My boys like to read at night, even after it’s time for lights out.  That’s when they get out their flashlights, so dad won’t know.  Only, dad knows when their door opens an hour later and they come out asking for new batteries, because their flashlights are giving out: their light is failing.  People believe they have light; you and I have light that truly is light, unfailing light.  Wisdom, virtue, compassion, equality, justice—these all sound good and feel good, but without God’s light they’re all failing flashlights.

Jesus finds many walking in darkness.  Some are blind.  God designed the eye for seeing; without light our eyes cannot see.  Don’t you just love fumbling around in the dark?  The eye needs light; seeing requires light.  Light is meant for seeing.  We might even say that light is meant to be seen.  Scripture tells us that God is light; God enables us to see, yet many remain blind: they choose darkness, prefer darkness.  How is this possible?  They say they see.  If we speak of darkness, they say we judge them.  They say we’re blind.

No desire for God: if this God about whom you and I speak really existed, He would ruin everything that the blind have so carefully built, so closely treasured.  He would overturn every table.  Jesus says, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19).  They live with a guilty conscience, not the good conscience Paul keeps asking Christians to cultivate, their gift from the Holy Spirit as they live in Christ.  Those who’ve taken shelter in darkness hate their guilty conscience and hate what causes their conscience to feel guilt: God, God’s Word, the light, people who are always judging, judging, judging them.  Why is it that people who are doing what they ought not do are always sternest in their demands not to be judged?  The only light is the light God gives: the one light they don’t want, the one light they want to ignore, want covered, hidden from their sight.  How intolerably preposterous this book is to too many.  And what can you and I do?

“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl” (11:33).  Yeah, I have this light, but I’m going to put this bowl over it.  Sounds crazy.  Sin is insanity and the world is a madhouse.  All the prisoner movies set in the old days put them in very dark places, deep dungeons, but there’s always that moment when a ray of light enters, almost always from above, like a gift from God, the eternal hope for freedom, which is the hope for God who is light.  There are people around us every day who feel like they’re lost, hopelessly lost.  God finds them, maybe even through you.  No darkness can hide them from Him.  God found us with His light and has given us His light, and Jesus tells us just what sane people do in the madhouse: they put the light “on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light” (11:33).

In this place, we mean for people to see the light; we put the light where it can be seen, and we don’t try to hide it.  It would be strange, to say the least, to light a candle and then put it someplace where no one could see it.  Nothing to see, here!  Or see by.  The light is set out to do its work, “so that those who come in” may see it.  They’re not coming into the madhouse—we’re all there already; no, those who come in are coming into the light, the place of hope, freedom, healing, sanity: the haven that points to heaven.  To open the Word is to open the door; knock, and it shall be opened to you.

I don’t think Jesus is speaking about light hypothetically.  He’s talking about those who will enter the place where the light may be found, be seen.  I think he just might be speaking about the church, the community of faith.  He’s speaking about us.  We are keepers of the light.

But what if there’s no light to be found here?  What if we’ve hidden it away?  No, I don’t believe that we have, but follow me a moment: church should be the one place where God’s light is not hidden or concealed, not covered over with the coverings made by men—human words, human teaching, the pretty drapery that lets in only as much light as people happen to want at any given time.

One of the early church fathers, Cyril of Alexandria, in Egypt, wrote of the church as a lampstand.  We aren’t the light, but we lift up the light.  The light has been given to us by the one who is light: God from God, light from light, eternal light whose first recorded words for us are “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).  Light makes it possible to see in the darkness, to find our way.  Light pushes the darkness back, pushes it aside, like a stone being rolled away.  Monsters may be in the dark; God is in the light.  Have His light in your eyes.  His light is for seeing; His light is true light.  In Christ, by the Spirit, we truly do have light—and we see.

