in this village, bringing hope to those whose experience of life is dark.
Third, share hope. That quote from Jesus doesn’t finish with Christians doing good. It says we are to do good in order that people might come to worship the God who made them.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”7
A large part of the point of the good deeds is ultimately to bring people to worship. The light we shine is not our own; it is Christ’s. We let our light shine so that they can discover his light. Ultimately he is what people need.
Sharing faith can feel hard or intimidating. But it doesn’t need to be. It could be as simple as:
- Inviting a friend to come with you to a Life Group or Sunday service.
- Resolving to pray for someone to know Jesus and then doing it every week.
- Offering to pray with a friend or neighbour who is in distress.
- Inviting someone to Alpha.
It feels scary but it shouldn’t. Jesus is good. Church is good. Light and life are good. And everyone deserves to know them.
Deep Church 