Jesus said to his disciples: You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket. It is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” (Matthew 5.14-16)
In the book The Forgotten War Remembered, Michael McCarthy offers stories of the Korean War from veterans who served in it, their own words bringing to life the strength, the sacrifices and the selflessness that they showed in that brutal and forgotten fight that started the 1950s. Hoping to have their heroism remembered at long last, McCarthy lets them tell their stories in their own words, allowing us to see the first-hand experiences of the men who battled, not only human enemies, but natural enemies such as sub-zero temperatures and ice-covered landscapes.
At the end of the book, McCarthy uses a photograph to bring home the reason for the war. The photograph, taken by NASA from one of its satellites, shows the Korean Peninsula at night. The lower section of the peninsula, where South Korea rests, shines with bright lights, blasting through the darkness, radiating upward with sparkles. The upper part of the photo, where North Korea sits, is a black mass, no lights shining, nothing to show that almost 26 million people call it home. The area is covered in darkness.
McCarthy offers this observation: “South Korea is ablaze with the lights of freedom. North Korea is dark with poverty, hunger, and daily fear from living in a totalitarian state.” Sometimes, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the picture that McCarthy places as the coda to his book speaks volumes, the lights, contrasted with the darkness, saying it all.
The image of light and darkness is as old as the world. Already, in the Hebrew sacred texts, we find the writer of the Book of Genesis, in the first sentence of his writing, telling the reader that “in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters, God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’ God saw that the light was good.”
Subsequent writers, both in the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures, will use the primordial image of light and darkness to bring home the crucial belief that where there is light, there is God, and where there is darkness, there is evil. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, intentionally borrowing from the Genesis text, begins his book with the same image, characterizing and symbolizing the life of Jesus as light, writing, “His life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
We should not be surprised, then, to find the image of light and darkness used in the First Gospel, as we see today in the section from those scriptures selected for us. Matthew has Rabbi Jesus, the teacher, follow his instructions, known to us as the beatitudes, with a series of other images that continues the lessons of the beatitudes, images near and dear to the people sitting on the hillside listening to the Rabbi instruct them in the right way to live their lives.
The first image that the Rabbi uses is that of salt, telling his students, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted? It is then good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men.” Doubtlessly, the people hearing his words acknowledge the truth of what he says, nodding their heads in approval, all of them using salt every day in preparing food for their tables and in preserving staples such as fish and meats.
Furthermore, next door to them is the Dead Sea, mined and merchandised for salt, the people of the region very familiar with the availability of its salt and with its widespread usability. For Rabbi Jesus to identify salt with their own practice of his teachings gives understanding and purpose to his words, the comparison a continuous reminder of who they are and what they are. Even modern minds, far removed from salt mines, understand, any patron of pretzels the first to proselytize the importance of salt.
But the Rabbi does not offer them a single image, but a second image as well. Here, we find him using the ancient image of light, found in their sacred texts, spoken to them by prophets through the ages, always used to remind them to seek light in their lives, not darkness, for, as he reminds them, light comes from God, and darkness comes from the demons of the deep. It was Isaiah, as they surely remembered, who told them “to be a light to the nations,” in this way proving to the heathens that Yahweh was the god of the heavens, not the wooden idols that the pagans worshiped.
So, Rabbi Jesus is showing continuity with the past, reaffirming the prophets of old, and reminding his students that they also must be the light to the nations. It is important to note that he speaks directly to the people in front of him, not to the powerful sitting on thrones, not to the well-heeled serving on boards, not to the connected standing in the shadow of famous stars. He says, “You are the light of the world,” in those few words giving his students their mission, their purpose, their direction in life.
Like any good teacher, Rabbi Jesus knows his time with his students is limited. He must move on and they must move on. So he offers them something to take with them, something that contextualizes his teachings. And that is light, another ordinary image, familiar to all of them, as salt is, but just as powerful, all of them fearful of the night, always grateful for the light of day.
Today, in our well-lit world and often over-lighted skies, we still have some sense of the importance of light, even if it is ubiquitous in our lives. All of us have experienced the loss of electricity during a storm, forced to stumble around in the darkness, unsure of our steps, fearful of a fall. Many of us have had to walk down a dark street, wary and worried about possible dangers. And who of us doesn’t reach for the light-switch the first moment we step into a dark room, an automatic reflex on our parts, accustomed to having light at the touch of our fingers.
So the image still speaks, loudly and clearly, summoning us to our purpose and setting before us our objective: We are to be the light of the world, in the same way that our teacher was the light of the world. He showed us how to give light. Now we must shine, embodying the light in big ways and in small ways, human tiki torches, so to speak.
Although not needing an explanation, we benefit from an examination of the contrast that is the underpinning of this metaphor. In using the image of light, Rabbi Jesus clearly understands there is at play its opposite–darkness. So if he is telling his students that they are to be the light of the world, then he accepts that the world is encased in darkness. If the world was, in fact, a well-lighted place, we wouldn’t have to “let our light shine before men,” as he tells us we must do.
Again, in the Fourth Gospel, we will find Rabbi Jesus making the same case in his conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus. He tells Nicodemus, “This is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.”
So, there is an opposition here, as there always is in the gospel, the images of light and darkness serving as the contrast between good and evil, a battle waging between the ways of God and the ways of the world. Rabbi Jesus expects his followers to be foot soldiers in this fight, carrying into the darkness of the world the light of God’s ways, shining into the dark corners of the world the iridescent beauty of light.
And what is the light that we bring into the darkness of this world? Rabbi Jesus calls it our good deeds, meaning the many ways that we imitate the goodness of the Most High God, a God who is generous, loving, and kind, a God who is merciful, just, and righteous, a God who always forgives, never forgets the least ones, and never forsakes his children.
Wherever he walked in the world, Rabbi Jesus brought light through his good deeds: when he fed the hungry, when he healed the sick, when he consoled the weeping. Light shone from his good deeds when he welcomed sinners, judged no one, and showed compassion to the poor. As he made his way from Galilee to Jerusalem, the path behind himshone with the light of a thousand good deeds, each step he took bringing more light into the darkness that held the world as its hostage.
When Nero, a particularly tyrannical and maniacal evildoer, was emperor of Rome, he delighted in persecuting the community of Christians living in the city, falsely accusing them of misdeeds and heedlessly tormenting them for his own pleasure. Known for his lavish parties in his spacious gardens, Nero was known to hang Christians on poles along the pathways of his outdoor parties. Coating their bodies in pitch and tar, he would set their bodies afire, turning them into human lampposts.
Seeing his morbid cruelty and hideous acts, many of his guests were so moved by the stoicism of these saints and so inspired by the silent suffering of these martyrs that they sought out means of becoming Christians themselves, wanting to find a purpose in their own lives that led to such courage and confidence.
Soon enough, Nero, his thirst for evil insatiable, was reviled by the senate and exiled from Rome, forced to drive a dagger into his own chest to avoid murder by soldiers who marched to his country villa to assassinate him. For their part, the ranks of the Christians steadily grew, their good deeds winning over more converts to the Way, their light shining in the darkness of Imperial Rome.
Certainly, no sacrifice as great as theirs will be asked of us, except in extraordinary circumstances, but there always will be opportunity for us to bring light where there is darkness, if only because there is still so much darkness in the world, our own good deeds eradicating the darkness one corner at a time, until light shines throughout the world, as it did in the beginning, when God saw that the light was very good.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 