“Your eye is the lamp of your body” (11:34).  In Jesus’ day, people used oil lamps.  Maybe some of you still have an old kerosene lamp.  Back then, lamps needed oil and fire for light.  Oil, fire, and light are strong, full symbols throughout Scripture: the oil of gladness, of brotherhood, the oil of anointing, for consecration.  To be consecrated means to be living with special, sacred purpose.  Fire is often used to describe the Holy Spirit: it only takes a spark to get a fire going; it only takes a flame, to have light for knowing, and for going.  The lamp is meant for all three: oil, fire, and light.

Your eye is the lamp of your body—oil, fire, light.  “When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light.  But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness” (11:34).  A healthy lamp, a good lamp, keeps the oil and the fire.  A healthy eye is an eye that works well, serving its proper function.  In place of this word healthy, different versions have clear or sound.  A good eye.  Now, God makes the eye and made it good; sin clouds the eye, blinds the eye with sin’s darkness.  The Greek word translated as healthy also has moral implications: generous.  A good eye is a generous eye: open, receiving and also giving—sounds like grace to me, because light is a gift, and life is a gift, and God sees how you and I and everyone use both the light and the life we’ve been given; He also sees how people fail to use or misuse one or both.

The body full of light is the life governed by God and God’s Word, God’s light.  There’s darkness there, too, of course, but the darkness is always in the presence of the light; the light reveals what’s in the darkness and the darkness hates the light, fears the light.  Maybe we all have at least one thing we would never want anyone else to know, yet it is already known.

The unhealthy eye, the darkened eye, blinded (in more ways than one), has the light that is no light, the light that is darkness.  The world has many such lights, many such ways; the many ways to god that are all no way because they are not God’s own way.  Here below, in the madhouse, the blind lead the blind, saying “Freedom is this way!  Paradise is here!”  Many follow.  It doesn’t take long to see the darkness out there.  Oh, it’s dark, but not so dark as entirely to hide what’s in it, who is in it: the Tempter, Darkness himself.  This is becoming increasingly evident, particularly on the internet.  Strange, how our darkest darknesses all find their way onto the internet: like our new collective unconscious.  As you and I form opinions, make decisions, and choose actions, we each must be asking ourselves continually, and praying continually: is this God’s way?  The world also wants to form our thinking, opinions, desires, and choices.

The unhealthy eye promotes a body full of darkness.  The unhealthy eye does not keep the light.  The unhealthy eye lacks oil, or fire, and so has no light.  Jesus told us about the wedding attendants who failed to have oil with them—their oil ran out and they were left in darkness.  How can our oil run out?  When we fail to go to the source of the oil.  When we assume we don’t need any more than we have right now.  “Nah, I’m good.”  Light takes oil.  We must constantly go to the source of the oil to obtain more.  When we go to the source, we always receive enough and more than enough, for God loves to give to those who come to Him, who recognize their need of Him: only He has the oil!  He gives it, free to us, costly to Him.

But there are those who do not go, do not seek.

Many years ago, I read an academic essay that cleverly made a connection between the seeing eye and the person doing the seeing, the I.  We are shaped by what we see.  We are also shaped by what we do not see.  We are shaped by what we seek, and by what we do not seek.  We’ve all done darkness at different times in our lives.  Before God revealed Himself to us, all we could do was seek darkness.  We wouldn’t have called it that.  We would have called it satisfaction, happiness, freedom, fulfillment, my truth, my way, right for me.  We would have called it Don’t Judge Me.  Now that God has made Himself known to us, we want His light, we need His light and know that, without His light, there is no seeing.  Not everyone knows.  And even we still go plunging back into the old darkness now and again, even knowing that God’s light penetrates even there: nothing is hidden, not even from ourselves, now.  Our good conscience is not the result of our perfect walk in the light but the result of God having claimed us and pledged Himself to our salvation: faith.  He will perfect us, in His time according to His purposes.  He does not leave us in the dark.  Faith is our assurance that God is going to do this.  O, love that will not let us go.

“See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness” (11:35).  I like how the NLT puts it: “Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness.”  Oh yes, there is light out there that is as good as no light.  True light comes from true light, not darkness.  We need the light that comes from light: Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the warm, good light that causes us to grow and be fruitful.  Accept no substitutes.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.